Ep. 22 Present Money vs Future Wealth: How Your Mindset Shapes Financial Freedom

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Are you serving Present You or Future You with your money choices? 💰 In this episode of the NetWealthNest Podcast, host Jim LeBoeuf breaks down the trade-offs between spending today and investing for tomorrow. From everyday purchases like the latest iPhone to bigger financial goals like retirement, college savings, or travel, every dollar is a decision.

You’ll learn:
 • Why your money mindset matters more than willpower
 • How to balance needs vs. wants without guilt
 • The hidden power of compound growth
 • A simple exercise (writing a letter to “Future You”) that shifts perspective
 • Practical steps to start budgeting for today while saving and investing for tomorrow

Whether you’re in your 20s just starting out, raising a family, or planning for retirement, this conversation will help you build financial stability, reduce money stress, and grow your net wealth with intention.

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe, review, and share the show so more people can join the journey to financial freedom.

#money #mindset #futureyou #personalfinance #saving #investing #netwealth

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Transcript

Jim 0:31

Welcome to Netwealth Mass Podcast. I am your host, Jim LeBoeuf. Thanks for joining us for another episode as we work to help you build financial stability in your life, as well as grow your Netwealth. Today we're gonna be talking a little bit about future you versus present you. And so when you think about it, every dollar you spend is a choice. It's a choice to either spend it on, present you and spend it today, or put it aside for future you to use in some fashion in the future. When you think about how you're spending your money, which one are you serving more? Great example of this is many people rush when a new iPhone comes out. It happens to be September twenty, twenty five. A new iPhone is just launched, and you see tons of people rush out to get that new iPhone, and those things are. Not cheap. They are typically a thousand dollars or more. And so do they need that phone? Nah, it's arguable the upgrades that are happening year in and year out with these different phones But what would that a thousand dollars mean to future you if you were able to put it? Into something that you could invest into it, and it would grow over the next 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years. It could mean a lot more than a thousand dollars. And so you're present, you typically pulls on your heartstrings, the joy in the moment, the vacations, the dining out upgrades, the social pressure that you have to go through with not only advertisements from, uh, companies, but also your friends and family. What you're seeing on social media that f. Fear of losing out or fear of missing out is really strong on a daily basis, and that leads a lot of people to really focus on present them versus future them and future you does have needs. Future you could have needs where it could be of emergency funds and just make sure that you have enough where you're not putting yourself in debt. If something happens where you need a thousand or $2,000, now to fix or, or replace something, it could mean. Having kids, it could mean saving for a house. It could mean paying kids education in the future. And of course, what many people anchor to is it, it typically means retirement as you get over the 60, 65 age range and move into your seventies, eighties, and nineties. And so the key is remembering that compound growth is super, super powerful, and every dollar that you make today that you can use and invest for future. You has the potential to grow to $10, $20, even 30 or $40, depending on how long you invest that. And so understanding that you not only have the capability to. Present dollars for future you, but you have the capability depending on how much time you have, to let those dollars actually work themselves and grow is super, super powerful And so the key is trying to find the balance. And typically what we really anchor to is making yourself a budget for present you. What are your needs? Then what are your wants? And then how are you saving and investing for the future? And the needs are really simple. As we've talked about in the past, your, your housing, your transportation, food, those types of things, it's where the wants lie, that that's where you can create hopefully some margin. And typically if you ask people and really sit down with them for a few minutes and get them to answer a few deeper questions, most people have a couple of wants, one or two that are really, really important to them. They could be different things. They could be like going on vacations and traveling. They could be like hanging out with friends and family, maybe going out to eat. They might be into fashion. And so they like to have, you know, uh, on trend clothing. But what you typically find is many people will spend on the one that's really important to them, but also spend on all the other ones at an, unsustainable rate. And that's where we encourage you, like, what's the one thing? So it, as an example, we'll just use like maybe somebody really likes to t Tramble, they're in their younger twenties. Uh, they're currently not married or have kids and so they really love to travel. And so we recommend like budget for that. Budget. That travel now into your current, present me budget, but all those other things, like maybe you're not as into fashion or you don't need to go and go out to eat, you know, once a week or once every other week, like ruthlessly cut that out and move that money into the future. You bucket the savings and the investment bucket, understanding that you are trading off some of those. Things of like, Hey, I'm gonna take trips now 'cause those are really important to me, but the clothing and the going out to eat not so important. I'm gonna trade those off now because I know that all those dollars will grow and be worth more trips for future me. That's what I really want to do. Or if I want to buy a house in the future, whatever, that those future goals could be. Those dollars that you save now are going to. Exponentially benefit future you because they're going to be able to just sit there and work and grow over time. And so understanding that there are trade offs and skipping some of the things that you don't care as much about now will pay dividends in the future. And one of the easiest ways to try to get your mindset and your head in the right space with present you versus future you is, is to think about future you. And not everybody does that, but if you're younger, like start thinking about what do you want your life to look like when you're 30, you're 40, you're 50. What are you willing to sacrifice now And so maybe it's, hey, like I wanna make sure that, I'm in my early, to mid twenties now. I'm traveling, I'm doing the thing, but I anticipate that I'm gonna find somebody I wanna spend my life with and, and maybe we're gonna have kids. Maybe that's what I want to do. I wanna start a family and I'd like to have a house. But in the same part when we're in the middle Ages and the kids are starting to like get in those, you know, ages where we can bring 'em around and travel. I don't wanna stop traveling either. So I know there's a lot of expenses I'm thinking about like. You know, kids cost money, having a house costs money and continuing to travel costs money. So really again, I'm focused on, I like to travel now, I'm gonna continue to spend on that, but all this other stuff, I'm really just gonna try to put it off to the side, spend as little as I possibly can on all those other things. The dining out, the doing, all those things. And I'm really gonna try to focus on investing that money long term. So when we, I do get older. That I have, some of that money that I can use. The same thing when you get above that retirement age, the 60, 65, 68 years old. And you're looking at retiring your active income, meaning the amount of money you're bringing in based off the hours you're working typically goes down as people start to retire or pull back on how much they're working. That doesn't mean your overall income will go on. If you've done a really good job of. Saving and investing over all of those years. Sometimes that income goes up as people start to tap into their retirement resources, but if you don't, then your active income and your overall income will both drop. And that's what we're trying to avoid, is we don't want your overall income to drop. Even though you're active, your the hours you're trading for very likely will. And so. Understanding how that future retirement you is going to want to do the same income. Maybe you wanna still travel when you're 60 or 65 or 70 years old. Maybe you wanna do all those same things. Maybe you envision yourself having a family and you're hoping that that family has, kids. And so you'll have grandkids and you want to be able to set yourself up to be able to have time with them or do things with them, or take them on trips. All of those things need to play into what your future you should look like, and that will help you understand again where you want to invest that time, effort, and money into. one exercise that's really good for this is to write a letter from future you to present you. And what people do when they do this is they write that letter as almost like a thank you note. Hey, present you, thank you for doing all the things you did to save money and invest money over time. What that has allowed me to do is, and then they list out all the goals that it has allowed me to do. They're able to travel, uh, in old age, they're able to do some cool things. Maybe they're able to buy the dream car that they wanted to buy. Maybe they live in their dream house. Maybe they have a family and grandkids and they're taking their grandkids, traveling, all of those things, they just list out all of those. And anytime you're struggling with that, you know, fear of missing out, present you and you're like, ah, this isn't travel, but there's all these things that I really wanna spend money on. They Pull that letter out or they have it on their computer, they can look at it and they can say, nah, 'cause Future me has done all these great things, and I wanna make that come true. And so it helps bring them back. again, just remembering that how you spend your dollars on a daily basis is, is serving one person. It's either serving, present you or it's serving future you. And understanding and finding the right balance is really, really important. And so what I challenge you today is write down a couple of things that you're currently spending money on for present you that aren't really that important and that you'd rather just. Stop doing that and give that money to grow and invest and save to future you so that you could do things that are really important to future you. I hope this is helpful today on building your financial disability, your future, and your net wealth. If it is, please make sure you're liking and subscribing, uh, to our YouTube channel, or if you're listening to us on, the podcast player of your choice, that you're following us, leaving reviews so that we can reach more people. We appreciate any questions that you do give us. That also helps us build content in the future, and so please, feel free to interact with us, we respond to all comments. Thank you for joining today. My name's Jim, everybody. Bye.