“Money is tight.”
“I’m worried about today. I’ll deal with tomorrow later.”
“If I cut out vacations and saving for retirement, I can make it work.”
Have you ever heard money excuses like this before?
I recently had a couple of great talks that got me thinking about comments like this. These talks led me to think about common money mindsets we sometimes have when we’re worried about paying for things today.
For many of us, the natural inclination when money is tight is to ignore the future and focus on today.
The pattern goes something like this:
Go to work, pay the bills, keep food on the table.
Wake up and do it all over again tomorrow.
Dream about life-enriching experiences and retirement later.
The problem with this money mindset: how are you ever going to break the cycle?
How are you ever going to progress towards financial independence so your life is not stuck on auto-pilot?
My challenge to you?
When money is tight, think long and hard about the future. Think about what comes next.
Use a challenging period in your life as motivation to do things differently.
It helps to picture yourself 10 years from now. Imagine you don’t do anything differently.
Same Job. Same bills. The cycle continues.
Do you like what you see?
If you do, no need to read any further. Keep doing what you’re doing.
If you don’t like what you see, let me share another perspective with you.
Let’s use the future as motivation to make the hard decisions today.
That way, you can spend your money (and time) on the things and experiences that bring you happiness in life.
How do we break the cycle?
It all starts with revisiting our spending choices and our Budget After Thinking.
Budgeting is about having a plan ahead of time.
The art of budgeting is to know what you want to do with your money before it hits your checking account.
Otherwise, it’s too late. Those dollars will disappear.
In fact, the word “budget” is synonymous with “plan”.
Some dollars will be used to pay your ordinary life expenses, some dollars will be used for all the things in life you love, and some dollars will go to your financial goals.
That’s all there is to it.
When it comes to budgeting, I divide my money into three primary categories:
- Now Money
- Life Money
- Later Money
Now Money
Now Money is what you need to pay for basic life expenses.
These are expenses that you can’t avoid and should be relatively fixed each month. If you have expenses for kids, pets, and other fixed life expenses, be sure to include them in your Now Money category.

Life Money
Life Money is what you are going to spend every month on things and experiences in life that you love.
This bucket includes dining out, concerts, vacations, subscriptions, gifts, and anything else that brings you joy.
We can’t be afraid to spend this money. This bucket is usually what makes life fun and exciting. The key is to think and talk so you are spending this money consistently on things that matter to you.
Later Money
Later Money is what you are saving, investing, or using to pay off debt.
This bucket includes long term goals, such as retirement plan contributions (like a 401k or Roth IRA), college savings for your kids (like a 529 plan), emergency savings and paying off student loan or credit card debt.
This bucket also includes any shorter term goals, like saving for a wedding or a downpayment for a house.
Most fun of all, this bucket includes any investments you make to more quickly grow your wealth, like investing in real estate or the stock market.
Later Money is the key category that fuels your ultimate life goals, like financial independence. The more you fuel this category, the faster you can reach your goals.
Your budget is really just about finding fuel for the best things in life.
This is where we circle back to the importance of having a clear understanding of what we want out of our money.
Ask yourself:
“Is your current spending aligned with how you want to use your money to fuel your goals and ambitions?”
If not, you can make incremental adjustments as you progress towards your ideal spending alignment.
The idea is to continuously add more fuel to our Life Money and Later Money. Why?
These are the buckets that represent the things we love the most (Life Money) and our most important life goals (Later Money).
When money is tight, resist the urge to cut these expenses from your budget. These are the expenditures that oftentimes give meaning to life and allow us to build a future on our terms.
Instead, focus on the Now Money bucket as much as possible.
For some ideas on how to do that, check out my Top 10 Budgeting Tips for Lawyers and Professionals.
You can make small adjustments, which are usually easier and faster to put in place. These adjustments might include dining out a bit less, cutting out a concert, or cancelling a gym membership or subscription you don’t use.
You can also make big adjustments, like moving to a cheaper part of town or getting rid of you car.
Small or big, the key is that when you make these adjustments, you repurpose that money in a thoughtful and intentional way. You’re now starting to align your budget with your money motivations.
These adjustments will give you options in the future.
With each thoughtful decision, you’re progressing towards your best money life. Most importantly, you’re learning about yourself and developing lasting habits. You won’t get discouraged and give up on budgeting.

What do you really want out of life?
Creating a Budget After Thinking is really all about one question:
What do you really want out of life?
When you prioritize Life Money (experiences) and Later Money (financial freedom), each dollar you spend or invest brings you one step closer to that ideal life.
If you are totally consumed with Now Money, you’ll struggle to build the life that you really want.
I started thinking about what my ideal life would look like when I wrote down my Tiara Goals for Financial Freedom in 2017.
By that point in my life, I had paid off my student loan debt and was about to get married.
My soon-to-be wife and I had good money coming in, but I never truly thought about what I wanted in life. Sure, I had thought about things like having a family and being able to take vacations.
But, I never carved out time to purposefully think hard about what I actually wanted. I had never asked myself what truly motivates me.
I never allowed myself to dream about financial freedom.
The truth is, I don’t think I had ever visualized a life that wasn’t dominated by a full-time job.
Up to that point, my whole life had revolved around getting an education and then getting a job. I never pictured a world where I might not need a full-time job to provide for myself and eventually my family.
I had read about the concept of being financially free, but it always seemed like a possibility for other people, not me.
Writing this years later, I feel sad for that version of myself for having such limiting beliefs.
Whenever someone tells me she doesn’t make enough money to dream about the future, I think about those same limiting beliefs I used to have.
That’s the cycle I’m hoping to help people break.
When money is tight, think about the future.
When it comes to spending choices, resist the urge to cut the things from your budget that make life what it is. That might mean money spent today on memorable experiences, like vacations.
Or, it might mean money saved and invested to provide yourself more options down the road.
The key is to break the thoughtless spending cycle that can make your life feel like it’s stuck in place.
Create a Budget After Thinking that prioritizes what you truly value.
Money might still be tight, but you’ll know you’re spending on things that matter.
You’ll know that you’ll have options in the future.