At The Financial Gym Advisors, we like to find inspiration for our client’s financial fitness journeys from all sources, and music is one of them. If you become a client of the gym, when you receive your financial plan, you’ll also receive your musical playlist, just as you’d have a physical workout playlist, we provide financial workout playlists for our clients.
For the most part, the playlists are unique to our clients; however, the first song on everyone’s playlist is “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” by the Rolling Stones.
It’s a great song with an even better financial fitness message. As you embark on your path to becoming financially fit, one of the first things that you need to know is that you can’t get what you want. We all have our spending weaknesses, mine are wine and eating out, Bridget’s is travel and Allegra’s is dessert. We like to indulge in our weaknesses because they make us feel better when we do; however, in reality, we can’t afford to keep making these choices.
The sad truth is that when we’re making purchases or thinking about purchasing things, we need to hear this song in our head. Even millionaires need to hear this song because no matter what our money situation, cash is a finite resource that will eventually run out if we don’t stop ourselves. As the song suggests, though, just because you can’t get what you want, doesn’t mean you won’t get what you need and you won’t be happy.
When I first sit with clients, we go through an extensive exercise of determining their wants and needs and the best way to go about attaining these. Most people rationalize and prioritize every dollar that they spend, but the reality is that we can only protect a few of our regular expenses, we call these your sacred cows. When you prioritize what you truly value, then you will spend less on the things that don’t really matter, leaving you more money for your sacred cows.
The next time you are about to spend money, I challenge you to listen to this song or play it in your mind and ask yourself if what you’re about to spend money on is something that you want or something that you need. If it’s something that you want, stop yourself knowing that you’ve given yourself more money to spend on what you need.
