Episode 1035: Focus On Saving Or Earning?

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1035 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:06] Marcus Hall: I'm Marcus

[00:00:07] hall, author of spiritual wealth, a 40 day journey to developing stewardship mindset. I challenge you to invest in yourself and invest in others. Develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to steward your resources.

[00:00:25] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.

[00:00:32] Scott Maderer: You're living paycheck to paycheck. At every time you get more money, you increase your lifestyle to match. You'll always be in that situation. Instead, you can begin to use that increased income to achieve your goals faster. Again, whether that's paying off debt investing for the future or increasing lifestyle.

[00:00:52] The truth is you can do a little bit of each of those and. Get further ahead. [00:01:00] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:01:17] We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your. So that you can impact the world

[00:01:26] in today's episode about impacting the world through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about the false dichotomy of cutting spending or increasing earnings to get ahead. I talk about why this dichotomy is so often what we talk about, but alignment is really more important. And I also talk about how one has a limit, but the.

[00:01:48] Doesn't as we talk about stewarding your treasures, wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without costing yourself an extra dime. It turns out you can't. [00:02:00] All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show.

[00:02:11] If you enjoy the show, when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. One of my clients asked me the other day. Is it more important to focus on. Saving or earning, is it more focused to cut expenses or to earn more income? In fact, Talked about it because he'd been having a conversation with somebody who was very wealthy and they talked about how a friend of theirs had made a decision, but was really able to earn money well, and that by just concentrating on earning more money, they would do.

[00:02:52] Okay. Even if the decision turned out to be. And my point when I was talking to the client, as I said, it's interesting [00:03:00] that's put forward as an either, or we can either earn more or we can spend less, we can cut expenses or save money or earn money that there's no way to do all of those things.

[00:03:15] Or more than one of those things at the same time, it's truly actually a false dichotomy. Now for most of us, we actually have an order of operation. If you've been struggling, if perhaps you're trying to get out of debt or you're living paycheck to paycheck, or you're having other sorts of income or outgo struggles, and you feel like you make too much money to be this broke all the time.

[00:03:42] Usually the way to move the needle first is to first focus on what you're spending and find ways to split. Less because the truth is there's an immediate return on that. You immediately feel like you got a raise. You begin [00:04:00] to save money today. That is much more valuable because you can invest, you can do other things with that.

[00:04:06] You begin to identify. What are the things that are most important to you and what things are you willing to give up? Because the truth is you can always outspend your income. I don't care how much you make it is possible to outspend it. It may be very difficult, but it's still pop. So often beginning to cut spending first, lets you begin to free up money to do other things like pay down debt or save or invest.

[00:04:42] And by doing that, you begin to make progress right away. But there's a limit to how far you can do that. At some point you have. Cut expenses as much as you can. And what's more, there's often things that you want to include in your expenses, that there [00:05:00] things that you value that are important to you, but maybe right now, today, you can't afford them.

[00:05:07] So there's always a limit to how far you can cut expenses. And that's why after you've done that initial cut. Make sense to pivot and begin to focus as well on keeping your expenses in alignment, but beginning to raise your income, but not necessarily raising your expenses commensurate with your income.

[00:05:29] If you're living paycheck to paycheck at every time you get more money, you increase your lifestyle to match. You'll always be in that situation instead. You can begin to use that increased income to achieve your goals faster. Again, whether that's paying off debt investing for the future or increasing lifestyle.

[00:05:49] The truth is you can do a little bit of each of those and often get further ahead. See alignment with what we really find [00:06:00] important lies throughout this, whether it's cutting expenses are making money. The key is to find the things that you really value. And enjoy those things. Find the things that are really important to you and put your time and your money towards those things.

[00:06:21] The alignment factor is what tells you what you can cut without worrying about it. It also tells you what you're willing to give up or. To increase your income because by the same token, if you only increase your income by adding more of your time, but yet one of the things you value is family time.

[00:06:40] That's not going to last, you can do it in the short term and you may need to break a log jam or to pay off a big debt or to do something else. But that shouldn't be how you set up your life term. That should just be what you're doing to get you to the next stage. See the truth is. Earning more.

[00:06:59] [00:07:00] Doesn't really have a limit. There are many ways you can increase your income, both in the longterm and in the short. But cutting expenses is limited. It's only so far down before you've cut into things that are actually necessities, things that you need to survive, food, water, electricity, those sorts of things.

[00:07:23] So the truth is one is limited and the other isn't, but in each case you have to think, what is it that I can do? And at some points you may end up wanting to do both. You may want to work on your expense side while you work on your income side. This is one of the reasons as a coach, I say that there isn't a one size fits all answer size answer.

[00:07:46] There isn't a set of steps that every single person should take. It varies because of the situations that we're in. Very the goals. We have very what we value much. I've [00:08:00] had clients that sacrificed deeply because keeping their kids in private school is so important. And so they have to give up other things that for many people, they would look at it, say it's not worth giving up, but for them, it is.

[00:08:14] And I've had other clients asked me, should I cut cable? And the answer is how much do you value cable? Do you value it enough to give up other things to get. Because at the end of the day, we always have enough money to do almost anything, but we seldom have enough money to do everything. Thanks for listening.

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