240 | Rewind: Playing to Win

As we close out 2024 and head into 2025, let’s make sure your money strategy is on point.

It’s easy to think that you’re doing okay with your money if you’re able to cover your bills and buy things you want.

But this line of thinking leads many lawyers to stay stuck in the same place financially because they’re not strategically thinking about how to move themselves forward.

In this episode, let’s talk about winning with your finances and growing your net worth, rather than just getting by and staying stuck.

• • what playing to win with your finances means
  • my personal story of not playing to win
  • how lawyers tend to think about their finances that keeps them stuck in the same place
  • the long-term vision for your finances
  • why doing the “right” things with your money doesn’t necessarily mean you’re winning
  • why staying in the same place sometimes feels good
  • what it takes to play to win with your finances

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You’re listening to Personal Finance for Lawyers. 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. By the way, if you’re a lawyer who’s struggling with debt, you’re probably making at least one of five common mistakes. Grab my free guide on how to correct those mistakes and finally get out of debt for good. Head on over to rhothomas.com/guide. That’s G-U-I-D-E.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. If you are listening to this in real time, it is the end of 2024, so we will have just celebrated Christmas. Merry belated Christmas to you, if you celebrate. Happy Hanukkah, if you celebrate that. I understand it starts on Christmas Day this year, so very cool. If you don’t celebrate either of those holidays, I hope that you’re enjoying the holidays you do celebrate, and if you don’t celebrate holidays at all, I hope you are enjoying some downtime with your family as we close out this year. So as we’re winding down this year, getting ready for next year, one of the most common intentions people set for the new year is improving their finances. If you’re in a situation where your finances at the end of 2024 don’t look much different than your finances at the end of 2023, I want you to set a new intention, to create a new strategy for the upcoming year, and this episode is going to help you do just that. So today I’m bringing you a rewind episode, and it will help you get out of that cycle of sameness, of treading water, doing the same thing month after month, year after year, not seeing any progress, and it will get you into forward momentum and progress with your finances. So with that, please enjoy this rewind episode, Playing to Win.

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Today we are talking about playing to win in your finances. Playing to win for me means actively doing things in your finances to move yourself forward and to grow your net worth. I was thinking recently about the time before my husband and I started our personal finance journey, and we definitely were not playing to win at that time. We were kinda like treading water. Right and we’re doing okay, and that we weren’t overspending weren’t going into credit card debt. We were even saving each month. But we weren’t looking at the full picture of our finances. We weren’t looking at our money holistically. We weren’t looking at how much debt we had or the interest rates on our debt. We weren’t looking at how much we had in savings or making goals to pay off our debt or to save more like any of that kind of stuff. We weren’t going backwards, but we weren’t really moving forward either. And this is something that a lot of lawyers do with their money. It’s like as long as I can pay my bills and buy some stuff I want, I’m good. But that way of thinking ignores the bigger picture. Your finances are so much more than just your day to day spending. And when you’re not thinking about the other pieces of your finances, when you’re actively ignoring those other pieces of your finances. Maybe because money feels overwhelming or it feels scary, then you can’t make a game plan that allows you to play to win with your money that allows you to start growing your net worth. When you are spending everything you make each month or when you’re overspending the tendency is to think just about how you can get to the place that you’re not doing that anymore, right. How can I stop overspending and stop going into credit card debt? Or how can I stop running out of money before my next paycheck? And I think that’s fine as a starting point. Because sometimes when you’re in that place, that’s what you can really believe it’s possible in your mind, right? That’s what you can believe is doable for you. I can get to the point that I’m not overspending anymore, or I can get to the point that I’m not running out of money. But I don’t only want that for you. The long term vision needs to be beyond that. So we’re not just trying to get you to where you’re no longer spending everything or overspending. I want you to be able to use your money to work for you. I want you to be able to pay off your debt and to save and invest and build wealth because that’s how you play to win. That’s how you create freedom for yourself and have more control of your time. When you don’t need all the money you make. You have a lot of options available to you that weren’t available before. And part of how you get to that point is when you’re not spending everything and you’re using that money to actively move yourself forward, to save to pay off debt to invest. We often think that as long as we’re not spending more than we make, we’re doing well. Like I was genuinely surprised when we added up our net worth and it was negative 342,000 Because you didn’t tell me it wasn’t gonna be six figures. We were doing the things we were supposed to do. Right. We weren’t going into credit card debt and overspending and all of that. We were saving a little but you can be doing all of the quote right things and still not be getting ahead. Still not be playing to win and that’s exactly what was happening with us. We were saving but the interest that was accruing on our student loans each month was more than the amount that we were saving. We were paying our minimum payments on time, but it was never even a consideration that we could pay more than the loan servicer told us to. We weren’t overspending, but we were allowing a lot of money to slip through our fingers because beyond paying our bills on time and saving, we weren’t being intentional with it at all. When you take a step back and look at the holistic picture of your finances, you can see things like that you can make a better strategy and actually move forward rather than treading water. treading water may feel good sometimes, maybe because it doesn’t feel as hard in the moment as thinking strategically about your money and making intentional choices about how to use your money to move yourself forward. You don’t have to give up anything, you don’t have to change anything. You can just keep doing what you’re doing. If you’re spending everything you make now I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you that you can just keep doing exactly what you’re doing and move yourself forward. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not magic. Something has to change if you want to change your finances. If we’re thinking about this water analogy, right, you’re not drowning. So you’re doing okay, you’re surviving, but staying in the same place not moving isn’t gonna get you out of the water. When you look beyond how to just survive, you can make that plan for how to get out. You can make a plan for what you’re gonna do with your money and you look at your finances holistically and you decide like What’s one thing I could do that will move me forward? Because sometimes it only takes one decision to make an impact. I say all the time that money is a tool. It can help you move toward what you want in your life, but you have to use it strategically. We’re not going to just be content with getting by anymore. It’s no longer just making sure your bills are paid in your head stays above water. It’s about changing your mindset, changing the way you look at your money. Looking at that holistic view of your money, thinking about how to strategically move forward to improve your finances. We’re playing to win. We’re not just playing to survive so those are my thoughts. That is the vision I have for every lawyer out there. You make good money and you can use it to your advantage.

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All right, I hope you enjoyed that rewind episode. I hope you got some inspiration, some motivation, some encouragement for your money journey in 2025. And listen, I have been doing a master class the last couple months that I plan to continue into 2025. It’s called the less debt, more money, master class. And in it, I teach strategies on how to decrease your debt, increase your cash flow, and start building your net worth. We have had a good time the last two times that I hosted it, and the next one is coming up in January. So if you would like some support on your money journey, be sure to join us. Head to rhothomas.com/lessdebt to sign up. All right, that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second and subscribe to the show. Leave a review if you have not done so already. Those things help the show get recommended to more lawyers. And as always, 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 take back control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice, you deserve. Enjoy these last couple days of 2024. I wish you all the best for the new year. Talk to you later.