00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 705 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey, I'm Matt ham, author of redefined rich, and I challenge you to live richly by listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. What can we do to actually make this the best it can be? What can we do to be intentional about setting this virtual environment up in a way that works?
00:00:34 And the key is that word intentionality, the key is to sit down and actually review what's going on in your money to be both setting a plan in place and tracking against that plan to see 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,
00:00:58 your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. Today's episode about investing in others through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about some of the benefits when it comes to your money and virtual work. I share some of the money disadvantages that comes from virtual work,
00:01:32 and I share what you can do to make it the best it can be. 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. 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.
00:01:59 If you enjoy the show, when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon all week. We've been talking about how working in this virtual environment changes the things that we do. It changes what things look like for us. And today we're going to focus in on how it changes our money. You know, when we talked earlier this week on,
00:02:21 on about productivity and time, we talked about how there's sort of a double edged sword. There's both a good and a bad side to this virtual environment that many of us are operating in today. And the same thing happens with money as well. There are both benefits to it, and as, as well as challenges to it, when it comes to our money and the virtual environment,
00:02:47 you know, telecommuting has been around for a long time. And when companies look at it, of course, they look at this kind of productivity versus cost to benefit. They look at it from the point of view of are they to get the work that they need from you, their employees in a way that saves money for the company. But when we look at it for ourselves as individuals,
00:03:07 we should actually think about the same sort of things, the same sort of, of benefits and costs that it can take us. And it is a money benefit, but it's also a time benefit because there is a value, a monetary value to how we spend our time. And so one of the obvious things that happens is when we work from home from a money environment,
00:03:31 we lose some of the expenses that we might have had. If we were going into an office, the simple and most obvious one is around commuting, right? We don't have to spend as much time in the car. We don't have to spend, wear and tear on our car. We don't have gas that we're spending to drive into work. And even if it's a five minute or 10 minute or 15 minute commute,
00:03:52 that adds up over time. But then we also have, from a money perspective, we can save money on some clothing as an example, because we're working from home more often, we may not have to wear the same clothes that we would wear going into the office. That's not, let's say that you should just dress in sweat pants, a tee shirt every day,
00:04:12 if you're working, but you do want it to recognize that the clothing needs, that you have maybe slightly less demanding when it comes to how we spend our money on meals, because we're not leaving the house. We can cook from home a little easier, have to spend as much on going out to eat. And the other things that come along with that.
00:04:35 So awesome. Mostly there are direct benefits to our money working in a virtual environment. We've, I've seen this working with folks today where we've had to reset their budget for certain categories around food and around gas and maintenance of the car and clothing and other areas because this new work from home environment created some savings for them. But the truth is I've also noticed that it creates disadvantages that affect our money too.
00:05:06 For one thing, we can really have our work and our personal life blend together in a way that sometimes isn't healthy, that sometimes causes us to spend money in ways that we wouldn't before, because psychologically we began to get exhausted. We began to get tired, tired. We lose our willpower in a way that we didn't do when we were working in an office environment.
00:05:29 It's so easy to just click open another tab on your computer at home and buy something from Amazon. It's a, it's so tempting to see those things in order the things that you need in a way that you wouldn't have none in the work environment because your home, those temptations sometimes end up being closer than they would have been at office in the office.
00:05:52 The other thing that happens to us when we work from home, that can be a disadvantage when it comes to our money is we can have some challenges around actual technology and infrastructure and needs to have a good work from home environment. I've discovered that there are folks now that they don't have a home office. They don't have anything set up for work and having no physical separation between work and home makes it really hard to remain productive.
00:06:20 And so setting up something like a new home office becomes somewhat of a need in some cases. And if you didn't have money set aside to do that, then all of a sudden that impacts your budget because your company may not pay for that. I've seen a lot of people changing and remodeling and upgrading their houses in different ways to deal with this virtual work environment.
00:06:44 And that can be very large expenses, especially if you have it planned and prepared for them. There's also a lot more because of the social isolation, we tend to do what I would call retail therapy, where we order more things online. We pay for more takeout or food to be delivered to our house. We run down the street and buy junk food because there's a comfort factor involved in those sorts of things that if we're not conscious of begins to add up and spend over time and creates an environment where it's death by a thousand cuts,
00:07:20 it's never a huge, expensive to Hedy vacation. Instead, it's a lot of little things. And if you tie that to also the fact that there are many folks that are now having their jobs directly impacted there's folks that have lost their job, there's folks that their job has reduced the wages because the company has, you know, barely staying open and to keep the employees on it.
00:07:42 All, everyone took a pay cut, all sorts of things are happening that can also affect the income side. So some of the disadvantages aren't just on the outgo side, but are also on the income side. So what can we do to actually make this the best it can be? What can we do to be intentional about setting this virtual environment up in a way that works?
00:08:06 And the key is that word intentionality, the key is to sit down and actually review what's going on in your money to be both setting a plan in place and tracking against that plan to see what happened because the truth is if you spend every dollar and you don't ever pay attention to what's happening, right? Inertia kicks in, it's so easy to just keep doing what you've been doing.
00:08:30 And then you keep getting what you've been getting. And the truth is the only way to make a change is indeed to make a change. And so when change is rest upon us like this work environment of the virtual environment right now, the only way to make it work for you is to grab it and be intentional well in designing your life in a way that works for you,
00:08:54 that gives you what you've been called to do that lets you live out and express yourself in a way that you've been called to do. And that's what we spend our time on in coaching. So it doesn't matter whether it's this challenge or a different challenge that you're facing. That's why coaching can help. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast,
00:09:25 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.
00:09:58 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.