Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Let me ask three simple questions:

First question: what matters to you? Stop and think about it for a minute.  What (or who) is most important?  What (or who) is it that you would tell someone matters to you more than anything in the world?

Next question: how much time do you spend on (or with) what (or who) matters most to you?

Last question: how much money do you spend (or invest) in what (or who) matters most to you?

In my free eBook, It’s Not About Money, the last paragraph reads as follows:

Do you want to succeed with money? Do you want to live a life without payments? Do you want to go to work because you WANT to go to work instead of because you MUST go to work? The preceding pages offer only a surface glimpse of what is involved in making personal finance work. The key theme of every personal finance concept, though, is the same – behavior. If you are determined to succeed with your money then your behaviors will reflect it and you will succeed. If you don’t force the issue by doing a budget, monitoring your spending, living on less than you make and being diligent with your priorities, you will fail. I hope you will begin the journey toward personal financial success and recognize that every time you spend a dollar, you’re saying, “this is what is important to me.” Every time you spend a dollar, you are laying down a worthless piece of paper and saying, “this piece of paper is how I show what matters to me.” So I’ll close with a simple question – what matters to you?

I have long seen and understood that most people don’t “put their money where their mouths are,” but especially after seeing some things lately, I believe today I need to encourage you to really spend some time pondering this idea.

In my full-length book, From Debtor to Better: The Details of Debt and How to Get Out!, I go to great lengths to explain how you can live without debt.  I go into the detailed mechanics and step-by-step processes necessary to rid yourself of the chains of financial bondage.  I spend lots of pages on how you SHOULDN’T spend your money, but I don’t spend many pages telling you how you SHOULD spend it.  Today I want to remedy that.  I want today’s post to be all about lifting you up, encouraging you and telling you why all this stuff matters instead of telling you all the reasons debt is bad or credit cards or evil…or anything else that might tear you down.

Today’s post is for the person waiting for the collection notices to come in the mail.  Today is for the person who knows payday is four days away and there aren’t enough groceries to get there.  Today is for the person who hates his job, but can’t quit and find something else because there are too many bills to pay to even miss a single day of work.  Today is for you.

Here are some things I believe you need to know:

• You don’t have a job just so you can pay bills.  That’s not the point.
• Your attitude toward the problems you face will usually determine how things turn out.
• You can decide to be poor (or rich), remembering poor and poverty are not synonyms.  Poor is a state of mind.  Poverty is a lack of money.
• You are not defined by your possessions (or lack thereof).
• You are not defined by the neighborhood where you live.
• You are allowed to make mistakes, but you must commit to learn from them.
• It is not the government’s job to take care of your financial needs – they can’t take care of their own needs.
• You are important because God made you.
• You are smarter than you give yourself credit for being.
• You are not allowed to give up.
• Your money is how you tell the world your passions, your dreams, your goals and ultimately, even your day-to-day priorities for life.
• Put your money where your mouth is.