The BEST THING I ever learned about MONEY!
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Some people spend their entire lives working for more money, more financial success, accumulating more things and houses and cars and bags... And then they have 50 only to realise that maybe that wasn't a good use of their time!
Contrary to what some people might want to have you believe, there are totally many wealthy, super happy people with great relationships and great family lives. And that is fantastic. But I also think it's fair to say there are some people who have made earning lots and lots of money their absolute focus of their lives and the rest of it has just kind of fallen by the wayside. While they do have money, they don't have much else.
I personally was fortunate enough to achieve my financial goals at a pretty young age. And I feel like that's given me a pretty unique opportunity to learn some financial lessons very quickly, which most people don't get until their life is like halfway over. And then they potentially regret how they spent their time.
What is the best thing which I ever learned about money?
You have a decision to make. And that decision is what is enough for me?
Now, let me share with you how I came to this conclusion that of all the financial decisions you're gonna make this one is the most important one.
I was at a conference and there were two speakers who were both discussing money very much along the same lines and encouraging the audience to define what enough was for them.
And while I've been to a lot of conferences and have heard a lot of people talk about money, this really resonated with me - this whole "enough" idea. And I truly have come to the conclusion that this is the most important thing that we're gonna decide about money.
One speaker asked people in the audience to raise their hands to:
who had said to their toddler before "just five more minutes, honey, I just need to finish up this email to the client" or
who had canceled on friends because they just needed to squeeze in a bit more work that night or
had maybe bailed on a vacation or family plans because actually, you just really needed the money or really wanted to make a bit more.
Vast majority of the room, myself included, raised our hands to one or all of those questions to which the speaker then asked us:
"When are we going to be satisfied?"
We started our businesses for freedom. And here we are working more than ever before to make an unlimited amount of money, which we're never satisfied with because we always just want more.
I feel like our society values growth. If you're growing that is successful. It doesn't matter how much as long as you're growing. If you're doing worse than last year, if you're doing the same as last year, that is a failure. Growth is the only thing which is successful.
And I have a real problem with that idea.
The second speaker at the event was talking about how she had decided upon what enough was for her and her family. And then she would stop working the rest of the year. Once she reached her financial goal she would just spend time with her family, do her hobbies, do stuff around the house that she just never had time to do when she was working constantly.
She picked her financial goal, worked towards it. And then once she reached it, she stopped working until January 1st, next year.
That inspired me.
I have talked my husband's ear off about wanting to reach this magical "enough" place for years. But ironically, I would also always want more and more and more, and there was genuine reasons for that.
In your twenties and thirties, you have a lot of these like startup expenses.
Pay off student debt.
Save for house down payment.
Save for wedding.
Renovation.
Emergency fund.
And so there was just a lot of things that required me to make money. But the problem was that this entire time I was also striving for more and more and more.
I knew I had to define enough. I wanted to take my foot off the gas pedal. And I was never reaching that point until now, which brings me to ...
Financial freedom.
Let me explain what true financial freedom means to me.
When you start off as a broke student (like I have) and then you get your first job. So you start giving yourself some little upgrades.
Maybe you get a new car instead of the old used one, which is kind of unreliable.
Maybe you get a nicer apartment or
You get a new couch ...
And you just start to slowly increase your lifestyle. It's pretty common to say that as we earn more, we tend to spend more as well. But if this keeps happening, we are always increasing what we're spending. We're always going to be a slave to money.
So my theory on financial freedom is that at some point, (and we all get to decide for ourselves what that point is for us) we need to pick what "enough" is the financial goal you're happy with reaching and where you could live your life that you're super thrilled about.
When you can keep your financial desires constant and not always move the financial goal that's when you can truly be financially free.
You might be reading this and thinking "Well, good job, Paige. You make a lot of money. And so therefore you can say this!" But there are people who make just as much as me but they want a Bentley or a Chanel purse or a house in Ibiza.
And I don't want those things. I've decided on the idea of the life which I want to live. And this is how much money it's gonna cost me. I'm not raising the desires any further because I truly think that I will always be a slave to money in that case.
I think a huge barrier to us actually achieving financial freedom and deciding on enough is other people's opinions, other people's goals, and other people's inspiration. When you go online you see everyone's five star vacations, their BMWs, their crazy mansions, huge diamonds and Chanel bags. This definitely has an effect on and an influence on what we think that we also want.
The entrepreneurial world is slightly different.
Instead of just showing off what it is that we have, it's more like, "here's this amazing revenue goal, which I reached in five days".
This can make us wanna hit those numbers just to keep up. Not because we actually maybe need or want the money. I think if we actually knew how much we wanted to make, we wouldn't be so easily influenced.
I believe true success is setting your own race, defining your own goal and reaching that goal.
It doesn't mean you aren't successful when you haven't met up with other people's standards of success.
The problem with what we see online is that it takes time and effort to make a lot of money to achieve those things. And if you don't even want that in the first place, then you're quite literally running someone else's race. I can honestly say that getting off social media (I've not been on it for literally years now) was the best thing I ever did to run my own race.
I blocked out all the noise, all the nonsense.
I started focusing on me and my family and what we wanted and how much we wanted to earn.
I have mentioned Shanna Skidmore earlier in the blog post. And I swear we're like a hundred percent on same page when it comes to social media and finances and enough and all of these things. So I am super excited to let you know about a training that she's hosting. It's called "The art of six figures and how to build a thriving business on your own terms."
And while this training has the very sexy "six figures" in the title, let me assure you that Shanna is all about financial freedom and helping you achieve it too. There isn't anything on running after some arbitrary financial goal just because it sounds sexy on the internet. But it is about truly figuring out what is enough for you and helping you reach that.
Just recently I have decided on "enough" for myself. I have stopped my financial desires from increasing. I am now at a point that I am super pleased with and I am just running my own race.
