Tag: personal finance

How to Make a Budget After Thinking
What would you do right now with $20,000.00?

Imagine it’s a $20,000.00 bonus that was unexpectedly deposited into your checking account.

No strings attached. It’s your money to do anything with.

Answering this question should be fun.

It’s a free $20,000.00!

But, my guess is that if you thought seriously about it, you didn’t have much fun at all.

Many of us likely struggled with what to do. We want to do the right thing, but we don’t know what that right thing is.

Should we pay down debt?

Should we invest?

Take a vacation?

Do nothing?

Do you have a plan for where your next dollar is going?

The reason we struggle with decisions like this is because most of us don’t have a plan for where our next dollar is going. What ends up happening is we do nothing.

Our money hits our checking account, we spend it on this or that, and pretty soon that money has disappeared. We haven’t used the money to advance any of our priorities. It’s just gone.

To me, this is one of the most important money mistakes that we need to fix right away. Having a plan for our money, before we earn it, is essential if we want to reach our goals.

With a plan, we can eliminate the disappearing dollars with confidence that our money is being used to serve our purposes.

And, that leads us to budgeting.

Budgeting is having a plan for your next dollar before you earn it.

Here, in Part 1 of our series on budgeting, we’re going to learn that the art of budgeting is having a plan for your next dollar before you earn it. That way, you avoid having disappearing dollars.

We’ll learn how to create our baseline budget based off of our current personal situation. Wherever you currently are in life, you can then make adjustments to your spending based on what you truly want.

In Part 2 of our series on budgeting, we’ll use a real life example to work through the budgeting process together. Through this example, you’ll see how even seemingly minor adjustments can make a big impact to your budget.

In Part 3, we’ll take a deep dive into my top 10 strategies for making thoughtful adjustments to our budgets so we can add more fuel to our financial and life goals.

In the end, I’ll show you how to use the information you’ve learned about yourself to create a lasting money plan that does not require you to track every penny.

What I mean is that if you can practice these budgeting tips for just a little while, you actually won’t need to budget anymore.

That’s when thinking and talking about money starts to be a lot of fun.

Let’s dive in.

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”.

How do you come up with a plan?

I teach my students that to create a budget, you need to first study your own personal situation to figure out where your dollars are currently going.

Then, you can figure out a plan for how to use your next dollar before you earn it. This applies not just to bonuses or other unexpected dollars, it applies to every dollar you earn.

When you put the time in to study your own habits, you can then create a realistic budget. When you have a realistic budget, you will have confidence that your dollars are working for you.

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.

Let’s take a look at three steps to take when first creating a budget.

Step 1: Track your spending for at least 3 months.

I recommend everyone, regardless of where you are in life, start with this first step of tracking your spending for at least three months.

Without knowing where your money is currently going, you won’t be able to think about adjustments.

I won’t lie to you. This step can be hard and you probably won’t like it. This is the step that makes people think budgeting is a nasty word. I get it and don’t blame you for having that reaction.

Still, there’s no getting around this first step. Remember, you don’t have to budget forever, just long enough to learn your own behaviors towards money.

Please know that many of us struggle with this first step. You might not like what you learn by tracking your spending.

When I first started budgeting, I learned that I was $20,000.00 in debt and was spending way more than I earned.

That wasn’t fun, but I’m happy that I put in the effort to find my blindspots and make adjustments.

I often think to myself, “Where would I be today if I didn’t go through this process 15 years ago? How much further into debt would I have fallen?”

Talk to your people as you go through the budgeting process.

One last thing, budgeting is one of those areas where it can really help to talk with our people along the way for support and encouragement.

You don’t have to budget in secret. We’re all in this together. Put the mental energy into this step, so you can stop wasting mental energy worrying about money and start getting energized thinking about money.

In Part 2 of our budgeting series, we’ll talk about the different ways you can track your spending. I’ve used apps, spreadsheets, and even the notes function on my phone.

The good news is, tracking your spending is easier today than it’s ever been.

Regardless of how you track your spending, be honest with yourself. If you intentionally or mistakenly leave out certain expenditures, you won’t learn where your money is actually going.

A budget, which is just a plan, is only as good as the data it’s built off of. Be honest about your data.

One quick note: Budgets are usually done monthly, so you’ll want to create a separate accounting for each month you tracked.

The reason we track three months of spending is so you’ll be able to identify any patterns or inconsistencies in your spending from month-to-month.

This helps ensure you’re making decisions based off the best data possible.

Step 2: Separate your spending into three three main categories.

Great work completing the first step! That wasn’t easy, but you did it.

Now that you have tracked your spending for three months, you can assign each expense into separate categories.

Most personal finance experts agree, though we have different names for each category, that you should divide your money into three main buckets.

I refer to these buckets as:
1. Now Money
2. Life Money
3. Later Money
1. Now Money

Now Money is what you need to pay for basic life expenses.

These expenses include housing, transportation, groceries, utilities (like internet and electricity), household goods (like toilet paper), and insurance.

These are expenses that you can’t avoid and should be relatively fixed each month.

2. 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.

3. 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.

You’ve probably guessed it already. 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.

Don’t worry about assigning a percentage to each category.

I have intentionally not recommended target amounts or percentages to allocate to each of your three categories.

The reason is because of what I’ve learned from my students over the years. I’ll lay out my full reasoning in a separate post.

The short version is that in my experience working with law students, assigning target percentages for each category is counterproductive.

When I used to teach my students to aim for certain percentages in each category, I could tell that they would get discouraged as soon as I put the numbers on the slideshow. I completely understand why.

Each of us is starting in a different place. If you are currently spending 80% of your monthly income on Now Money, it’s not helpful to have someone tell you to create a budget that automatically drops that level to 50%.

My students would tune me out as soon as I put those numbers on the board.

Now, I teach my students to think and talk about their current personal realities and aim for steady and lasting improvements.

I want my students to create a plan that will last, not an unrealistic plan that they give up on after a few months.

So, whatever amount you’re currently spending in each bucket, that’s what we’re going to work with as we move on to step 3.

One other thing before you move on to step 3: don’t get hung up stressing about what type of expense goes into each category.

Sometimes, it gets tricky. Do clothes you buy for work count as Now Money or Life Money?

Don’t stress. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not worth the mental energy thinking about it. Just stay consistent and move on.

If you still want a target, aim for 20% of your income added to your Later Money each month.

All that said, I know that some of us operate better if we have a specific target in mind. If that’s you, the conventional wisdom is to aim for 20% of your income added to your Later Money each month.

Targeting 20% savings each month was popularized in Elizabeth Warren’s book, All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, first published in 2005 (before she was Senator Warren, she was a law professor and author).

Senator Warren advocated for a 50-30-20 budget framework with 50% going to fixed costs (what I call “Now Money”), 30% going to wants (“Life Money”), and 20% going to financial goals (“Later Money”).

Most personal finance experts agree that the 50-30-20 framework is a solid plan for your budget.

In theory, I agree.

In reality, I’ve become convinced through working with my law students that the 50-30-20 framework does not cut it in today’s environment. Like me, some experts have also recognized a 60-30-10 framework may be more appropriate today.

While I agree the 60-30-10 framework is more realistic, my experience has taught me that assigning rigid percentages is just not a practical framework for most people at the beginning of budgeting process.

Step 3: Make adjustments so your spending better aligns with your true motivations and desires in life.

OK, so now that you have assigned your spending to each of the three categories, the next step is to think and talk about your current habits and whether you’re spending matches your true motivations and desires in life.

If you decide that your spending does not match your life values, then it’s time to make some adjustments. What kind of adjustments?

We’ll talk much more about how to make those adjustments in Part 2 of our budgeting series.

In essence, my budgeting philosophy is to aim for steady and lasting improvements based on your current reality and your ultimate motivations. What does that mean?

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. Money is a tool. 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 will be to continuously add more fuel to our Life Money and Later Money, the buckets that represent the things we love the most (Life Money) and our most important life goals (Later Money).

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.

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.

As we wrap up Part 1 in our budgeting series, keep the three initial steps in mind.
- Step 1: Track your spending for at least 3 months.
- Step 2: Separate your spending into 3 main categories.
- Step 3: Make adjustments so your spending better aligns with your true motivations and desires in life.
As you start to implement these steps, you’ll start to have a clearer picture of how your money can work for you.

And, the next time you’re asked what you would do with $20,000.00, you’ll know the answer ahead of time because you have a plan in place.

Answering the $20,000.00 question will be fun. No more anxiety-inducing, disappearing dollars.
January 8, 2025
You Should Want to be Good with Money
So far, we’ve talked about why we need to think about money, why we need to talk about money, and Italian beef. Before we dive deep into budgeting, saving, paying off debt, and investing, we need to make sure our money mindset is locked in.

I hope you’ve started thinking about why you want to be good with money. This will be personal for all of us and may change with time. The more you think and talk about why you want to be good with money, the clearer your motivations will become.

Three powerful reasons why I want to be good with money:
1. Money can give you choices.
2. Money can give you personal power.
3. Money can give you time.
1. Money can give you choices.

This may seem obvious, but when you have money, you have choices. You can choose where to live. You can choose who you work for, or can work for yourself. You can choose how you eat, exercise, relax, and travel.

This holds true whether you make $50,000 or $250,000. Of course, your options may be different. The point is that when you’ve made good money choices, you’ll at least have options.

2. Money can give you personal power.

This is another way to say that money gives you control of your life situation. If you are in a bad relationship, a bad job, or just need a change, money gives you the personal power to do something about it.

3. Money can give you time.

When you have enough money to be truly financially independent, you have earned the freedom to do whatever you want with your time. You can spend your working hours at a job that is meaningful to you. You can spend more time with people who are meaningful to you.

It’s been said many times, “time is our most precious resource.” When you have money, you can buy your time back.

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

The most important part of talking is listening.

From the time we’re in diapers, we start learning by observing people older than us. As my family prepares to leave the house, my son has recently started chanting “Let’s roll! Let’s roll! Let’s roll!” Yup, that one’s on me.

The same idea applies when it comes to life and money. I’ve mentioned before how much I’ve learned about life from listening to my clients suffering with mesothelioma. I’ve learned even more by listening to my family, friends, and mentors.

When you listen to enough people with more years behind them than you, certain themes continue to surface, like the importance of family. You’ll hear about creating experiences and memories, usually involving vacations or time with friends.

One thing I’ve never heard? Someone saying “I wish I spent less money on doing the things I loved.”

You don’t have to agree with everything you hear, but the act of listening will start turning the wheels in your own mind. And when your wheels start turning, you can’t be afraid to spend money on the things that make you happy.

Why do we need to actively think about the things that make us happy?

A sneak peak of how I look at budgeting.

I said we weren’t going to discuss budgeting yet, and we won’t. “Budgeting” is kind of a nasty word. Nobody likes to say it out loud, let alone aggressively do it each month. This is why we spend so much time in the beginning talking about our money mindset.

A budget is worthless if you are not motivated to stick to it. Sure, you may stick to your budget plan for a month or two, but you’ll fall back into old habits if you haven’t prioritized what matters most to you.

We’ll save the particulars for another day. A sneak peak at how I teach my students:

Like it or not, everyone needs a budget… for a little while. Once we’ve identified what we spend money on and made some thoughtful choices, most of us don’t need a rigid budget.

If you’ve thought and talked enough about your true motivations, you won’t need a budget either. Each month, you will take care of your obligations, grow your net worth, and use the rest of your money to buy things you love and to create experiences.

Talking money should be emotional.

If you’re being honest with yourself, talking money should be emotional. Remember, most of us exert mental energy pretending we’re not worried about money. My challenge to you is to exert that same energy into figuring out why we behave in certain ways when it comes to money.

The reason it matters is because we’re soon going to be talking in detail about budgeting, which is just the process of making thoughtful choices about how we spend our money. If we don’t know why we choose to spend in certain ways, we won’t be able to make lasting adjustments to our budget.

Have you ever thought about why you dine out?

Photo by Kevin Curtis on Unsplash

Let’s look at an example to start prepping ourselves for the budgeting process. This is a good time to revisit one of the main principles when talking money with your people: no judgments allowed. We’re not looking to shame ourselves or each other. We are aiming for understanding so we can make thoughtful decisions.

Say you’ve looked at your monthly spending and realize that you’re spending a lot of money dining out. The key to creating a budget you will actually stick to is actively thinking about why you spend so much money dining out. You might learn that dining out is an essential part of your best life. You might learn it’s really not.

Ask yourself these questions:

Is there an emotional reason you dine out frequently, like it makes you feel successful? Or, you like spending time with friends? Do you get joy out of trying new dishes?

Maybe it’s something else entirely and unrelated to your emotions. Maybe you don’t have time to cook at home because of your work schedule? Maybe it’s just laziness?

It might have nothing to do with how often you eat out, but where you choose to eat and what you choose to order. Do you order a bottle of wine with dinner? Could you have drinks at home beforehand instead?

When you honestly think about and answer these questions for yourself, you can start to make thoughtful decisions on whether that spending matches your priorities. If it doesn’t, then it’s an area for adjustment.

And, that’s really all that budgeting is. Not so nasty, right?
January 6, 2025
How to Think About Money and Italian Beef
Too many of us are really good at pretending not to worry about money.

“Credit card debt?” Everyone has it.

“Emergency savings?” My job is secure.

“Retirement?” I have so much time.

Accept money for the tool that it is.

Instead of honestly assessing our relationship with money, we actively ignore it. Yes, actively ignore. We don’t passively hide from our credit card bills. We all have the credit card apps on our phones and receive multiple emails about our bills. We know what the numbers are, and we bury that knowledge. We exert mental energy to not think about our money.

Let’s stop doing that and re-frame how we think about money. Instead of convincing ourselves that we’re not worried about money, let’s accept money for the tool that it is. Let’s get energized thinking about what money can do for us.

Thinking about money does not make you a bad person.

Thinking about money does not make you a bad person. Always remember what money is: a tool. You are not a bad person for wanting to use that tool to build the best life for you and your family.

Remember, the goal is not to fall in love with or obsess over the dollars in your bank account. The goal is to think about how you can use those dollars to maximize your life experiences. When you start thinking like that, money is energizing.

A higher income won’t cure your money worries.

You are not immune from worrying about money just because you have a high income. Ask people further along in their careers if earning more money magically solved all their money worries. A lot of times, the opposite is true.

The more we earn usually means the more we spend. We tell ourselves that we deserve to spend more. Or, we need to spend more to match our neighbors or colleagues. You can see this through the clothes people wear, the vacations they take, the restaurants they eat at. This habit of spending more, even as we earn more, explains why credit card debt in America continues to surge.

The other thing about earning more? It also usually means we’re working more. If you were worried about money when you had more available time to think about it, what’s going to happen now that you’re working longer, harder hours?

Vicki Robin, often credited for laying the groundwork for the FIRE movement, has a lot to say about the relationship between money, work, and time. Her book Your Money or Your Life is a must read.

“Sushi Rice” by Skitter Photo/ CC0 1.0

I could go for an Italian beef.

Years ago, my friend came to Chicago to visit. He loves good food and treated me to one of the premier restaurants in the city. Very fancy, Japanese menu. 12 courses. Sake pairings. At one point, my friend spilled some sauce on his shirt. Having noticed his predicament, the waiter walked over and discreetly handed him a stain removal pen folded in a napkin. Classy, right?

It was one of the best dining experiences I’ve ever had, but it had nothing to do with the food. I loved being there with my friend, and he knows it wasn’t about the food.

Towards the end of the meal, I got up and went to the bathroom. I returned to my friend and the couple at the table next to us gushing about the meal. Turning to me, one of them asked, “Did you absolutely love the food, too?” He choked on his Unagi when I responded, truthfully, “I could really go for an Italian beef.”

I want you to spend your money.

OK, so what’s the point? I am in no way saying we should all stop spending money. Or, that we shouldn’t use our money to enjoy what we want in life. Quite the opposite, actually. I want you to prosper. What I really want is for you to define for yourself what a prosperous life means.

If that means you want to use your money to eat Japanese delicacies instead of Italian beef, please do! Just do it because you put some intentional thought into how spending your money that way fits into your overall life experience.

Get energized thinking about money.

If you’ve read this far, I’m assuming that you’re tired of pretending not to worry about money. You’re tired of treating money just like everyone else. You’re tired of fooling yourself that if you just made more money, everything would be fine. You want the worrying to stop.

Now, you want to feel like you’re moving forward. You’re ready to be energized about using money as a tool to reach your hand selected goals, regardless of how much you make.

To start moving forward, we need to change how we exert our mental energy when it comes to money. In the beginning, many of us exert mental energy into making excuses about our money. Or maybe worse, we actively ignore our money. We convince ourselves that we’re just like everyone else. We pretend not to worry.

Let’s flip that around. Instead of exerting mental energy to ignore our money worries, let’s get energized thinking about how we can use money as a tool to build our lives. It starts with discovering what truly motivates us. Only then can we talk about strong personal finance habits. Without the motivation, we’ll slip back into that existence of pretending not to worry.

There’s no dress rehearsal in life.

Life doesn’t come with a dress rehearsal. There’s no practice game to test out new plays. We need to think about our motivations now and continue to think about those motivations as we go.

You’ll soon hear all about my Tiara Goals, my made-up name for what truly motivates me. At this point, I’ll share the simple recognition that we each only get one life. I don’t say that to be morbid or depressing. I don’t say it to be inspirational, either. I’m saying it simply because it’s true.

Bill Perkins, author of Die with Zero, makes a very convincing argument that most of us wait too long to start using money to create life-changing experiences. You should read Die with Zero and talk about it with your people. This book has led to more money conversations with my friends and family than any other book I’ve read.

This truth is a powerful reminder for me to use money as a tool to accomplish my Tiara Goals. That truth helps explain why I work hard for my clients with mesothelioma, own rental properties, teach law students, and now write this blog.

I encourage each of you to start thinking about what truly matters to you. Not in a theoretical sense. Not what you expect other people would say should matter to you. What you, after deliberate thought, believe truly matters. You won’t have all the answers right away, but you need to start somewhere.

For now, let’s start by helping each other. Let’s stop pretending that we aren’t worried about money, so we can do something about it.

“Credit card debt?” Yup, and I’m attacking it.

“Emergency savings?” Growing each month.

“Retirement?” Not a problem.

“Unagi?” Eh, I’ll have the Italian beef. Dipped, hot peppers.
4 responses to “How to Think About Money and Italian Beef”
1. Kevin
  
  January 11, 2025
  
  This really hit home for me! I read the book Die With Zero, and loved it.
  
  Reply
  
  Matthew Adair
  
  January 12, 2025
  
  Glad you enjoyed the post! And thank you for being a consistent reader of Think and Talk Money!
  
  Reply
2. SA Bandoni
  
  January 12, 2025
  
  So, is the Italian beef like a ‘steak & cheese sub’ in Boston?…if so, then , hell yes… Italian beef over Unagi every time. It is great to see you tackle the topic and attempt to make money a candid discussion. I suspect your teachings, and this blog will inspire more people to do the same.
  
  Reply
  
  Matthew Adair
  
  January 12, 2025
  
  I appreciate those kind words, SA. It’s all about starting the conversation. And, Italian beef is probably like a steak & cheese sub… only better!
  
  Reply
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Comment *
Name *

Email *

Website

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
January 4, 2025
A New Financial Freedom Blog for Lawyers and Professionals
I named my financial freedom blog “Think and Talk Money” because most of us don’t do enough of either.

I believe we can make it easier on ourselves to make consistent, good money choices if we just spent a little time each week thinking and talking about money.

Wouldn’t most of us agree that doing new things, and especially doing hard things, is easier when we have a partner? Someone to bounce ideas off. And, someone to keep us accountable. Or, someone to pick us up when we aren’t at our best.

Have you ever talked about money or read a financial freedom blog?

Who is the person that knows the most about you?

Your best friend? Significant other? Brother or sister?

This person knows your most embarrassing stories. She has seen you cry. She has been there for you through thick and thin.

But, have you ever talked to this person about money?

Have you ever shared what drives you to wake up at 6 a.m. for work?

Have you mentioned that you’re worried about how you’re going to pay off debt?

Or, have you ever talked about how you’d like to use money as a tool build your life on your terms?

You might be surprised how powerful these conversations can be. It’s likely the person you’re talking to will be relieved you started the conversation.

If you don’t know where to begin with conversations like this, a financial freedom blog is a good place to start.

I didn’t read a financial freedom blog or talk about money in 2010.

I certainly didn’t think to have conversations about money in 2010 when I fell deeper and deeper into debt.

Maybe that’s why I still remember the day so clearly when I realized I was financially heading in the wrong direction.

It was an ordinary Monday. I had grabbed my mail on the way out the door as I headed to my job at the courthouse. When I got to my desk, I opened my credit card statement and was stunned by what I saw. $20,000 owed ($30,000 in today’s dollars) one year into my career.

I was ashamed. I was supposed to be smart. Responsible. Trustworthy. How could I be so foolish?

Looking back, I wonder if I would have had these feelings for so long if I had read a financial freedom blog. Or, what if I was more willing to discuss my money choices with the people I trusted?

I likely would have saved myself a lot of worry, frustration, and time if I hadn’t struggled alone. Perhaps I would have learned that so many others were struggling with consumer debt like I was.

I made it harder on myself by not talking.

I unnecessarily did it the hard way, but I figured it out. Right then and there, I made it a priority to turn things around.

At the time, I didn’t know the solution. But, I had been trained to do research so I could find answers to hard questions. So, that’s what I did.

Along the way, I realized that the fundamental and basic personal finance principles are, well, basic. George S. Clason wrote “The Richest Man in Babylon” nearly a century ago. His collection of parables set in ancient Babylon is legendary.

Everyone should read it. His advice is simple and excellent: spend less than you earn. Save. Invest. The same fundamentals are as true today as they were then.

Easy, right?

Money is about continuous choices.

Not exactly. Money is about continuous mindset and choices. The basic concepts are easy enough to understand. Consistently making good choices is hard.

Even as I was racking up credit card debt, I could have aced a quiz that asked, “Is it a good idea to spend more money than you earn every month and plummet deeper and deeper into debt?”

For some reason, though, most of us choose to deal with money on our own. I’d like to change that with my financial freedom blog. There’s a stigma that we shouldn’t talk about money. I’d like to change that, too.

Get comfortable talking about money.

I want us to get comfortable with the idea of going to our friends and loved ones to talk about money, just as we would talk about anything else. There should be no embarrassment or shame in it. We’re all dealing with the same challenges.

By talking about money, we can help each other turn those challenges into opportunities. If we can alleviate our money stress, perhaps we can reverse the trend of lower happiness levels among young people today.

Talking about money is not about numbers.

We’ll have plenty more to say about how to talk money in this financial freedom blog. For now, let’s agree that talking about money is not about prying into how many dollars we each have in the bank.

We can benefit by talking about our money mindset, habits, and strategies, while still keeping certain information private.

Let’s also agree that talking money is a “no judgment” endeavor.

We have all had different experiences that have shaped our relationship with money. It’s important not to pass judgment, especially when talking to our significant others. Your conversation won’t last very long if you ignore this advice.

Each session I’m with my students, I learn from their experiences and money mindset, same as they learn from mine. I encourage them to continue the conversation outside the classroom with their loves ones.

When my students report back, they tell me how empowered they felt after starting these conversations. The more we can talk money, the less we’ll feel alone. We’ll all make better choices because of it.

What topics will we cover in this financial freedom blog?

In this financial freedom blog, we’ll talk about the importance of money mindset and why you should want to be good with money. Money mindset touches every aspect of personal finance, so it’s a theme we’ll keep returning to.

I didn’t realize the power of money mindset until I wrote down my Tiara Goals for financial independence on a beach in 2017.

We’ll talk about personal finance fundamentals, like eliminating disappearing dollars with a Budget After Thinking.

While very few people enjoy the budgeting process, it’s a crucial first step to generate fuel for our savings and investments, which ultimately fund our major life goals.

In addition to budgeting, saving, and investing, we’ll learn how to responsibly use debt and why credit is important.

We’ll spend a lot of time discussing real estate investing, one of my favorite ways to achieve financial freedom.

Along the way, you’ll hear me regularly share one of my core beliefs:

Talking about money is not taboo.

There’s no reason to embark on your journey to financial freedom alone. Share your accomplishments and struggles with your friends and loved ones. You’ll only be better off for it.

I certainly will be doing that with my financial freedom blog.

Please share in the comments below if you’ve ever benefited from talking about money with a friend or loved one.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email list for all the latest!
2 responses to “A New Financial Freedom Blog for Lawyers and Professionals”
1. Kevin
  
  January 3, 2025
  
  I’ve been learning from Prof. Adair for the past decade. Not only that, I’ve followed his advice, and it is one of the reasons I am financially independent today. I could not be more excited for this website – there’s so much more left to learn!
  
  Reply
  
  Matthew Adair
  
  January 3, 2025
  
  Love our chats about life and money, Kev! I’m always looking forward to our next conversation!
  
  Reply
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Comment *
Name *

Email *

Website

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
January 2, 2025