161 | 3 Reasons Lawyers Don’t Stick to Their Budget

Many lawyers have trouble sticking to a budget. Typically, it’s for one of three reasons. In this episode, let’s talk about the top three reasons lawyers don’t stick to their budget and how to fix them.

• the top 3 reasons lawyers don’t stick to their budget

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You’re listening to Wealthyesque. 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 three reasons I see lawyers not sticking to their budgets. I have talked to a lot of lawyers over the years about their finances. And not being able to stick to a budget is one of the top issues that comes up so today we’re going to explore the three most common reasons that I see that lawyers aren’t sticking to their budget. All right. The first one is you’re not writing it down about it in your head may as well not exist. Like you have so much information in your head. You got work stuff, you got family stuff, you got friend stuff, you got life stuff, right? You’re not going to remember what you want to spend when people tell me that they have a budget, but it’s in their head. I know they don’t really know what they’re spending. And when I have my clients do their look back at what they’ve actually spent. It’s always more than what they thought it was right? Always more than the number that they had in their head. So the first step to sticking to your budget is to actually write it down. Write out what your plan is, write out how much you’re going to spend in this category or that category and how much you’re gonna say and how much debt you’re gonna pay off and you know, whatever it is, write it down, get the plan out of your head and write it down. The second one is you’re making unrealistic budgets, and this is one I see a lot. So maybe you actually write your budget out, but it’s not really your budget. It’s some idealized version of what you think you should be spending. Your budget should be a reflection of what’s important to you. It should be realistic for your life. So if you know shopping for example is important to you. Don’t put the you’re gonna spend $0 shopping. You knew that wasn’t true when you wrote it down. And shout out to my client that I just had that conversation with this week. Right? If you know you’re busy, and you don’t typically have time to cook or you just don’t like cooking or you don’t want to cook then why are you spending so much money on groceries so the food can go bad and you can throw it away? You’re literally throwing money away. You could plan differently. So the way some of my clients handle this is they choose to spend less on groceries and buy pre prepared meals or like those meal kit services where they go out to eat or some combination of these things. And when you plan to do that you actually end up spending less because you didn’t buy a refrigerator full of food that went bad and then also get DoorDash every night on top of it. The issue with unrealistic budgets is you’re not going to stick to it anyway. So you’re just setting yourself up to fail and giving yourself yet another opportunity to beat yourself up. Make your budget realistic for your life, not some imaginary rules that you think are supposed to follow or what you think the budget should be. It should be realistic for you and your budget is going to look different from someone else’s budget and that’s okay. There’s no objective right budget your budget needs to be realistic for your life. The final one is not reviewing your budget so this one is also one that comes up often maybe you write out about it maybe even realistic for your situation. Although as I say for most lawyers I’ve talked to it’s not we tend to go to the idealize this is what I’m supposed to spend and write. But let’s say you made the budget and we can never look at it again. How are you going to stick to a budget you never look at? How do you stick to a plan when you don’t keep the plan top of mind when you’re not tracking what you’re actually doing against the plan. You want to be reviewing your spending against your budget throughout the month. I have my clients do it at least once a week. Some of them even do it multiple times a week. It doesn’t take that long. You just look at what you’ve spent so far and track it against what you wanted to spend and it’s a lot easier to stay on track when you do these weekly reviews. And then if you are off track, you can course correct before the end of the month to make sure you’re still able to hit your goals. So make sure that you are reviewing whatever budget you’ve created because it’s gonna help you stay on track better. Alright, so those are the top three reasons I see lawyers fail and stick to their budget. And if you do all three of these things that I just told you, right, you write your budget out, you make it realistic for your life and you review it against your spending, you will inevitably start sticking to your budget and you’ll find that you have more money available and you’re able to achieve your goals faster. And if you need help with implementing this within your own finances, this is what I do. So let’s set up a call and talk about how we can work together just go to rho thomas.com/call. Alright, that is it for this week’s episode. Come connect with me over on social media. You can find me most often on LinkedIn rho Thomas and Instagram at I am rho Thomas, subscribe to the show and leave a review both of which helped more people to find it helps the show grow so we can get this information out to more lawyers. And please think of a friend or two who you think would find this information useful and share it with them. Another way that we get the information out. As we close out friends, 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 of choice you deserve. Talk to you later.