120 | The Art of the Follow-Through

If you’re really good at making plans for your money but not so good at sticking to them, you’re not alone.

It’s super common, especially among lawyers.

Many of us have gotten really good at not following through on our word to ourselves. But it’s also the reason so many lawyers don’t have the finances they want.

In this episode, let’s talk about why people don’t follow through on what they plan to do and how you can turn things around if that’s you.

Topics Discussed

• the biggest problem many lawyers have with their finances
• how we often handle promises to ourselves vs. promises to other people
• what not following through on your word leads to
• creating realistic plans for yourself
• how often to look at your money plan
• the effect of building a track record of following through

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Resources mentioned

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If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, let’s schedule a call. 

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Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

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 following through on your financial decisions. So many times I will see people make decisions about their money plan for the month and then when it comes down to it rather than sticking to their plan, they’ll go back on their decision so they don’t follow through on the plan. They negotiate with themselves. They tell themselves Oh, it’s fine. Like it’s fine to go off plan. It’s fine to buy this thing I wasn’t planning to buy because I just really want it. I will just get back on track next week or I’ll get back on track next month. The biggest problem that most lawyers have with their money isn’t not knowing what to do. I say all the time, like we know exactly what to do. Right. There are too many books and articles and podcasts and not know what to do. The biggest problem we have is not following through on the decisions we make. It’s not keeping your word to yourself. So we’re really good at following through for other people. But when it comes to ourselves, we don’t hold ourselves in the same regard. We break our promises to ourselves constantly. We treat the things we want as less important, because I bet if you told because I bet if you told one of the partners you work with or your supervisor or your spouse or your kid that you would do something you move heaven and earth to actually do it. But when you tell yourself that you’re going to do something you don’t bring that same energy. Another example that comes to mind is or I guess a specific example that comes to mind is when people want to make time for themselves on their calendar, and they might even schedule time for themselves on the calendar. And if they have an appointment with someone else, they’ll honor that time, right there’ll be there for that appointment. But when it’s something for themselves, they don’t treat it like a real appointment. They don’t honor it in the same way. So if someone asks to meet at this time that they’ve scheduled for themselves and they’ll say they’re available, they’ll just move it right when it comes down to it. We don’t honor the word that we give ourselves the promises that we make ourselves in the same way that we honor the promises we make to other people. So you practice not following through on your word over and over again. And you strengthen the habit of not following through then what that leads to is questioning yourself or not trusting yourself to follow through on your word and the decisions that you’ve made because you’ve created this track record of not following through. You’ve gotten so good at not honoring your word to yourself that your word doesn’t mean much to you anymore, right. I said I was going to do XYZ but oh well. I don’t feel like it. I’m just going to do this other thing instead. If you want to manage your money better, you have to get good at following through doing the things you say you’re going to do. Trusting that you’ll be able to follow through on the things you say you’re going to do. So how do you do that? It starts with creating a plan that’s realistic for where you are. A lot of times lawyers will create plans based on what they think they should be doing rather than what they can actually do right now. Where they are right now. You have to start where you are. You always have to start where you are. I say all the time. You can’t go from zero to Beyonce overnight. Right? So rather than making the picture, perfect plan or the ideal plan, make the plan that works for your situation and where you’re starting from the plan that’s doable for you right now. And by plan here I’m talking about your budget, so your plan for how you’re going to use your money in the next month. So if you are overspending and overdrafting your account and running up your credit card every month, your plan isn’t going to include saving half your income that’s just not realistic for where you are right now. So yours might be just getting to where you’re not spending more than you make in a month or even getting to where you don’t spend as much more as you’ve been spending. So if you’re typically overspending by 3000 Each month, maybe you get it to where you’re only overspending by 1500. Eventually, you’re gonna get that down, right, I’m not suggesting that you keep overspending by 1500 Every month but the key is you want to set yourself up for success because we are getting you to the point that you can follow through and show yourself that you can do what you said you were going to do, even when it’s something for yourself and not only something for other people. Then once you’ve created that plan, you have to look at it. So many lawyers will tell me that they get really fired up they’ll make a budget and then they never look at it again. It’s hard to know if you’re following a plan you never look at, right you don’t know if you’re on track or not. But most likely you’re not because you don’t even know where the track is because you’re not looking at plan. So you’re going to look at your budget. I have my clients do a weekly check in on where they are in relation to their plan. It doesn’t take that long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes max each week, but looking at that plan will help you to follow through with it. So when you’re looking at it each week, you can see where you are in relation to your plan in real time. And you can make necessary tweaks in the moment right you can make those tweaks as you’re going along versus getting to the end of the month. Like oh shoot, I spent so much in an outbreak. And look, eventually you’re gonna get to the point that you don’t have to look at it as often you just know how to manage your finances and you know about how much you spend in each area so you’re not looking at the plant every week. We don’t look at ours all the time anymore. But that comes from so many years of practice and looking at it and tweaking our approach and getting our finances down. So now we naturally spent about the same amount each month give or take, and it doesn’t take a bunch of effort for us to do it. And let’s be clear, I don’t think you ever get to the point that you always execute perfectly right we still go over budget in some categories sometimes. But overall, we follow through with what we say we’re going to do, which is how we paid off all our student loans and consistently have money available to invest. And one more thing, a lot of times my clients have so much resistance to the idea of reviewing their finances every week at first, but it comes down to whether improving your finances is actually something that’s important to you right now. And something that you really care about. If not that’s perfectly fine, but be honest with yourself about that. Don’t keep telling yourself it’s important if your actions aren’t lining up because that doesn’t feel good either. Right? And if it is important to you, then 10 to 15 minutes a week is not a lot to ask in exchange for improving your finances. You might not always want to do it but just because you don’t want to do a particular thing doesn’t mean that you don’t do it. If you truly want the result of doing that thing. Then whether you want to do it or not doesn’t really matter. As you build a track record of following through on what you say you’re going to do, right? So you’re implementing this process, you are creating plans that are based on where you are and you are actually looking at those plans and implementing them. Right you build a track record of following through on what you say you’re going to do and you start to trust yourself to do those things. You actually start doing those things more and more rather than always going back on your word and negotiating with yourself and all that and when you start following through on the plans you make for your money and sticking with what you said you were going to do, you will inevitably improve your finances and start achieving the goals you set for your money. So if you want support to follow through on the plans you have for your finances, you want to stop negotiating with yourself. You want to start negotiating with yourself and going back on your word. Let’s work together you can head to rho thomas.com/call and schedule a consultation to get started. All right. So that’s it for this week’s episode. Come connect with me over on social media. You can find me on LinkedIn rho, Thomas and Instagram I am rho Thomas. Subscribe to the show and leave a review both of which help more people to find it. And please think of a friend or two who you think would find this information useful. And share this episode with them. 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.