225 | What You Want Now vs. What You Want Most

One of the biggest reasons that many lawyers never achieve their financial goals is they get caught up in the things they want in the present.

But by focusing on the things they want now, they ultimately sacrifice the things they want most.

In this episode, let’s talk about the balance between what you want now and what you want most and how to make sure you’re still giving attention to your ultimate goals.

• • instant gratification in today’s society

  • the requirement of change and sacrifice to improve your finances

  • making trade offs with your money

  • making room for the things you want along with your goals

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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 the things you want now and the things you want most. I heard this saying that was something like, discipline is sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. And I also did a devotional that was focused on the dangers of sacrificing your dream for what is temporary. It is interesting that this concept has come up a couple times lately, and I think it’s particularly applicable within the personal finance space. So I wanted to talk about it. A lot of our society these days is focused on instant gratification. We want what we want. We want it now, and we want it fast, right? But when you’re working on improving your finances, there are sacrifices that have to be made. One of the biggest, or the most common, is putting off that urge to spend money on something that you see right now, just because you want it in service of your ultimate financial goal, that thing you want. Most many of us don’t have a plan for our money. And I mentioned before that, that was my husband and me, before we started our money journey, the extent of any financial strategy was looking at whether we had enough money in the account to pay for it. And there wasn’t a plan. There wasn’t any sort of strategy involved. We weren’t looking at things in a strategic way, and that’s how a lot of people approach their finances. But if you are currently spending your money in such a way that you don’t have much money left at the end of the month, maybe your account is going into the negative or you’re going into debt, you are not able to save that kind of thing, then something has to change if you’re going to achieve your goals. Because what often happens is, we say we have a particular goal, we want to buy a house or get out of debt or be able to leave our job, but then we don’t put any strategies in place to do those things to actually accomplish the goal. And because there’s no strategy, we end up using the money that could have been used to fund those goals, buying things that we want right now and neglecting the things that we want the most. As I have said many times before, we are always making trade offs with our money. So when we use our money for something that we want right now, when we use it to buy a new bag or to buy a new car or go on vacation or whatever the things are that you might want right now, then that money is no longer available for the thing that you want most, for that ultimate goal that you have. If you’re not where you want to be with your finances, think about the things that you’re doing now in the present that don’t allow you to achieve the goal that you have for your future, because there has to be a measure of sacrifice to be able to achieve those goals. You have to change something that you’re doing now, sacrifice some money that you’re spending now to be able to use that money to achieve your goals and put yourself in a better financial position. So when you are planning your spending, first of all, you need to be planning your spending right, not just seeing what’s in the account, but making a plan. So when you’re planning your spending, you want to do so in a way that allows you to achieve whatever your goal is, and there’s room for both. I don’t believe that you just have to sit in the house and be bored and eat ramen noodles and do nothing until you achieve your financial goals. I don’t think that’s sustainable. I don’t think it’s realistic, but I know that there needs to be more thought put into how you’re using your money in the present to make sure you can reach your bigger goals in the future. So if the way that you’re currently managing your money isn’t working, then you’ve got to change something. That change will involve some sacrifice. And the way I want you to think about this is in terms of the thing that you ultimately want, your ultimate goal, and whether that is more important to you than whatever it is that you want in the short term. And when you put it in those terms, you look at it that way, it makes it easier to make that decision about how you want to spend your money, if my ultimate goal is to turn my finances around, and that is more important to me than whatever it is that I’m looking at in the present, right? I want to build my savings. I want to get out of debt. Whatever that means for you, then that means saying I’m not going to do this right now. I’m not going to spend on this I’m not going to spend this much, I’m not going to go this time. I’m going to skip this thing because I want to use that money for my goal. I want to use that money to be able to save. I want my savings account to get to this amount. I want my debt to get down to this amount. It’s not just going to get there because you want it to. The savings doesn’t grow and the debt doesn’t decrease. Just because you want it to, you have to make changes, and part of making those changes is deciding what’s more important to you, deciding that the goal you have is more important, and not sacrificing that goal for something that you want in the moment, that you’re probably going to forget about in a couple days anyway. Because when you spend money without intention and you end up not having money for your goal, you basically put those things that you bought above the ultimate goal that you have. You’ve made those things more important than the ultimate goal. And I don’t want you to look up 10 years from now and still be in the same place because you’re buying stuff that you want in the short term and not thinking about the goal. I want you to be achieving your goals and making new ones. And to be clear, sacrifice doesn’t mean that you have to completely cut everything you want out in the present, right? There’s often a way to spend on the things that you want in the present while still against your goal. So that might mean that you don’t do something as often as you want to, or you don’t buy as much as you want to, or you buy a slightly lower level that costs a little less. Those are still sacrifices, because you’re not getting exactly what you want, but it’s a compromise that gives you more room to achieve your goal. For example, I told you in a recent episode about my client on a shopping trip and dipped into her checking account buffer. So she had gotten to the point that she had $1,000 extra in her checking account, and she felt like it was extra money, so she wanted the shopping trip, and then she had less than 1000 but one of the things that we talked about was how she can still go shopping, but she can spend less than she did on this trip. It’s still a sacrifice, because she wants to spend X, technically, she has the money to spend X, but if she also wants to achieve her goals, and she can’t spend X, she can spend some amounts that allows her to achieve that money, not achieve that money that allows her to achieve that goal, but she doesn’t have to completely sacrifice being able to shop at all. And listen, I am not shaming anyone. I’m not saying that what anyone likes is wrong or anything like that. I like to shop, I like to go out to eat, I like to travel, but I also was willing to make sacrifices in those areas, because ultimate goal of getting out of getting out of debt was more important. So I didn’t shop as much as I could have, or I didn’t buy as excessive stuff as I could have, as often as I could have. We didn’t go out to eat as much as we could have. We didn’t travel as much as we could have, or go on as fancy vacations as we could have, because we want to achieve that goal, and so by making those compromises, it meant that we had more money available to achieve the goal. We still were able to experience the things. I did still shop. I did still go out to eat, we did still travel, but we didn’t do it at the level that we could have. And so that we didn’t spend as much, and so we have more money available for the goal that we had. So you can’t keep spending the same way and expecting things to change. It doesn’t work like that. If you want things to change, something has to change, and there’s going to be some measure of sacrifice involved in that change. Ultimately, it’s a matter of what you want right now versus what you want most, and only you can more important to you. But my prayer is that you don’t sacrifice your financial goals for the fleeing pleasure of things that you want in the instant moment. All right, so that is it for this week’s episode. Please share this episode with a friend, spread the word about this podcast, and let’s help more lawyers get their finances in order. 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 regain control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.