085 | Feeling Overwhelmed By Your Finances

Many lawyers feel overwhelmed by their finances.

For some, the overwhelm comes up regarding a particular financial goal, such as paying off their student loan debt.

For others, it’s a specific decision they want to make about their money.

For still others, it’s anything to do with managing their money.

Overwhelm is a particularly un-useful emotion, and it will never lead to the finances you want.

In this episode, let’s chat about where overwhelm comes from, the situations it often presents in, and what to do to get out of it.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• where overwhelm comes from
• situations I typically see overwhelm come up in
• my experiences with overwhelm
• why you feel overwhelmed
• why overwhelm is unhelpful
• what to do to get out of overwhelm

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Resources mentioned

n/a

Work with me

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

Connect with me

Social media: Instagram and LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friends, welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Today we are talking about overwhelm. So many people feel overwhelmed when they think about their money, or when they think about starting a plan to get control of their money. And it’s not a problem to feel overwhelmed, right. We all feel overwhelmed at times, but overwhelm will never lead to the finances. That you want. First will weirdness overwhelm come from overwhelm is an emotion and it comes from the way you’re thinking about your money. So we’ve talked before about the relationship between your thoughts, your emotions, your behaviors, and the reason overwhelmed won’t lead to the finances. You want it you’re not going to do anything, right you’re not gonna have any sort of productive behaviors when you’re feeling overwhelmed. So just think about what you usually do when you feel overwhelmed. I know for me, I’m like, I need a break. I don’t want to look at this thing. I’m going to avoid it. I’m going to procrastinate. I will find all the reasons why I don’t need to do it right now. Right? And you’re probably doing the same thing with your money. If you’re feeling overwhelmed. So you’re like, I don’t know what to do. I’m overwhelmed. I just, you know, I’m not gonna look at this right now. But then never comes a time where you’re like, oh, yeah, now is the right time to look at it again. You just avoid it right? You avoid your money, you stopped doing anything with managing your money proactively at all. So you’re not making even a little progress towards your goals. I usually see overwhelm come up in two situations. So first is when you’re looking at your goals and thinking you have so far to go to reach them. Or you’re thinking about all the things that you think you need to do to achieve them. Or you’re thinking about, you know, how you need to go as quickly as possible. So that’s the first thing and then second is when you believe there’s a right or wrong way to do something such as creating a budget or you know, choosing an account or whatever it is. And so you try to research all the options and you know, with a bunch of information you don’t know where to start and you feel overwhelmed. So you do nothing, right? If you’re feeling overwhelmed about your money, and feel like you’re standing at the bottom of a mountain and looking at the top where your goal is and wondering how am I ever gonna climb this thing? You’re not alone. I have been there for sure. Right? Like looking at all the things that you have to do you know, or you have to go or whatever it is, like I’ve told you many times about how my husband I found ourselves in over $670,000 of debt back in 2016. And how overwhelmed I felt when I thought about paying it all off. The same if you’re thinking about all the options for starting a budget or choosing the right savings account or paying off your debt or whatever. I have been in that analysis paralysis of having 30 different tabs open on the internet and looking at all the options and comparing back and forth and all that stuff. There is no right answer right? Just pick one and move on. And then you’ll stop feeling overwhelmed. But when you’re thinking about all the things, or you’re only focused on the ultimate goal and how far away it is, you’re putting yourself into this really unproductive headspace because when you are feeling overwhelmed, you’re not going to spend the time that you need to spend with your finances to achieve your goal. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re gonna avoid your finances. Right? If you are feeling overwhelmed, you’re not gonna sit down and make a plan. To reach your goals. You’re not gonna look at your budget and make sure that you’re staying on track with it, you’re not going to look at your debt and figure out a plan to pay it off. You’re not gonna beat your savings goal and make plans to get to where you want to be. Right overwhelm leads to inaction. Overwhelm leads to avoidance. And so here’s the thing you have to remember. You don’t have to take all the steps at once, right? You don’t have to do all the things all at once you come back overwhelmed by taking things step by step. So you just need to take the small step that starts moving you forward towards your goal. Taking each next small step little by little will add up to huge progress down the line. This small step will feel more manageable and you’ll probably even realize it’s not as bad as you thought. A lot of my clients are so resistant to creating a budget or looking at their debt balances for the first time. But once they do, they always tell me it wasn’t as they thought it was gonna be. And the little steps also will keep you moving forward so much more than sitting in overwhelming doing nothing. If your goal is paying off debt. A good example of this is the Debt Snowball Method, which is the method I teach for paying off debt. And a big part of why I like it is it’s taking these little steps one at a time to get to where you want to be. So for example with my husband, me and our $670,000 of debt, the smallest loans on that little were like 1500 2020 500 and we were able to pay those off very quickly. So at one point, we’re paying off a loan a month and we’re getting paid in full letters and it felt really good and it built so much momentum like we were knocking those loans off quickly. So then we got to the higher loans, you know, 20,000 30,000 etc. And then ultimately my husband’s $350,000 loan. We were so motivated to keep going because we already had all this evidence behind us showing us that we could do it. Taking those first little steps with those small loans led us paying off almost half a million dollars of student loan debt. So when you’re feeling overwhelmed finances, ask yourself, What’s the next step I can take here? What’s the next thing to do? What’s the next thing I know will get me closer to my goal. Maybe I don’t know how to do all the things but what do I know? And then go do that. Maybe that’s just looking at your current expenses or listing out all of your debts. taking that next step, rather than looking 1020 30 steps down the line and feeling overwhelmed. Right when you’re trying to jump from where you are now, all the way to the end. Of course you feel overwhelmed. Of course you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. Of course you want to avoid it because it feels hard. Like it’s the equivalent of like you’re trying to go from preschool to college, but you’re trying to skip all these steps in between. You’re making it so much harder than it has to be don’t make it hard on yourself. Don’t overcomplicate things, take it one step at a time. Each of those steps that you’re gonna take between here and your ultimate goal will prepare you for the next one. You can’t get from A to Z without going through B first, right? You can’t get from the starting point to the endpoint without hitting those smaller markers along the way. That’s how you get out of the overwhelm and keep yourself moving. Not looking at all the things that you have to do in this huge goal that you have, but breaking it down into the smaller steps, asking yourself what’s the next best step that I can take and then doing that and allowing that to help you build momentum to keep going to ultimately reach your goal. Oh, the first step is just to track where I’m currently sending my money. That seems easy enough. And then you do that. And then it’s like, Okay, what’s the next thing? Oh, all I have to do is XYZ I can do that. And you just keep going from there. Big goals are just a bunch of little goals stacked on top of each other. Big things that you want to do with your money are just the result of a bunch of little steps that you take to get to that point. So I want to encourage you if you’re feeling overwhelmed, just look at what the next step is, rather than all the steps that you need to take. Every time you take one small step. The next step that you need to take feels a little easier. You’ll build momentum and eventually get where you want to go. And if you need support to get out of overwhelm and start making the progress you want to make with your money. Reach out to me schedule a call at rho thomas.com/call. Alright, so that’s it for this week’s episode. Come join me over on social media and most often on Instagram at I am rho Thomas and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the show and leave a review on whatever platform you’re listening on. Both of which help the show to get seen by more people and also also share it with a friend if you’re so inclined. Alright, for now, as we close out I pray that you recognize when you’re feeling overwhelmed your finances and why you feel that way. I pray that you take the next step you know to take and get yourself moving so you don’t stay stuck doing nothing. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom choice you deserve. Talk to you later.