Episode 800 It's Not a Math Problem
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 800 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Shannon miles from belay. I challenged you to discover your calling and find your third option so you can be empowered to live every day to the fullest. One way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend and Scott Mader.
[00:00:28] I've had a client tell me, I've gotten a real emotional attachment to having cash in the bank. Not in terms of this is where their safety and their security comes from or what they worship. At the altar, but instead just out of the idea of that emotional piece, lets them make decisions and do things that they wouldn't do in STEM.
[00:00:50] 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 [00:01:00] must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in 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.
[00:01:23] And today's episode about investing in yourself through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about how getting your money in order. Is it really a math problem? I share what the real key to success is instead. And I also talk with you about some resources you can use to begin to make that shift.
[00:01:41] 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. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon [00:02:00] and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show.
[00:02:03] If you enjoy the show, when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. This time of the year, a lot of folks begin to worry about getting their money in order. There was something about the new year that causes us to want to have a new start. And we think to ourselves, now is the time this is the year I'm going to get it all together.
[00:02:27] And then what I've noticed is people began to try to treat it as a math problem. And it, it makes perfect sense. After all our budget or our income, our outgo, our expenses, all of these things are just numbers. So it should just be a math problem. We sit down and we put our income down and we figure out what we're doing.
[00:02:47] And then at the end of the day, it either balances or it doesn't. But the truth is the real key to success is to recognize that it's not really a math problem at all. [00:03:00] It's a people problem. It's a behavior problem. It's a mindset problem. It has a lot more to do with what you believe is true and what you do and the actions that you take than it does with just the math.
[00:03:15] Now don't get me wrong. If you don't have enough money coming in to pay all of your bills and to pay for things like food and shelter and clothing and utilities, then obviously getting more income is going to be a priority. Getting the top line number to work. So that the bottom line number, isn't a negative number is important, but the truth is even then, it's not really just a math problem.
[00:03:41] It's more about what are you doing to create the income? What actions are you taking? How are you moving forward more effectively and more quickly on those things, but more often than not, it's not that instead. We've got a situation where we [00:04:00] usually have enough money to do almost anything, but we don't have enough money to do everything.
[00:04:09] And then all of a sudden it becomes. Almost paralyzing because we either see the 547 different things that we would like to do with money and begin to immediately think to ourselves, what are we actually going to do? What can we do? And because there's so much going on, you can't really make any decisions.
[00:04:31] And instead you end up freezing. Or you try to do everything. And so you do nothing well because at the end of the day, when you try to do everything, you usually don't make as much progress as when you focus on one or two things that are most important to you and get those done first and then move forward with the next item and the next item.
[00:04:54] And the next, the truth is in all of these cases, we end [00:05:00] up just not getting. Where we want to go. Not because it's a money thing, but because it's a mindset thing, we began to have problems figuring out what to do. And so we ended up doing nothing. You the real key to success is recognizing that it's not just the numbers on a page that those numbers mean something.
[00:05:23] That money is something that you have an emotional attachment to. I've had a client tell me, I've gotten a real emotional attachment to having cash in the bank, not in terms of this is where their safety and their security comes from or what they worship. At the altar of, but instead just out of the idea of that emotional piece, lets them make decisions and do things that they wouldn't do instead it's an emotional issue.
[00:05:53] Money has an emotional baggage and the truth is if you want to start [00:06:00] making that shift, you've got to do some things. You've got to take some action. So some of the resources, if you sign up, I've got a simple budgeting form. You've got to create a budget. The reason why is until you start putting numbers down on a page and actually making them.
[00:06:18] Balance and seeing what's going on until you have an idea of what's really going on, you can't start making intelligent decisions about what you want to do. You can't start balancing your priorities until you've put down those priorities. Something else you can do begin to regularly track against your budget, see what you're actually doing and evaluate whether you need to change your behavior.
[00:06:45] Is it you need more income? Is it that you need to reduce expenses? Or is it a little bit of both? What are the actions you need to take to cause things to move forward quickly? Some of the other [00:07:00] resources, accountability. This is what I do as a coach. Part of what I do is help. Make decisions with my clients, help them figure out what is the best decision for them, not by way of telling them what to do, but by talking through the issue so that they can see the emotional decisions and the behavior and see what's actually happening.
[00:07:21] And then they can make informed decisions for themselves. This is what coaching can do for you. In all of these situations though, recognize it really comes back to, it's not the math. There is no magic app that will fix your situation. There is no single tool that will solve all your problems. If the truth is, if you've got a problem and want to get your money in order, the problem and the solution are the same and they look back at you, when you look in the mirror, If there's a couple situation and you're trying to work on it, you've got to work together.
[00:07:58] You've got to have regular [00:08:00] meetings and discussion and get on the same page. Otherwise you end up working against each other and pulling in two different directions. And the minute you do that, you've got a problem. Because at that point, what else can happen other than a decrease in communication and an increase in fighting and other things it's inevitable because it's not a math problem.
[00:08:26] It's an us problem. Thanks for listening.
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