183 | The Source of Your Advice

Every piece of financial advice isn’t meant for you.

Often people have opinions about what we should do and how we should handle our money, but they don’t have the same goals or vision that we have. That makes their advice largely inapplicable.

In this episode, let’s talk about the importance of being mindful of who we take advice from and filtering the advice we receive through our vision for our lives.

• • the story of a real estate investor who didn’t follow the advice of his family and ended up building a real estate empire
  • family and friends’ desire to keep us safe
  • advice from people who aren’t where you want to be in life
  • running any advice you receive through the filter of what you want for your life
  • my husband’s and my story of buying our house to fit our goals
  • being mindful of who you take advice from

You’re listening to Wealthyesque. 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 being mindful of who you take advice from. I was listening to a podcast interview recently with a real estate investor and he was talking about how when he decided to get into real estate, all of his family and friends told him he was crazy. They said he had a steady stable job and he should just be grateful for what he had. But the issue was he was feeling unfulfilled and he wasn’t making a lot of money and was just kind of struggling to get by and he wanted more for his life. And he learned about people doing real estate investing, so he was interested. So he ignored his family and friends. He took what they said was a risky move. And he got into real estate and he has now built basically a real estate empire. He is making way more no longer just scraping by having more fun, all of that. And I’m sure his family and friends just wanted to keep him safe. They wanted what was best for him. But they weren’t living the life that he wanted to be living. They weren’t in the position he wanted to be in. They were in the same or similar position. As he was already in. The only difference is they were satisfied with it. And he wasn’t. So he ignored their advice and he followed the advice of these real estate investors he had learned about and as I heard that story, I was thinking about how many of us take money advice from family and friends. Often just like in this guy’s story. Those family and friends are not where we want to be and yet we take their advice anyway. Let’s stop let’s stop taking advice from people who aren’t where you want to be. financially. Don’t take advice from people who are always stressed about money or who live in fear of their money or who believe they’ll never pay off their student loans or who believe that the only way to build wealth is to hit the lottery. Unless you want to be in that same position. Don’t take their advice. There have been so many surveys and other research here in America that show that most Americans are not good with money. The vast majority almost 80% are living paycheck to paycheck. And even among those who make over $200,000 a year. About a third of them are in the same boat. And there have been similar findings regarding how people manage their money in Canada and Australia. I’m not familiar with statistics from other countries beyond those, but that just shows that a lot of people aren’t managing their money well. And if the vast majority of people aren’t managing their money well, chances are most people in our lives aren’t either. Chances are the things that you see them doing won’t be the best way to get where you want to go. I am very much a big believer and doing what works for you and for your personal situation. I think that we have so much intuition about what works for us and the life that we want to lead. So even when you do get advice from someone who’s where you want to be financially, I think you have to run it through the filter of whether it works for your life. When we were paying off our debt, I came across so many people who were like, just spend nothing, don’t go to restaurants don’t go on vacation. Just put all your money towards your debt and hoard. And when you retire, then you can live right? That doesn’t make sense to me. And I know my husband definitely wasn’t going for that. So we took the parts of the advice that worked for us that fit how we want it to live our lives. And maybe that meant that we didn’t pay off our debt as quickly as we could have or that we’re not building our investments as quickly as we could be. But we’re doing it in a way that we get to live life in the process, you know, so I remember when my husband and I were buying our house, and everyone was telling us where we should buy and what we should do. And I mean, a lot of people that I used to work with a lot people that my husband works with, they had really nice houses, but we had these goals for our finances and for our life. And they were different from what most people do. So we wanted to have more freedom and how we lived our life and not be concerned about money all the time. And so we decided that we were going to get something that maybe wasn’t as nice as what other people have. But it worked for us. And we ended up taking only a fraction of what the bank wanted to loan us. But that decision has allowed us to do so much with our finances, and it’s a big part of why we paid off all of our student loans so quickly is a big part of why I was able to go down to 50% at my job and why I ultimately was able to leave that job when I wanted to do something else. If we had taken people’s advice and get gotten a nicer house, you know, all of that then we might not have had those types of options. So that’s an example of what I mean about making decisions for your life for your goals and not taking the advice of people who aren’t where you want to be. The ultimate goal for us was to have control of our time and be able to make decisions and not have to worry about the money. And that’s how this whole money journey started for us in the first place. But that’s not most people’s goals. Most people aren’t thinking about that. And maybe down the line we’ll get you know the nicer house or whatever. But we wanted to make sure that we were in a really strong financial position before we did something like that. Again, that goes back to our goals and doing what works for our life. So for you if you don’t want to be in your job long term, if you want to have flexibility to do something else, if you want to be able to take time off and do something that pays less or just want to have more options in your life. Don’t take advice from people who are in a job they hate and not making moves to leaf. Stop taking advice from people who are comfortable to keep doing what you’ve always been taught to do. Right having options like that is not the way that we’re typically taught. That sounds crazy to a lot of people so most of them aren’t gonna leave as possible. That’s how it was when I would try to talk to people about what we were doing. And that’s okay. That doesn’t mean that you can’t do it. That just means that they’re not the right people for you to listen to. So always be mindful about who you take advice from. Keep your own financial goals, your own life goals in mind. If someone isn’t where you want to be, don’t take their advice. Everybody has an opinion. That doesn’t mean you have to take it. Lean into the people who are doing the things that you want to be doing. Look at how you can take inspiration from what they’ve done and apply it in your own way. And always think about how advice that you receive fits with your own strategy for your life. And if you’d like my advice on how to manage your money better join us in money mastery for lawyers. You can get started at rho thomas.com/join. Alright, that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second and share this episode with a friend or two who you think may find it useful. That will help tremendously with spreading this information and helping more lawyers manage their money better, and I would greatly appreciate it. 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.