224 | When Having Money Feels Uncomfortable

You might think that having more money would make everything better.

But what I have found is often lawyers don’t know how to handle having more money at first.

It feels uncomfortable, and they find ways to get rid of it and sabotage their progress.

In this episode, let’s talk about why it feels uncomfortable to have money and how to fix it.

• • 3 clients’ experience of wanting to get rid of the money they had

  • why it’s uncomfortable to have money when you’re not used to having money
  • subconsciously sabotaging your financial progress
  • the purpose of having a checking account buffer
  • the mindset shift you have to have when you’re managing your money better
  • a tip for dealing with overdraft fees

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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 when it feels uncomfortable to have money. This is something that comes up a lot with my clients early on in working together, and it has come up multiple times in the past couple of weeks. So I wanted to talk about it. I had two clients who achieved the goal of building a $1,000 checking account buffer, which I have talked about before, and then they spent the money. And then I had a third client who we were putting together, her first budget in there. We made room for her to get to $1,000 buffer by the end of the month, and she immediately wanted to know what to do with the money, like, we put that that line in there for the buffer, and she’s like, okay, so then do I move that to my savings? Am I gonna put that no as an extra payment on my credit card? What do I do with it? All of these clients are used to their accounts getting down to pretty low balances right before payday. And so one of the things I’m doing with them is helping them to have more money before payday, and to get used to having more money before payday. There’s this feeling of discomfort with having money, when you’re used to not having money, when you’re used to living on the edge, when you’re used to your checking account getting down to a couple $100 or getting hit with overdraft fees, or you’re used to feeling stressed before payday and things like that. It’s a really common thing, because in our brains, change is dangerous. Change is uncomfortable. So when you’re in that kind of situation where you’re living on the edge, you’re used to your account getting low. You’re used to putting money in savings having moved back again, or having to put stuff on your credit card because you ran out of money. When you first start to change your situation and you start setting up your account in a way that you have more money, it feels uncomfortable because it’s different. Our brains, like, for things to stay the same, change feels dangerous. And so when we’re talking about having money just sitting in your checking account, so your account isn’t getting even close to zero, which is what we’re doing in all three of these situations, it’s like, oh no, no, no, my account gets down to $200 like, why is there $1,000 in here? I have to do something with this money. And that’s where you get into trouble. And trouble is too strong a word. It’s not trouble, but you start to take yourself off course, because you’re defaulting to your typical way of managing money, and it’s a subconscious thing, but you literally sabotage yourself and your progress because you’re not used to it, and it feels uncomfortable. So then you tell yourself things like my clients did, like I have some quote, unquote extra money so I can go shopping, or I can take this unplanned trip, or I can move this to savings, or I can make a payment on my credit card. My clients felt like they had to do something with the money, because they’re not used to their accounts being at this level. they’re used to them being a lot lower and the thing that I always have to teach them is that having the money sitting in the account has a purpose. The purpose is to keep your account from getting down to the level that you’re used to, where you’re super close to zero or you’re even overdrafting or you’re relying on credit cards and feeling stress waiting for your next paycheck, having that money there gives you a lot of peace. You don’t have to worry about running out of. money. You don’t have to anxiously wait for your next paycheck. You can just live your life. But there’s a mindset shift that you have to have where you get used to having that money there. I always tell my clients, you have money. Now, like I was just talking to one, the one who did the shopping trip, and I told her, you’re a lawyer with money. And she had this big cheesy grin, because even though she had dipped into her checking account buffer for a shopping trip, she still has about $600 left going into her next pay period, which is much more than she usually has. No it’s not the full $1,000 that we had built, but it’s a huge improvement over what she’s used to, and she’ll get back to the 1000 like, I’m not worried about that at all. She also didn’t have to keep transferring money back and forth between checking and savings this month, like when you put money in savings, but then you don’t have enough in checking, and you know, something comes up. And you have to transfer some money back. She didn’t have to do that all this month, so she’s making progress. And so the point that I’m making with all of this is that there’s a change that has to happen in your brain. When you start managing your money better. It’s gonna feel uncomfortable to have more money at first. You might have some of this subconscious sabotaging going on. So you have to start seeing yourself as somebody who has money. You have to start seeing yourself as someone who has $1,000 $1,500 $2,000 in your account, and you’re getting paid again in less than a week, you have to start seeing yourself as a lawyer who has money and who knows what they’re doing with it, and stop seeing yourself as a lawyer who’s used to struggling and feeling stressed before payday and getting overdraft fees and all that kind of stuff. And by the way, if you are in that situation where you’re getting those overdraft fees, something came up that you weren’t expecting and you didn’t have enough money in your account, you got hit with that $35 fee. Call your bank and ask them to waive it a lot of times. They’ll do that as a courtesy, especially if it’s not happening all the time. And I know this from experience. I used to get down to $1 before payday in my account when I was in college, and I overdrafted a few times. And I have to say some of those were not my fault. It was the way the bank put the charges and deposits through, like they would do it out of order, where let’s say I was getting paid so like I could see that the check was coming through but it hadn’t cleared yet and then maybe I also bought some stuff that day and they would be in the temporary section of the applicant when you log in you can see the stuff that’s italicized where it hasn’t gone all the way through yet so like I would have some of that stuff in there and then they would put all the charges through so I get hit with overdraft fee and then put the deposit through and I’m like no, no, that’s not the way. that this happened like that is not the order these things showed up the deposit was coming in first and then I made the charges but anyway, there was a woman. at the bank that I was using at the time who told me that they had a policy where they offered one courtesy overdraft fee waiver a month or something like that. So that’s something that you can ask your bank about, about, because I’m sure that multiple banks have that same kind of policy, same thing with interest on your credit card. Like something that happens with my clients when they pay off their credit card is they’ll still get an interest charge that month after for the interest that had accrued during the month before they paid it off. And so I always tell them, just call them, ask them to refund it, and they typically do. It doesn’t hurt to ask. But all that is a little off topic. Don’t be afraid to ask for refunds on your fees and that kind of thing, but we want you to not be in that situation in the first place. So getting back to what we’re talking about, there is sometimes that feeling of discomfort when you’re getting your finances in order initially. That is okay. It’s completely normal. It’s just a matter of practicing seeing yourself differently. So you’re used to seeing yourself as a lawyer who struggles with money, you need to start seeing yourself as a lawyer who has money. You need to see yourself as a type of person who has $1,000 buffer in your account, or who has savings, who doesn’t spend every dollar just because it’s there, who has money. And when you start seeing yourself differently, you start to feel differently about having money, so it stops feeling uncomfortable, and it just becomes the norm for you. And as you see yourself differently and you get more comfortable with having money, you start making different decisions with your money, and you start seeing the progress that you want to see. So that is it for this week’s episode. I hope it was helpful for you as you start managing your money better. And if you haven’t done so already, please take a second, subscribe to the podcast, leave a review. Both of those things help the show to grow so that more people can find it. 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 regain control of your time, build wealth and live a life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.