A Clean Slate

If you're like many Americans, August can be a brutal month for your finances. It's a wild cocktail of end-of-summer travel, experiences with friends, back-to-school expenses, and the transition from summer to fall clothes. When all these factors combine forces, it's easy to implode our monthly budget.

This past week, I met with frustrated family after frustrated family, each feeling guilty and defeated by a busted budget and sudden financial stress. It's an easy mistake to make, and it happens to the best of us. Here's the good news if you're a family who budgets healthily. Somewhere between 1 and 30 days from now, we get a clean slate. Even when we mess up, the month eventually concludes, and a new one begins.

This may feel like splitting hairs, but it can make a huge psychological difference. Something powerful happens when we wipe the slate clean at regular intervals. Mistakes will happen (they always do), but they don't define us.....and they certainly don't need to haunt us.

This clean slate perspective can work wonders for us. My wife and I regularly have financial months we'd like to forget. Once the month wraps up, we take inventory of what happened and simply move on. With every passing month comes the opportunity to learn, adjust, and try again. This is our 168th monthly budget since getting married. We've had many bad months in there, but we've learned every step of the way. Some months are amazing, while others end with us counting down the days until the slate is wiped clean. But every time, we eventually get to start afresh.

On the flip side, even when we nail our finances in a given month, the clean slate provides us yet another opportunity to bring our dreams to life. There's a pool of money to account for this month, and therein lies the opportunity for us to live out our values through our budget. Sarah and I have a handful of fun priorities this month, ranging from future international travel, to generosity, to the kids. As we put the budget together, it's been fun to see these aspirations come to life. And next month, we get to do it again.

We don't need to budget forever......just until we die. #dadjoke. Budgeting isn't something we have to do, but rather something we get to do. It's a blessing, not a curse. It's an opportunity, not an evil. It doesn't tell us what to do.....we tell it what we're going to do. It's a beautiful tool to plan our dreams, then put one foot in front of the other to make them come alive.

Embrace the clean slate. Make the most of it. Use this opportunity to live out your values. You won't regret it.

"I Want to Be a ____"

About once a month, one of my kids will update his proclamation of what he wants to be when he grows up. Recent examples include a firefighter, basketball player, mowin' man, podcaster, and "in Twenty One Pilots."

Sometimes their ideas are practical, and sometimes they are absurd. However, I have one guiding rule as I try to parent these little men: don't kill their dreams. So often, I see parents criticizing, downplaying, demeaning, and even mocking their children's dreams. I've witnessed many of my youth group students have an amazing aspiration, only for it to be zapped away by their well-intentioned parents.

Sure, sometimes these dreams and ideas may be far-fetched. But it's not our job as parents to squeeze the life out of their dreams. Rather, it's our job to support, encourage, teach, and walk alongside them. They will eventually find their right path.....if we don't emotionally and mentally beat it out of them.

I get how this happens. We want our kids to succeed. We want them to be in a position where they can take care of themselves. We don't want to see them suffer. In the process, though, we're doing more harm than good. In an attempt to protect them from failing, we're preventing them from winning. We're trying to ensure they have money, while simultaneously robbing them of meaning. We're trying to steer them onto the "normal" path, when maybe their path needs to be anything but normal. I know many young men who were forced into college by their loving parents, only to hate it, get depressed, then drop out. They beat themselves up and feel as though they are just giant losers. Then, they will usually find the path that truly suits them. Once they do, their creativity, work ethic, and drive comes alive. It's like a light switch.

Who knows, maybe I'll read this post years down the road and consider my past self wrong......but I doubt it. I suspect my kids will do their fair share of failing as the years roll by. It will hurt them, but it will also hurt me to watch. However, that's where the beauty lies. From failure comes pain. From pain comes growth. From growth comes impact. From impact comes meaning.

I'll be there to walk alongside them, encourage them, and support them when they need me. I hope they never let go of their crazy dreams. I hope their dreams grow with them. I hope their dreams are so big that others will laugh and shake their head. Whatever those dreams are, I hope they are uniquely their dreams.....not mine. I hope they stay true to themselves and aggressively pursue whatever path that entails.

Parents of adults, what are your thoughts? Any wisdom to share? Would love to hear about your wins and losses in this department.

The Silent Dream Killer

Cole and I recently recorded the debt section of our upcoming video course, Meaning Over Money. This was some pretty fire content and I can’t wait for the course members to experience it when we launch next month. In it, I refer to debt as the silent dream killer. Debt doesn't quietly sneak into our house when we’re sleeping at night. Rather, we invite it in, roll out the red carpet, welcome it with open arms, and tell it to stay as long as it wants.

Debt is the financial version of instant gratification. I want that car NOW…..so of course I’ll agree to pay $400/month for the next five years. I want that vacation NOW……so I’ll just put it on the credit card and worry about it later. I want that bigger house NOW……sure my mortgage payment will go up, but I can afford it. I want to upgrade my furniture and appliances NOW…….and the store has a really sweet 0% interest offer. Every act of financial instant gratification has one inevitable outcome: tomorrow’s me will have to pay the price for something yesterday’s me enjoyed. This sounds fine until we realize tomorrow will someday be today, and today will turn into yesterday. There will come a time after we get back from that trip, after the new-car smell wears off, after our house fever subsides, when we’ll still have to pay for the decision we made in the past. Over time, decision by decision, it starts to erode our freedom. The tension and pressure slowly builds. Not all at once, but more like the analogy of boiling a frog. Little by little, our dreams start to die. But we don’t make these decisions knowing it’s going to crush our dreams and our freedom. That’s not how it works…….which is why I call it the silent dream killer. It’s sneaky.

As I was writing the content for our Meaning Over Money course, I was reminded of a story I hadn’t thought about in a while. In early 2019, on the heels of making my decision to step away from my career and into my new pursuit, a few people started to take notice. A woman in my life, who was watching some of the decisions I was making and was aware of my expertise in coaching, approached me and asked if we could talk. She confided in me that her husband makes $300,000/year at his job, and she makes another $100,000. They were in their early 40s and have had a stellar income for many, many years. I wasn’t sure where this conversation was headed, but then it turned on a dime and her face started to change. She shared how her dream in life was to stay at home with her kids, but her husband’s $300,000 income alone wasn’t enough to support their family. Think about that! They couldn’t afford to drop from being in the top 1% of income earners in America……all the way down to the top 2% of income earners. They couldn’t pay the bills only making $300,000!!! That’s the negative power of debt, in action! She didn’t hate her job, but she so desperately wanted to live out her purpose of being a stay-at-home mom. She started sobbing. She felt trapped, hopeless, and helpless. On the surface, they were living the dream. Beautiful home, luxury cars, Instagram-worth vacations……they had it all! But every day she woke up sad, unfulfilled, and increasingly resentful. She would have given up all of the stuff and status in a heartbeat, but her husband and the culture around them saw it different.

When I think about her story, I get sad. I remember the look on her face, the desperation in her eyes. I started thinking more about her in the days following our recent recording session. So I reached out to her. I wanted to know how she’s doing. I went into that conversation with a lot of hope and optimism, but it was quickly squashed. One year has gone by since she vented to me about her situation. Since then, it’s only gotten worse. She’s grown to hate her job……and her anger and resentment towards her husband has magnified. On most days, she cries on the drive between daycare drop-off and the office. She says it feels like her dream is slipping away one day at a time. Her and her husband are in counseling, but she said it feels hopeless and divorce appears to be a possible (if not likely) outcome. In her words, her husband cares more about what others think of him (and the title below his name on his business card) than he does about her. He justifies it by saying he’s only trying to provide his family the best life possible, but all the while his marriage is dying and his wife’s spirit is draining.

This story feels heavy to me. It impacts me deeply. I wish I could say it’s an extreme story, or a rare story…..but unfortunately it’s not. I hear different versions of this story every single day. The details are different, the incomes are different, the dreams are different, and the decisions looks different. But one thing is consistent from story, to story, to story: the debt….the silent dream killer.

Here’s the important takeaway. If this particular family wants something better, something different, something awesome, they can have it! The decision is 100% theirs. And they can make that decision today! All they need to do is make one very difficult, very counter-cultural, very impact decision. It’s not easy, but it is simple. You and I also get to make that very same decision! Every one of us has a choice to make, and it’s 100% on us to make that choice. We aren’t victims of our income, or our education, or our circumstances, or the way we were raised, or anything else. Those things may make our journey a little harder or a little easier, but they cannot stop us from walking towards the light.

Some of us need to downsize our house (or apartment). Some of us need to downgrade our car. Some of us need to sell some toys. Some of us need to stop caring what others think. Some of us need to take a few less vacations. Some of us need to stop confusing our identity with our job title. Some of us need to take a step back and realize “providing for my family” does not mean providing them with all the stuff we never had growing up.

So, who’s with me? Who’s ready to make the hard choice? Who’s ready to kick the silent dream killer out of the house and replace it with a life full of meaning and impact?