211. Income Problem? Nope - You’re Trying to Afford Everything at Once

You make good money… so why does it still feel like there’s never enough?

In this episode, Laura talks about the financial pressure that comes from trying to fund too many good things at the same time—from kids’ activities and private school to vacations, home projects, retirement, and everything in between.

You’ll learn why “not now” doesn’t mean “not ever,” how comparison keeps us financially stretched, and why every yes with your money automatically means saying no to something else.

Plus, Laura gives you a simple three-step challenge to help your family decide what actually matters most in this season.

Ready for help figuring out your financial priorities? Book a free Clarity Call at accelerateyourlegacy.com/claritycall

Learn more about working with Laura Sexton

.        Join the Facebook group Legacy Builders Network.

·        Become a master with your money. Learn more here!

·        Checkout the resource library here!

Want to ask a question Laura can answer on the podcast? Connect with her here!

Want to receive a live money or career audit? Apply Here

Send an email to Laura@AccelerateYourLegacy.com or send a DM on Instagram @accelerateyourlegacy

Elevate your coaching with daily devotionals and prayers from 'Seasoned with Salt.' Get your copy HERE!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Laura 0:00

You may not have an income problem. You may have a trying to fund everything at the same time problem You are listening to the Money and Legacy Podcast with Laura Sexton. I'm helping families pay off debt, grow wealth, and build a legacy without sacrificing what matters most. This is where money feels easy. Hey, Legacy Builders. Today I wanna talk to the families who are doing pretty well on paper. They make good money, they have a nice house, kids are in all the activities, and maybe they're paying for private school, and they're also saving for retirement. They have cars, they eat out, they travel, they're investing for their career. Do you know anyone who fits in this category? They're trying to do all the things that successful families are supposed to do, and somehow they still feel squeezed. That is what I want to talk about today because sometimes the problem is not that you are irresponsible. Sometimes the problem is that you're trying to do too many things, too many good things, all at the same time This is the lie underneath a lot of the financial stress for high-achieving families. You make great money, but that doesn't mean that you can do everything. You can make a million dollars a month, and you still have to decide what you're going to do with that money. If you're looking around and going, "Well, everybody else seems to be able to make it work. Why can't we?" You don't want to look at your partners at work and go, "Well, they're doing this, so we should be able to do that and everything else, too." None of the expenses, when we narrow down into all of our things, none of the expenses look ridiculous by themselves. It is instead the combination that becomes crushing. Let's look at things on an individual level. Are your kids in sports? A lot of times, the numbers don't seem crazy. I signed my kid up for cross country. It was $60, plus I had to pay to get her a physical. That's not a lot of money. However, when you add her $60 for that cross country, plus $110 for spirit squad, plus all of the money that I'm paying every time I go to a game or spend extra time and gas to go back and forth to sports practice and pickup and extra snacks. Do you see how it all kind of adds up and becomes a crushing, overwhelming number? What about your nice cars? Can't just have a Ford Focus. No, we have to go for an upgraded model. So we're looking at a Lexus or a Mercedes. Now, on the surface, not a big deal. If you're paying cash for your cars and you can do that, this probably isn't overwhelming. However, a premium car means premium gas and premium insurance, and the numbers start to add up. What about your home projects? You're probably going for marble, right? You want the nice, the upgrades. You want the under-mount lighting. You are not going for basic So what would have been a relatively easy project ends up being an expensive one Let's look at vacations. I bet that you're not just going to a two-star hotel. You're not even going to a three-star hotel. I bet you are a four or a five-star hotel person. Your vacation starts to add up You're trying to do all of that while still going out to dinner whenever you feel like it, still saving for retirement, still investing, still paying for private school, saying yes anytime a friend invites you anywhere. You can afford a lot of things and still not be able to afford all of them at the same time. We are constantly looking at someone else's finished project and wondering why ours doesn't look like that yet. I get it. Trust me. I keep looking at this starter house that I'm in, which is absolutely amazing. I love it. I love everything about it, and if I didn't change anything about it, it's perfect. But I can still look around and go, "I want to make it a dream house. I want to add trim here. I want to build in bookcases. I want, I want, I want. I want all the upgrades, and I want them all yesterday." I want them because, well, everybody else has. You see, social media gives me the visible result that I want, but there's no financial structure underneath it. I can't jump from where I'm at to where I want to be. I have to walk there When you're looking at other people and you're looking at their life and going, "I want it to be like that," you have no idea what kind of debt they're carrying. You have no idea whether or not they are saving. You don't know whether or not they had family help. You don't know what they earn. You don't know if they're sacrificing somewhere and there's another part of their life that you're not seeing where they are just struggling or choosing intentionally to sacrifice something they want so they can have this thing that you are looking at. I'm thinking a lot of our old school back in California. There was a day when I realized that there were people that were going to this school that were not paying for their kids to go there. Instead, their parents were paying for their kids to go there This was so shocking to me. I was struggling to afford three kids in private school on one salary, and we were making it work because it was a priority to us, and we were making that top of our list. You know, tithe, food, rent, tuition. It was in that order. That was how we were structuring our, our budget And I didn't understand how there were all these other families that seemed to be, you know, they sent their kids to school, only one parent worked, they were carefree. One of them bought a new car every year. It was like her back to school shopping, she just went and got a different car And I was so jealous of how easy it was for them. And I'm thinking in my head, their husband has to be making $400 or $500, $600 a year to be able to make this work. But no, their parents were making the payment Comparison makes us feel like we should already be in the season that we want to be in, but we have not earned our way into it yet This is why prioritizing can feel so emotionally difficult. We have the FOMO. We have the comparison. We sometimes will stop and go, "Well, if I don't take this trip this year, we may never get to take it, so we have to go this year. If my kid does not play sports now, they're not gonna be able to play in middle school, and they're not gonna be able to play in high school, and they're not gonna be able to go to college, and it's not going to be able to get into the major leagues, and then we're just... our whole world and our whole future that we have planned for this four-year-old is just going to fall apart." I know these parents. I know this happens. Maybe that's not you, but I know on some level we all look at our kids and project out into the future of what we want for them, and we don't wanna fall behind. We don't wanna do something today that is going to ruin their chances in the future. I know all of us parents have that feeling I have a very good friend who gets the opportunity to buy a new party dress every year for her company event. Now, I love this for her, and I'm a little bit jealous, just to be completely honest. I don't have anywhere to get dressed up and go look fancy and amazing, and part of me is jealous now, this fits completely her priorities and her budget, and the point that I'm making here is not that buying a dress is wrong, okay? I want you to hear that from me. But every year for her company party, for multiple company parties, she buys a brand-new dress. She never wears the same dress twice. It fits her priorities and her budget, but If she were to come to me and go, "Does this make sense financially?" I'd probably say no. Does it make a lot of sense to buy a brand-new dress? What about all the other dresses that we've worn before? Why don't we rent a dress from somewhere like Rent the Runway? See, to me, that makes sense, but for her, this fits completely within her budget. It is high priority for her, and so, yes, go buy the dress. Go feel good. But I want you to know, and I want anybody else that's listening to know, nobody knows whether or not you wore the same dress last year. People are not remembering what you wore. I may remember what you wear because I care so deeply about you and how you look in it and how you feel in it. But other people probably won't remember or care. If you are doing it because you want it and you can afford it, you should be doing it. But if you are doing it because you're afraid of what someone else is thinking about what you're wearing, that's not a reason to do things. And I do know people that make their decisions because they're like, "Oh, well, so-and-so's going to realize that I wore this dress last year, and they're gonna think we're on hard times." We're not nearly as important to other people as we think that we are. Most people are so busy thinking about themselves that they don't have the time to be thinking about you and what you wore last year I'm using this example because I missed out on getting to go new dress shopping with my best friend, and I'm a little bummed about it, but this is what happens when you move. People are a little bit further away, but we have made a plan for next year to make sure that I don't miss going dress shopping with her for a company party because I relish that time with her. I love spending time with her, finding something that is perfect for her. I'm just using this as an example, because what I want you to hear from me throughout this episode is that your priorities are the most important thing, and your priorities should be the thing that tells your money where to go. It's not what somebody else thinks about me, it's what I think about this situation, right? And you also need to hear me say that not now does not mean not ever. You don't need to stop wanting things. You just need to decide what order they go in. This season might be a paying off debt season, so we have to say no to all the 900 different sports that our kids wanna do. This may be debt payoff season, so we have to say no to going out to eat. That's okay. In fact, that's good. If you are in a season like me, and private school is one of the top priorities for you, guess what? That means there are parts of your budget that have to get shaved down so that private school can be the thing that we're focused on. If you're in a season of preparing for retirement, we need to cut back on some other things so we can make sure that we maximize our retirement savings. If you're building a business like I am right now, my business is full-on starting over. I have uprooted my family, I moved. I forgot while I was moving to pay attention to building out my leads and my pipeline, and all of those things. If you're in a business-building season, some other things have to go. You have to prioritize. What are the things that I spend on a monthly basis that I'm keeping, and what are the things I spend on a monthly basis that I'm getting rid of? Other seasons can include bigger vacations, home renovations, nicer cars, more activities for the kids. You have a lot of the things that you want, you just have to stop demanding that you have all of them right now. Your priorities are how you choose the order for your yeses And I want you to have all of the yeses that you desire, but you cannot have everything at once. That's not how the world works. The Kardashians, with as much money as they have, they still have to prioritize because guess what? They could have all the money in the world that they could do anything they want, but they can't do every single thing at the same time. You can't be in Bora Bora and Jamaica at the same time. You just can't. You can't do everything at once. So you set your priorities because that's how you choose the order of your yeses. I also need you to hear me say that when everything is a priority, nothing is. And if you're teaching your children that everything is important They're going to decide what order they fall on, on that list. You need to show them what a priority is and how we go after that in this season, and then our priority can change. But priority in and of itself, the word is singular. There's one priority, one top of the list When you're teaching this to your children, it's not just a budgeting lesson. This is your legacy. Because when your kids are watching you say, "We are not doing that right now because this other thing is what our family has decided matters most," they're gonna learn patience, delayed gratification, intentionality. They're gonna learn that money has limits, that saying no is not a failure, and that people do not have to own everything just because they can pay for it Instead of every kid doing four activities, everybody gets one Does that feel hard? Yes, absolutely. Because I want my kids to be able to do everything But it gives our whole family margin, not just financially, but also emotionally, time-wise. Your children are learning what matters by watching what you are willing to say no to. And I'm willing to bet that there aren't a lot of things that you say no to on a regular basis And I'm willing to bet that that is one of those things that is hard for you, because I know it's hard for me. When my husband is home and he's not away on work trips, it is hard for me to tell him no. The other day he went to the store and he bought a bunch of Adirondack chairs. Did we need seven Adirondack chairs? No, I don't think that we did. He thought we needed them, and he was very proud of them, and our kids love sitting in them. If we had been out together, I would have told him no, and I still think we probably should have gone with no on the large purchase of seven Adirondack chairs But it's really hard for me to say no to him. It's really hard for me to say, "Hey, that's not a priority right now." I get it. I get that it's hard But I need you to realize that whenever you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. So what could that $100 that we spent on chairs, what could that have been spent on instead? Sometimes we have to do that hard work of deciding, of figuring out what did we lose because we said yes to this thing. What could we have done with that money instead? And I'm not doing that as a shame thing. It's not, "Hey, you should know better." That's not what I'm doing here. What I'm doing is I'm focusing on what could be And sometimes we have to stop, take a step back, and look at what could we have spent that money on to realize, to break the habit pattern in our brain. We can't just say yes to everything. Because even though in the moment it feels really good, and in the moment we're saying yes, and yes feels good, what we're doing is we're saying no to something else that we may not be realizing. And we could be saying no to something that is actually a priority, but in the moment it felt good. So here's your practical challenge this week. Step one, pick your top three priorities. Now, I know I told you priority means one. There's one priority. There can only be one priority. I will give you three peaks to this mountain, okay? Three. Top three priorities. Where your three that you are picking to be at the top of the mountain. Not 12, 3. What matters most in this season that we're in, not in all of life forever, right now, where we're at today, where we're... What three things are going to push us towards our ultimate financial goal in this season? And then step two, take three things off your list. Now, I know you just made a list, right? We were thinking about, okay, here are all of the things that could be a priority, but here are our top three. What are the three at the very bottom? They're not gone forever. They're just not now. Put them somewhere that you can revisit later. I know as a business owner, I have a million ideas a minute. I have other picture books floating around in my head that I want to be able to do. They are a not now. They have been taken off the list. I have a parking lot folder, and I put them in the parking lot. You need to do this with your financial priorities. Maybe you need to do this with your ca- calendar priorities. And then step three, and this may be the hardest one Have the family conversation. Let them know, "Hey guys, we've been doing too much, and so now we're gonna focus on what matters most to us right now." And then tell them what your top three priorities are. And let them participate where appropriate, 'cause this is your family culture You may be listening to this and thinking, "All right, Laura, sure, I understand. I need priorities." But what you don't understand is there are too many. There are too many things that are so important, and I have to do them all. I don't know what things should stay and what things should go. that's exactly what we work through in coaching. Book a clarity call with me so we can look at what your family wants, what your money is actually doing, and where the pressure's coming from. We can figure out together your next right step so that your money starts supporting the life you actually want instead of constantly making you feel squeezed All you have to do for that is scroll down into the show notes and book your free clarity call or go to my website accelerateyourlegacy.com/claritycall. You don't have to stop wanting a beautiful life. You don't have to stop dreaming bigger, and you don't have to say no forever. But you do need to decide what matters most right now. Pick your priorities. Take something off the list. Talk about it with your family because the goal is not to cram everything into your life. The goal is to build a life that you actually have room to enjoy. And while you're building that room to enjoy, go out and make a difference