Aligning Money with Life Goals – Episode 549

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, we’re going to be speaking about aligning our money and our life goals. So these two go together. Oftentimes, we’re in a race thinking that it’s all about the finances. And then if you’re so far on the other side, you think it’s all about the woo-woo stuff and no, they come together. So Kim, help us find that one-two punch. I love it. The woo-woo stuff. So I heard a story recently that evolved around the Currents app that a lot of our prospects and clients have heard about here on the podcast and in other places. If you don’t know about it, Currents is a buy invitation only savings structure. And it’s an app plus an account that really drives savings behavior and helps people spend their money with purpose.

[01:01] However, it is not a budgeting app. That’s a very important thing to identify. But the purposeful spending of money more really properly stated. The purposeful saving first of money and then spending the rest is an age old structure that has worked literally since the beginning of time. I don’t know when budgeting came into the lexicon of our world, but it’s proven it doesn’t really work. So how do you connect the fact that you do still have to make dollar choices every single month with the money that you have? And this idea that budgeting doesn’t really work. So what do we do instead? So the what do we do instead is easy. We just save first. But the connection is the question that you’re asking.

[01:53] And so I believe it is so, so important to have each individual person as well as a family get very, very clear on their values. And so here’s the story that occurred. This family had been incredibly dedicated to saving money for a particular goal. That was a long, long, long time down the road. And they were literally stripping their monthly lives of joy because of their extreme savings habits. And so they were frustrated at the wife in particular. And this is not a female male thing. It’s just the wife was like mad because they had recently gone on vacation and basically didn’t do anything because saving. Saving money was so important to them. Saving is a verb as in like putting money away.

[02:49] They had put so much money away during the previous months and they didn’t want to put anything on their credit card, but they just didn’t feel like they had any room for fun. And so afterwards they were speaking with their advisor, who’s a friend of mine, and he helped them realize that that is not a long term recipe for success. In fact, very specifically, he said, I am concerned about your marriage if you keep on this path. So let’s do this instead. Pick a dollar figure. It could be five hundred a month. It could be a thousand a month, of course, going to be very relative to your own income and the percentage of income that you’re saving and spend it and spend it with purpose. So this is the key Spencer is to have each individual separately and together as a family identify what it is that they would spend the money on to get more joy.

[03:44] And this is where it is so important for absolutely no judgment to come in. Because for some people, a trip to Europe that’s 10 or 15 grand or 30 grand, you know, depending again on your income and your capability is the most purposeful, valuable, life enhancing, amazing educational thing that they could do for somebody else. Maybe new furniture in the home. Maybe the kids are a little older and they need real beds and real dressers instead of the stuff that they had when they were babies. And maybe for somebody that is the most purposeful. What were all my words, educational, inspirational, you know, the same words that I used expansive thing that a person could spend dollars on. And it just takes a little bit of time to step back and get purposeful with our choices so that when we spend money individually and collectively, and this is where the harder part may come in.

[04:55] There is joy. There is purpose and there is education and expansion and harmony and all those things that we would want our money to have. So I’ve got another friend that, as stated, saves everything because she wants to do a big trip every single year and she forgoes alcohol, coffees, you name it. Like that’s her thing. Beautiful. For somebody else, maybe it truly is that $7 coffee fill in the blank extra, you know, pieces and parts that they spend time with on a daily basis. For me, it’s even hard to say that because that’s very foreign to me, not where I would choose to spend my money. But for some people that is it and it is their choice. Then the challenge becomes to bring the two together when there is a couple involved.

[05:54] And so it just takes conversation. And I think sometimes it takes separating the money a little bit. You know, maybe it’s X dollars for him and X dollars for her. And then there’s X dollars for the family that gets decided upon together. But all of this needs to be happening previous to the time of the spending of the money. Right. It’s not time at the furniture store to have the discussion about it’s uber important to me that I upgrade my kids’ bedrooms or whatever. It’s not the time people don’t go to travel agencies anymore, but it’s not the time at the travel agency location to decide it’s uber important to me to go first class on this plane. But for somebody else, it’s not. How do we integrate these two opinions? Because there’s not a right or wrong. It’s just a function of values.

[06:55] It’s a function of the purpose, and it’s a function of that family’s decision around those. And again, that is so important to decide ahead of time before the emotion of the buying moment comes into play. Okay. So I want to kind of take a moment, hit pause, and I want to simplify and create some strategy around this. And then I’m going to go down another rabbit hole with this. So from what you’ve said is we need to have purpose with the money that we have. And what that means is a discussion ahead of time of the spending of the money. And so that means there has to be intention with it. So whatever that looks like. And then you’re saying we’re going to save first. And most people, they tend to be reactive. So meaning they’ve gone the month and let’s say it’s now the 25th of the month and it’s like, oh, no, I’ve got X amount of dollars left over.

[08:01] Let’s say $100 left over. So I guess I’ll just save that. So you’re saying be intentional at the beginning, but even more so being intentional with the things that you want. Absolutely. And when saving first occurs, then the dollars can get spent with freedom for whatever that thing of purpose is that brings you joy and education and forward momentum and capability into your life. So all of those examples that I gave are examples of people that are saving first, first, and then purposefully spending the money. OK, so here’s the rabbit hole that I wanted to go down because I was listening to this and I thought, OK, I’m going to save the money. OK, so here is the rabbit hole that I wanted to go down because I was listening to this and I thought like I had this burning question inside, which is.

[08:59] For people that are going, well, these these lattes are the six dollar latte is so important to me or this vacation so important to me and I just have to scrimp and save. And I go, we’ll just create another stream of income. Just make a bunch more money and solve the problem. Yes, that’s that’s just you know how I my knee jerk reaction. But how do you address that? And again, the next component is people don’t tend to go from nothing to something really large. There’s steps. So addressing it and talk about steps. Absolutely. Well, from eons ago, like our very first book. So this is maybe 25 years ago. We have the prosperity ladder and we’ve shared it on the podcast before. It addresses some steps that I think are very, very valuable and the top step of the ladder.

[09:51] There’s just three, but there’s four actions that go with it. The top step of the ladder is ownership and ownership of one’s time is one of the most valuable things. And so today, thankfully, it is so easy to add an extra income stream to your life without massive amounts of time commitment. Now, of course, if you want a bigger income stream, it’s going to take a bigger time commitment to get that bigger income stream. And again, ownership of time then also parlays into ownership of businesses where I believe the best source of effort because it can be combined with purpose does lie. And so I believe every single family should be looking at how can we have a business and even if it’s a network marketing program or it’s some little thing on TaskRabbit that you’re doing or some extra virtual assistant role that you’re playing.

[10:55] That’s a couple hours at night, a couple hours on the weekend, you know, whatever it is, then that’s increasing your income. And when you already own a business, looking at how you can serve your existing clientele even better. Going about things with that house of both perspective that I’ve shared before, you know, how do you, how can you try to get both you can’t always but you can’t get anywhere if you’re not at least asking the question. How can you take a business that you already have and improve it expand its offerings, make it more profitable to serve the people that you have even better. These are all good questions that are super fun to have the family involved in I mean what a great way to get your kids brains going on.

[11:42] Whatever business you already have maybe having them involved in the business in a positive way, helping them learn about entrepreneurial mindsets and skill sets and capabilities. Those are all very, very valuable tools that enable the income into the family to increase. So good. So, in order for a person to do that, they have to start somewhere, they’re gonna have to say first, they’re gonna have to have the habits, they’re gonna have to get the mind right. I’d say for our listeners that have been around for years, listening and learning and doing. They have a pretty good base of aligning their money and life goals for any of you that are still trying to get that savings component down. Send an email to hello at prosperity thinkers calm, and type in the word currents, see you are REN CE, so you can get them with that, that will help there.

[12:44] Again, hello at prosperity thinkers calm is the email address and that topic is currents and Kim can get you all the information about the currents app. Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit prosperity thinkers calm.