Episode 920: Money is the Symptom Not the Cause
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 920 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:07]Ernie Prabhakar: [00:00:07] Hi everyone. This is there any pro Bocker. This is your chance to invest in yourself. Invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world, but using your time, talent and treasures to live out your calling. This is a great chance to find the opportunity to become the Christian.
[00:00:24] You always want it to be, and to be inspired, to be the best version of yourself. Listen to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.
[00:00:33]Scott Maderer: [00:00:33] That's one of the reasons that I love coding. My joke is I tell people I help them master their time, their talent and their treasure so that they can live out their calling. But the truth is I only coach on one thing, talent, because at the end of the day, the way you handle your money, the way you handle your time is really about how you handle yourself.
[00:00:54]Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If [00:01:00] 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. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact.
[00:01:20]in today's episode about investing in yourself through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about how we often blame our problems on money. I share how often money problems are a symptom, not the cause of the issues. And I also share why digging into the ideas behind the real issue is the key to fixing the money issue.
[00:01:40]As we talk about stewarding your treasures. Wouldn't it great. If you could support this podcast and do it without costing yourself an extra dollar. 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 money problems. I've heard so many people come to me and talk to me about that. They have money problems. It could be that they're struggling with debt and getting out of debt. It could be that they have a situation like they've owed taxes for years and they're behind on what they owe and they don't know how they can actually.
[00:02:35] That never happened again, make it where they can actually keep up with what's going on and pay what they need to pay and not be behind it. It may be that there's, it's a couple and they're fighting all the time, not seeing eye to eye on their money. It may be that they're struggling with doing the things that they need to do to take care of what they feel like needs to be taken care of for their kids and their [00:03:00] kids' activities.
[00:03:00] It could be paying for college for the kids, could be saving for retirement, could be making enough at their job, whatever it is. They refer to it as the money problems that they have. And we often blame problems that we have on the lack of money. We often look at our situation and feel like we don't have enough to provide.
[00:03:25] We don't have enough to do all of the things that we want to do. And that's certainly true at times. There are certainly times when people are underemployed or unemployed or when they're struggling to make ends meet. Maybe they're a single parent or otherwise in a household or in a situation where money struggles are real.
[00:03:45] But even then, Money. Isn't the only problem that's going on. Typically the money problem is a symptom, not the problem. If you're fighting about [00:04:00] money, then there's usually an underlying communication in shoe. If you're struggling with not having enough, is it because you truly are not making enough? Or is it because.
[00:04:10] Maybe you're doing some things with your money that maybe you really shouldn't things that are out of alignment with your real long-term goals. Is it a lack of knowledge of what to do? The truth is being smart with your money. It's not rocket science. It's not something that is really hard.
[00:04:29] Oftentimes the things that I talk about people doing are a captain obvious moment. There, there are things that. Are logical. There are things that most of us would know, this is what I should be doing live on less than you make, do something smart, the difference. But yet we don't do it because the truth is that the money issue isn't the core issue.
[00:04:53] There's something else underlying it, it could be our own limiting beliefs. It could be how we view the [00:05:00] world. It could be how we grew up and learned our way through with them. There's all sorts of underlying causes that often show up in our budget. They show up in our money, they show up in the fights.
[00:05:15] We have, they show up in how we feel like we don't have enough. They show up and how we struggle because we're buying this and buying that we're overspending in one area or the other, but digging into the real issue, digging into the behavior. To the mindsets, discovering your priorities and your values, doing the hard work to align, how you use your money with those underlying priorities.
[00:05:43] That's really what makes a difference. But the problem is it's a lot easier to just focus on what can I do to make more money and that'll make all my problems better, but it usually does it. What can I do to actually just do a budget, [00:06:00] because if I can just do the right budget and get the perfect budget, then everything will work out.
[00:06:06] Let me tell you the truth. It really won't. If we can just make more money than we'll stop fighting, you probably won't do that either. If I can just make more money than it won't matter if I'm overspending, because I'll still be able to save for retirement and pay for my vacation and do all the other things I want to do.
[00:06:25] But if you don't address the underlying mindset and behavior, that will never be true. You'll just continue to raise your spending as your income goes up and you'll never get to the real root causes and fix the real issues. That's one of the reasons that I love coding. My joke is I tell people I help them master their time, their talent and their treasure so that they can live out their calling.
[00:06:51] But the truth is I only coach on one thing, talent, because at the end of the day, the way you handle your money, the way you handle your time is really [00:07:00] about how you handle yourself. How do you handle your relationships with yourself and with others? How do you handle your mindset? How do you handle your belief?
[00:07:11]Have you done the hard work to figure out what's really going on and then make the changes that you need to make. Not because someone else tells you to not because you have to, but because you want to now, because you've found out what it is, that's really important to you. And then it's much easier to actually align your activities with those actions.
[00:07:40] Because now it makes sense. Now it's obvious. Now the common sense becomes easier to do because you understand the why behind it. And what are the real underlying things that we're changing. And why does it matter? [00:08:00] That is why money is often the symptom of the problem and not the real underlying cause that you need to fix.
[00:08:09] Thanks for listening.
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