Get Ripped - Financially
Let’s talk about where your money is going. And let’s remove all the emotions from it. The biggest help factor in being a professional is I’m not emotional about anybody’s money. I’m not really emotional about mine either but hey, this is a journey and you can all get there too.
For the sake of this exercise, let’s replace the word spending with investing, which includes all dollars out of your hands. Because every dollar is an investment in something, let’s call it like it is. An investment. Here are a few examples for those of you who need a concrete understanding of this. Money out, what you used to call spending, $100 on organic produce at a farmer’s market, is an investment. Can you see that the $100 of organic produce is an investment in your long term health, digestive system function this week, better skin and vitamins for a long lasting body? And let’s take the same $100 on fast food for your kids and their friends after a hockey game because you didn’t have time to prepare dinner for everyone with your work schedule this week. This $100 is also an investment, it’s buying back your time and as much as it may not be on organic produce which seems so healthy, it is in something important which is that your kids are fed, had fun with their friends and you spent your time elsewhere which was important that day leaving you with zero mess to clean up at home.
When your investing is misaligned with your values or you don’t have the flexibility to be investing in that area are the two main reasons where misalignment prevails. I’d suggest the women reading this are likely in the first category – investing is misaligned with your values.
Now because this is such a personal thing, I’m not suggesting that the $100 spend on produce is a better investment than the fast food. Really, it all depends on what’s important to you. And for the mom who has limited time, maybe that $100 of produce is going to go bad in your fridge or you bought it with unrealistic expectations of how you were going to cook 5 things this week and never got around to it because you don’t have the time. That would be a bad investment. And maybe then you end up spending the extra $100 on fast food for the kids because your planning wasn’t realistic in the first place.
Can you now see that the $100 spend on two different things is an investment in something and that there’s good and bad to both in this scenario?
See, this is also where people can get caught up with budgeting. Great that you have a goal and some boundaries but I’ve never seen a budget that sticks and I’ve never met somebody who doesn’t feel shame around budgeting. It’s just the word that gives me the ick. Mostly budgets are set with unrealistic parameters and they fail to address behavioral modification. This is why a budget never worked for me and probably hasn’t for you. So this is not budgeting. This is an investment plan. And to address changing the investment amounts, creating a behavioral modification plan is the only way we are going to do that.
Because I have used this investment plan since I was in my early 20s, I have a lot of experience with it and I know it’s worked for me. Here's an example that I use from my first investment plan. When I received my bi-weekly paycheque, I would analyze my banking transactions every two weeks and look for ways I can avoid investing in areas that don’t have a return on the investment I’m making. In my regular review, I found that I was investing a few hundred dollars a month at Shoppers and couldn’t remember what I was buying, I had nothing to show for it. And then I started thinking, how do I end up investing so much there? I noticed that I would go into Shoppers often on my lunch break because I wanted to take a break from the office. There I would invest $40-60 often on snacks, random beauty products and cleaning stuff for my desk at work that I didn’t need. Really, I just needed something to do at lunch and it ended up being a walk to Shoppers. From there, I decided that I needed to avoid going in on my lunch break, full stop. If I needed something, I can go after work anytime. That simple tweak changed my investment plan and gave me a few hundred dollars of leeway every month to invest in something more important to me. What it took was knowing where I was investing, if it was valuable for me, when I do it and how I can pattern interrupt.
The first step to changing the trajectory of our investments is knowing what we are doing. I have a sense that many women are just not looking and therefore not aware. If that’s you, the first step to getting a handle on this and reigning it in is looking. If you’re riding a horse and it’s going all crazy but your eyes are closed and your reigns are loose, it can be a very scary experience. And when you open your eyes, straighten up your back and secure your reigns, that’s when you get into order and can steer the horse into the path you want it to go. That’s what our goal is here – bring everything into order with your investments. It’s time to face it.
