Avoid These Money Myths

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Partial Transcript

[The following is a partial transcript of this episode of The Scott Alan Turner Show. Listen to the full episode to hear this story, listener questions, money hacks, and inspiring stories of people that are changing their financial lives. Subscribe to the free podcast on iTunes or Google Play]

Myths are things people believe which aren’t always true. Entire industries have been built around destroying myths – like Mythbusters – and promoting myths – like deep woods travel expeditions to spot Big Foot. There are also a lot of money myths, which are some of the biggest wealth killers. When people make these mistakes:

• they end up in the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle
• they get stuck in the rat race with a job they hate
• they miss out on the rich life everyone can have

One is people think, “I don’t have time to make a plan.”

You already plan. You plan vacations, birthday parties, vacations, dinner out, fantasy football drafts, grocery shopping, time to get your nails done.

Let’s be honest. If someone offered you $1M twenty years from now and all you had to do was watch one 42 minute episode of Star Trek each week, you would do it. People have the time, they just don’t make it a priority.

We make the urgent and not-so-urgent the priority. If I break an arm, it’s urgent. I’m going to the ER, right?

If people don’t think health is urgent, they believe they can eat a Big Mac every day and 40 years later they will just get their arteries scraped out and fix it, they assume they won’t die of a heart attack before then. It’s not urgent, until your calling 911.

The good news is the government has a plan for your life if you don’t. Oh wait, that’s bad news.

No, the good news is people don’t have to rely on the government or their family to take care of them and be a burden on them.

You know you can claim your future starting right now.

Most people think more money is the answer, right? That’s a myth.

I love the financial pied pipers that have convinced people they don’t need to budget, then turn around a give people a simplified version of a budget and call it something else. It’s the bucket system!

The problem with buckets is they can leak and overflow.

These gurus are business owners, and do you think for one second they haven’t created detailed budgets for their business?

It’s kinda like selling t-shirts and they are placing orders for ‘some shirts from China’ that will cost them ‘something’ and they will sell them for ‘something more’ and with no inventory system.

Running a business like that, instead of hanging up a sign one day that says ‘back in 15 minutes’ or ‘gone fishing’ they hang up a sign that says ‘back never, we’re bankrupt’. Running life that way is no different.

It’s real simple – you will win with money when you know what’s coming in and know where it goes out, down to the dollar.

A budget is you telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. – John Maxwell

And isn’t it true people think they know how much they are spending each month.

Well then they should be able to answer all the following:

• How much did the spend on vacations last year, and what does that come out to each month?
• If they pay for car insurance once or twice a year, how much is that each month?
• How much do the yearly membership dues come out to each month, like for home owners associations, or gyms,
• How much for Christmas presents

Those things are yearly costs, and they are often forgotten about. Surprise, it’s Christmas again! It shows up every year on the exact same day, but people forget to save for it each month.

It’s like all these new menu descriptions that have calorie counts and are ruining my good time. If people know how many calories they are eating, they make better choices and eat differently. They start becoming more physically fit the same way you will become more financially fit.

Finally this myth that budgeting is hard.

But being broke is harder, right?

Let’s be ok with the money moron moments of the past and learn from them, because we’ve all had messy money to deal with.

You have to look at where you are and ask would I be farther along if I busted these myths.

• I’m going to do a real budget so I can have huge wealth faster
• I’m going to decide what I spend first before I spend it to keep more of what I worked hard for
• Take back control

What happens next is you do those things, and you start making your own lottery jackpot.

Maybe you go take out the checkbook and write yourself a check for $1M and keep it on the fridge for some motivation. That $1M is not a myth like trying to spot Big Foot, that becomes your reality you move towards. You can spot that in your bank account.

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