218 | Rewind: Seriously, Money Means Nothing

Friendly reminder that money has no inherent meaning.

Whether it’s your salary, how much debt you have, the balance in your checking or savings account, or something else, they’re all just numbers.

Different people will think about those numbers differently, and ultimately, the way you think about them shapes your financial results.

In this episode, we explore a few real-life examples that illustrate this point and go through an exercise to help you uncover some of your thoughts about money.

• • why money has no meaning

  • real-life examples of different people’s thoughts about different money situations

  • an exercise to help you uncover some of your money thoughts 

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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 I’m bringing you a rewind episode. This episode originally aired about three years ago, but I find in my conversations currently there’s a lot of meaning placed on money, a lot of thoughts about money. And so I thought that re-airing this episode would be helpful as we think about what money truly means. I hope you enjoy this rewind episode, seriously, money means nothing.

Alright so jumping into the episode today I want to talk about the meaning of money, and I’m really excited to talk about it, it’s not like a woowoo kind of thing let’s you know think about the meaning of life or anything like that. It’s just a reminder that money has no meaning, until we give it meaning. It’s literally paper that we as a society have all agreed has our value. And, I mean these days I don’t know when the last time is that I actually use paper money for something. So these days it’s more like numbers on your screen right, but your salary, the size of a raise, the size of a bonus, the amount of debt you have, how much you have in savings, how much something you want to buy costs, none of those things mean anything until we make them mean something. Each of the specific things that I mentioned is just a number. And our experience of each of those things of money in general, and all things really. Each of those things is just caused by our thoughts, or our experience if you do those things is caused by our thoughts as one of my mentors always says. Perception is reality. So our perception of our salary of our savings, our debt, whatever that determines our reality, when we perceive our salary as too low, or we think we don’t have enough savings, or we think that the amount of debt we have is bad. That’s the reality that we create for ourselves, Right, that’s the way that we experience each of those things. But none of those things are good or bad or high or lower enough or not enough. Until we decide they are. And the reason we know that is different people have different opinions about those different numbers right those numbers don’t inherently have any particular meaning, even the same person might have a different opinion depending on the context. So I have a few examples for you. First, what are your thoughts about a $150,000 salary. I remember when my husband was in med school, and some of his classmates will say things like, they didn’t want to go into primary care which is like family medicine that’s what my husband does or pediatrics internal medicine, you know, OB GYN that kind of thing, but they’d say they didn’t want to go into primary care because they didn’t want to quote be poor. Now the average salary for primary care physicians is about $150,000 Yes, primary care specialties are. Maybe the lowest paying specialties, but most physicians in those specialties still make six figures. Maybe they don’t make as much as some other specialties but they make what many people would consider to be a good income. But those classmates thought the income was too low for them. And maybe you think is too low too high. But either way, the 150,000 is just a number. And those people had their thoughts about that you have your thoughts about it I have my thoughts about it, etc. What are your thoughts about $670,000 of debt. Now if you’ve been around for a while you know my husband and I started out with over $670,000 of debt, and we’ve been working over the last four and a half years or so to pay it off. And when we first started, I thought it was terrible, right, it was burdensome. It was all the negative thoughts, all the negative things. And now I see it as a catalyst for me being able to help other people learn to manage their money better. Like if we didn’t have that debt and hadn’t been working on paying it off, I wouldn’t have that story, or the lessons that I’ve learned to share with you. And finally, what are your thoughts about $50,000 in savings. I’ve mentioned before that a woman I worked with a few years ago was telling me how she didn’t have a lot in savings, and I asked her, well you know how much is it just like oh it’s not a lot like but what’s the number, and eventually she said well it’s only 50,000. For some people, like this client, 50,000 is not enough. For others that would be the perfect amount. And for even other people it would be too much. I’ve been in this personal finance space for a while and I know a lot of people in the blogging world wouldn’t want to keep that much money in a savings account, because of the potential for it to make more in the stock market. But in all these examples, you see that it’s the people’s thoughts about the money, that gave it a particular meaning to low or terrible, not enough too much. It’s not the money itself. The money doesn’t mean anything by itself. We make it mean something because of the way we think about it. So I have an exercise for you to help you uncover some of your thoughts about money. You are going to complete the following sentences. And the point is just to bring awareness to some of your money beliefs. So don’t think about whether it’s good or bad or right or wrong or whatever just finish the sentence. So first, money is. Debt is. Having savings is. People with money are. For my parents, money was. If I had more money, I would. So just take a look at the way you finished those sentences, and, you know, if you didn’t actually do it in real time and you want to come back to it when you have time to think about it, that’s fine, but we have talked before about how thoughts create emotions which drive actions, which ultimately create your results. And so if you look at your current financial picture, the amount of money in your accounts, the amount of debt you have, etc. Consider how the way you finished these sentences, led to that result. So for example, if you finish money is with the root of all evil, then you’re probably not gonna want to hang on to your money, right. If you say people with money are bad or crooked, then you’re probably not going to be pressed about building wealth. So, the point again is not to judge yourself or your thoughts. We just want to bring awareness to them, and if you like the thoughts and the results that you have because of them, great people. But if you don’t, then you want to work to change those thoughts so you can change your results. The moral of the story is money means nothing by itself. We give it meaning by the thoughts that we have about it the way that we think about it. Right. What we make it mean.

I hope you enjoyed that rewind episode, and I hope that it helps you to think more about what money truly means, what you’re making it mean in your life, so that you can change those thoughts if they don’t feel good to you. All right, that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second, subscribe to the show, leave a review. Both of those things help us to get this show in front of more lawyers and spread this information, and I greatly 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.