00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 675 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Julie Tafolla. I challenge you to invest in yourself and others develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, talent and treasures, to live out your calling. Having the ability to communicate and build relationships is vital. And one inspirational way to develop that is to listen to this,
00:00:31 the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, those things went away relatively easily. Again, this isn't to say that, you know, getting 0% interest in a of 20% interest, doesn't help this isn't to say that getting rid of the debt as quickly as possible. Is it a good thing? This isn't to say that figuring out the way to optimize your investment so that you get a really good return over a long period of time.
00:01:06 That's aligned with your goals. Isn't important. 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 you can impact the world.
00:01:40 And today's episode about impacting the world through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about identifying your values and priorities rather than all the little details, why this allows you to align your money with what's really important and how it lets you say yes instead of no. When doing your budget, as we talk about stewarding your treasures, wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without costing yourself,
00:02:08 an extra dime turns out you can. 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 will come back to support the show. If you enjoy the show, when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When it comes to our money. One of the things that I've seen people spend way too much time on is getting into optimizing every little detail of their money,
00:02:42 trying to fine tune and find the exact place that they can make just a penny more in interest, or save a penny on debt that's owed, as opposed to stepping back and really identifying what are your values? What are your what's most important to you? What's the big changes that you're trying to make and why are they important? How is it that you can do things that bring you a little closer to what you really see is your ideal place to be with your money?
00:03:18 If you're married or in a relationship, how do you work with your partner in a way that communicates and allows you all to identify a unified set of goals and values and priorities rather than optimizing every little detail? See the truth is we often get mired down and looking at the perfect set of tools, the perfect set of applications. You know, if we can just move this credit card debt over there and get 0% interest than somehow or another,
00:03:52 we'll magically pay it off faster and don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing about the math part of it. I'm not saying that if you save on interest, you can't actually pay down a debt faster. What I'm saying is often we're so worried about doing those things that we lose track of, even figuring out where we want to go in the first place.
00:04:13 It becomes about the goal rather than the real emotional reasons behind the goal. The truth is as a coach, I spend a lot more time helping people align their money with what's really important to them than I do. And optimizing how quickly they can do things. And what's funny is by doing that, that usually achieve those goals faster than the math tells us they should be.
00:04:44 Because the truth is, is when you have a deep enough reason and when your money is aligned with those reasons, then it's easier to stick to it. It's easier to make progress. It's easier to make the difficult decisions. It's easier to say no to yourself in one place. If you've got a big enough, you raise it to say yes to yourself,
00:05:02 somewhere else. And that's really the framing that I use, whatever I'm talking to a client. And they've got a difficult situation where if they sit down and do their budget and they put down money for all of the things that they want and need to do, they end up with a negative number at the bottom of it budget. One way, way of looking at it as what do you want to say no to what do you want to cut out of your budget?
00:05:26 But I'll tell you the truth is I don't like the idea of saying no to myself. I don't like the idea of saying no to lines on my budget. I much prefer the idea of saying yes to things than saying no to things. So I actually tell people to do that. It comes to your budget, start with a blank sheet of paper.
00:05:46 What are you going to allow onto the budget? Assume you were spending no money anywhere today. What are the things that you're going to allow into your? Because the truth is it's easier to say yes than it is to say no, but what's funny is you will discover that there are some things that indeed you are spending money on today. And you may even think of them as absolutely necessary things that there is no way you could live without them,
00:06:14 or there's no way you could spend less in that area. And yet whenever you start prioritizing things and putting down the things that you actually want to, to pay attention to, that you actually want to allow into your life, the things that are truly aligned with your values and your priorities, then all of a sudden, some of those things that right now seem like they're impossible to reduce.
00:06:39 Impossible to cut out of your life would just go away. You just never add them back into your life. I've seen it happen when people have had something massive go on and they've been forced into this situation. They make very deep decisions about what they're going to say yes to, and by end result is they end up saying no to some things, you know,
00:07:02 eating out is my favorite example. There are people that spend thousands of dollars on eating out and it feels like it's just necessary. Their life is so busy. They're running from thing to thing. There's no way they could eat at home more. And then something happens that takes away eating out. Like, I don't know nowadays with everything that's going on with,
00:07:25 with COVID. And COVID-19, we've had a situation where suddenly a lot of times people were going out to eat less. And, and what's funny is a lot of people have told me they don't miss it because the truth is it turns out that they were eating out more out of habit than out of need. And as their life changed as their, their focus changed as what was important to them changed those things went away relatively easily.
00:07:54 Again, this isn't to say that, you know, getting 0% interest instead of 20% interest, doesn't help this isn't to say that getting rid of the debt as quickly as possible. Is it a good thing? This isn't to say that figuring out the way to optimize your investment so that you get a really good return over a long period of time, that's aligned with your goals.
00:08:13 Isn't important. It's just to say that if that's all you're doing, you often, aren't going to make as much progress as if you first step back and figure out what truly is important to you. What are the things that you absolutely want to say yes to, and then let everything else go. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:08:45 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, you can sign up for our treasures tips by going to inspired stewardship.com/treasures or text in the U S four four two two two treasures tips.
00:09:18 And we'll send you five weeks of our best tips on stewarding your treasures until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.