Better at Making or Keeping Money?

When people learn that I’ve been teaching money wellness to law students, I usually get a reaction like, “I need that class! I know nothing about investments and the stock market.”

It’s a fair reaction. Investing in the stock market can be complicated. Most of us never learn basic stock market principles, let alone how to manage an investment portfolio.

It’s also a reaction that has always fascinated me. Yes, wanting to learn about investing is important. But, it’s not where money wellness begins.

I often wonder, why do people automatically assume that money wellness means investing? There are so many things that we need to get right before we can focus on investing.

Learning about the stock market wasn’t going to help me when I was struggling with debt. I needed to first figure out how to make better spending choices and get out of debt. I needed to play defense before I could go on offense.

Yes, investing is important.

No, it shouldn’t be the first thing we think of when we hear money wellness.

We’ve hardly mentioned investing so far in this blog.

Have you noticed that so far in the Think and Talk Money blog we have hardly even mentioned the word “invest”?

That’s because in order to invest, we first need available money.

To have available money, we need a budget that actually works.

To have a budget that actually works, we need honest, powerful life goals.

Are you starting to see why we first talk about money mindset? Then we moved on to budgeting?

We will talk about investing once we have a plan to continuously generate money to invest.

We will soon talk about investing. A lot. Don’t worry. In my money wellness class, we discuss in depth the importance of investing to create wealth.

Here at Think and Talk Money, we will also talk extensively about investing, including in the stock market and in my preferred asset class, real estate.

Investing is not as hard as generating money to invest.

For now, our goal is to establish sound habits so we have real money to consistently invest over time. It doesn’t make sense to learn how to invest until we have a strong foundation in place.

I think you’ll also find that investing is really not that hard. If learning how to do it on your own doesn’t sound like something you want to do, there are professionals that can do it for you. Whether it’s a good idea to go that route is something we’ll discuss so you can make an informed decision.

If you do hire a professional to invest your money, you still need to know enough so you can talk to this person.

Plus, this person will likely tell you that your ongoing mission is to generate more cash to fuel investments. That’s what we’re focusing on now.

The fun part is once you’ve discovered your motivations and established strong habits, you will consistently have money available so you can invest month after month for the rest of your life.

You could be a terrific investor. If you only have $1,000 to invest a single time, your upside will be limited. If you continuously generate $1,000/month of Later Money to invest, your options (and your wealth) will grow exponentially.

My wife and I would not own five properties today if we didn’t first learn personal money wellness.

My wife and I would not own five properties (11 rental units) today if we had not first learned money wellness fundamentals. I don’t just mean we wouldn’t have had money available to invest, although that is certainly true.

I also mean we wouldn’t have the skills and knowledge to successfully run our real estate business. If you’ve ever wanted to be a business owner or investor, working on personal finance skills now is critical.

Maybe that’s not your path. Still, these skills are critical whether you are a consultant, a writer, or a teacher. Would you agree that having money issues and stress at home can distract you from performing your job at the highest level?

How many hours per year do you work to make money?

Lately, when people ask me why I’m so passionate about money wellness, I respond with a question of my own that goes something like this:

“Let’s say we work 2,000 hours per year to make money (40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year).

We won’t even count all the hours we spend getting dressed and commuting to our jobs.

We also will pretend we’re not looking at our emails in the evening and on weekends.

We definitely won’t count the hours we’re staring at the ceiling fan because we can’t sleep.

OK, so that’s 2,000 hours (plus) per year, to make money.

How many hours per year do we think about what to do with that money?”

Let that sink in for a moment.

How many hours do you work every year to make money? 2,000? 3,000? I’m guessing a lot of those hours are stressful.

Now, how many hours do you think about what to do with that money?

Do you spend any hours at all talking about what to do with that money?

This is why I am passionate about money wellness. Most people spend the vast majority of their lives worried about making money and practically no time at all thinking about what to do with that money.

No, I’m not suggesting that you need to think about money for 2,000 hours per year.

What I am suggesting is that even that little bit of time each week spent thinking and talking about money is just as important as the time you spent earning it.

Think and Talk Money is about encouraging each other to make purposeful money choices.

Robert Kiyosaki put it best in Rich Dad Poor Dad, “It’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep.”

If you knew someone that made $1,000,000 per year, and at the end of the year, had only invested $20,000, what would your reaction be?

What if you knew someone who made $100,000 per year and invested $20,000? Did your reaction change?

Think and Talk Money is all about actively thinking and talking about money so we can help each other make informed choices with our hard earned money.

Whether you make a lot of money or a little money, it doesn’t matter. What you choose to do with that money is up to. It’s your life.

All I want is for you to make those choices from a position of informed confidence.