214 | 3 Questions for Better Money Decisions

Intentional spending is foundational to managing your money better and achieving your financial goals.

Often we spend impulsively and without thinking about how that spending impacts other areas of our finances.

In this episode, let’s talk about 3 questions you can ask yourself to make better money decisions and to spend more intentionally.

• • the importance of being intentional with your spending

  • impulse spending and planning how to spend ahead of time

  • the tradeoffs we’re always making with our money

  • 3 questions to make better money decisions and spend with more intention

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You’re listening to Wealthyesq. We are a community of lawyers who believe that true wealth is having control of our time. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Today we are talking about three questions you can ask yourself to make better money decisions and spend more intentionally. Intentional spending is something that talk about a lot with my clients, because it really is the foundation of managing your money better and achieving the financial goals you have. When you are not intentional with how you’re using your money, it’s a lot harder to achieve your goals. You don’t really know what’s going on with your money. You feel lost. You feel like things all over the place, and you may even find yourself making more and more but not being able to save or get out of debt. One of the biggest issues for a lot of people is they make these impulse decisions about their money based on what’s happening in the present moment. So they’ll look, for example, at what’s in town, and then make a decision about whether or not to buy something. And they don’t think more holistically about their finances beyond this present moment, for example, other expenses that could come up, or future goals that they may have. So you want to make sure that you are planning for how you’re going to use your money ahead of time, and not at what you’ve got in your account right at this moment when you’re making decisions, and if you’re in a situation where you want to be saving more or you want to be paying off your debt, but it’s not working out. This is how you make those kinds of things happen. You have to plan for it. It’s not just going to happen because you want it to now, let’s say you have created your plan, and you’ve decided how much you want to spend on overall categories of things. As you’re going through your day to day life, how do you decide whether to spend on individual purchases that fall within those categories? First, we have to realize that we’re always making trade offs with our money. Any money that we use for one thing is money that can’t be used for something else, and the key is to make sure that we’re making those trade offs intentionally. So we want to be thinking about the things we’re buying and where those things fall into in terms of importance to us. This is where the three questions come in that will help you make better decisions and be more intentional with your spending. The first question is, Do I really need the thing I’m about? Sometimes we buy stuff just because it’s there, but we haven’t actually given any thought to whether we need it. Sometimes we buy things and we already have the thing at home, or we already have multiple of the thing at home. And so it’s like, do I really need this thing? Do I need to make this purchase? That’s the first question that we want to ask ourselves, and that’s kind of the baseline, right? But we don’t only have to make purchases that we need. So the next question is, do I really want the thing I’m about to buy? We often go about our day and we see this thing online and it’s like, oh, that looks cool. And we just immediately buy it, without even thinking about whether we want it, and then you get the package or whatever else, and you forgot all about the thing in the first place. You have no idea what’s in this package, right? So taking a second to ask yourself, do I actually want this that’ll help you to spend more intentionally, because you’re not spending just because the thing looked cool, or because you saw someone else with it, or because it was on sale, or it was a good you are actually thinking about whether you want the thing, and often you’re going to find that you don’t. It was just something you thought was cool, maybe an impulse in the moment. And by taking that beat to ask yourself the question, you interrupt that impulse, so you are less likely to act on it. A lot of times we right. We’re like, do I want this? Yes, I want it. I’m going to buy it. And then we end up looking sad because I wanted to make an extra debt payment this month, but now I don’t have any money left. So that’s why you don’t stop there. The final question you want to ask yourself is, is is making this purchase more important to me than my financial goal? So pay for a house or pay off your credit cards or build up your emergency fund. When you’re thinking about whatever your goal is, is the thing you’re about to buy more important to you than that goal? You Yeah, in some cases it might be, and that’s okay give yourself that permission. It doesn’t have to be that you’re a bad person, because you decide to go out and do something fun or buy something you want when you could have used that money to save or pay off debt, you get to make that decision, because it’s your life, and it’s your money. You’re an adult, so you can decide that you want to spend on something that you want, because that thing is more important to you than whatever your goal is. Sometimes, though you might decide, no, this is not more important to me. I can buy this thing next month, or I can catch that concert next time, or whatever. And so you decide not to spend the money, but either way, you want to be making that decision intentionally and running it through this filter. So if you ultimately decide, I don’t need it, but I want it, and it’s more important to me than my goal, by all means, go forth, but it’s important to at least do this inquiry, because so often we get in the habit of spending just to spend. And when you’re in that habit, and you’re not thinking about your financial goals, you’re not thinking about the trade offs that you’re making. You will often end up in a position where you’re not able to make the progress you want to make with your money, and you believe you just can’t do it right? I just can’t save or I can’t pay off debt. So those are three questions that you can ask yourself to make better money decisions and start being more intentional with your spending. As I said before making these kinds of intentional decisions with your money is the key to managing your money better. So use these questions and watch what happens. All right, that is it for this week’s episode. Please subscribe to the show and leave a review. Both of those things help get the show in front of more people, so we can get this information out there in the hands of more lawyers. And I appreciate your support as we close out, friend, I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently, week after week, you’ll continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.