Giving and Discretionary Spending – Episode 487

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. We’re going to be talking about discretionary income and giving fund. So this is about us giving back. And sometimes there are people that save a little too much or they invest too much and too much is to your own definition. But Kim, I want to hear what is it for you as someone that is helping others live a prosperous life. And you’re talking about emergency and opportunity funds and investing and whatever it may be, where does the other money go? Well, it’s such a great question. And it’s so important, I believe, that we enable our lives to be lived today without deferring everything. And we know that deferring all types of things can be good, right?

[00:54] If you defer vacation, as an example, for a little while, that can benefit you. But if you defer it too long, then you’re not effective at work because you’re overtired or you’re, as Dan Sullivan says, when I get tired, everybody gets stupid and you get yourselves in a mental frame of mind that’s not helpful. So I believe that, first of all, if we take retirement off the table, if we just understand that that was a social construct that was introduced and it doesn’t serve us any longer, then it takes a lot of the pressure off of living today and truly enjoying our lives while also saving. But we’re not saving for this thing in the future called retirement that when we really look around, nobody’s doing very well, always exceptions.

[01:50] And if we make sure that we are spending our dollars based on our own values, not what the Joneses are doing, not what our parents did, not what our siblings are doing, not even what our best friends are doing, but saving and spending our money based on our own values, then we can be a complete piece and we can have money to give to charities or causes that we care about. And it can go on vacation and not be stressed about it because it’s all going on credit cards and we’re at the end of our rope and we can possibly even help friends and family members from time to time if that’s what we want to do with our money. And so it takes, I think, a little bit of self-knowledge, which is always a good thing that we should always all be working on.

[02:42] Like you’re never done learning about yourself and it takes being really clear on what’s important to you. I’ll give a quick example. You know, some people really, really enjoy international travel and others really, really enjoy going and camping on federal land and cooking their own food and having a very, very minimalist vacation time. There is no right or wrong with either one of those. And yet the person that really went, really wants to travel internationally, but buys a latte for $6 every day and goes out on Fridays and Saturdays and blows money and spends a bunch of money on clothes and then says, I don’t have any money to do international travel. That’s where the disconnect is. And so getting clear on your values, getting clear what’s important to you.

[03:36] And then making room financially for those values to play out in your life. Again, whether they are, maybe the whole clothes thing is super important to you. We’ll find something that’s not important to you and don’t spend money on that. Good, good point. You you’re mentioning something. So that’s our values and our focus. There was a story that you told a while back that may seem like a very small example, but to me it’s one that’s actually stuck in my head for a number of years. You mentioned at a time in your business that felt like you were just grinding through mud and then you decided to donate to Kiva. Tell us about that real quick. Yes. It was a super challenging time and I felt like I was grinding

[04:28] through mud business wise and I felt totally stuck. And literally money was not moving, which meant money was not flowing into our businesses, which made it very difficult to flow out. And so of course I was doing all that I could, but you really have to focus on what you can control. And so kiva.org was fairly new on the scene at the time. I loved the message. I had read the gal’s thought process and creating it and just the whole micro lending thing. I thought was super cool. And so I chose to help money start to move by donating $25 to, which was the minimum to kiva.org because I knew it was going to help a business and that was going to create other good, which then went on and created other good and of course I have no idea how or when or why or who

[05:18] benefited from that, but it wasn’t the point, it got me on stock. And so maybe it’s you pay for, if coffee is an important thing to you, maybe it’s you pay for the coffee behind you. Maybe it’s you pay for the groceries in front of you. Maybe it’s you put gas in somebody’s car. You know, whatever it is that you can do on whatever scale, right? I love the sentence, do for one, what you’d like to do for all. So if you’re thinking, oh my gosh, you know, I don’t have enough money to donate to charity. Oh yes, you do. You can help one person with two or $3. Do for one, what you’d like to do for all. It’s a great way to pay it forward. So you use the term give back at the very beginning of our conversation.

[06:12] I’d like to introduce the concept of paying it forward instead. And I certainly didn’t come up with the terminology, but giving forward or paying it forward is so much of a better way to think about it. You know, it’s very common in our society, talk about giving back. And yet giving back implies that you took something. And entrepreneurs in particular, we do not take from our societies. We couldn’t run profitable businesses if all we were doing was taking. We do give to our societies. And so giving forward or paying forward, I think is just a really important terminology that’s nuanced and yet valuable. Oh, I love that. That is so good. So here are a couple of takeaways that I have from this episode.

[06:57] One is to pay it forward and whatever, as small as it may seem, I can do for one that would be done for many. And I think for any of us, whatever our circumstance, we can look at that. The other that I’m looking at is being really clear on what our values are and what we really want. If we’re talking about traveling internationally, then actually making it happen, being really clear on that or whatever those pieces are. It’s alarming that people feel stuck. We’ve all been there, but what you’ve shared is a way to get that momentum, that movement. And I’m grateful that’s a principle that we talk about time and time again. I haven’t mastered it yet. Maybe in the next 20 years, when we’re still doing this show,

[07:54] I’ll say, Hey, Kim, I’m closer. I love it. Well, as we know, I haven’t mastered it either. You know, giving is an ongoing thing. And, and I give first mentality is a wonderful perspective to bring to life. And it takes daily work. Thank you for sharing this principle with us today, Kim. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.