290 | If It Were Easy, Everyone Would Do It

If you’ve ever encountered difficulties or become frustrated during your personal finance journey, you’re not alone.

It’s a common experience. But I want to offer some encouragement to you.

In this episode, let’s talk about what makes managing your personal finances well feel difficult and why you’re the perfect person to take on the challenge.

• • what I’ve been telling myself as I’ve encountered difficulties in my real estate investment journey
  • why personal finance is simple
  • what makes personal finance feel difficult
  • the balance between enjoying your money and making decisions for financial security
  • making decisions others won’t make to be able to have a different life
  • why lawyers are well-equipped to handle the difficulties of their money journeys

• Need help with your finances? Schedule a consultation here

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.

Hey friend. Welcome back.

Today, I want to offer a bit of encouragement to you on your journey with your personal finances.

I thought of this episode because of something that I have been telling myself a lot lately.

So I mentioned in a previous episode, or maybe multiple previous episodes, that my husband and I bought an investment property and when I tell you, we have encountered struggles with getting this thing up and running.

We bought a condo, so it’s in an HOA, and there’s a property management company for it, and so dealing with the property management company on some repairs that we wanted to make. And then when we had the contractor, they installed something incorrectly, and it has to be redone, just all of these different roadblocks that we’ve kind of run into and it has felt really frustrating, not going to lie to you.

But the thing that I have been telling myself is, if it were easy, everyone would do it.

If it were easy, everybody would do it. And the same is true for personal finance because personal finance really is simple. It’s about how much money you bring in and how much of that money you keep and what decisions you’re making with that money.

So I’m bringing in X amount and I’m keeping a percentage of that and making good decisions like paying down high-interest debt, building an emergency fund, investing the money so that it can earn more money for me versus I’m bringing in X amount of money and I’m spending out X amount of money, right? It really is about how much you’re bringing in versus what you’re doing with that money. How much is coming in, how much is going back out.

And I think the thing that makes it feel more difficult is all of these other factors around.

For example, there are people who make hundreds of thousands of dollars to market products to us to get us to spend our money, to make us think that we need this product for our life to be better or to be… a better person or to be more beautiful or to be more well-liked.

We have this societal expectation that as you make more, you spend more because you get bigger and better and more expensive things. If you are in a prestigious career, like being a lawyer, there sometimes are societal expectations that you will have a certain level of things, certain type of house, certain type of car, certain types of clothes.

Then there’s also just the desires that we have, wanting to do different things, wanting to buy different things. And so all of that is kind of competing with this desire for financial security and building wealth and paying down your debt and all of that stuff. When we’re thinking about managing our money better and building wealth and being financially secure, there’s a balance there. Yes, you want to spend and enjoy your money. I don’t believe in making a bunch of money and just hoarding it all, but I also don’t believe in making a bunch of money and spending it all out.

And that’s something that I’ve talked with a number of my clients about in this process, that balance between spending, enjoying the money, but then also making those other decisions that lead to financial security.

And there have been a number of times where I’ve told my clients, if you want to just live a regular lifestyle and just make lawyer money and spend it out the way everybody else does, you can do that. You’re allowed. You don’t have to go through this process.

But if you want to have a different life, if you want to have different decisions available to you than are available to most people, if you want to have different opportunities available to you than are available to most people, you have to do different things. You can’t do the things that everybody else is doing.

That’s the hard part. It’s everybody around you that’s giving into the marketing, giving into the societal expectations, giving into the desires, and you doing something different.

But that truly is the key. If you want something different for your life, you have to do something different with your money. There is no shortage of information out there about making better money decisions, about building wealth, about paying down debt.

There are so many books and podcasts and blogs and YouTube videos. and all of that stuff, the information is there. It’s readily available. And if it were just about having the information, everybody would be millionaires. Everybody would be able to do whatever they wanted to do.

But it’s not just about having that information, it’s about applying the information. It’s about making those decisions. It’s about the delayed gratification. Yes, I could buy this thing right now, but I’m going to wait because I have this goal, and I’m going to wait until X time when I can buy it and it’ll be a lot more comfortable.

I’m going to put off this thing so that I can pay down this credit card. I’m going to forego this vacation that all of these people are taking, so that I can achieve my financial goals.

Those are the decisions that we have to make. And if anybody is able to do these things, it’s lawyers because practicing law is way harder than anything you’re ever going to do with your finances. You made it through law school. You’re a whole lawyer. You deal with complex issues and all of that every day. This is nothing for you.

You just have to decide if you actually want the things that you’re telling yourself that you want. Do you actually want the financial security? Do you actually want to build wealth? Do you actually want to have options in your career to leave the job that you’re in to be able to do something that feels more fulfilling, even if it pays less?

And if so, then you got to be willing to do something different.

If it were easy, everyone would do it.

It’s not easy, but it’s simple. And again, you have done harder. So I want you to keep that in mind as you’re going through your financial journey. It might feel hard at times. Right. And give yourself those times to rest, give yourself those financial rewards.

I don’t think that you have to just sit and stare at a wall until you achieve your goals. There is balance there, but you have to make sure that you keep moving forward toward the goals and that you don’t take yourself completely off track because you’re giving in to the societal expectations, the marketing things, the desires, the instant gratification.

You can 100% do this. I believe in you. It’s just a matter of doing it and you have this podcast, like you’re already on the right track listening to information about your personal finances. You have this podcast, you have so many books available to you, so many YouTube videos, blogs, websites. Take that information and implement it.

And once you do, then you will be able to achieve your goals and have way more options, opportunities, flexibility than you ever thought possible.

If it were easy, everyone would do it. It’s not easy, but you can do it.

And if you’d like help along the way, schedule a consultation at rhothomas.com/call, and let’s talk about how we can work together.

All right, so that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second, share this episode with a friend or two who you think could use this information. That is how we get this information in the hands of more people. 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.