261 | Putting Money in Its Proper Place

Let’s talk about glorifying money and putting it on a pedestal vs. neglecting money and not caring about it.

Both extremes can be detrimental to your finances and your experience of life.

In this episode, let’s talk about these views of money and how to put money in its proper place.

• • loving money and putting it on a pedestal
  • not caring about money and neglecting it
  • using money as a tool to live the life you want to live

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 to the show.

Today we are talking about putting money in its proper place.

Now, I think it is really interesting to watch the way lawyers view money and the things they do with it. And I often see two extremes with respect to how lawyers view their money.

And that’s not to say that everyone falls at one of these extremes, but I think it’s an important topic to talk about because the extremes do come up really often and because they can be so detrimental to your financial health.

So let’s talk about what they are so you can determine whether you fall at one of these extremes and you can take the steps that you need to take to fix it.

So I’m going to share what the extremes are first, and then we can talk more in depth about them.

On one end are the people who love money and they almost put it on a pedestal and on the other end are the people who claim not to care about money and treat it like they don’t care.

So let’s talk about loving money and putting it on a pedestal first..

I have talked with a number of lawyers who are so focused on getting more money and constantly chasing the next dollar at whatever cost. And I’ve seen lawyers who are obsessed with keeping their finances at a certain status or like in a certain place.

So to give an example, a situation that comes up with my clients a lot is when they hit their savings goal and then some emergency or unexpected expense comes up and then they don’t want to touch the savings.

And I get it. Like if you’ve never had that much money in your account before, it feels really good to see that balance, but the point of the money is not to just sit there and look pretty so you can say you have X amount in your account, right?

Like that emergency or that unexpected expense, whatever it is is exactly what that savings is for. But again, there’s this big focus placed on your finances being in a certain place, right, and having X account balance or whatever that people aren’t actually using the money. They want to just look at that balance.

Another situation that I’ve seen is people being obsessed with keeping a certain credit score, so they won’t do something that will help them because it would “hurt” their credit score.

So an example I’ve seen, you know, like a client who’s in the groove of paying off their credit card debt and they’ve got a high interest rate. And so we talked about doing the balance transfer and they could get a 0% interest rate on their credit card or they could get a personal loan with a lower interest rate and they won’t do it because taking out that new loan or that new credit card is going to hurt their credit score.

And to be fair, there are times when you do want to protect your credit score. Like if you’re about to buy a house or something like that. But that is not what I’m talking about like that wasn’t the case here. This was about having “good credit” and not wanting to mess it up.

And again, it’s another example of that focus on keeping your finances a certain way, like elevating the finances over these other things that are happening in your life, right. They are, to me, forms of putting the finances on a pedestal. It’s an example or variation on loving money because basically all of these things are saying like I value this money over these other areas of my life.

And the thing here is the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And I am by no means saying that the people that I’m thinking about with these examples are evil. But when we start putting money on a pedestal and we’re loving and idolizing our finances, it leads to negative things.

So it’s definitely something to be mindful of. So that is loving money.

But on the other side, you’ve got lawyers who say things like I don’t care about the money and who neglect their finances and don’t take care of it.

And listen, if you are one of those people who says you don’t care about the money – please stop.

Like we all know that’s not true because if it were true, you wouldn’t be spending so much of your time working to get money. You bill your time in six-minute increments and you do things you don’t want to do, you don’t even like to do a lot of times to get money. That’s really strange behavior for someone who doesn’t care about money.

And I’m going to tell you, I care about the money. You know why? Because Georgia Power cares about the money and my mortgage company cares about the money and the grocery store cares about the money.

I don’t only care about the money, it’s not the thing I care the most about, but I do care about the money because it’s how I live and how I take care of my family. We all care about money on some level. Admitting that you care about money doesn’t mean that you only care about money or it’s the most important thing to you.

But beyond admitting that you care about money, I also want you to take care of your money. Like I’ve talked to a lot of lawyers who just ignore their finances. They bury their heads in the sand. They hope that whatever financial problems they have just go away.

And that’s not how it works. If you don’t pay attention to what’s going on with your finances, you’re always going to end up living on the edge. You’re always going to end up feeling stressed, and you’re gonna be stuck in positions that you don’t want to be in.

So you want to make sure that you’re taking care of your money, which means looking at how much money you make each month, looking at how much you spend and where you spend it. Looking at how much debt you have. Looking at how much you have in savings. Looking at what your net worth is.

And then you want to create a plan for how you use your money. You want to create a plan to build your savings and pay down your debt and invest. You want to take care of your money and when you take care of your money, your money can take care of you.

The way I think about money is it’s a tool to help me live my life. I don’t put it on a pedestal, but I also don’t just sweep it under the rug and ignore it. Like you can use money to pay for your needs and invest in yourself and buy things you want and help someone else who needs it, right. It’s a tool. Don’t lose sight of the purpose of your money.

It’s there to serve you, not the other way around.

So we’re not putting it on a pedestal and preserving the money or the credit score or whatever else, right? Going after more money at the expense of these other things in our life that we need or that would help us.

But then we’re also not just ignoring it and not taking care of it. Your money cannot help you if you don’t have any because you’ve been ignoring it and not taking care of it. Money is a resource. It is a tool that will allow you to do the things that you need and want to do. It’s not the end all be all. So don’t love the money and put it on a pedestal. Don’t neglect the money and leave it by the wayside.

Be a good steward of the money you have. Use it as a resource to support the life that you want to live, but don’t let it run your life.

All right. That is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second and subscribe to the show. Leave a review. Both of those things help the show get out to more people, so more lawyers can get access to 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.