5 Steps to Help You Change Your Attitude Towards Money
Collaborative post
Money is the lifeblood of our lives and our businesses. We need money to pay for everything we need, want ans desire, from food and drink to a home and amenities.
Money is important in our lives, can we keep pretending it isn't?
The truth is most of us know money is important, but we’re scared to admit it, because it will mean dealing with the state of our finances and finally facing our money fears, shame, guilt and self blame etc., which can be uncomfortable (to put it mildly).
I know we all want to wake up tomorrow and be debt free or have double our income; but the truth is, getting our money right is a journey and if we think of it as a long term process, it can make a big difference.
I had a lot of money fears and was riddled with panic attacks every time I had to touch money, so I figured my issues with money were a little deeper, so I took a long term approach to my finances.
When I was US$60,000 in debt, I gave myself 5 years to pay off my debt and gave myself permission to just focus on changing my spending habits and fall in love with my bank account.
I paid off the debt in 4 years, launched my company and started traveling again!
Then I gave myself permission to take another 4 years to create a consistent income in my business as I traveled from country to country, without a credit card.
It took 3 years to get a consistent income in my business and to get my business to pay me a salary as I live in various countries!
Now I’ve given myself, 3 years to create passive income streams so I can choose to retire when I want.
It all started with me changing my attitude towards money and changing how I see money.
1.Get clear on your Financial vision
Why do you want money?
Where do you want to be a year from now? What about 5 or 10 years from now?
If you’re thinking in the next 10 years that you want to move into a bigger house, have kids, and be able to enjoy holidays abroad - you need to align your financial goals to your values, investments and spending habits to achieve this.
Consider how you’ll reach these goals and what you need to do to get there.
If you know your current salary won’t help you reach these goals then you need to start thinking of ways to make this goal a reality.
Money is the driving force of many things but you need to be the one to light the fuse and make a change.
2. Get clear on the lifestyle you want
It's not just about the vision you have for your life - you also need to understand the lifestyle that accompanies that vision so you start aligning the two.
If your vision is to travel the world in 3 years but you have a job that requires you to be at the same location 365 days a year and this job pays for a huge mortgage, fancy car etc., there's a disconnect in vision and lifestyle and you need to start making some changes to either the vision or the lifestyle (which includes your job).
Let’s say you plan to work from home for yourself in the future as an author.
If you haven’t even published your first book yet it is time for you to consider doing so in the next year to set yourself on the right track.
Working in your spare time to reach a goal is something you must do if you want to live that dream lifestyle. Yes, we believe in magic, but you still have to take action and work to make things happen.
Likewise, if you want to retire early (or even at all) and move overseas to live out the rest of your days somewhere tropical, services like Expat Wealth @ Work can help you organize your finances the right way. If you're unsure where to start investing, these services help you find the best investments to inch you closer to your dream of sitting on the beach listening to gently crashing waves and sipping a cocktail or two.
3. Save for emergencies
It's important to consider the importance of saving money for a rainy day because life does happen and nothing throws us off our path faster than an emergency.
If you don’t already have a savings account now is the time to invest in one and start putting aside a small chunk of your income each month to save for the things you want in life.
If we don’t have some money set aside we might fall into debt very quickly.
I often stayed in the cycle of debt because I had no emergency savings, so whenever an emergency arose, I’d use credit cards and loans to cover everything.
4. Find new ways of making money
One of the things that helped me pay off my debt quickly, was a side hustle and learning how to make extra streams of income.
I got a part time job and lived off the salary from my job and used the extra money from my side hustle to pay off my debt.
There are many ways to make extra money, even if you don't bave a business idea (yet) - you can try and find delivery driver work in the evenings and weekends to supplement your full time job, you can rent out the spare room in your house, you can turn your cooking or baking hobby into a weekend business. Think out of the box and get creative.
5. Focus on healing your money trauma
Actually, this point should be number one.
The truth is we all carry baggage, which affects our relationship with money and changes our attitude and feelings towards money.
It's the little fights we saw in the family whenever the topic of money came up, it's how our mothers got tense whenever the bills arrived in the mail, it's how adults around got excited when payday came and got tense mid-month when money started running out; all these things are small events but they contribute to our money stories and the events and memories may contribute to our money trauma, which leads to an unregulated nervous system whenever we deal with money.
Every time we handle money, parts of us that feel unsafe or scared or ashamed of money are triggered and those parts of us impact our emotional reaction towards money and that emotional reaction then affects our financial behaviour.
This is why touching money would trigger a panic attack for me and lead me on a spending or gifting spree so I could get rid of money as soon as it hit my bank account, it wasn't about the money, it was about the memories that I associated with money, which made money an unsafe thing in my life. The only way for me to stay safe was to get rid of money, so of course, I often had a negative balance in my bank account.
As we start to heal these memories and events, we change our emotional reaction towards money and our behaviour towards money starts to change, which affects our investments, bank balance and income.
What are some steps you’ve taken or are taking to start changing your attitude towards money?
Share in the comments section below.
