260 | When You Don’t Want to Manage Your Money

It’s something that has come up with multiple attorneys I’ve talked with. But whether you want to manage your money is the wrong question.

In this episode, let’s talk about what the correct question is and what to focus on to stay motivated on your money journey.

• • being honest with yourself about what you really want
  • the right question to ask yourself when managing your money
  • what to think about when managing your money
  • examples of things we don’t want to do but do anyway
  • where to focus your attention as you’re managing your money

You’re listening to Personal Finance for Lawyers. 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.

Hello friend. Welcome back.

Today we are talking about what to do when you don’t want to manage your money.

I’ve had a couple of conversations recently where the lawyers that I was talking to told me some version of I avoid my money because I don’t like looking at it. It’s not fun. I don’t want to do it.

So first, let me say this. I am a big proponent of people being honest with themselves about what they truly want.

So I’ve talked before about if you don’t actually want to manage your money, you don’t want to improve your finances. That’s OK. Like if you’re OK to keep living, how you’ve been living and keep doing what you’ve been doing with your money and you don’t want more and you don’t want anything different for yourself. You don’t want anything different for your life -that’s fine. Let yourself off the hook, though.

Don’t keep beating yourself up about how you should do this, or you should do that because you don’t actually want it, and so it’s not productive to keep beating yourself up about it. If you would prefer to just keep spending whatever you make and you prefer the lifestyle over the financial security or building wealth or whatever that goal would be, that’s OK.

I do want you to be aware though, that not taking the time to get your finances in order might feel easier right now. You might be having all the fun and spending on the lifestyle and whatever right now, and that feels easy, but there will come a time where that decision will lead to some harder times.

I’m reminded of… there’s a saying or something that’s like, “Easy decisions, hard life, hard decisions, easy life” or something like that. So I’m thinking about like, if you’re not setting aside money in savings for an emergency fund or for unexpected expenses, if you aren’t doing that and you just keep putting things on credit, there’s going to come a time where the credit is maxed out and you can’t use that anymore. But then you also don’t have savings to fall back on.

If you’re not setting aside money for retirement. Retirement age is still going to come, and then you’ll likely have to keep working past when you want to stop to be able to support yourself.

So if you don’t want to do the things to improve your finances to get things straightened out, you want to just keep doing things how they are, that’s fine, as long as you are going in eyes wide open and you know what you’re signing up for, right. And then just let yourself off the hook and don’t worry about any of this stuff.

But I I suspect that because you’re listening to this podcast, that probably is not you. And so if you’re not OK with how your life is going right now and you do want more for yourself, you don’t want to feel stressed all the time, you want to be able to rest. You want to stop feeling stuck, then you have to get over this thought that you don’t want to manage your money.

Because ultimately, it’s not about whether you want to, it’s about whether you want the outcome that comes from managing your money.

So when you’re thinking about money management, you want to think about the end goal. Like what are these things that you’re doing leading to? What are you trying to accomplish?

So for example, if we take it out of the context of money.

When you went to law school, you didn’t want to sit in class. You didn’t want to study and read your case book for hours and outline. You didn’t want to take a four hour exam. You didn’t want to take the bar. But you wanted to be a lawyer. That is the outcome that all those other things that you didn’t want to do led to for you.

When you go on vacation, you don’t want to pack a suitcase and get up, you know, to the airport 2 hours early and go through security and if you’re traveling with kids, deal with them getting restless. And you don’t want to sit on this long flight and whatever else be uncomfortable, but you want to be on that beach. Or you want to experience that city or whatever it is that you’re looking forward to with your vacation.

The destination is the end goal for all that stuff that you didn’t want to do, but you still have to do those things to get there.

The point is, we do things that we don’t want to do all the time. That’s not a reason to not look at your finances, not make a plan for how you’re going to manage your money. Make sure that you’re managing your money effectively and moving towards your goals.

Just like with law school, just like with taking a vacation, there are steps you have to go through with your finances to get to your end goal. Whether it’s buying the house that you want to buy or paying off your credit card, or having the freedom to walk away from your job or go part time, or being able to take a lower paying job. Or caring for your aging parents. Or to take a vacation because I know from some of the calls that I’ve had over the years that some of you haven’t been able to take a vacation in a while.

So there are things that you have to do to be able to achieve that goal. And if your finances aren’t where they need to be to achieve those goals, then there are steps that you have to take to get there.

You can’t keep flying by the seat of your pants and hoping things work out. You can’t keep spending everything you make. You can’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results.

So again, the key in this to me anyway, is looking at the ultimate goal, looking at the destination. That’s something that I held on to during our money journey. Like what life would be like if instead of having hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, we had hundreds of thousands of dollars in our account.

And I posted on LinkedIn recently that you don’t only want to focus on the ultimate goal, because sometimes that goal feels so far away and we can feel discouraged that we’re not there yet. So you want to focus on the progress that you’re making toward the ultimate goal.

So what are those smaller milestones that are more within reach and will lead to you achieving that ultimate goal? Because as you see and celebrate that progress you’re making, you’ll be motivated. As you move to where the ultimate goal and you feel really good because you accomplished something.

So, we want to look at what those smaller milestones are that get you to the ultimate goal, but we also want to think about what the dream is that you’re moving toward.

So instead of thinking about the stuff that you don’t want to do or the parts that you don’t like, think about those things that you want to accomplish, the place that you’re going to be in when you do those things.

So if you are one of those lawyers who’s been avoiding your money because you just don’t want to manage it, I encourage you to think about it this way. Think about what managing your money better would do for you in the long run. What is the ultimate goal that you want to accomplish. What does life look like when you achieve that goal? And then what are the smaller milestone goals that you can work toward that ultimately get you to that larger goal you have?

You can also think about ways that you can make doing those things that you need to do to get to that ultimate goal easier. So what is something that you can automate, what something that you can pair with something that you’re already doing?

Like maybe you have a favorite show that you like to watch right before you watch that show, you’re gonna look at your spending for the week.

What are those things that you could be doing with your finances that move you forward towards your goals and how can you fit those into things that you’re already doing with your life?

Ultimately, the main thing that I want you to take from this is you can’t just not manage your money because you don’t want to. If you have goals that you’re trying to accomplish, you can’t get around this part.

Alright, so make sure that you create that plan for yourself of managing your money, making it fit within your lifestyle, and you keep your ultimate goal in mind as you work towards smaller goals that get you there.

Alright. So that is it for this week’s episode. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to sign up for the next Money Moves Masterclass. You can head to rhothomas.com/moneymoves.

In the class, you’re going to learn my exact framework for managing your money better without sacrificing everything you love. Also, be sure to share the episode with a friend or two. As I have said before, that helps the show to grow so more lawyers can get their hands on this information and as always, I appreciate your support.

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 take back control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve.

Talk to you later.