Episode 1235: Creating Focus for Your Money

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,235 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:06] Jem Fuller: I'm Jem Fuller. I challenge you to invest in yourself, 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 communicate with kindness even to yourself.

[00:00:24] Is key and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this the Inspired Stewardship podcast with my friend Scott

[00:00:34] Maderer.

[00:00:37] Scott Maderer: Still bring that attention and that energy to the one main thing, but set up the other things to happen automatically or without a lot of effort and energy. So you put the energy and the effort into making the decision and setting up the systems and processes, but not the doing and maintaining.

[00:00:57] So that you can have the energy and [00:01:00] focus. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. 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, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that.

[00:01:25] Can impact the world

[00:01:27] in today's episode about impacting the world through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about how focusing on one goal at a time can bring success to your money. Also share how some of the trade offs and risks that come with that focus, and I talk about how you can balance the two as we talk about stewarding your treasures.

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[00:02:13] One of those things that comes up a lot when we're dealing with money is the idea of focusing on one goal at a. And that often is a really good technique. It's something that you can do, but there are some concerns, some limits, some trade offs. When you do that. The idea is having real intense focus.

[00:02:36] On your specific financial goal, like saving up an emergency fund, paying off credit card debt, paying off a car, saving up for a car, saving up for a down payment on a house, saving up for a college fund, or another big purchase. It's the idea of focusing on things that you can achieve [00:03:00] relatively quickly with focus.

[00:03:04] And intense work towards that one goal. Part of the problem is oftentimes when you finish the first one, there's an immediate second one. know, If you pay off your credit card debt and then. Immediately focus on paying off your car and then you next focus on paying off the emergency fund. When you stack all of those goals together, it can be a significant amount of time.

[00:03:26] A lot of it depends on the amount of money that you make, the income side and the amount of money that you spend, the outgo side, not just the amount of money that you spend on that specific goal, how much you can free up to put towards your emergency fund, but your overall expenses. And so the idea is if you bring that great power of focus, you can give up a lot of things for a short time to achieve those sorts of focused financial goals.

[00:03:56] and honestly that has a lot of power to it. It's [00:04:00] something when I'm working with clients and I'm coaching, we often end up, that's the decision that they make on the direction that they want to go. They focus on that one goal really intensely, and they give up other things so that they can accomplish that goal in a relatively short period of time.

[00:04:17] Maybe a year, maybe six months, maybe even two years. But let's talk a little bit about some of the trade offs and some of the concerns, some of the things that you need to think about before you decide to focus on just one goal before you decide to focus all of your energy on paying off debt and spend no money on, for instance, investing for retirement.

[00:04:39] What do you need to think of? . So first off, you do wanna think about some math Things like what's the interest that you can make, or what's the compounding that this could do if you, for instance, put some of the money towards retirement while paying off debt? What's the trade off there financially?

[00:04:59] And [00:05:00] again, it determines, it's determined by how quickly you can do it. A lot of times you're also often giving up things like an employee match where you have something like a 401k and you get a hundred percent return on your money. Up to the match. That can be something that can cost you, especially when it's gonna take you a long time to do all of these series of goals.

[00:05:24] It's why you can't just look at the initial goal. You can't just look at getting out of debt. You want to determine where in this process, You're going to kick in and start doing these. It's also usually not an all or nothing kind of decision. It's not about you do only this and none of that. You can do some things where you bring a lot of focus to one goal, but you spend a little bit of energy on something else.

[00:05:55] You spend a little bit of money or time on something else, there also can be [00:06:00] tax ramifications to some of the things that we do with our money. And again, it could benefit you greatly to spend a little bit of time and energy. Determining where to do that. There's also things like asset protection and insurance and other things that could be factors in deciding how much of your focus you want to put towards one thing.

[00:06:25] Again, it's not that putting all of your focus on one goal is bad, and it's not that putting all of your focus on one goal is good. It's that it's more nuanced than you often hear. Often people put it out there as an all or none. Focus 100% of your energy on one goal for all of the time. And again, that focus can bring a lot of quick wins on that goal.

[00:06:49] And often it is the right thing to do, but it's not. Always the right thing to do for everyone in every [00:07:00] situation. It's a lot more nuanced and gray than people put out. It also depends on your energy and your attention and how much work you can put in on these various things. How many different balls can you reasonably.

[00:07:17] and doing it on your own versus having a coach can affect that as well. Because often when we have an external accountability partner, when we have somebody else walking with us, it helps us keep motivated, keep the energy, and decide that we're going to spend more on multiple goals, and we're able to keep our focus on all of those because we've got somebody helping us along the.

[00:07:42] and other times it ends up being with all of the clutter and business of your life and multiple kids and maybe job changes and all of this other going on. We really only can focus and have the energy and the attention on this one goal today. But over [00:08:00] time, that could shift. See, it's not an all or nothing.

[00:08:04] There's often nuance to it that you can actually work through and have a more complicated relationship and yet still bring the power of focus. Still bring that attention and that energy to the one main thing, but set up the other things to happen automatically or without a. Effort and energy.

[00:08:28] So you put the energy and the effort into making the decision and setting up the systems and processes, but not the doing and maintaining of it so that you can have the energy and focus to put towards the thing that actually requires intervention, the thing that actually requires effort, the thing that actually requires maintaining momentum and focus and energy and discipline.

[00:08:55] and all of those things, motivation, all of that energy [00:09:00] is being taken, but identifying which goals you can set up as systems and processes and which need that energy and focus becomes part of the conversation because it's different for different people at different points in their life. Focus is tremendously powerful when it comes to your money, but you need to think about the trade offs.

[00:09:20] You need to think about what else is going on, and you need to think this about the specificity of your personal situation before you decide that focus on one specific thing, like getting out of debt or saving up for car is the best thing for you. Thanks for listen.

[00:09:39] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of Treasures. [00:10:00] You can sign up for our treasures tips by going to inspired stewardship.com/treasures or text in the US 4 4 2 2 2 treasures tips, and we'll send you five weeks of our best tips on stewarding your treasures.

[00:10:22] Until next time, invest your. Your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.