Creating More Financial Self-Reliance

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Over the past few months, we have watched a stream of headlines and announcements that seem to change on a daily basis, and you would be forgiven if you felt more than a little uncertain about what will happen next. A reality we all have to come to is that there are some circumstances within our control and many that are not within our control. Unfortunately, from a financial perspective, many of the things that we plan for because they have been standard and long-standing expectations, may not actually be things that we can bank on in the current environment we are living in. Of course, there will always be unknowns that we have to live with, but in order to plan, we have to make our best guesses and assumptions around those things. What seems different now is that some of the things we may have baked in as solid assumptions may no longer be as solid as they once were. Realizing that some of the things we may have taken for granted in the past may not be as certain as they once were, it makes sense to adjust your thinking and to take the approach of being more reliant on the things that you have greater control over. So, in this issue of the newsletter, we would like to highlight 3 areas, which build on each other, and that you have control over that can allow you to be more financially self-reliant and less dependent on outside influences to achieve what you desire.

Establishing a Mindset of Financial Responsibility
So much of what we do on an ongoing basis, financially or not, has to do with our mindset, which allows us often times to make decisions almost on autopilot. When it comes to finances, quite often the mindset we’ve established has resulted from emulating what we see that others have done or from attempting to fill in things that we might think are missing pieces in our lives. While those tendencies are common, they may or may not be the most financially healthy approaches to take. If you could create more of a clean slate for yourself and objectively look at what is the most effective way to approach your financial life, perhaps you would look at things differently than you do when factoring in all of the experiences that have shaped your approach. It may be easy to suggest not allowing your past experiences to affect your current thinking in the abstract, but it is much harder to do that in practice. Why? Because change is difficult. And it is even more difficult to change long-held beliefs, especially ones we may not even notice we hold. However, if we want to break free from the things that may have held us back in the past, one of the best ways to do that is to adopt a new mindset, and one that is rooted in sound principles that have proven to lead to success. It may not seem as fun or exciting in the moment to adopt a mindset of financial responsibility, but when applied consistently over a long period of time, that approach can position you to where you can have less worry and more control over what happens in your life. That may end up being much more valuable than some momentary enjoyment that is not sustainable.

Building Habits that Lead to Financial Success
Once you have established a mindset that lends itself to improved outcomes, what should follow from that is habits that support that mindset. Again, it can be challenging to change old habits, even negative ones, because once something has become a habit, it is second nature, and you may do it without even thinking about it. If you’ve gone the step of adopting a new mindset, you may have tackled the most difficult piece of the puzzle, so the next step is to be intentional about reforming your habits where necessary. As the saying goes, it takes 21 days to build a habit. If your existing habits have been in place way longer than 21 days, it’s likely that you will have to make a concerted effort to form new habits that will align with the new mindset you have. There are a wide variety of habits you can work on to create greater financial self-sufficiency, but it is often mastering the fundamentals that create a stronger foundation for success. Financially speaking, some of those fundamentals are things like managing your income so that you ensure paying yourself and spending less than you make, maintaining financial assets (savings and investments) that will enable you to both cover unexpected situations and fund future needs and desires, and being willing to take calculated financial risks that allow your money to work for you. If these are habits you want to build, it doesn’t just happen because you want it to. You will need to work at it over a period of time until it becomes second nature to you. If you are up for building better habits and would like a platform for doing so, we have created a system called The 90 Day Challenge that is intended to help you build habits that can last a lifetime and would be happy to share that approach with you. The idea behind the 90 days is that if you can build a habit in 21 days, if you can do something for 90 days, you will have reinforced the habit so that it becomes a part of your life.

Taking Actions to Move Your Plan Forward
Mindset leads to habits, and habits lead to actions. When it comes down to it, nothing happens until you take action on what is in your mind. What is important is ensuring the actions you are taking are in alignment with your ultimate objectives are. All plans look great on paper, but until you put your plan into action, it is little more than a paperweight. We can sometimes get overwhelmed when we look at the big picture of what we may need to do to create the success we want, so it can be helpful to take those larger plans or even actions and divide them into smaller and more manageable tasks we can visualize executing on. As we said, change is not easy, so even when you realize the actions you take can lead to a positive outcome, you have to overcome the inertia of doing what you’ve always done so you can move to a better place. Given the right motivation, you may be able to do that on your own, but quite often, it is to your advantage to engage an accountability partner to help you stick with the plan even when you may be less inclined to do so.

These three areas that you can change to be more financially self-sufficient may seem simplistic on the surface because they are things that everyone is capable of doing, but they are the “little things” you can exercise control over and make bigger positive changes in your financial life. I encourage you to look inward to see if these changes can help you take more agency in your own financial life by controlling the things you can control.

Stewardship Emphasis
You cannot control what anyone else does, but by controlling what you do, you can put more of your destiny in your own hands.

The Empowerment Channel    |   Volume CCXXXVIII   |    Dedicated to Promoting Financial Education through Stewardship