In this episode, Laura Sexton discusses the concept of "living on rice and beans" as a strategy for financial discipline and achieving big goals, inspired by Dave Ramsey's approach. She shares personal anecdotes and insights into how cutting back on discretionary spending can pave the way for achieving long-term financial freedom and abundance.
In this episode, Laura Sexton discusses the concept of "living on rice and beans" as a strategy for financial discipline and achieving big goals, inspired by Dave Ramsey's approach. She shares personal anecdotes and insights into how cutting back on discretionary spending can pave the way for achieving long-term financial freedom and abundance.
Hello and welcome to the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. I'm Laura Sexton, your trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. Join me as we explore the world of money and money mindset while also paving the way for a lasting legacy that extends far beyond money. Together we'll eliminate stress, amplify freedom, and ensure you stop paying for your past so you can start saving for your future. If you're seeking peace in your finances, more margin in your budget, and a legacy that inspires generations to come, you're in the right place.
Hey, accelerators. Today, I wanted to talk to you about an article I read that was titled, How Living on Rice and Beans Makes Life Less Spicy. Now, of course, what this was in reference to is Dave Ramsey's common phrase of living on rice and beans, beans and rice. He's not saying you literally only eat. Rice and beans, beans and rice. What he's saying is you live on broke people food. For some people that's hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, some people that's peanut butter and jelly, some people that's tuna fish sandwich. Whatever it is that you equate with broke people food, that's what we're talking about here. The whole point of rice and beans living is to cut down on costs while you are striving after a very intense, Goal, if you were here with me last week, you may have heard me talk about being intentional over being intense and I really think that there is a time and place for that. And I also think that there's a time and place for full out sprinting. There's a time and place for cutting back every single dollar of spending that you can because you were searching for. A big financial goal. Just last week, my husband sent me a text message and I about fell out my chair. We had about 7 days left of the month and he said, I'm not spending any more money this month and I'm going to shop the pantry so we don't spend anything else on groceries either. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It was insane. I was like, I'm sorry, did this man just say that he was going to shop our pantry? The reason he's doing that is because we want to put more money into savings. You guys know I'm on this journey to buy a home and unfortunately, I live in Southern California where home prices just keep going up and up and up. Property taxes are insane and it's going to be a bigger down payment now to get the home that we want in order for a monthly payment to be reasonable. That means we're working hard, striving right now to put as much money into the bank as we possibly can. It makes a whole lot of sense for us to cut back on food that we're not going to eat anyway. Why would we keep buying stuff to put in the pantry when there's plenty of stuff in the pantry that we're not using? There comes a point in time where shopping the pantry makes a whole lot of sense. It makes a whole lot more sense than going out and buying food that you're just going to shove in front of everything else in the pantry so that you don't have to dig around to the back. When we talk about living on a bland diet of rice and beans, what we're talking about is giving up on guilty pleasures. We're giving up on the extras that are above and beyond and not what we necessarily need. That could be that instead of going and spending a whole lot of money on my kid's Easter baskets this year, I went to the dollar store and, I'm not mad at it. Not only that, but I also went and shopped their room because there's plenty of stuff that's in the very back or the very bottom of the toy box that they don't even remember they have. And they're going to be very excited that they got, again, because one, they're still pretty young, and two, they love rediscovering things that they have. Sometimes they dump their toy box out and put it in backwards, so they think that they're getting all new toys in the toy box. They're ecstatic. So why would I go out and buy more little bitty things? That are just going to litter my home? What just popped in my mind right now is last week. We talked about the cost versus the benefit. The cost versus the benefit is this the kids get a momentary excitement over their brand new thing that they got and then I get to spend the next 6 months cleaning it up off the floor until I decide just to throw it away. Maybe it's bland to shop the kids toy box for their Easter baskets. But maybe I'm just trying to stick with my core value of making things easy. Now, don't get me wrong. My kids are getting brand new things. They are getting new candies and all of the joyous things that come in an Easter basket. And yes, we are celebrating the real reason for the season. We will be celebrating Christ's Rising from the dead to save our sins. That is obviously the number one thing. But we also really love a good Easter basket because who doesn't need a chocolate bunny? Maybe we give up some guilty pleasures, I'm going to go ahead and give voice to the naysayers here. A life without a bit of joy is not fully lived. Okay, I hear you. I hear you. I didn't say give up your joy. I said give up your overspending. And actually, if we want to stop and think about it, I'm not saying give up your joy. I'm saying give up what you want right now for that thing that you want most. Ramit Sethi is another big financial guru that I love. We don't always agree on everything and that's okay because he has a great mindset when it comes to how we handle our money. And one of his big things, maybe his biggest thing is that he wants you to live a rich life. The way I look at that is an abundant life. Christ said he came to give us life and to give us life abundantly. So when I think about that, what is a rich life? It's full. It's flavorful. Oh, no. Now we're going back to the rice and beans, not being spicy, right? Like the flavor of life. How can we mix it up and make it better, make it spicy, make it enjoyable? One thing that Ramit says when he talks about this rich life is he wants you to be specific. About the things that you want most, he wants you to be specific about the things that you are calling a non negotiable. Maybe for you, it's, you want to be able to sit down at a restaurant and order the guacamole and not care that it's going to cost you extra. 1 of my things for me is that I want to be able to buy a drink when I go out to dinner. When I grew, when I was growing up, it was water. You could have water. There was never another option. My parents would sit down. They would order water for themselves and water for me. If we were out at a restaurant, that was amazing and very exciting. I never once expected to get anything other than water at the restaurant, not once. I want to be able to sit down and order whatever beverage I want at a restaurant and not have to worry about it's going to cost me, it's going to cost me some money to order this. I want to be able to go all out for my kids birthday parties. I want them to have exactly what they want. However, they want it. I want to be able to take my kids to go get their nails done right before school starts. These are little bitty things. I'm not throwing a rager at Disneyland, I'm getting these little bitty things, but to me or how I grew up, it's a big deal. I remember my mom taking me to get my nails done for the first time. I remember that. I want to be able to do this for my kids, not because they need it, they don't. They're going to be 8 and 5. They don't need to go get their nails done. They don't need to be pampered at a spa. But how fun is that going to be for me to get to give them this core memory of, okay, it's the day before school starts. For one of them, it's her first day before kindergarten. She's turning into a little person. She's not a baby anymore, and this is just something, a nice little rite of passage that we get to do. Hey, you're growing up. I don't want to have to worry about whether or not I'm going to have that kind of money. That's a rich, abundant life to me. In order to make that happen, though, I have to cut down on discretionary spending. I have to cut down on the things that don't matter. It could be Thank you. If you have a storage unit that's full of stuff that you don't ever use, why are you spending money every month on a storage unit to have stuff that you, you don't use, you probably are never going to use again? Why are you wasting your money on that? Are you wasting money on subscriptions that you don't know that you have in your account? Are you wasting money on going out through the drive thru every day? Because you don't want to take the time to cook a meal for your family at home. Look, if you were tired, and you were working multiple jobs, and your kids are going out on all the sports, and you're trying to just keep up, no shame in going out to make sure that your children are eating. If going through the drive thru is the only way you're going to make that happen, good for you, no judgment here. But if you're just doing it because it's convenient, and you've put no thought into it, you were just wasting money. That could be used for something else. That's it. There's that caveat, right? If you have plenty of money and going through the drive thru doesn't affect you at all, go. Have a good time, but if you aren't funding the things that bring you joy. Ultimate joy, not momentary, but like the things that you're looking forward to and retirement and travel and all of the things that make life abundant. If you are just doing things day to day because they feel good in the moment. I'd ask you to re examine whether or not you're living richly, whether or not you're living in abundance. It's the small habits over a long period of time that help you live the life that you truly want to live. And if I have said something today that has been convicting for you, can I ask you to look at yourself and ask yourself why? Why was that convicting? Why was that troubling to hear? Is there something that we need to put into your life, a system, that we can put into place for you so that you can live more abundantly? Not just in this moment, but live abundantly in the future. And live abundantly with peace. I talked to a couple the other day, and they were telling me they're in the military and they look around and they see people a little bit differently now, because where they used to see people like, oh, my goodness, they have this beautiful house and they have these cars and they have, you know, they always go out to eat and buy the nice wine and they have the most beautiful clothes and they must be doing so well. And now they look at them and they go, wow. I bet you're really stressed at night because I see you put everything on a credit card and I've seen your cards get declined. And I just know that you were leveraged with payments and you have no options. And that was the thing, the fact that they wanted to have options on whether or not to continue their military career. They wanted to set themselves up to be able to choose to have the freedom to make good decisions for their life. To have the freedom to say, well, I want to have more children. Being in the military is not conducive to that life and I want to choose a family rather than a career. You can't make those decisions when you owe money to 9, 10, 15 different people. You can make the decision, but you're going to make your life real hard. Or you can get rid of those creditors and you can make your life a whole lot easier. And you can make your decision more You see, the only thing these two will have to consider When it comes time for her contract to end and her to decide whether or not she's going to re up, the only thing she has to decide is whether or not she wants to. She's not going to be financially bound to this career. She loves being in the military. And I have no doubt that if things are going well with her children and her husband, that she's going to make the decision that makes her happiest. And I have no doubt that if she was strapped and stressed for money, The money would be the only thing making the decision. I'm going to tell one more story, and then I'm going to wrap things up for today. I had a lady call, and she couldn't decide whether or not she should move over to this new position. She was in a job that she enjoyed. It wasn't her dream job, but she enjoyed the work that she was doing. She had gotten a call from her previous employer, and her employer wanted her to come back. It would be 500 more per paycheck. So we're not talking about a big difference here, but that 500 was enough for her to consider moving. The other side of that, though, was the people that she would be going back to work for had sent her notice. To let her know that they did not want her coming back. They did not want to work with her. And in fact, they wanted somebody else to get that position. And if she got it instead of them, they would make her working life hell. But she was considering going there to this very toxic work environment for 500 more every two weeks. A thousand dollars more a month was making her consider going over to this horrible place I really hope you don't need a thousand dollars that much that you would consider it I'm gonna go ahead and give you the freedom to make the decision on your own to decide what's important to you I want you to live a rich life. I want you to live an abundant life. I want your rice and beans to be spicy Maybe that means you just have to make them a little bit different than you're making them right now. It doesn't have to be a bland life. You don't have to give up everything that brings you joy. You have to be conscious and make thoughtful decisions so that you get what you want most. Instead of what you want right now. As always accelerators, if I can do anything for you, if I can have a conversation with you, I would absolutely love to do it. If you heard something on this podcast that resonated with you, please share it with a friend. It really helps me in the algorithm. If you take five seconds to rate the show, give me five stars. If you have a little bit of extra time, write a review. It helps me get out there to more people. I cannot wait to tackle another money topic with you next week. As always, my friends, go out and make a difference.
Laura:
Thank you for investing your time with us today on the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. Remember, your legacy isn't just measured in dollars and cents, but in the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. Don't just listen to the show, but take action on what you've learned. Share this wisdom with a friend who can benefit and help us spread the word by rating and reviewing the podcast. For questions or encouragement, reach out to me on Instagram at Accelerate Your Legacy or explore the resources listed in the show notes. I will be back with you next week. Until then, build your legacy with intention.