315 | Rewind: Feeling Better About Your Money

The way we feel about money is hugely important.

Having negative feelings about your finances drains your energy and impacts your day-to-day experience of life.

The value of feeling better about your money can’t be overstated.

In this rewind episode, let’s talk about one of my clients’ experiences with feeling better about her money and why feeling better about your money is so important.

• • one client’s experience with feeling better about her money
  • achieving amazing money goals and feeling better about your money
  • how your feelings about money can impact other areas of your life
  • getting to the point that you don’t think about money much anymorewhat financial independence is

• Episode 127: How Liz Simplified Her Finances and Created Peace of Mind

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, and happy summer. I am doing something I have not done in the six years I’ve recorded this podcast, and that is taking the summer off.

In place of recording new episodes, I’m sharing webinars I’ve done, trainings from private programs, and past episodes. So, please enjoy today’s episode, and I hope you’re having a great summer.

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Today we are talking about feeling better about your money. So often we get caught up in the numbers. How much I want to save. How much debt I want to pay off. How much my net worth is. How much I make. All of these numbers, and we sometimes forget about or neglect the way that we feel about money.

The way you feel about your money is so much more important than the actual numbers themselves. I was having a conversation with one of my clients actually for the podcast so you will get a chance to hear this conversation. By the time this episode comes out you will have heard it, but when she came to me she actually had quite a bit of money already. She had done a phenomenal job with saving, but the saving came from this scarcity that she was feeling around money and thinking that it always needed to be more.

Her original savings goal was X, and she reached X and was like oh, now it needs to be 2x, and she was about to hit 2x when we start working together, and I could see that once you get to actually just gonna start looking ahead to 3x. So I questioned her and asked her like, what is this money for? Why do you want this amount of money?

And in our work together, it was very clear that she felt like the money would be what made her feel secure. It would be what made her feel better, feel safer. And really because of the way she was thinking about the money, even as she saved more, she was feeling terrible about money.

A lot of our work together was unwinding her thoughts about money being the thing that makes her feel good or that makes her feel secure or safe. And so now she’s able to approach her money from a much calmer place and not from this place of scarcity and it’s never enough and I need more.

And she said in our conversation that she has less in savings than she did when we started working together because she decided that she didn’t need as much as she had. So she used some of that money for other things. And even with having less in savings, she feels better about money overall, which she never thought would have been the case.

I think that is even bigger than the numbers piece. You’ve heard some of my clients on here talking about saving $20,000 or $30,000 or paying off $20,000 or $30,000 or getting out of credit card debt or learning how to stop overspending. And don’t get me wrong, those stories are amazing, right? They made those kinds of moves in their finances in just six months. So just imagine they’re gonna be years from now.

But beyond that, beyond those numbers, the part we don’t tend to talk about as often that I think is even bigger is how they’re feeling now about their money. So yes, they are paying off tens of thousands of dollars or saving an emergency fund for the first time or controlling their spending or stopping this credit card cycle where they’re overspending on a credit card and going deeper in debt, but they’re also feeling more abundant with their money. They’re feeling like money doesn’t have this hold on them. Feeling like they have everything they need. Feeling calm. Feeling competent.

All of that is so much bigger than the amount that you’re able to save or pay off. You’re gonna do that too, right? You’re gonna save money. You’re gonna pay off debt. You’re gonna make progress in those ways. But when you can just feel better about money. When you’re not feeling anxious waiting for your paycheck. When you’re not stressed out about your money. When you’re not worried about if your card is gonna get declined on this next purchase. Or you’re not worried about overdrafting your bank account. You’re not feeling uncertain about if you’re doing the right things with your money. All of that is invaluable. It’s priceless to be able to look at your finances and feel good about them.

Because the way we feel is so huge. It’s such a big part of our lives, and it impacts so many other areas. That’s why I think this work is so important. Lawyers are already dealing with a whole lot of stuff. So you’ve got your responsibilities at work and pressures there and the deadlines and client or partner demands and all of that. But then on top of that at home, you’ve got your roles as partner or spouse or significant other, as a parent, as a child, as a sibling, as a friend, right? All of these different roles that you have.

And when you’re going through life feeling stressed, feeling bad, feeling anxious, feeling scarce, feeling uncertain, worry overall negative about money, I can’t tell you that doesn’t spill over into and affect other areas of your life. I know it does. It’s completely different experience when you know exactly what you’re done with your money and you feel confident about your finances, and you’re able to approach your finances from a much more grounded place. You’re not driven by fear and stress and anxiety.

For my clients and for me personally, money is just not a major factor anymore. We don’t think about money too much beyond our check-ins. It’s a tool, but it’s not the end all be all, and it’s not invading our thoughts from day to day. Having been on the other side where I was feeling suffocated by money, or really by our lack of money, let me tell you not thinking about money at all is a really good place to be.

So consider this my plug for valuing feeling better about your money above the tangible money results that you’ll inevitably achieve. We’ve done a conversation about the emotions that people have around money before and how those emotions impact the way that you manage your money. But the value of feeling better about your finances truly cannot be overstated.

The stress and the pressure and anxiety and the fear and the uncertainty and all those other really heavy, negative emotions that you might have about money that feel terrible are not a great place to make money decisions from. So when you’re able to ground yourself in thinking about your money differently and knowing that you’re in control of it, and that you’re able to do the things that you want, and you don’t have stress and you don’t have anxiety and you feel confident, all of that impacts not only your experience of your finances, but the other areas of your life too.

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Alright, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and got a lot out of it. If you have not done so already. Please subscribe to the show, leave a review, and/or share this episode with a friend or two who you think could use this information. All of that is how we get this podcast in the hands of more lawyers, 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.