Ask Steve Now!
“But it doesn’t come out that way, does it, because money is not the solution.
It’s you that has to be the solution.
You have to change. You have to manage your money differently.
You have to understand money differently for money to really be—for you to be able to make a difference in your life with money. “
Challenges
What I want to do now is talk about something we talk about quite a bit, and it just seems to come up so often is the constant challenge that we get because we’re Lifestyles Unlimited and not “money unlimited.” And we have this phrase, “It’s not the money; it’s the lifestyle.”
And I try to get this point across as kindly as I can, but sometimes I think it takes a brutal point to get this really across. We have a little one-minute spot where we talk about how two people can make the same amount of money yet their lives can be completely different—one high quality, one very low quality.
And I use actually a high-income earner in that particular example, but it could work just as well with a low-income earner—two people making 20,000 a year, but one of them has a high quality of life, one of them has a low quality of life. And I know so many people are going, “What? With $20,000 a year how could you blah, blah, blah.”
Understanding
And I have to remind people that when Josie and I—Josie and I will celebrate our 23rd anniversary here in February. And we’ve been together for about 25 or 26 years total—but that when we first met, we lived in an apartment in North Carolina where I literally would save up $5 to go get heating oil to keep the house heated. And I would get it in a little five-gallon container.
I mean that’s it. We didn’t fill up the tank, which was probably a couple hundred gallons and then go for months without having to refill it. I had to refill it. That’s how poor I was. I was mentally a poor person. I didn’t understand money. I didn’t understand work. I didn’t understand saving. I didn’t understand investing. Nothing.
But I was happy as could be. I was with the woman that I loved; I was in shape; I was involved in everything that I wanted to. The only thing that was negative about that particular time was I didn’t have all the toys and all the — if you will the peace of mind of money, but I was hopeful. I knew that I was moving towards my goal. I was starting to study money; I was starting to study real estate; I was reading books on it, and things like that.
Inside
But people are so confused with the concept that, “Hey, yeah, I’m overweight now. Yeah, I’m unhappy with my kids. Yeah, I’ve got trouble with my spouse. I’ve got trouble with my kids. I’m not involved in the charities of my choice. I don’t have money. I don’t have the time.”
And I will promise you—and here’s the brutal point—if I give you a million dollars you will still be overweight, you will still have trouble with your spouse, you will still have trouble with your kids, you will still not be involved with the charities of your choice because those are characteristics.
They are not based on something external—meaning the money. The money is not going to solve all of those problems for you, because the problems are internal. They’re inside.
Blaming Money
The type of person that leads that lifestyle is not going to change just because you hand them a bunch of money. They think it will. And then they start blaming the money. “Well, the reason I don’t have time to workout… the reason I don’t have time for this… the reason I have trouble with my kids… the reason I have trouble with whatever it is… that well, I’d give to the church, but I don’t have enough for myself.” We all have heard that one. Many of us have said it. I know I’ve said it.
But give that person more money and it won’t change. The only person I can obviously pick on is myself. But let’s take a simple point of having bad credit, not keeping your financial promises. When I made $35,000 a year I had bad credit. I worked hard at my corporation; I made more money; I got raises; I got promotions. I got up to $70,000 a year and got bad credit again. Why? Because the money wasn’t the solution.
Let’s take one that we can all relate to. There’s a rule out there that whatever your pay increases to your expenses will increase to match. Think about it. How many of you thought that this next raise or promotion was going to change your life? You did, didn’t you?
Starting
You thought, “Man, if I could just get from 36,000 a year to 40,000 a year, boy, that would be—that’s what I need because then I could start saving that money. I could start giving to the charities. I could start doing all these other things that I want to do.” But it didn’t happen, did it?
You started off at 24,000 a year and lived paycheck to paycheck. Then you got to 28,000 a year. Suddenly you’re still living paycheck to paycheck. Then you got to 40 — paycheck to paycheck, 60,000 a year—paycheck to paycheck.
And you had your excuses. Now you’ve got a kid; now you had to have better transportation, had to have a bigger house ‘cause you had a kid. But every single time that you got those promotions—you got more money. And I thought money was the solution, people. It’s the solution, right?
Change
But it doesn’t come out that way, does it, because money is not the solution. It’s you that has to be the solution. You have to change. You have to manage your money differently. You have to understand money differently for money to really be—for you to be able to make a difference in your life with money.
And there’s the key phrase I was really leading to. I just thought that was a good time to go ahead and get it out there. Your decisions allow you to let the money make a difference in your life, because the money doesn’t do anything. It’s what you do with it.
And so often when people get more money, they just spend more money. I guarantee you, the problems you have today—give yourself a bunch more money—will be the same problems that you have. Give it a year. It might solve it for a while ‘cause you might pay off all your bills, and you think, “Man, I got it made.”
But the problem is the habits are still there. And then a year from now, instead of you being $20,000 in debt, you’re $50,000 in debt because you got yourself all paid off and you just started over with the same habits.
Priceless
I’m reading Warren Buffet right now. There was an article—he recently held a Q & A at Rice University. Impressive university. My son’s trying to get in there.
“The Rice business students who visited Warren Buffet on Friday weren’t struck most by the billionaire’s business acumen, but by his affability. The Oracle of Omaha didn’t give out stock tips for the 27 students from Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, but offered advice several students found life-changing: He called unconditional love more valuable than any amount of wealth.”
The name of this article—you can find it at chron.com—is written by Jennifer Latson, “Buffet’s advice on life: priceless.” And he talks about how all of the things that he did outside of just making money were really the things that brought him his true joy.
More
The story of the person on their deathbed — the one thing that you will never hear a person say on their deathbed is, “Boy, I wish I’d spent more time at work.” It’s just not what you hear on people’s deathbeds.
But if you talk to people who are healthy, they have a tendency to think that’s where they should be—working more, driving more, meaning being driven to make more money. More, more, more. More is better. Money’s the solution to everything. But then in the end it means absolutely nothing.
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