305 | Rewind: When It Feels Like It’s Not Working

What do you do when you’ve been trying to improve your finances but it feels like it’s not working—it feels like you’re not making progress with your finances?

The answer depends on your situation.

In this rewind episode, we talk about 4 example situations in which someone may feel like they’re not making progress on their finances and what to do in each.

• • when you don’t realize you’ve made progress
  • when you feel like you’re going backwards
  • when you’ve made intangible progress
  • when you’re actually not making progress

• Episode 205: How to Get Out of Debt
• Apply for a complimentary strategy session

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 am bringing you a rewind episode. This episode first aired about two years ago, and it’s for those of you who have been working on your finances, trying to get out of debt, trying to save all of that stuff, but it seems like you’re not making progress. It seems like it’s not working.

If that is you, in this episode, I go through four different scenarios of what could be happening, and I tell you what to do in each situation.

So please enjoy this rewind episode: “When It Feels Like It’s Not Working.”

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The first example is when you actually have made progress, but you just don’t realize it. When you are thinking about your progress, you want to make sure that you’re working with facts, and not just your feelings or your thoughts, because those are not facts.

What that means is making sure that, as you’re saving or paying off debt or whatever, you’re tracking your progress. So you can see, for example, in January, you were at x, and now it’s May and you are further. You’re at x plus y, right?

You can objectively see what’s happening with your debt and see the progress. And I can tell you from personal experience that when you are paying off a bunch of debt, it starts to feel like you’re slogging through and nothing’s happening. It feels like it’s just going so slowly, and like you’re not making progress.

But having that tracking information available, being able to look back and say, like, a month ago, two months ago, six months ago, I was here, and now I’m here, right? I was in that place, and now I’m here. You can objectively see that you’re doing better and that you are making progress, even though sometimes it feels like you’re not. That is a tip for everyone make sure that you are tracking your progress so you can see what’s happening.

Now the next example is when it seems like every time you make progress, you have to take a step back. So this could be a situation where you’re working on paying off debt, but then you have to put something on your credit card again, or maybe you’re saving money and you have to dip into savings for something.

I was just talking to one of my clients the other day, and she was telling me about how she has to move unexpectedly, and she’s got all these expenses associated with the move, and she had just gotten her savings to where she wanted it to be, and now she’s having to pull it to cover these expenses that she wasn’t expecting to have. She said it feels frustrating because she’s going backwards, like she has to dip into her savings. She doesn’t like that.

And the thing that we talked about is the fact that, yes, she has to dip into the savings, and that sucks, because she did work really hard to get to where she wants it to be. But the fact that she has this money in savings is in itself progress. Because if this had been a year ago, this situation would have been devastating for her because she didn’t have savings. And so even though it feels like she’s going backward, the fact that she has the savings in the first place is progress.

Sometimes it’s just a perspective shift of like, yes, that sucks you’re dipping into your savings, or you have to use your credit card to cover something and you just paid it down. That’s not ideal. It’s not what you want. But the fact that you have the savings to pull from, or that you have the room on your credit card when it was maxed out before, is progress.

And on that credit card front, something that we just talked about in the last episode [episode 205], is how one of the reasons people have this back and forth with their credit card is not having savings, so they will pay down the credit card, but then they don’t have any sort of cushion, and then they have to put stuff on the credit card when an emergency situation comes up, because all they have is the debt to rely on. So it might just be in that situation that you have done things a little bit out of order, and you want to make sure that you get some savings built up.

All right, the next situation is when you haven’t made tangible progress. You’re looking at your credit cards or your loans, and the balance isn’t lower, or you’re looking at your bank account, your savings account, and the balance isn’t higher.

It is a fact that there has not been progress in that regard. But sometimes the progress is mental or it’s in your experience of your money or how you’re feeling. Often you’ll see that kind of progress, like the intangible progress before you see the tangible results, before you see the lower debt balance or the higher bank account balance.

So if you’re thinking about money differently, that’s progress. If you’re being more thoughtful in how you spend your money, that’s progress. If you feel more confident in the decisions you make with your money, that’s progress. If you created a strategic plan for how you’re going to manage your money, but you got off track with it, that’s still progress, and the tangible progress will inevitably follow.

So let’s look for the progress that you have made, because if you are actually working on improving finances, there likely is progress, even if it’s not tangible progress yet. So in this situation, you want to redefine how you think about what progress is, or maybe expand your definition of progress to include more than just the tangible results of a higher bank account or a lower debt balance.

You also want to evaluate why you’re not seeing the tangible results yet, and if it’s just a matter of not having given it enough time, then just keep doing what you’re doing.

The final example is when you don’t have the tangible results, and you’re not feeling better about or thinking differently about your finances. In this case, you either haven’t started or you don’t have a strategy, or something in the strategy is off. So we need to get you started with a proven strategy or tweak what you’re doing so you can start seeing progress.

And like we just talked about, that progress may be more intangible at first, like feeling less stressed about your finances or being more intentional with your spending, but it will ultimately lead to the tangible progress you want to see.

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Alright, I hope you enjoyed that rewind episode.

If you are in that last situation where you don’t have tangible progress, but you also don’t feel better about your money, I can help you. You can apply for a complimentary session where I will work through your numbers with you, map out strategy, and get you a plan, so you can get moving in the right direction. Head to rhothomas.com/apply to sign up for that.

Alright, that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second, share this episode with a friend or two who could use this information. That is how we get this information 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.