All I Know About Money

.... Almost

Hey you!

This is an LFM + X special so still expect our regular Monday newsletter. I am trying out a new platform, can you tell? Substack was my first choice when I first started LFM but I ended up not using it because it didn’t have all the features I wanted - anyway, we do not always get what we want right? As my email list exceeded 20k subscribers, the email provider just had a lot of issues handling it so I knew it was time to move. Let’s see how this goes. *crossed fingers*

So, how are you doing? As in for real. Take a second to think about it. As for me, I’m doing okay. This year started like it was trying to make up for last year so the first quarter was incredibly busy for me. I burnt out by end of March and just finally trying to catch my breath. This burn out is the low-key reason I didn’t send out any newsletters in April, I just didn’t have any juice left.

I’ll talk about burnouts and replenishing on Monday but today, I want to talk about money.

Growing up, I never lacked anything I needed so money wasn’t really something I consciously thought about. Sure, as soon as my dad was retired, I began to understand that money was something we needed to function in the world but money was never tight for us so again, I didn’t think about it much. My parents also raised us to be content I think. My siblings and I aren’t ostentatious. Sure, we enjoy the good things of life but we weren’t raised for money to center our world so it never has.

Now that sort of upbringing is great and I praise my parents for that. The only thing though is that it was incomplete. At least I never learned the principles of growing money from them. They were both entrepreneurs at a point in their lives (mostly my mom) and I learnt a lot about that life from them.

Up until a few years ago, I used to say I didn’t care about money and it’s a fact, I didn’t care. I had just enough to get by, which again is a great thing. But as my ambition for myself and my community grew, I knew I had to start learning to grow money. And the first step was tuning my mind to start caring about money.

Now let me pause here and explain how not caring about money affected my finances. I never had a budget, I never had financial goals, I didn’t know how much I needed in a month and whenever I got a windfall, it meant it was time to “treat myself”. PS: treating yourself is an important part of a healthy financial lifestyle, you just need to make sure you make measured allocations for it.

Not caring about money also meant that I did a lot of free work or a lot of work where I was underpaid. It didn’t matter to me because again, I didn’t care.

So when I did an analysis of my financial situation, I realized that I had most of what was needed to build wealth but I wasn’t doing it because I didn’t care for it. So I started to care.

What does caring about money look like?

1. Reviewing your spending habits (this is the first step because in your spending you realize more about yourself. Do not assume that you know it offhand. Always look at the data! You’ll be surprised).

2. Be honest with yourself on why you want to grow wealth. No matter what the reason is (provided it is not illegal of course), it is valid. A lot of people miss this because they cannot be honest with themselves. I want to grow wealth because I’ll love to help people around me but my primary reason is because I want to live a life of luxury. Finish. No long story.

3. Set actual goals. It is not enough to think about it, you need to set goals. I was speaking to a client of mine who made $1m in her business last year, and she said she had never made that type of money before, but she saw someone in her industry who had and she said if that person could, then she could as well. So she set it as her goal and she reached it in one year. Your goal doesn’t have to be a million dollars, you should just have a target.

4. The magic of tiny drops. See, I’m not saying that you should start pinching pennies but you need to be conscious of the magic of tiny drops. I’m still learning this one because it is such a hard one but growing wealth means that you need to be aware of the job you have given every dollar. Again not penny pinching but making sure that you understand tiny drops into a bucket will fill it eventually, same way tiny drops leaking out of a bucket will empty it eventually.

5. First step to growing wealth is almost always increasing your income. I talk about this a lot. If you are serious about growing wealth, then you have to become serious about having a bias for action in doing the things that will increase your income. Whether it is negotiating for a raise or starting a side hustle, doesn’t matter. Just onwards.

6. Less is more. I no longer spend money on things that I do not care about. I’ve never been into designer bags for instance - i think they are cute but it is not my thing. I had this $$$ bag that I didn’t wear anywhere. Took it to a consignment shop, sold it and used part of the proceeds to book a vacation to a city I’ve always wanted to visit. The rest of it, I put it in my investment portfolio. There’s nothing wrong with designer bags. For instance, I’ll still spend that amount on a rare bottle of whisky or a pair of shoes. Bags aren’t just my thing. So going forward, before I spend on something, I ask myself if it is something I actually care about or need. You’ll be amazed how little you actually need. My idea of living in luxury isn’t buying a bunch of things I don’t care about. It is about getting the best of the things I do care about. Make sense?

Finally, I have been listening to a 4 hour podcast with Naval where he breaks down his epic tweet storm on how to get rich without getting lucky and here’s something that he said which stood out to me:

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

You can get a transcript of the interview here. I love re-reading this since the first time I read it in 2018.

Do have an amazing weekend ahead and “see” you on Monday.

With love and everything nice,

Moe

Feels great to be back!