121. The Hidden Cost of Making It Work: When Peace Is the Better ROI

Are you trying to make it work—even when it doesn’t really work for you?

In this episode, I open up about our recent home buying experience—how we put in an offer, ran the numbers, and realized the biggest purchase wasn’t the house… it was the peace we were giving up to get it. From mental gymnastics to misaligned values, I walk you through the financial, emotional, and legacy-level cost of trying to force a decision that just doesn’t fit.

You’ll learn:
 1️⃣ Why “we can make it work” might be your most expensive mindset.
 2️⃣ The 2 big signs your budget and values are out of alignment.
 3️⃣ How to say “not yet” without feeling like you’re missing out.
 4️⃣ Why peace should be part of your return on investment.

This is your reminder that long-term legacy > short-term pressure. Don’t sacrifice your sanity for the sake of a strategy.

🎯 ACTION STEP: Identify one area where you’re forcing it financially—then pause or pivot.

💬 Feeling stuck? Book a free Clarity Call with me at accelerateyourlegacy.com/claritycall and let’s get your money and mindset aligned.

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Transcript

Laura: 0:02

hello and welcome to money and career mastery from overwhelmed to ownership. I'm Laura Sexton, your abundance and legacy coach here to help you navigate the world of money, debt payoff, and career growth with confidence and clarity. In this podcast, we'll tackle the financial and career challenges, holding you back, optimize your income and build the freedom that comes with true ownership. If you're ready to break free from overwhelm, create a budget that aligns with your values and design a legacy that empowers future generations. You're in the right place. Hey, accelerators, I'm going to tell you a little story. Now, you guys have heard a bit about, if you go back, you've heard me talk about wanting to buy a home and why we want to purchase. Purchasing a home is not always right for everybody in every situation. We wanna be very thoughtful about, this is one of the biggest purchasing decisions we're going to make and. Yeah, it's not the most expensive decision we've ever made. Because somebody pointed this out to me yesterday. We put an offer on a home and the offer that we bid is less than the amount of money that we paid off in debt. If you've been around for any amount of time, you know, I paid off$372,347 in debt, and for this home we offered 347,000. Which is close to$30,000 less than what we paid off in debt. So that was a shocking revelation. But today I wanna talk to you about this home buying process and kind of where we were at with everything, because we found ourselves saying, well, we can make it work. You guys know I am the nerd in the relationship. I am the money guy, as it were, and I kept looking at the numbers and going, well, if we crunch them, we can make it work. You see saying, make it work to every new financial challenge, like market setbacks, car trouble, counter offers. That can be something I. Doable, but that doesn't mean that it's a peaceful decision. And if you know anything about me, you know that what I'm after is peace. That's literally why I want to buy a home. I want a home where my kids can play outside and have a good time and run around so that I can have a more peaceful parenting experience. What I mean by saying that buying this home would have made for a financially and emotionally draining decision. Is that eventually what we found was it did not align with what we actually wanted. Now, when we put in the initial offer, we were under the impression that we could pull our money out of our deferred compensation plan. We have a large amount in there that we are not currently contributing to because there are better financial. Vehicles that we could be putting our money in. And so we have shifted that over. So it's just kind of sitting there. It's not gaining much interest because it is a federally managed account, so it has extremely conservative investments and it is just kind of sitting, it's not doing much of anything. And so we had planned on pulling it out and putting a very large down payment on this home. It turns out that we could not get to that money, which was very frustrating. But I said, okay, that's okay. There are other ways that we can make this work. So I started going through the mental gymnastics of where can I find enough money? As long as we put 20% down, we should be fine. Now keep in mind, we are planning on buying this home in a state that is not our current home state. And we were putting a bid on this home side unseen. Now my mother had gone, she'd walked through it. It's across the street from her home. All of these are wonderful things. Her husband could do all of our handyman work'cause that's what he does. And I was like, this is gonna be absolutely fabulous. The house is only two years old, so we probably won't have hvac, or. Roof repairs or any of these things, and I'm sitting here going, look at all these wonderful things. Look at all the wonderful things. We actually had somebody that had asked us if she could rent from us for a couple months until we could move out there, and we're sitting here going, are you getting somebody who's going to pay us rent for a couple of months, which is going to offset the cost? Do you see how many hurdles, mental hurdles that I'm jumping through to try and make this work? When we put in the initial offer, our monthly payment on a 15 year mortgage would've been around$2,000 a month, which is insane. However, by getting to barely a 20% down payment, we are really pushing it, and we are going to be paying essentially what we're paying for rent right now. It's really frustrating though, because. Having a home right across the street from my mom would be ideal. Having a brand new construction home that we could get for below asking price and the current market that we're in for homes is crazy. It doesn't happen, especially a turnkey new build like this, but there are hidden costs to making it work mentally, emotionally. Financially and when. The thing that I want most is peace. Why am I allowing myself to be drained? Making it work will drain your emotional reserves and it impacts your decision making capacity. I was doing literal mental gymnastics, trying to figure out where I could move money from this account to that account, and I could probably pull this here and I could take this away. And I could do, it Became exhausting, physically exhausting. I, I got tired trying to figure out how I could make it work. And I know that some of you do this often, and it goes back to the justified spending that I was talking about last week. The hidden cost of making it work would have also caused me to delay and also disrupt some long-term goals like my savings and investments. Now, we had money set aside to be able to cover almost 20% of this home purchase. We would have to take money out of other places like my business cash reserves, to be able to hit that 20% mark. Why do you wanna pay at least 20%? So we can avoid private mortgage insurance, which would've increased our monthly payment by around$300 a month. So by finding the extra$3,000 that I needed, I would save myself$300 a month. It's a considerable savings. However, when the counter offer came back higher by around$8,000 higher, finding another$8,000 was not something that I could do. And so the thought crossed my mind, well, what if we take money out of our Roth IRA? You can take. Principal out of the Roth ira. You cannot take any interest that has accrued. But thinking about taking$8,000, especially at that time, the market was down. The market was down a lot. We lost around$12,000 in a day. I say lost. If we had taken it out of the market at that time, we would've actually lost it. It was just lost on paper. The market is going back up. But the question is, is it worth it? And the answer was no. If this had been my dream home and I needed to move in next week, we may have thought about it. It may have come to a different result because our necessity had changed. But this is a long-term goal buying a home, and it's not worth disrupting other areas of our life. Other plans that we have made. I have big plans for the money that is in my account. I am planning on having a picture book illustrated, and that costs money, and so I need that There. I am building things out for you that are going to be absolutely amazing, and I don't wanna take money away from the piece of my business and taking money out of investments. I never recommend that for anybody else. So why was I considering it? I was trying to make it work. I hope you see where I'm going with this. So here are three signs that your values and your budget are out of alignment. You're constantly stressed or anxious about money, even when you technically can afford it. We could have afforded the down payment on this house. And it was completely stress inducing, not worth it. Your purchases reflect pressure, not peace or purpose. We are constantly talking about how to make money easy. Easy's not just the simplicity of things. Ease is a way of being. There's no world that I want you to be under pressure when it comes to your financial decisions. That's funny. That was only two signs that your values and your budget are out of alignment. But those were the two that came to mind and I apparently stopped writing notes after that. So how do you say not yet without feeling like you're missing out? It does feel like I'm missing out, not getting the right across the street from my mother. You reframe No As not yet. It's a strategic delay. It's not a permanent. So how do you say no without feeling like you're missing out? Well, the first thing we do is we reframe it, right? We're not saying no, we're saying not right now, or not yet. This is a strategic delay. It is not a permanent denial of the thing that I want. Yes, we want a home and we want, but we want a peaceful home. So when I realized that those two things were not lining up, we realized that this was not the way to do it. Another way to say no without feeling like you're missing out is to anchor your decisions in your values and your legacies, not your overall expectations. Our expectations will lie to us. Our feelings will lie to us. We have to look at what the facts are and how it aligns with what we want most. So here's your mindset shift. Peace is a better ROI. Your peace is worth more than that purchase. If it's not aligning with your values long term, it's not aligning with your values. What feels good right now may harm you later. And we have to look at things in a long term, legacy minded focus. If you were only looking at right now, that bag of chips, I can eat the whole thing. If we're only looking at right now, I don't need to work out. But if I look at the long, long-term thinking, how is this going to affect me later? That's the ultimate. So I'd like you to take one small action this week. Identify one area where you've been forcing it financially. Where have you been saying I can make it work? Can you pause or pivot this decision? Think about it. If your make it work moment was adding a car payment to the mix, it may be trying to get rid of that car. If your make it work moment is putting your kids in private school. And that doesn't align with your future and you can't actually make it work or making it work means that you're not getting to do the other things that are very important to you and your family. Can we pivot? Is there a place that costs less? Can we do homeschool? What can we do to adjust this? Identify an area that you're forcing financially and decide how you can pause or pivot. If your finances feel tight and tangled, if it feels like things are definitely out of alignment, but I can't figure out how to pause and pivot, go ahead and book a clarity call with me. All you have to do is scroll down into the show notes or go to accelerate your legacy.com/clarity call, and you can book a time to work with me. I'm going to in 30 minutes help you get clear about the things that are most important to you and that help you move forward confidently. Clarity and confidence will build the skill that you need to make the legacy impact that you were hoping to make. So when you're feeling pressure in your finances, we need to solve for peace. The only math problem you need to do, it will need to equal peace. Okay, that's it for this week. Accelerators, as you're going out, you're looking for peace over pressure. Go out and make a difference. thank you for spending time with us today on Money and Career Mastery from Overwhelm to Ownership. Remember, your legacy isn't just about financial freedom. It's about living with purpose, taking action, and building a foundation that lasts for generations. Don't just listen, implement what you've learned and share it with someone who could use a financial or career breakthrough. If you found value in today's episode, help us grow by rating, reviewing, and sharing the podcast. I'll be back next week with more strategies to help you master your money and career. Until then take ownership of your future and build your legacy with intention.