00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 5 70 of the inspired Stewardship podcast. I'm Daryl Lines, author of 18 to 80. 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 toe. Live out your calling. Having the right behavior with your money is key to doing that. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott made her either because you behaved in a way that you didn't plan to behave or because there was something else going on some hidden costs or some accident of time or event that caused something to deviate and see.
00:00:55 That's the third step, that act of reflecting, looking at the tracking, looking at the plan and actively thinking about what happened. 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 will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. In today's episode about developing your influence through stewarding your treasures.
00:01:40 I talk with you about why we tend to ignore the hidden cost in so many things. Why optimism isn't the same as false beliefs and how you can learn to be more realistic in your approach to money as we talk about stewarding your treasures.
00:01:58 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.
00:02:06 All you have to do is use inspired stewardship dot com slash amazon when you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon,
00:02:14 and a small commission will come back to support the show. If you enjoy the show when you're ready to buy from Amazon,
00:02:21 just use inspired stewardship dot com slash amazon. One of the things that I've noticed over the years of working with clients and their budgets I've seen now literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of budgets for many different people over the years,
00:02:39 and all too often one of the problems that we have is, well, you know, At the end of the day,
00:02:46 we just tend to underestimate the rial cost of things. I mean, somebody comes along and offers us something for free.
00:02:56 And so we think, Well, this is not gonna have any monetary costs. It's not gonna have any impact on me,
00:03:01 But we don't think about hidden cost. So as an example, you know, you you get a puppy for your kids and you pick up the puppy for free from the pound,
00:03:10 or maybe just for 20 or 30 bucks. But you don't think about the lifetime cost of that puppy in terms of dollars and cents.
00:03:19 Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that having the puppy is a bad thing. In fact,
00:03:25 the love and companionship of a pet is something that has an emotional impact on us that has great benefits.
00:03:34 But the truth is we often ignore the fact that there's a monetary cost that comes along with it. Everything has some level of opportunity cost.
00:03:44 Everything has some level of impact on our money, even if it's just a impact on our money. In terms of time.
00:03:53 Now, I often challenge clients toe, think about ways to do things cheaper than they've done them before.
00:04:01 You'll have clients that come to me, for instance, and say, Well, going, socializing, spending time outside of the house always cost money.
00:04:10 And, yeah, there's always a monetary impact. But you can begin to make choices that allow you to have a lower impact on your money rather than a higher impact.
00:04:20 There's ways that you can choose to do things that change the impact, but the first step is to recognize that there are hidden cost.
00:04:31 If you hire someone to do something for you, there's not just the monetary costs, but there's the cost in time and effort that you spend with them.
00:04:39 There's always a cost and we tend to underestimate it. We tend to ignore things like the impact of taxes on our income,
00:04:48 the fact that if we finance things that there is a cost in terms of interest that also affect us,
00:04:54 and so we don't really look at the true cost of things when we're making plans. Instead, we tend to look at only the best case scenario.
00:05:06 We tend to look at it as if everything's gonna work out perfectly and the truth is, as right now is showing us there's always a chance that things won't work out perfectly.
00:05:18 You know, I have an emergency fund, not because I know what's going to go wrong, but because I suspect that at some point something will go wrong.
00:05:30 And because of that, having an emergency fund helps gives me emotional peace of mind during those times. See,
00:05:38 it's not about knowing the future. It's about preparing for the future. There's a difference between optimism, which is looking at things as if they will be better in the future and false beliefs,
00:05:52 which is where you ignore reality and just pretend like everything is going to somehow work out. It's not about having faith or hope.
00:06:03 It's about ignoring any sort of downsides, ignoring any possibility that anything will go wrong. And the truth is,
00:06:12 optimism is about not just assuming things will go right, but beginning to paint a vision of a future that you then move towards.
00:06:23 You actually do the hard work and the steps and the priorities and the process to create that future. You know,
00:06:32 it's about having a realistic approach. It's about looking at the world as it is, but also then looking at the world as the way you want it to be,
00:06:44 and then trying to connect the two with the process and actions that will get you there. This is one of the reasons that doing a realty true budget is so important,
00:06:55 but it's not enough by itself. I've had people that come to me for help with their budget, and they've been doing ah budget for years,
00:07:05 but they've never actually look to see whether they're living to that budget. See, I tell clients there's really three parts here.
00:07:13 There's doing the budget and then there's tracking how you work and seeing if it actually fits the budget. Did you actually spend the money that you budgeted on what you said you were going to spend it on?
00:07:26 Or did something go wrong with the plan either because you behaved in a way that you didn't plan to behave or because there was something else going on some hidden costs or some an accident of of time or event that caused something to deviate and see?
00:07:43 That's the third step, that act of reflecting. Looking at the tracking, looking at the plan and actively thinking about what happened.
00:07:52 Why didn't it work? Why didn't the plan work out the way it should have? And as you do that over time,
00:07:58 you begin to refine your plan and you begin to change your behavior and build the systems and the processes that keep you on track.
00:08:07 This is why it's a process on an event you generally don't create the perfect budget the first time you create a budget.
00:08:13 And in fact, you probably never create a perfect budget because I don't think there's anything any such thing as a perfect budget because there isn't a perfect life.
00:08:24 Life always throws us a curve, and sometimes it's not about the curve. It's about our reaction to that curveball.
00:08:35 That's what determines if we win or lose. That's where optimism comes in, recognizing that when life throws you a curveball,
00:08:44 you have a choice in how you react and you can move forward effectively, not out of fear, not out of any sort of worry,
00:08:53 but out of the ability to create the future that you want as you go there. So I ask you,
00:09:00 what do you do to examine the hidden cost of things. What do you do? Tow? Make sure that you're paying attention to the opportunity cost when you make a choice.
00:09:10 And how do you balance that with a realistic approach that keeps you optimistic but also realistic? Thanks for listening.
00:09:23 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.
00:09:33 But act on what you've heard and find a way toe. Live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of treasures,
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00:10:09 your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact world