What Were You Taught About Money?

Feb 13, 2023 | Monday Mindset

This is the Monday Mindset Newsletter that was sent on Monday 2/13/2022…

Good morning from Playa Del Carmen,

I hope you’re having a kickass start to your week!

I heard a statistic recently that should have been much more amazing to me than it actually was. The statistic was that about 1/3 of adults in the U.S. can’t not afford an unexpected $400 emergency expense.

Four.. Hundred.. Dollars.. 

That is a shockingly low number. But I also get how that could be the case.  

There are a lot of people who grew up in homes where money was painted as a bad.. or maybe even an evil thing.. There are also a lot of people who don’t make nearly as much as they would like for the work they do and regularly experience more Month than Money. 

For me, money wasn’t discussed much as I grew up. I was rather ignorant about money and had virtually no understanding of how to earn it or be responsible with it. It wasn’t talked about at home, and the public school system did nothing to educate its students on how money worked and its role in the economy or how to use it to become wealthy. 

Just to show you how ignorant I really was about money early on, I can simply point to the story of when I registered for college in 2001 and started attending classes without realizing there were any costs associated with it… When I got a call from the registrar’s office asking me about how I planned on paying for tuition, I am not sure who was more surprised, the lady on the other end who had to explain that college was NOT free like high school, or myself who had to learn about college costing money after I had already started attending classes!

How many kids do you think graduate from high school without understanding college costs money?? That is how little I knew about how the world worked and just how ill-prepared I was to enter it as an adult. 

But I FIO (figured it out) and got my real-world education as I applied for and received student loans that allowed me to continue on and get my degree in Psychology. 

No matter how you were raised and what your experiences were, as an adult with a family, goals, and dreams of your own, it is important to acknowledge that money is truly a vehicle to all kinds of safety.. protections.. experiences.. and freedoms. 

As I have gone through the Peaks and Valleys of life, building more businesses and more wealth, I have found that money is oftentimes the ONE thing that gets in the way of people being able to do more of what they would like when they would like to do it. For most people, if they had more money, they would take more trips, donate to more charities, live in better communities, have better insurance, drive safer vehicles with more safety features, help more people in need, and so on. 

So here is the point of today’s mindset email… 

Money can make life much more colorful and experiential. It can make life much more fulfilling by who you can help and the ways you can help them. Money can make life much more exciting by being able to see and participate in things that touch you deeply. 

So, if you would like to have more money, start by asking yourself and discussing these 3 questions with your family:

1) What did your parents teach you (or not) about money?
2) What are your long-term and short-term financial goals?
3) What are your fears about money?

Just level setting with your family is an important first step. Get everyone on the same page and have a healthy discussion around any self-limiting beliefs, low-glass ceilings, fears of imposter syndrome, worthiness, and anything else that may be getting in the way of you and your family experiencing financial abundance. 

Once you’ve done that, the next big thing to do is to begin increasing the amount of money you make for the time you spend earning it. That is achieved by your ability to figure out how to resolve big pain points for people who are willing to pay you well for their pain points to be solved. 

There is both an art and science to making that happen, and it is far too big of a topic to cover in this email alone. But it will be a topic of future emails and certainly a topic of the Ignition Year community that launches in June 2023. So if you’re looking for ways to increase your revenue streams and the amount of money you get paid in exchange for your time, make sure to keep reading these mindset emails and to join our community when enrollment opens very soon! 

Go forth and conquer!

Matt

Recent Articles