Episode 76 - Personal Discipline and Self Control(original date 10/16/23)

This is a replay of Episode 30. But it is just as timely as ever. Personal Discipline and Self-Control are crucial for financial success. I give you three suggestions to help you implement them in managing your finances.

Transcript

Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance. And we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host, Paul Scarfone. Thank you for being here today. Today, I want to talk about personal discipline, and self control, as it relates to our finances. But before we do that, let's start with a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, we ask You for all the grace and wisdom that we need to face the challenges or circumstances that we find ourselves in. We know that you love us, and that you have a great plan for us, allow us to yield to your Holy Spirit. We ask all this in Jesus name, amen. And the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So I've mentioned in a couple of the prior episodes, that I teach personal finance to the seniors at my children's school. And the other week, they were were starting to work on budgeting, I gave them a few scenarios for them to work through, they had to create budgets based on the info I gave them. And they had to use some planning for long term and short term items, and some common sense to fill in the blanks for the budget. You know, one of the things the students quickly identified is that they couldn't spend all of the income for these individuals each month, if they also wanted to save. And they were easily able to move a few things around, lower some expenses just to create space in the budget to allow for some savings. And it's always easier to do that, when you're working with other people's money. There's no emotion, there's no emotional tie to it. They're just numbers, you don't need self control. They do right, the individuals whose budget you're working on, they would need self control. There are several times that I'll go over some very simple concepts. For instance, I will show them a long term investment calculator, right, a compound interest calculator. And we'll quickly calculate what happens when someone invests$100 per week for 30 years. When someone does that, the total after 30 years, it's over a million dollars in the investment account. So that's 30 years, that's from 20 years old to 50 years old, or 25 to 55 or 30 to 60 years old, just 30 years, at $100 per week. And when I show them this example, that just a simple $100 per week, can accumulate over$1,000,000.30 years, the kids eyes bolt, they can't believe it. And I asked them if they think it's possible to invest$100 per week, or is that a ridiculous number? They always respond? Yes, it's possible once and their attitude is typically once they have a full time job. I asked them, Do they think everyone would be able to do this? Or is this just crazy difficult? They say no, it looks very doable. Then I asked them, I said, How many people do you know do this? And they typically respond that they don't know anyone. They don't think anyone that they know does this? I asked them if their parents have done this. They usually kinda look a little lost or respond. I definitely don't think they do. And they might not know for sure their parents might not have shared that information with them. But what they see and they hear spoken in their home is probably a large indicator of why they think their parents don't have a million dollars lying around. Then Then I asked them if this is so doable. Why doesn't everyone do it? And the responses they give me they're probably ones that you could identify yourself? Well, people once instead they spend their money on buying clothes and shoes are keeping up with the latest trends. They'll spend money on the newest electronics, the newest iPhone, whatever that might be. They have debt, car loans, student loans. They tell me sometimes it's because people like to go out and eat and have fun. And I might also add to this list. It's because just people overspent in a plethora of categories. And they don't budget. They don't tell themselves. No, they don't have personal discipline and self control. And then by the time by the time they figure out they need discipline and self control, and they learn to do it. They've got to focus on cleaning up their mess. Then they can get started on some of these longer term planning items. I mean, people, friends, clients, just even strangers. And they'll say to me that they just want to have fun. They don't like to budget because they feel like they can't say yes to the things they want to do. They want to do what's fun and easy. They don't want to have to exert the effort or intentionally execute a plan. They usually don't have a big enough goal that they're willing to sacrifice for. They're usually under this false impression about what having fun with money actually is like, they might think fun with money is buying food whenever they want. Or maybe fun with money is the new car smell, or maybe fun with money as a tropical vacation. And I'll admit, some of those are fun. But I would argue they are not the most fun. Now, I've mentioned in my podcast on a couple other occasions that Taryn and I, we strongly feel that the Lord is calling us to be generous. One of the best parts of being generous, is that it's incredibly fun. Several years ago, when we were first starting to get our financial house in order, we heard that a family we knew was struggling financially. It was late November, Christmas was right around the corner. And we thought, how great would it be if we could give them some money, so they could buy their kids some gifts for Christmas, we tightened our budget limited a couple of expenses. And we're able to give them a check for$1,000. They were blown away by our generosity, they cried, we cried. I remember, when we were giving him the check. It was like, I was so nervous, like there was just this crazy excitement. It was awesome. And it was honestly the best feeling in the world. And I remember thinking when I was praying about this, how different I would have felt if I had just spent $1,000 at electronic store, buying a home theater setup. Honestly, I probably would have felt pretty sick. And I would have been second guessing the whole decision. But in this case, in this situation, having just given away $1,000 and seeing their response, knowing that they felt loved. I mean, it was exhilarating. And we couldn't wait to do it again. And this isn't for us to boast. It's just to share. Like when you're in a spot, and you're able to give and be generous. It's so worth it. It's so exciting. And it just creates the spirit of generosity. And it prompts you to do it again and again. And it's awesome. So this is one of our goals. And we constantly pray, Lord, how can we be generous? How can we show our love to others? How can we show your love to others? How can we use and share with you, Lord have blessed us with so that we can bless others. Now, it takes a lot of personal discipline and self control. And this has been a big factor in our personal financial plan. We've made intentional financial decisions to create space to be generous. We've, we've told and continually to tell ourselves, no. Sometimes we have to tell ourselves no monthly, sometimes daily depending on what's coming up. But we do that so that we have space to be generous. We also create space to save and to invest for the future. Why? Because we want to be able to continue to be generous when we retire. This all takes a lot of discipline and control. And sometimes it's exhausting. But it's something that we need to practice and build upon. It is hard to change overnight. But if you think you can't implement personal discipline, self control, because it's going to be too hard. Let me tell you, it will only get harder and your life will only get harder, you need to start today. So I thought I would offer just three simple suggestions that will help you to implement personal discipline, and self control into managing your finances. The first suggestion, prayer, seek the Lord and His will for you. Discern your goals, and then make a plan to achieve them. You can truly only do that through prayer. Our heavenly Father is absolutely crazy about us. He has an exciting and awesome plan for each one of us. And he is in constant pursuit of us to show us his love and draw us to him. But when we're running around, distracted running after the things of the world, the newest whatever's or if we're just in pure, like desperate survival mode, we will miss him regularly. We need to stop. We need to be still and quiet. We ask. We need to ask Him to reveal Himself to us. And then through that personal relationship with the Lord, we begin to hear and understand His will for our life. And then through the power of the Holy Spirit, we're actually able to implement it. And the cool part is that his plan doesn't change. You know, despite my worst efforts despite our worst efforts, he continues to pursue us and to bring us back to him. I've given talks about this before and one of the analogies I love to use is that of a GPS right or Everything I like Google Maps on your phone, when we're born, the Lord puts our destination on our hearts right on our hearts, GPS. And what's the destination, the destination is heaven. He's got a plan for us to get to heaven. And then we go through life and because of our freewill, we are constantly making wrong turns and getting lost. But the GPS it reroutes. It's quickly trying to get us back on track. But we need to remember to look at it. And we need to remember where it's bringing us where the destination is. And how do we do that? We do that through prayer, and the sacraments, especially confession. These are what helps us to get back on track. So prayer, that is my first suggestion for helping you to implement personal discipline, self control, managing your finances. My second suggestion, get motivated. So how do we get motivated, we get motivated by setting big exciting goals. I did a whole two episodes earlier this year on goal setting, you should give those a listen. But you need to remember set big enough goals, goals that are big enough that you'll get excited. We need to have goals that will motivate us that will drive us to change. Without that our efforts they're just going to be and you won't change. We'll just kind of limp through life probably with a victim attitude feeling sorry for ourselves and our situation. And I'm not being uncharitable here, our attitudes do not need to mirror our situation in life. When I was 17, I made friends with a kid who had muscular dystrophy. He was in a motorized wheelchair. He was my age. He was 17 as well. And me and my friends. I mean, we had to carry him up and down stairs, we had to carry him to the bathroom, we had to wipe his nose, feed them food. I remember when he had a cold we'd have to help him get the mucus out of his mouth. Right. In his situation life. He would have totally been allowed to complain, whine and just have a miserable attitude in general. But he didn't. Instead, he had goals. He wanted to go to college, he wanted to get married. He wanted to have a life and a job and have kids. He pursued and he got the beautiful prom date. He played ice hockey in his wheelchair. He got accepted and attended college. His parents were awesome encouraging him and supporting him. His attitude was so attractive. He had tons of friends. And then four years after I met him, the Lord called them home. But I can tell you he lived a full life, his life. Oh, it was unfair. His life was full of suffering and trials. But his attitude, and his love of God and others carried him through. He chose to attack life with joy and love not to be a victim. His life is a model for anyone who is going through suffering or severely handicapped. There is hope. And Joshua Gondor was the best example of that. So have hope, set goals, seek joy and the Lord's will and allow these to motivate you. It's so important. My last suggestion for helping you implement personal discipline, self control is accountability. If you're married, you have accountability built in, you need to work together and call each other out and call each other on. If you aren't married. You need to find a friend who loves you enough to deliver encouragement, but also deliver a hard word when you need to hear it. Share your hopes and goals and plans with them so that you have someone cheering you on and rooting for you. To try to do this with out accountability. It's a huge challenge. You need to be open and transparent with your accountability partner, if you want strong support. So whether it's your spouse or a friend, you should meet with them weekly, especially at the start as you build up momentum. I recommend that you continue to meet weekly, especially if it's your spouse, but sometimes with a friend logistically that could be a little tough, so at least monthly. But you want that constant reminder that constant encouragement and touchpoint to keep pushing forward. That I promise you through prayer, the right motivations and accountability, you'll begin to see the fruits of discipline and self control in your personal life. And these things will quickly spill over and yield fruit in countless other areas of your life. I love Hebrews 12 Verse 11. At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain. Yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it. Discipline is not fun. It is hard, but it yields such a harvest of peace and joy That's all I have today. Some reasons for you to pursue personal discipline and self control in your financial life. And then these three things that will help you prayer, motivation, and accountability. I pray that you find the peace and joy that the Lord desires for you in this life. I hope this was helpful. Thank you for joining me today. God bless. Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time. Please click subscribe in your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day