I’ve been a financial planner and business owner for almost 16 years and traditional finance services annoys me. Yes, there are good people there. But for the most part, it’s sucky. It’s about minimum investments and products and insurance and asset management and BLAH-BLAH-BLAH……
You start to feel like if you don’t meet someone’s minimum requirements, you can’t play. Or if you don’t have 6 months’ of expenses, Suze Orman is going to kick you out of the conversation.
So many people opt out of the money conversation or personal finance because they feel like they should get organized, get out of debt, get whatever BEFORE coming to play.
You start to feel like you don’t have a right to expect more from your money; that unless you’re willing to spend hours a week on this (or pay someone thousands of dollars to manage this), you don’t have a right to successful financial life. This is so WRONG.
Instead of working for your money, start making your money work for you. I’m here to give you permission to expect more from your money—and that doesn’t mean you need to start spending hours figuring this stuff out, it means that you get to change the way you think about this…in fact, it’s probably none of the things you’ve been told is important to successful financial life.
What IS important? I am going to share with you the three things you absolutely must do to expect more from your money (and GET MORE from your money):
Step 1: Ground yourself in possibility, not fear
For many people, everything having to do with money starts from a place of fear and survival. So if we are going to expect more from our money, then we need to flip that dynamic.
So, let’s say that you hate-hate-hate thinking about how you spend money. The idea of someone else knowing how you spend your money makes you cringe. Guess what you need to start doing?
You need to get more comfortable with looking at the data. When you have clarity, it opens up the world of possibility for you—it might be changing what you’re doing, or it might be that everything you’re doing is awesome and you can relax. You can have more peace of mind.
A huge piece of expecting more from your money is developing your own philosophical framework to filter the data. And the symptoms of fear—judgment, guilt, grudge—have no place in it. So right now, commit to yourself:
No judgment. Have you ever heard of someone getting MORE done and being MORE successful because someone was judging them or they were judging themselves?
Forgive the past. You can’t move forward with a successful money life until you make peace with your money past. You might have made mistakes, gone into debt, not charged enough for your services or have given away all of your money, and that’s okay. It got you to where you are today, resolved to get started in a way that suits you better. There’s no empowerment in the past, it’s what you decide right now, and the choice you’re making in this moment.
When we become aware, stop fearing, stop judging and forgive the past, we’re freed up to focus on the things that matter, which leads to our second step:
Step 2: Get a Vision
You can’t get excited about just money in and of itself (or at least, most people can’t)…you need something that you’re going to use that money for—THEN you can get excited. For so many people, personal finance is about saving into your 401k or paying down debt…and that’s sort of boring.
I once had a client who’s vision was to transition to a career that didn’t take such a toll on her health with the long hours and intense coding sessions. Your vision doesn’t have to be epic. So what are you trying to do?
- Are you trying to shift over to a job you love?
- Are you trying to take a sabbatical you trying to travel the world?
- Are you trying to build a family?
- Are you trying to follow the Seahawks to every away game?
If you’re confused about what you want your money to be doing for you…. start with, how do you see yourself in your vision? How is the YOU right now aligning with your vision of the future?
This is another permission point. This is permission to have a bigger vision for yourself even if you feel like you have no money. Permission that regardless of how much you have right now, you can expect more and have the money coming in work harder for you.
And I want to challenge you right now to write down one thing. What is one thing you want? What’s one thing that’s fallen by the wayside because life got in the way?
So now that you have a vision for yourself and what you want your money to fuel for you, then you can move on to…
Step 3: Taking Action (because action is more important than knowledge or inspiration)
The problem with personal finance is, it’s hard to get inspired by it. So don’t. You know how some days, you just don’t want to exercise, but afterwards, you’re always glad you went? Personal finance is like that. Don’t expect to feel inspired, expect to feel rewarded. And the only way you’re going to get that feeling is by starting.
Action might be figuring out all of the things that involve getting to your vision, or researching vision options and what they cost. It might be tracking your spending more closely (millionaires track their spending). It might be finally devising that debt snowball. You choose.
It’s more about the small actions you take and not the big financial “win.” What people need to understand is that personal finance is sort of like a video game; you need to win enough points at the lower level to make it to the next one. You experiment, you work out a game plan based on success AND mistakes. You just need to focus on the next step while keeping the big picture in mind.
In the coming months, I am going to be helping more people become Money Bosses, and covering all kinds of topics relating to money. If you want to get started, just click here.
Take Action
Remember, to expect more from your money, you need to:
- Turn off that inner mean voice. Forgive yourself and whenever you start beating yourself up about money, ask yourself, where is my greatest opportunity for clarity or possibility right now?
- Build your vision. That’s the fun part, right? And approach it from the standpoint that what you want doesn’t need to bear any resemblance or logical path to what you have right now.
- And take action consistently. Accept that you’ll need to return to this. Most people want to get the “learning” and be done so they never have to think about this stuff. That’s not how this works. You’re never done, but it gets easier and easier.
What’s your vision, and what is the first step you’re going to take to get there?
Join me in the Money Boss pilot! You can check it out here.