How To Have Better Money Habits

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[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]

I was reading and re-reading your recent show comments over vacation. As I ate lots of cookies, it was fabulous. One thing that caught my attention was how many people asked

How do I have better money habits?

There are a lot of people watching or listening,

• People who feel hopeless
• People who let their past determine their future
• People who keep trying and trying and it just doesn’t seem to make a difference

I get that many people are wondering, what do I do? Or they just can’t seem to see the needle moving forward.

You know, I wish it was as easy as me sitting in here and saying I woke up one day and the tooth fairy had stuck millions of dollars under my pillow. A secret Santa fixed it all and dropped some gold bars down the chimney. I caught a Leprechaun and stole his Lucky Charms. Maybe one out of a thousand people has a rich uncle that’s going to fix it.

For the rest of us mere mortals, it’s chipping away over time. Kinda like Michelangelo chipped away at a piece of marble to create David.

Realize Michelangelo had to first see David in his head. If he didn’t he would have carved a turtle.

BTW – do you know how tall the statue of David is? Fourteen feet tall. See if any of your friends can guess that.

Then Michelangelo showed up for work every day, and carved marble. For two years. One statue. Two years.

Compare that to Bob Ross who would paint the Alaskan wilderness in 20 minutes.

Like learning how to paint. Or carve a statue. Understand it’s small habits, repeated over and over again, that get big results.

If you think you can’t figure it out, can’t save, can’t stop spending, can’t get ahead, can’t stick a plan, listeners of The Scott Alan Turner Show, you couldn’t be more wrong.

It’s like people who think they can’t cook. I can’t even make a pancake! They always burn! Well, no-one has shown them how to cook a pancake over medium heat, not high heat. Then it doesn’t burn.

It only took me 10 years to figure that out.

Listen to this success story from a while back:

Alli

I never really cared about money, it always came kind of naturally. I thought. I was raised in poverty (government cheese and a single wide mobile home) so the fact that I went to college and made 65k a year was a big deal for me. I thought I had arrived. Together with my husband, I paid my bills, had a high credit score, owned a nice car, owned my house, had a happy marriage and 1.5 kids. It was the American dream.

But I didn’t have any retirement and my type 1 diabetic husband would…. eventually lose his ability to work (according to stats on diabetics). We are 34 and 37 so we need to plan now for retirement since between the two of us we have only 10k in retirement (yikes). So we took a local class on finances and I started listening to everything I could about early retirement. We learned that debt repayment is the only way to change our life. We did a 30 day no spend challenge and learned we had really bought into the idea that spending money equated to success.

So we paid off the smallest debt to the largest. We paid off a Target credit card, a pet credit card, my student loan, our hospital bill, and my car. Now we have my husband’s car and his very large 50k student loan and our house. It seems daunting but we have intention, purpose, and the will to make this happen. For the first time ever, my life and my marriage has real purpose. We are totally on board, 100% invested.

I am a little unique because I run our finances and our plans for money in the future, but I have always said “I don’t care about learning about finances.” We have paid off $22k in ten months and we plan to have the house totally paid off in 6–8 years. We have cut back all areas of spending, even cutting cable. I am a woman on fire for this plan and we will arrive.

Good habits and bad habits are built in a short amount of time. It might be 30, 60, or 90 days. A Harvard study might say 21 days. A Yale study might say 62 days. The only thing that matters to you is – results! Pick something small to start with.

Let’s say someone eats out for lunch five days a week. Bring your lunch on Monday with the weekend leftovers. You’ve just saved $600 a year. That’s a small thing. Could you do that? Yes, you can.

Maybe someone is working on commission. Could you make one more sales phone call a day? That’s more than 200 extra calls in a year. That’s more income from a small thing. Could you do that? Yes, you can.

If someone hears the siren call of Target and needs some more make up. Get the makeup. And make it a habit to not walk through the clothing section where extreme weather conditions have been known to cause cute tank tops and summer shorts to spontaneously blow into a shopping cart on their own. It’s the same reason I don’t walk through the cracker section at the store. I didn’t know I needed a box of Wheat Thins! Until I saw them and they reminded me. It’s summer time Scott. You’d look good in a new box of Wheat Thins. We’re only 6,200 calories. Buy us! And we’re on sale too. It’s a small thing to steer around temptations. Could you do that? Yes, you can.

• If you mess up, you mess up. Try, try again.
• If you forget, you forget. Try, try again.
• If you can’t yet, you can’t yet. Try, try again.

Think about one small thing you could change in your life today, that’s going to be something to build on tomorrow. And the next day and so on.

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