We've all heard the dismal statistics. Most people who set New Year's resolutions abandon them by February. What gives? Why is it so hard to follow through on our goals? And most important: What can we do to succeed?
Let's find out.
In this week's podcast, host Stacy Johnson is joined by financial journalist Miranda Marquit. Listening in and sometimes contributing is producer Aaron Freeman. This week's special guest is Dr. Brad Klontz, psychologist, professor and Managing Principal of Your Mental Wealth.
Brad's is going to help us understand why we sometimes get in our own way when it comes to money and building financial health.
Remember, even though we sometimes talk about money and specific investments on this show, don't take them as recommendations. Before investing in anything or making any other money moves, do your own research and make your own decisions.
You can watch this episode below, or if you'd prefer to listen, you can do that with the player at the top of this article or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts:
Don't forget to check out our podcast page for more episodes designed to help you make the most of your money and our YouTube page for more videos.
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Understanding your mental wealth and money scripts
One of the things Dr. Brad talks about on his website is "money scripts." We cover some of the realities surrounding why it's so difficult for us to set realistic money goals and then accomplish them.
Listen to the episode to learn how to beat your evolutionary programming and become better with your money.
In the meantime, here are some resources about money mistakes—and how to avoid them.
How to make the most of your money
You don't have to set resolutions to succeed with your money. Instead, it's about figuring out what matters to you and then building a plan around that. If you're interested, Miranda has a post about how she still has a purpose for her money without setting financial new year's resolutions.
Here are some other resources to learn about financial planning, setting money goals and building your wealth.
Meet this week's guest, Dr. Brad Klontz
Bradley T. Klontz, Psy.D., CFP® is an expert in financial psychology, financial planning, and applied behavioral finance. He's an Associate Professor of Practice at Creighton University Heider College of Business, Co-Founder of the Financial Psychology Institute, and Managing Principal of YYMW Advisors.
Dr. Brad is co-author/co-editor of 8 books on the psychology of money, and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and a Former President of the Hawaii Psychological Association. He was awarded the Innovative Practice Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association for his application of psychological interventions to help people with money and wealth issues and his innovative practice in financial psychology for practitioners across the country.
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About the hosts
Stacy Johnson founded Money Talks News in 1991. He's a CPA, and he has also earned licenses in stocks, commodities, options principal, mutual funds, life insurance, securities supervisor and real estate.
Miranda Marquit, MBA, is a financial expert, writer and speaker. She's been covering personal finance and investing topics for almost 20 years. When not writing and podcasting, she enjoys travel, reading and the outdoors.
Hey guys and welcome to the money talks news podcast. This episode we're talking about setting goals and actually accomplishing them. We've all heard the dismal statistics. Most people who set New Year's resolutions, abandon them by february. What gives, why is it so hard for us to follow through on our goals and most important what can we do to succeed this time? Let's find out. I'm Stacey johnson. As usual, my co host is financial journalist Miranda. Mark
Hello Miranda.
Hello Stacy. Let's let's start this new year off kind of right,
let's do this. I am so I love this topic, listening in sometimes contributors, our producer, Aaron Freeman. Hey erin, I was just gonna say that goals goals, goals. If you're a subscriber to this show, Stacy talks about them all. Well I think they're really important and that's what we brought on. A special guest this week. It's dr brad, Clontz, psychologist professor and managing principal of your mental wealth. Hello brad. Welcome,
Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. We are delighted to have you. He's gonna help us understand why we sometimes get in our own way when it comes to money and how to build financial help. Before we start the show. Remember this has not attended his financial advice before you make any money moves. You always do
your own research, you consult your own experts. Okay, let's dive in. In the first part of our show today, we're gonna talk about why we so often fail to achieve our financial goals. In the second part, we're gonna talk about specific steps you can take to make your dreams your reality. So I made some bold promises there for you brad. I hope you're gonna be able to deliver on them. I'm a little nervous. Tell us a little bit about yourself before we get started.
So I am a a strange bird. I'm a clinical psychologist who got really interested in the psychology of money after I got out of graduate school owing $100,000 in student loan debt and um sort of desperate to get out of it. I took up some day trading. I saw a friend of mine make $100,000 day trading in a year. I thought what a brilliant strategy for me to get out of debt.
I know
I
always like to say I had a few good months Stacy. Um And then the tech bubble burst and I was
Left there with these terrible decisions and the consequences and wondering the question I had for myself is why would a reasonably intelligent person do something so stupid with his money. And that is what led me um on my career over the last 20 years trying to figure that out.
So you're both a psychologist and a money manager.
That's right yeah I started as a clinical psychologist and um doing lots of consulting in the field over about 10 years and then I went ahead and got my C. F. P. And um moved into that part of the industry now that you know it's funny because I was gonna say that's that's a really unusual combo and it is in my experience but it really shouldn't be because a lot of how we end up financially is because of our mental state, isn't it?
It's totally true. And actually um I. M. A. C. F. P. Certified financial planner practitioner and the board just came out and is requiring 7% of the exam to now be psychology of financial planning that we recognize it as a profession that um it's one of the biggest factors in whether we succeed or not is is what is our mindset around money.
Yeah. And I wanted to talk to you about that too. I was I was checking checking you out a little bit before you came on the show. Today, I noticed something on your website called money scripts.
What what is the money script?
Yeah. Money script is the word we use to describe your beliefs around money and we use the word script because quite often are beliefs around money were passed down to us from our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents. And it's a script for many of us that's unconscious and we just sort of play it out. Um And that's one of the things that I've done a lot of research on
are your beliefs around money, predict your income, your net worth, your credit card debt, uh the socioeconomic status, You grew up in all sorts of things. And so that's been a big part of my journey as an individual and me helping other people is trying to really uncover what are these beliefs that we have around money that for many of us are unconscious that we've inherited that are playing out in our lives around money. You know, brad. I wrote a book 20 years ago called life or debt. And in that book I recounted how my parents who grew up in the depression,
I thought about money and how it translated to me and one of you know, there's someone looking like for example a biblical term, it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to gain entrance to the kingdom of God. And so when we get messages like this and the message, my dad grew up dirt poor and the message he gave me was if you've got a lot of money, you cheated to get it.
Either you inherited or you did something shifty. You know, he was always, you're mad at the government type person. You know, they, they, these bored people on the county board that they know when the freeway is going to come in and they buy the land up, you know, so everybody who was rich with suspect and that's kind of what I brought into my life is that the kind of thing you're talking about when you say money script.
Yeah psychologists were very well known for making discoveries that people already knew. Um And so to your point uh we would call that money avoidance in our research. It's beliefs like rich people are greedy, money corrupts. There's virtue in having less money. That's one of the four main categories we found. And um it's really common belief within lower socioeconomic groups. I grew up lower income, it's like I didn't know any rich people. It actually made me feel better about not having money to sort of pin that negative view of them
um on them. And of course there's always examples of rich people doing terrible things. I mean um you don't have to look very far but that's only part of the story. Um So we're we're looking to get more of a balanced view. And it's true that some rich people are greedy nasty individuals and some do great things in the world. And I always encourage my followers and people read my books to become one of those really good rich people who do great things in the world.
So okay let's get back to some brass tacks here Miranda and Aaron have totally failed at doing their financial goals. They don't set them, they don't accomplish they're just a mess. Why is that brad why why can't these to get their acts
together?
It's human nature. I do not blame either one of them. I don't blame them right now. It's their best. I'm gonna let them off the hook a little bit. We're just wired to not do that. I mean this is the way human beings are wired and
Um a lot of our financial behaviors make sense. If you look at it through the context of our prehistoric ancestors running around in a group of 100 250 people, the whole concept of saving is goes against our biology, like we really couldn't save a whole lot. Like for example food, it would spoil so eat as much as you possibly can. You know, the more fat, the more sugar the better.
And I think that we're wired to not do that around saving two, we're wired to be present, focused, worried about today not worrying about the future. And so I think it's actually abnormal to be really great at setting and achieving financial goals. Did you hear that you guys you're not abnormal? I was just picturing every one of his clients coming in and getting a fashion advice but they have to do it laying on the couch.
That sounds awesome to me as a matter of fact
that actually I've got one right here, I've got one right back here. Um uh No, but I I really like that because I think a lot of the time we beat ourselves up, right and and Aaron and I were talking about how, well I don't know, Aaron specifically, but I was talking about,
I don't actually set specific New Year's resolutions. I have plans for my money, I have, you know, I have the spending plan, I have the plans for my money, I have the things that I want my money to accomplish for me. Um, and that's kind of how I look at it, but I don't set uh specific New Year's resolutions because um,
because to me it just feels very arbitrary and it's, and you feel the sense of failure when you're done and when you, when you can't accomplish this lofty goal and so I find being able to say, okay, let's let's dial it back, let's have some aims and some goals and some and some good solid like ideas to move forward, but do it with the idea that, okay, if I fall behind, if something weird happens, I can start again tomorrow,
I've
been doing this for decades fred and I keep coming back to the same thing,
I don't have your background obviously, but I've thought about, because I, I used to be an investment advisor, you know, and, and I guess to some extent to limb, but what I'm always trying to motivate people to do the right thing, we're trying to motivate ourselves to do the right thing, but why is it, it makes no sense to me that you'll, you know, here's what I want, I want to say about the down payment for a house or whatever it is, whatever goal And then you don't do it. If it's important to you, why aren't we doing the things we want to do, what's keeping us from? I don't understand it.
Yeah. Well, um first of all, it's a fascinating question and um we've done some studies to try to get people to save more money so I can share with you some of the things that we've done um and we we put people in a room and we increase their savings rates by 73% after one hour by doing what I'm about to share with you. Um We again, we're not wired to think about the future. And um one of the big problems with, you know, New Year's resolutions. And if you've ever joined a gym,
what they get you on is the automatic drip. Right? So it's automation, they're going to go take that money out of your account every single month. Automation is such an incredibly powerful force that you can be used for good in your financial life.
So what I encourage people to do, get really excited about their financial goals and what we had people do in the studies, we had them create vision boards. It sounds a little kooky, but people got really excited about it. You can picture exactly what it is you want. This is you have to do this because most of our decisions are made by our emotional brain
and our emotional brain is focused on the present moment. This is how we've survived as a species and you need to get future oriented. And the only way to do that is to get really excited about that future. So the clear, you can make it, you know, not just the house, what kind of house, how many rooms, what square footage, what part of town paint a picture of it. Get really excited about it. And then you have to take the second step, which is harnessing the status quo bias, which is what, you know, the people at the gym use to keep you paying.
Um, and to set up an automatic movement of money from your checking or from your paycheck, whatever it is to those particular goals, naming accounts ideally name them after the goal. So you can feel it.
Um, and then you're very likely to just keep it going the way you do your gym membership because you have to override. You basically have to convince yourself that you no longer want to send your child to college or that you no longer want that house or that you no longer want financial freedom to go unwind it. So that's what we found to be the key in our studies. Now when you say create a vision board, you mean literally,
we literally had people come in the room and then we had um, poster board and we had magazines and we had scissors and we had markers, we literally had them create a visual image. We wanted them to get to make it really powerful for them. The other question I keep yachting magazine in my bathroom, is that sufficient? It could be, it could be.
But no, I didn't. And this is something obviously that we've all, and you know, again though, I can remember when you, when you said that about the Vision Board Brad when I was a stockbroker, I'm talking 1980-85.
Um, I had a picture of a yacht on my computer screen
and after a while, I just stopped seeing it though, and it didn't, I guess maybe I wasn't being detailed enough and what I wanted to create, but you know what wasn't visualizing exactly what I wanted and just having a picture didn't do the job for me?
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And that's why, um, you gotta get the picture. You gotta get emotionally excited. You need to overcome this whole status quo bias. I don't wanna take action. It's, it's a pain in the neck and then you need to set up an account and then automatically start moving money over. So you don't have to make this decision every month.
That's where we fall flat when it comes to our goals. But what if you have two, what is your vision board is full of depreciating assets and then all of a sudden it gets you too excited and you're like, I want them now, I don't want them in 10 years and you know, it just ramps you up to spending too quickly and then you're just massive debt because your vision board is full of these things.
Well, yeah, don't do it that way. Aaron. Yeah,
I
thought it was more complicated than
that. No,
don't do that.
No. So, one of the things I like to do is i it's kind of similar to the vision board really, is I have what I call my life map. Um and I have a little map, like, just like, it's like kind of this little thing, it looks, I don't know, maybe I have it here
for people on video. They can kind of look at it,
but
but in the middle it says living with passion and purpose because that's like how I want to do. And I have the things around it that say like, what I like to do, like,
you know, my business, my personal development, how to make a positive difference and try to look
at this. This, this was on your desk because of this podcast. You actually have this all the time.
Yes. Yeah, I have this to like, show me like the things that I do and
it looks really confusing. You look kind of manic. It
does a little bit. It works. I have A. D. H. D. You guys, this this is what works for me. That's
That's the 120th version of
it. I have an actual diagnosis and this is what works for me. But no,
but no, like it's nice because like I have these boxes that, you know, and some of them overlap. And so that's where the arrows come in to where to where they overlap. But it helps me um look at this and say, okay, if I'm gonna spend money, if I'm gonna do things, is my money working for me and working for helping me? Like, is it the tool that I need to like accomplish these things that help me live with passion and purpose?
It's very cool. So we're almost to the mid point of our show brad. But I want, I said at the beginning, the first part, we're gonna talk about why we failed to achieve our financial goals. So if I asked you to summarize,
um why we failed to achieve things that we ourselves are stating are important and you had to condense that to a sentence or two, what would you say?
I would say that we are wired to not do it. I mean, it is our basic biological wiring. It's our social wiring, for example, saving in and of itself goes against, you know, what we're supposed to be doing in a tribe. Um, you know, you're supposed to be sharing everything. Um the whole idea of not giving in to, you know, trying to um have our displays of status. Like we always like to tell people, oh you shouldn't care about what people think. Well that's impossible. That's absolutely impossible. You are going to care about what people think
and social media just inundates us with all these, you know, it's false, it's a false narrative to like this isn't actually how most self made millionaires spend their money, but we we are seeing, we sell these trappings and luxury watches and sports cars and all this sort of thing. Um and it makes us feel deprived um in psychology we call it relative deprivation.
You you basically judge whether or not you're doing okay based on what you see around you. It's not objective, it's very subjective. And so we're constantly feeling like, you know, we don't have enough stuff right now because it seems like everybody else has way more than we do, which feels like an existential threat and then we tend to not um set those long term goals and stick to them. So actually, essentially what I'm hearing you say is this isn't my fault.
It is however Miranda and erin's fault that they can't accomplish their financial goals. That that's what I got, you know, blame our parents and grandparents. It also allows us to blame our podcast co host as well. Okay guys, we are having, Now when we get back we're gonna
talk about specific things that we can do and I'm talking about a list of things you're going to give us bread, right? So we can start turning things around today and start shifting the blame back to wealthy people. I don't know wealthy people are. I think they're okay anyway. We are halfway through our show. So I've got a quick question for you guys
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It is now time to dig into the nitty gritty of how we're gonna set our financial goals. Oh but wait, I did have one more message if you like what we're doing here folks, you gonna do us a favor right this second and share this show your friends, family and of course subscribe to, It really helps us. Okay now back to the nitty gritty brad. Make me an accomplish er of goals step by step.
Okay, well first of all I just want to say, you know, don't do a budget? I mean whatever you do, don't do a budget. Well, now that did not expect to hear. Yeah. Yeah, Well, it's just a terrible emotional experience. It's it's actually a horrific if you really want to have a terrible time with your partner or your spouse, just go ahead and sit down across the table and start pointing at each other's expenditures and telling each other which ones they need to cut out.
You know what a way to start the New Year? I've tried that it did not work, didn't go so well did not go. Well,
it's
kind of like the whole idea of diet and what happens psychologically is when you tell your body you are going to starve it,
it immediately starts to work against you and your metabolism slows down. It starts to scan the environment for the fattest, saltiest, most sugary foods
and the same thing kind of happens with a budget. You know, if you're coming from a sense of deprivation and it's just a terrible experience unless you're an engineer engineers level. Um but most, most of us don't and so setting goals like that are just gonna backfire. I think it's it's much more exciting to create a spending plan. How are you going to spend your money, what what do you care about? What are you most passionate about?
And so I usually encourage people to, like, think about, what are those top three financial goals. So first of all, you got to name them, like what are they, what do you really want? Um, and really connect these things to your values? Why do you want them? Like what really matters to you?
Yeah, that makes sense. And, and, and very, and it's unusual to one of the things that I said. In fact, I think maybe in one of our last podcast in that in the book I wrote, I was, I was saying like, you know, a lot of what we do is I want a big house, I want a car, you know, because what we're doing is reflecting what society tells us we should want. But what actually you might want is a little sailboat. I mean you might want to do nothing. You know, I mean, there's a million things you can want first, you have to get in touch with what the hell that is right,
That's right. And I'd like to passion test the goals. That would be the second thing. Passion test you and to your point. Um like I have, I've done this many times where I sit and I visualized as if I already achieved this goal. This is actually really important. How is it going to feel? Um, and what, and I'll tell you, I've stopped doing a lot of things because I realized, uh it would be cool for a minute and then I'd be stuck with this thing I would take care of. Um it wasn't really going to give me what I thought it was gonna give me.
Um and it's a great exercise to to have because like for example, one of my goals is I'm gonna write, you know, 20 books and I was all excited about it um
and then I sat and I thought about it, I'm like, why do I want to do that? What's the point of that? What a silly goal. Um and so I've actually kept myself from going down directions that didn't really fit with what mattered the most to me by by actually picturing as if I already had it.
Very cool. Yeah, so passion testing it, and then as I talked about and um at the, at the beginning of part of the segment is then get really specific and visualize what it is. Those are those things that you want,
um you know, real specific on it, like what size boat, where would you get it? What sort of cost get really specific on it, You can, you'll never achieve any of these things unless you get really specific because once you are aware of what it is, then you can set in those automated processes to achieve those goals. So I'm a huge fan of visualization and the whole concept of manifestation and all that kind of thing, but without a process you don't get any of it.
Okay, so first of all, you have to have the goal, You gotta be passionate about it, You gotta be excited about it, then you gotta stick a process in place and the one I like, as I mentioned, naming a goal, like there's nothing worse than a, than a quote savings account. If you have an amorphous savings account, it will get you nowhere, it's not attached to anything. Um Three months from now, you're gonna look at it, you're like, oh look, we got two grand in there, what do we want to buy? What do we want to spend it on today?
It's a it's a terrible strategy. You need to set um you know, accounts that are specifically named for that goal, and then you work backwards and you start, what is, what's the amount of money I want to set aside each month to achieve those goals. And what's so fascinating and incredible about this automation process.
You've taken out all the psychological barriers and self sabotage in achieving those goals. And then eventually you're going to be looking in your account, you're saying, well, I can't believe how much money we have already for this. It's it's it's an amazing process and it seems like at the beginning of the year, what, what is very common uh with, with financial goals or otherwise I want to have $10,000 in the bank by the end of the year. I want to pay off all my debt.
I want to lose 20 lbs. But these are the types of goals that don't have the passion, right? I mean do they?
Well, you know, for me the passion indicator is has it sparked you to go do the next step which is setting up the accounts and setting up the automatic money movement and if you are interrupted in that process, what's happening is to me, I'm saying you don't want it bad enough, it's not that important to you.
Um you know, because the thing about the budget versus spending plan is if you identify what you most want in life around money, you're super passionate about, it becomes really easy to cut the stuff that you literally just said you didn't care about as much to achieve those goals and it goes along Stacy with the whole pay yourself first mentality, right? So you've set these goals these matter the most to these are the most important things. So you're going to allocate money towards those automatically, then you're gonna have the rest of this money and then that's what you're gonna be working with for all the stuff that doesn't matter as much to you
to go back to the first thing you said about budgeting, we say this a lot, we talk about people going through their budget trying to find out, you know, what are you overspending on whether it's like, you know extra, you know, subscriptions to anything you're saying, you know almost like a reverse psychology go through and say what you wanna wanna wanna purchase like a home or something like that.
Do when people do this, do they self actualize that's the right word? But, and find out like, oh, you know what to get there, I'm going to give up, you know, you know, cigarettes on the weekend, I'm gonna eat out less. Do they do that?
It's so much easier to do it that way versus starting by where, where am I going to make the cuts?
So because if you have already decided what matters most to you, it's the thing you're most passionate about and hey, maybe that's, you know, smoking cigarettes, I mean it's your goal, um, you know, whatever it is, you're gonna set for yourself and you've allocated those funds towards it. Psychologically, it's a lot easier to then look at the rest of the stuff and figure out how you want to allocate because it's, you've already, you're taking care of business. And what's so interesting is this is the incredible technique to reduce your financial stress
because financial stress quite often is when your behaviors are out of line with your values. So your, your urine misalignment. This is why you're stressed. You know, people are stressed because I'm juggling with this. But what I really want to do is be saving for that and I'm not saving for that. That makes you feel bad. It's a, it's a terrible feeling, you're out of integrity with yourself. Um and so it actually lowers stress.
It makes a lot of sense. And I heard what you said to Aaron and I never really thought of it that way. It's, it's almost like you're yourself budgeting because what you're doing is you're saying I need this boat so bad and I do not seem to put aside of money, so I better look at my money, we'll see where it's going now, so I can put it toward the boat. So you're kind of doing it backwards, you're establishing the goal and you're working and you're creating your own budget because you want to, because you're trying to find money to buy the boat rather than somebody else telling you, you know what you need to do, you're going, oh, this is what I need to do and it's
reverberates in your own head and it makes sense.
Yeah,
go ahead, go ahead.
Just say one of the things that I find helps me what kind of along with what brad was saying is that I like to um periodically go through, review my spending um and list, you know, list the regular things and spending money on, look at those things and then um go through and say like, okay, um let's prioritize and you know, it makes it easier to like what brad was saying
the stuff at the bottom of the list, go, I can knock that off, like I don't need, like that's that's ridiculous. And then the other thing and I've talked about this before is I have the four questions I asked myself before I put money to something, right? Um The first question I ask myself is do I need it? Right? Food, clothing, the rent? Um Yeah, the second question, so you know the second question I ask, because if the answer is no to the need that I have to go to, the next question,
the next question I ask myself is does it help me achieve my goals? Does it help me work toward what I value? What I prioritize? Is it helping me reach this? Uh The third thing I asked, so if the answer is no, then the third thing I ask myself is is it helping somebody else? Like I don't need a lot of charity. Um you know, back in the day when we were growing, I was like my son's fencing lessons. So like is it helping somebody else? Is it going to the good in the world or these other things? And then finally, the fourth thing I ask myself is
is it enriching my life because you know, for me, like, do I need symphony tickets? No. Is it really helping somebody else? No. Is helping me reach my retirement? No, but it's enriching my life and so I like the symphony tickets
and if I can't answer yes to one of those four questions, then I'm done and I don't spend the money, I don't allocate the money to the thing because it really like, I really have to be able to say, okay, um take a step back, think about this, and is it really is the money I spend really doing what I wanted to do for my life?
My questions are, is my wife going to allow me to have, this, is my wife going to think it's expensive, Is my wife gonna allow me to, you know, open, you know, get into my checking account?
You
know what, I actually, I actually wonder if Aaron's wife is gonna let me do stuff. I mean we all need a wife like yours,
Aaron,
we don't, we all have one. Anyway,
may
I may I recap recap what I, what I, what I wanna do is I want to make sure people leave this podcast with specific steps they can take. Okay, so let's, let's recap where we are now. We've got uh we're visualizing something in intricate detail, right? We're and and something we're passionate about
and then we're gonna automatically fund that. Is, am I saying this right brad, you, you recap for me, where are we now? Yeah, that's it, it's um identifying those goals getting really specific a clear picture, Getting really excited about it. Um I love Miranda's questions. If it doesn't fit any of those, kick it out, find another one. This has to be something that really matters to you because you're asking your brain to do um to override its natural impulses. So this has to be something you have to be really excited about.
And then automate automate automate, this is the key, this is the process that makes, makes you a millionaire. This is the process that gets you every single financial goal you ever want is automating because if you rely on your motivation or your um your memory every month to write, sit down and write checks, you will fail.
Um and you know, like I said, the people who run the gyms know this because for you to go cancel your gym membership, think about the mental gymnastics, you have to go through, you're gonna have to tell yourself, oh, I guess health isn't important to me, oh, I guess, you know, I don't need a good body. I mean, no, you're gonna talk yourself out of it, you're gonna be like, no, no, I need to do this. And the same thing happens when it comes to your for
financial goals. So use that, it harnesses the status quo bias. We're all naturally lazy, We don't want to deal with things, so use that to your benefit to achieve those goals. So what I'm hearing you say then brad is that we should go in together on a gym because it sounds like a great idea, this is my new goal, I want to, I want to harness all these fools to pay me every month. I like that idea.
Well it works on me,
so okay, so is this the whole, is this our whole system, is it? What else, what else do we need to do?
You know, I think that you know there are other more um you know, tips that we've talked about really help to. The one thing I will mention is, you know, budgeting isn't fun, but thankfully they have, you know, count aggregation technology now so you can just stick in your accounts. I think it's always useful to do that and then look at where your money is going.
Um We used to ask people to track their spending and write down every expenditure, but studies show that that makes you more depressed. Um And so people don't want to do it, you know? Um So using those that that technology to help because you will find stuff on there that you'll slap your head and you'll be like, how long have I been paying for this thing? You know, this website subscription, whatever it is. Oh my goodness, I never use it. So that is a useful exercise. I think it's much more fun.
Start with what it is, you know why we're saving and investing, Why are we working to begin with? Why are we doing this? Because you're absolutely right. Um But I think to add to that once you start practicing these things because it is it's psychologically tough too because most you go to the gym, I've been there, you have to physically go down there to cancel it and that's you have to talk to something. Yeah. And they try to talk you back into why you want to do that and then you gotta, you know, get out of it, there's a contract blah blah blah. But once you start practicing these things
it becomes easier and you'll find like subscriptions on a, you know, whatever you name it, name an app or name a website or whatever. Uh those that um cancelation is hidden. Those menus are hidden. Don't make it easy.
Um but once you start doing it, you go, oh look I got a two months to HBO max or whatever and it's it's two bucks, great. Then you put it on your calendar to cancel it and you actually cancel it because you get used to doing this and you make sense. You know, so it takes practice. We're almost out of time. But I have one more question and I don't know if you hear this very often bread. I don't have any goals.
I really don't I mean I don't have goals. I have goals. You know, I run my business, I have a great time, but I don't have, I mean I basically have all the material possessions that I want because even though I look like a young brad pitt I'm actually an old guy who's been around for a long time and is pretty much anything he wants to buy? I can't, I can remember, you know, being 30 and being really excited about material possessions, you know, and and, you know, fame and fortune, but now it's like I'm okay
and I don't mean to say that that I'm in my life is perfect. If you said to me Stacy, let's make a really uh passionate goal for you today. I don't know what the hell I'd say.
Do you encounter that?
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, when it comes to like New Year's resolutions, goals, that kind of thing. I'm a huge fan of multiple categories, you know, so like for me, financial goals is one category, um, you know, connection with others is another category. Self care is another one.
My spiritual pursuits is another one. I mean, so I'd look at and I think it's great, it's sort of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you remember that from, from psychology, but basically we're all worried about survival and safety until we get it. And then we kind of move up to, okay, now I'm gonna focus on relationships and building a household all the way up to trying to figure out
the meaning of life. You know, if you really want to get depressed, sit around and think about that for a while, but try to explore, you know, now that I do have resources, what's the point of this, what sort of legacy do I want to leave that happens? You know, it's it's starting to happen to me. I although I look like a very young man myself. You do
You look like my twin, like we both look like Brad Pitt in his 30's. I think so. I think so. Then there there's my goal to be look like Brad Pitt in his thirties and you achieved it. My wife would be very, very happy if I accomplished that goal.
So anyway, by the way, if you do want another meaning of life, we have, we're almost out of time. But here it is. It's to make me laugh. That is the meaning of life. Okay guys, I'm afraid we are out of time. But you know what, we're never out of a topic, dig deeper. You're gonna find links to lots more info on our show notes. And remember if your goal is to make more to spend less to retire rich or to accomplish your goals. Your online home is money talks news dot com. And don't forget to check out Miranda's online home as well. That is Miranda. Mark M A R Q U I
dot com. And of course, you want to see brad. Don't you go to his website. It's brad Clontz dot com. That's brad K L O N TZ dot com. If you got a question, comment or topic, you'd like to suggest to us tell us email us at hello at money talks news dot com. And one final thing you already heard me say, well, I'm gonna say it again. If you like what we do, Do something for us. Subscribe to our podcast. Didn't take you very long. Really helps us though. So if you like to show us and subscribe, I'm Stacey johnson,
I'm Miranda, Mark,
I'm Aaron Freeman. And this is where you're supposed to say your name, brad was supposed to tell you that, Hey, I'm dr brad clients. Awesome. Thanks for hanging out with us folks. We're going to see you right here next time.