311 | The Importance of Saying No and Delayed Gratification

One of the most powerful skills you can learn is how to say “no” to yourself.

Society is filled with opportunities for instant gratification, but learning to say “no” is a powerful tool in your wealth-building journey.

In this episode, let’s talk about why delayed gratification is so important, along with some tips to help you say “no” more often.

• • why delayed gratification is so powerful
  • the problem with spending all your money before you achieve your goals
  • sabotaging your goals
  • the similarities between raising children and managing money
  • tips to practice delayed gratification

• Apply for a 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 we are talking about saying no to yourself, delayed gratification.

This is something that comes up a lot in my work with clients and talking with lawyers about their finances, and I find that it’s a really hard thing for people to do sometimes. But saying no is one of the most powerful skills you can learn.

Delaying gratification is one of the most powerful things you can learn because it impacts what is available to you in the future. So let’s talk about saying no to yourself and delayed gratification.

If you have a money goal, if there is a set amount of savings that you want to have, or you want to pay off some debt, you want to buy a house or some other thing, there’s got to be some saying no until you achieve that goal. There’s got to be some delayed gratification. Otherwise, you don’t get to the goal or you don’t get to the goal as quickly as you could.

In our finances, we’re working with a set amount of money, the amount of money that you are bringing in. Yes, you could bring in more by doing side hustles, by getting a second job, getting a higher paying job, but if you don’t want to do those things and you want to work just with the amount of money that you have, then that means you’ve got to make some trade-offs with how you’re using that money.

Because if I’ve got this goal, I want to have $5,000, $10,000, whatever the amount is in my savings, I have to get that money from somewhere. And if I’m spending all of it right now, then I’m never able to achieve that goal of getting my account to whatever amount I want it to be. So there has got to be some measure of saying no to yourself and that delayed gratification to be able to achieve your goals.

I have run into so many lawyers who have trouble with this, where they’ve got a goal and they decide, you know, they even plan out their spending. I’m going to spend this much, I’m going to spend that much in these different categories. And they’ve got a set amount for entertainment, but they exhaust that amount, right? They spend it all, and they’re only halfway through the month. And then they cheat themselves and spend more because I really want to do this. Well, I really want it to go here. I really want it to buy this. And that overage, that extra amount that they spend, then eats into the money that they have for their goals.

And you could offset it with other categories. Maybe you’re going to spend less in this other area to be able to spend more on entertainment. But I find often that that’s not what happens. They still spend the same amount in all the other categories, but then they spend over in entertainment because they wanted to do this or buy this or go here.

And so then the thing that suffers is the goals that they have. The delayed gratification and saying no to yourself prevents that. Because sure, you might want to go here or do this or whatever, but if you don’t have the money for it, if that amount is already spent, then you’ve got to say no if you still want to achieve this goal.

If we think about this in terms of having children, and I don’t know if you, listening if you’ve got children, but I think we as adults all know that you can’t just give kids whatever they want, right? Whether you have children or not, I think we all know that you can’t just say yes all the time. Whatever they want, yes, yes, yes.

You have to say no sometimes. Sometimes it’s not a good idea for them to have the extra ice cream or the candy or to go out this place that they want to. You’re saying no for their own good. And I think we can see that in the concept or in the context of child raising or interacting with children. But sometimes it’s harder for us to see it for ourselves where you’ve got to say no sometimes for you to be able to achieve this goal, for you to be able to get to that amount of savings that you want, or to buy that house that you want, or to pay off that credit card that you’re trying to pay off.

There has to be some discipline there where you can’t just do whatever you want to and expect to achieve the goal. If you’re doing whatever you want to, you’re not going to achieve the goal, right? If we let the kid just do whatever they want to, they’re going to be spoiled. They’re not going to know how to handle themselves when they’re out in different situations. They’re not going to know how to behave.

We have to discipline ourselves the same way that we would discipline children in telling them no sometimes. We tell ourselves no sometimes, and that’s okay, right?

It’s okay for us to not have every single thing. And I don’t even think that it’s not having the thing. I say it’s not having it right now. Like as I’m recording this, it’s April. Maybe there’s something that I wanted to do, but I’ve already spent all of the money that I set aside for entertainment. And so now I’m going to wait until May to do that thing. It’s not saying that you can’t do it at all. It’s just changing the timeline on when you do it.

So I want to talk about how to say no and how to delay gratification, like some tips to help you with that, because they are so important in achieving your financial goals or other goals even, like other goals in other contexts of life.

So, the first one is exactly what I said of having that money set aside for you to do the things that you want to do. I don’t believe in the, spend nothing, stay home, never go out to eat, just stare at the wall until you achieve your goals. Because I don’t think that works. It’s not sustainable. So you’ve got to have some money set aside for fun. And the way that my husband and I do it is we’ve got our joint account for all of our bills, for stuff for the kids, for house, et cetera. But then we also have separate accounts where we get a set amount of fun money each month. And that’s money that we can spend however we want to, no questions asked, but we’ve got that money set aside. And we’ve been doing that throughout our money journey. And it’s a big part of why we were able to stay on track with it when we were paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.

When you’ve got a pot of money that you can just spend on fun, then it makes it a lot less likely that you’re going to overspend or you’re going to sabotage your goals because you’ve been depriving yourself for so long and you just go and binge and overspend, right?

So have a set amount of money for fun each month, like allocate that for yourself.

The second tip I have is thinking about when you’re going to do these different fun things, these entertaining things. Because again, there might be something that I want to buy in April, or I want to do in April, but I could just as easily do in May. And by thinking about when I want to spend, I can make sure that I’m not overspending the amount that I set aside for fun, so that I don’t cut into the money that I have for my goals.

So sometimes it’s delaying the thing that you want to do for a little bit. Sometimes it’s cutting back a little bit. So maybe I go out for brunch every single weekend and instead of doing it every weekend, I’m going to go every other week. That helps because I’m still able to go to brunch. I’m still able to enjoy that experience, but I’m spending a little bit less on it, which allows me to have more money for other things that I want to do.

The final tip that I have is thinking about whatever the goal is for yourself. If you don’t have a set goal, set one, because knowing exactly what you’re working toward makes it easier to evaluate whether you want to do something in the moment or whether you want to say no. And the thing that I like to think about is, is doing this thing more important to me than insert goal here, right? Is this thing more important to me than buying a house? Is this more important to me than building my savings? Whatever it is.

And I think I’ve talked about this before, but a few years ago when Taylor Swift and Beyoncé were doing their tours, I had clients who were big Taylor Swift fans, big Beyoncé fans and when they did that analysis of is this more important to me than whatever goal, for a lot of them, yes, it was. They wanted to go to the concert, and so they were willing to not make the progress on saving or debt or whatever so that they could pay for that ticket.

But again, that is an intentional analysis that they did. It’s not just, oh, well, I really want to do it, and I’m just going to spend, even though I already spent all of my fun money. It’s like, you know what? I’m going to get back to saving next month. I’m going to take this money. I’m going to buy that ticket because I really want to have that experience.

And I think that’s what personal finance is all about. It’s being intentional with those decisions that you’re making versus just swiping here and there and everywhere and being sad when you can’t save money at the end of the month.

You want to be intentional with those decisions. And I think most often when you run that analysis of is this thing more important to me than my goal, most of the time it’s not going to be. Most of the time it’s like, no, this goal is more important to me, so I’m going to say no. There will be that rare occasion, like I said, with the Taylor Swift and the Beyoncé concerts, they were like, you know what, I’m going to do this. But most of the time, I think the goal is going to win out. And that helps you to say no. Like you’re putting this thing in the present in the greater perspective of what you’re trying to accomplish.

And you’re making that intentional decision about whether you want to move forward with this thing or whether you’re going to stick to your goals.

And again, when you put that intention behind your finances and you are making those kinds of decisions, then you are much more likely to achieve your goals.

It’s not about always depriving yourself, never doing the things that you want to do, but it’s about the intention behind it.

And if you would like some help with creating the plan for you and being more intentional with your finances, head to rhothomas.com/apply, and sign up for a session. I would be happy to help.

Alright, 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 the 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.