Why Comparing Yourself to Wealthy People Is Holding You Back

Everyone wants the investment portfolio, the house, and the financial freedom—but very few people pay attention to the years of disciplined habits and financial systems that made those outcomes possible. In this episode of The Money Blueprint Podcast, Isaac Nkusi explains why comparing yourself to financially successful people can quietly hold you back, and why true wealth is built through consistent, often boring financial habits rather than visible moments of success. If you've ever wondered why others seem to be moving ahead financially while you feel stuck, this episode will help you shift your focus from comparing outcomes to building the daily money management, budgeting, investing, and financial discipline that create lasting wealth. Stop making excuses, stop comparing your beginning to someone else's results, and start building your own financial blueprint

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Look, I want you to picture two people. They are roughly the same age. They went to the same university around the same time. They both get decent jobs. They both start earning money. They both have plans. And actually, at the beginning, there isn't much difference between them. They're both ambitious. They both want a good life. They both say things like, One day I want to own property. I want my children to be okay. I want to invest. I don't want to depend on my salary forever. So far, they look almost identical. But give it 10 years, just 10. And suddenly they're not remotely in the same financial position. One of them has accumulated investments. They've built an emergency reserve. They've increased the amount they invest as their income has increased. They've made mistakes, yes. They've had expensive seasons. They've had unexpected family responsibilities. They've probably had moments where they thought, I'm not doing enough, but they kept going. The other person, they are still earning, maybe they're earning significantly more than they were 10 years ago. They've upgraded their car, they've moved to a better house, they've taken care of their family, they've traveled, they've had a good life over the last years. But when they stop and look at the bigger picture, there's not much there. And that's the question I want to explore with you today. Why? What happened? Because I don't want you to give me the easier answer. Don't tell me one person was better with money. Don't tell me one person was more disciplined. Don't tell me that they were simply luckier. Sometimes those things do matter, of course, but that's not the pattern I'm interested in. I'm interested in something much more powerful. Why does one person's financial behavior keep producing process, keep producing progress, while another person's behavior keeps producing the same financial position year after year? Because I think the answer has very little to do with motivation and much more to do with systems. Look, this matters because we tend to judge financial success from the outside. We see the person who has the house, the investments, the business, the money, and we assume that they must somehow possess a level of intelligence or financial knowledge that the rest of us just don't have. And that's often not what's happening. What happened is much less exciting. They made certain decisions. And then they made these decisions again and again and again. That's it. They repeated the behavior long enough for the result to become visible. And that's something I want you to really hear with me today. Wealth or financial stability is often boring before it becomes impressive. It looks like a person making a small decision, then repeating it, while everyone else is looking for a big move. And eventually the boring decisions win. Now, before we go any further, let me give you a real piece of evidence of this. There is a well-known behavioral economics experiment called Save More Tomorrow, developed by Richard Teller and Slomo Benarty. And Slomo Benartzi. The basic idea was simple. Instead of asking people to make one painful decision today to increase their savings, they committed in advance to directing part of their future salary increases towards savings. And in the first implementation they studied, 78% of the employees offered the program joined it. Among those participants, the average savings rate increased from 3.5% to 13.6 over 40 months. Now, think about what that tells you. The people didn't suddenly become more intelligent. They didn't suddenly become better human beings. The system changed. The decision was made in advance. And once that decision was built into the process, progress became much easier to attain. That's the conversation I want to have with you today, because maybe, just maybe, your financial future doesn't need a more motivated version of you. Maybe it needs a better system around the version of you that currently exists. Hi. If this is your first time listening, welcome. My name is Isaac Nghousi, and I'm a financial literacy consultant specializing in financial decision-making architecture. Over the last decade, I've helped professionals, business owners, and organizations reduce financial stress and build stronger financial systems. And one thing has become incredibly clear over the years. If you earn a livable income, your biggest financial challenge usually isn't how much you earn, it's your spending culture. That is the instructions you give your money every single month the moment it reaches your account. If your money has no instructions, it has no direction. And if it has no direction, it will almost always disappear into someone else's priorities instead of building your own future. So if you're ready to stop hoping for your finances to improve and start giving your money structure, you're in the right place. You're listening to the Money Blueprint Podcast. Now let's go back to those two people because I want to show you something. The person who builds wealth consistently isn't necessarily the person who makes the best financial decisions. They're usually the person who makes good enough decisions consistently. That's a very different thing. And that distinction might completely change the way you think about your own financial life. Because maybe you've spent years waiting for yourself to become the kind of person who is disciplined enough, knowledgeable enough, confident enough to finally get serious about money. But what if that was backwards? What if the people who seem naturally disciplined aren't actually relying on discipline nearly as much as you think? What if they've simply built a financial life where the right decision is easier to repeat and the wrong decision is harder to make? That's where we're going next. Thought. Now, let's go back to those people again. Because I want to challenge something that we said earlier and something that you might be thinking. We said one person keeps making good enough decisions, the other person doesn't. But what actually makes that possible? What makes someone capable of doing that right thing, not once, but repeatedly? Because that's the part that matters. Anyone can make a good financial decision once. You get a bonus, you put some money aside, you get a promotion, you invest a little. You have a good month, you decide you're finally going to get serious. That's not wealth building. That's a good month. Wealth building begins when the behavior survives that bad month, the boring month, the expensive month, the month where your child needs something unexpectedly, the month when work becomes uncertain, when you're exhausted and you simply don't feel like thinking about money. That's the real test. Because anybody can behave well when life is behaving well. The question for you is what happens when life stops cooperating? That's where systems separate people. Listen, I've noticed something about people who consistently build wealth. They don't necessarily have few problems. Sometimes they actually have more than most. More family responsibilities, more complicated careers, more financial decisions, more people depending on them, but they've done something very important. They've stopped making every financial decision from scratch. And I want you to think about that. Because if you have to decide every month, should I decide should I save this month? Should I invest this month? Can I afford to invest? Maybe I should wait. Maybe I should keep more cash on hand. Maybe I'll start next month. You're actually exhausting yourself. You're asking your brain to negotiate with your future over and over again. And eventually your present, your present moment will win. Because your present is right in front of you. Your future is far away. Your present has a bill. Your future is a possibility. Your present has a child asking for something. Your future has a retirement account for you that you haven't built yet. So unless you've already made the decision, the present usually wins. That's not because you're weak, it's because you're human. And this is where financial architecture becomes so important. You need to decide certain things before the moment arrives when you're tempted to decide differently. That's what the people who consistently build wealth understand. They don't necessarily have stronger willpower, they just have fewer negotiations with themselves. Think about something as simple as saving. A person A gets paid. Then they live, they spend, they respond to whatever happens during the month. And near the end, if there's something left, they save it. Then person B gets paid. And before the rest of their life gets involved, the money already has instructions. This amount goes here, this amount stays liquid, this amount goes towards investments, this amount handles your household, this amount is available for everything else that you enjoy. Now, which person do you think has to exercise more discipline? Hint, it's not person B. Person B decided earlier. Person A has to decide every single day. That's a difference. And I think that's one of the biggest misunderstandings we have around financial discipline. We think discipline means resisting temptation over and over and proving that you're strong enough. But I don't think that's discipline. I think that's strain. Real discipline is often much quieter. It says, I already decided. So now I don't have to negotiate. And this is where those people who seem mysteriously consistent become interesting. You look at someone and you think, how does she always manage to save? How does he always invest? How do they keep their spending under control? How are they always prepared? You imagine some incredible level of self-control, maybe. But often there is something much less glamorous happening behind the scenes. There's a rule, there's an automatic transfer, there's a standing instruction, there is a separate account, there's a monthly review, there's a limit, and there's a predetermined decision. In other words, there's architecture. And architecture is powerful because it doesn't care how you feel. It doesn't care whether you're motivated, it doesn't care whether TikTok just convinced you that you need a new phone. It doesn't care whether everybody in your office suddenly decided they're going away for the weekend. The system still runs. The structure stands all weather. And that's exactly what you want. Now, let me make this even more personal. Think about your own financial life. Where are you depending on yourself to remember? Where are you depending on yourself to be disciplined? Where are you depending on yourself to just make the right choice every month? Because every one of those areas is a possible failure point. Maybe you're saying I'll save whatever is left. That's a system. It's just not a very good one. Maybe you're saying I'll invest when the market looks better. That's a system too, but it's a timing system. Maybe you'll say I'll increase my investment when my next salary comes in. Again, that is a system, but it's a system based on a future version of you. And future versions of ourselves are often incredibly unreliable. We always imagine that next month's version of us will be more disciplined, more organized, less busy, more financially mature. And then next month arrives, and you're still the same you, same responsibilities, same pressures, same good and bad habits. So why not build something that works with the person you actually are now? That's what good financial structure does. It doesn't require you to become a different human being. It simply creates an environment where the person you already are can behave better consistently. And this is where I want to challenge another idea. People often say, I just need to become more disciplined with money. I'm not sure that's the right goal. Because imagine you hired somebody to run a business and they told you, don't worry, I'll just try really hard to remember everything. You'd try them. You'd want systems, you'd want accounts, you'd want processes, you'd want reporting, approvals, you'd want budgets. You'd want things that reduce the chance of one bad day destroying the whole operation. So why when it comes to your personal finances, you suddenly decide that all of that structure is unnecessary? Why does your household deserve less financial structure than a small business, than a large organization, than a government? That's something I want you to sit with. Because when you look closely at people who consistently build wealth, you start noticing another pattern. They don't only make decisions, they sequence decisions. That's important. They know that everything cannot be a priority at the same time. They know first get stable, then create breathing room, then automate, make it automatic, then invest consistently, then increase and refine, protect what you've built. They don't try to solve their entire financial life on a Tuesday evening because they watched one inspiring video. They build layer by layer. And because they're not trying to do everything at once, they actually keep doing things. This is where a lot of financially intelligent people get themselves into trouble. They overcomplicate the process. They discover five different investment strategies, seven asset placets, 12 different opinions about what the market is going to do. They start comparing platforms, comparing funds, comparing currencies, and comparing property opportunities. And suddenly they've turned a financial decision into a research project. And they're back where they started, thinking, comparing, preparing, delaying. And the irony is they're doing all of this in the name of making a better decision. But a decision that never gets implemented isn't a better decision. It's just an unfinished process, an unfinished decision. And this is why I keep coming back to something that sounds almost too simple. Consistency isn't about repeating a perfect decision. It's about repeating a good decision long enough for the results to matter. And that's how wealth starts to separate. Not because one person discovered some secret asset or some magical investment opportunity, but because one person kept feeding the machine month after month, year after year, and the other person just kept restarting. Think about that word, restarting. That's another silent financial killer. You save for six months, then you stop. You invest for four months, then you get nervous. You create a budget, then life gets in the way. You decide you're going to get serious, and then an unexpected expense happens, and suddenly you're back to zero. Now, life absolutely causes disruptions. No one's denying that. But here's the question: Does your financial system have a way of absorbing disruption, or does every disruption completely reset you? Because there is a very big difference. A strong system bends, a weak system breaks. And when it breaks, you start over again and again and again. That's why some people seem to move slowly but surely, while other people are constantly making, are constantly talking about their next financial fresh start. The first person has continuity, the second person has cycles. So if you've been listening to this and you're thinking to yourself, okay, maybe I'm not actually bad with money. Maybe I'm just inconsistent. I'd go one step further. Maybe inconsistency is not your real problem either. Maybe the real problem is that your financial life has no architecture that produces consistency. That's very different. Because now you can actually fix it. And you don't start by promising yourself that you'll try harder. You start by identifying the decisions that should no longer require a decision. The amount you save, the amount you invest, when you review your finances, what happens when income increases, what happens when an unexpected expense appears, when the market falls, what happens when your salary changes, when your responsibilities increase, those things should not all be improvisations. At least, not if you want your financial life to produce a predictable result. And this is where I think we have to stop thinking about wealth as something you build only through financial products. That's a little bit too narrow. Wealth is built through repeated decisions. Products are vehicles. Your behavior is the engine. And your structure is the steering wheel. You need all three. Because you can have a brilliant investment and still sabotage it with poor behavior. You can have good income and still waste it without allocation. You can know exactly what you should do and still remain financially stagnant. If nothing in your environment makes the right behavior repeatable, that's the part I don't want you to miss. Because once you understand that, you stop looking for the next big financial breakthrough and you start looking for the next repeatable decision. And that is a much more powerful way to think. So now I want you to imagine something. Imagine you wake up five years from today and your financial life is dramatically better. Not perfect, but better. You have more assets, you have more breathing room, more options, more confidence. And I ask you, what is the one decision that changed everything? You might be tempted to name an investment, a property, a promotion, a business, a lucky opportunity. But chances are, if we trace the story properly, we would find something much more ordinary. You started doing something consistently. Then you made that consistency automatic. Then your income increased. And instead of allowing your lifestyle to consume all of the increase, you directed some of it into a system. Then you repeated that and repeated it. And over time, the results started looking extraordinary. But the behavior that it created was very ordinary. That's the lesson. The extraordinary outcome often comes from an extremely ordinary decision or set of decisions, repeated long enough. And that's why people who consistently build wealth aren't necessarily more gifted. They're often just better at turning good decisions into default behavior. Let's talk about what consistency actually looks like when life gets messy. Because this is where I want to challenge the way that we talk about discipline. We have this idea that financially successful people are somehow incredibly disciplined. They never overspend, they never make uh mistakes, they never have unexpected expenses, never get tempted, never have months where everything goes wrong. That's nonsense. Of course they do. They're human beings just like the rest of us. The difference is what happens after something goes wrong. That's where architecture matters. Because if your entire financial life depends on everything going perfectly, then you don't have a system. You have hope. And hope is not a financial strategy. Think about something, think about somebody who has built a six-month emergency reserve. Now imagine something happens. Their car needs an expensive repair, their parents' uninsured parent gets sick, their child needs something unexpected. They have a few months between contracts, whatever it is, life happens. Now compare two people. The first person has no reserve. The unexpected expense becomes a financial crisis. They borrow, they use a credit card, they stop their investments and go raid whatever savings they have. They start next month under pressure. And then they spend the next six months trying to recover from the one month that went wrong. The second person also hates the expense. They don't magically enjoy paying this extra money, but they have a buffer. So the expense is an inconvenience, not a crisis. That's an enormous difference. And notice what created it. Not intelligence, not a spectacular investment, but a decision made months or years earlier and repeated consistently. That's what I'm talking about when I say architecture. You are designing your financial life to absorb reality. Because reality is always going to happen. And this is where I want to introduce another idea. Wealth is not just what you accumulate, it is the amount of financial disruption you can survive without destroying the progress you've already made. That's why emergency funds matter and why insurance matters, why diversification of your investments matters. That's why having money with a different purpose matters. Because a financially strong person isn't somebody who has eliminated risks. That's impossible. It's impossible to eliminate all risk. A financially strong person has built a system that can carry risk without collapsing. And that is a very different objective. Now, think about what happens when your income increases. This is where consistency really starts to separate people. You get a promotion, a new contract, a salary adjustment. Maybe your business starts doing better and suddenly you've got an extra $300, maybe $500, maybe even $1,000 every month. Most people experience that as. Permission. Finally, I can breathe. And yes, you should breathe. You work for it. Enjoy some of it. But here's the question: What does your financial system do with that increase? Because if your system has no instructions for new money, your lifestyle will create those instructions. And lifestyle is incredibly efficient at absorbing all your income. A better house, a better car, more convenience, more travel, more eating out, more subscriptions, more generosity. Anything individually outrageous. Nothing individually outrageous. But together, they're quietly turning your salary increase into a cost of living increase. Now compare that with someone whose system says, whenever my income increases, part of that increase automatically goes towards building assets. They still enjoy the raise, they still improve their life, but they capture some of the progress. That is the difference. One person experiences every increase as a consumption capacity. The other person experiences some of the increase as a wealth building capacity. Same salary increase, different architecture, different future, different outcome. And this is why I want you to stop admiring people's financial outcomes without studying their financial systems. Because you see the apartment, you don't see the automatic transfer. You see the investment portfolio, you don't see the years of boring monthly contributions. You see the business, you don't see the years when they reinvested instead of upgrading their lifestyle. You see the results, but you don't see the repetition. And repetition is where most of the story happened. Let me take a listener's question here because I think it fits perfectly with what we were talking about. Someone asked, What if I keep making the right decisions, but something always seems to come up and wipe out my progress? All right, look, this is a legitimate problem. And sometimes the answer isn't that you're failing to save. Sometimes your financial system is simply too fragile. You're trying to build wealth before you've built enough resilience. So the answer may be slow down, strengthen the foundation, build the emergency reserve, reduce the fixed obligation that you reduce the fixed obligations that leave you exposed. Protect your income, then start increasing your growth allocation. Because sequence matters step by step. You don't build a beautiful second floor on a foundation that is cracking. And this is another reason why consistency matters. Sometimes consistency means investing, sometimes consistency means protecting what you've already built. Another listener asked, What if I don't earn enough to do all of this? And that's where I want to be very careful. I don't want to sit here and tell somebody earning barely enough to survive. Just invest more. That's irresponsible. When resources are generally constrained, your priorities are different. You may need to focus first on increasing your income, stabilizing your housing, reducing expensive debt, creating a small emergency buffer, building skills that increase your earning capacity. And then, only then, but even then, there is a simple principle that still matters. Give your money instructions. Because structure isn't something you earn the right to have once you're wealthy. Structure is what happens when you become more financially capable. The amounts may be smaller, the priorities may be different, but the architecture remains the same. And maybe that's the biggest lesson from these two people we started with. One doesn't necessarily have a magical financial personality. They don't wake up every morning thinking about compound interest. They just build a life where certain decisions happen automatically. That's the secret. And once you've built that, you don't need to think about those decisions every day. You can get on with your life. That's actually the point. A good financial system should become boring. If you're thinking about your finances every five minutes, something is probably wrong. If you're constantly asking, should I invest? Should I save? Can I afford this? Am I doing enough? Maybe I should change strategy. That's exhausting. Your money should not require your full attention constantly. You have a career, you have a family, you have relationships, you have a business, you have a life. Your financial systems should support your life, not become another full-time job. So let me give you one simple challenge, not a 10-step financial transformation, not another course, just one challenge. I want you to identify three financial decisions you are currently making repeatedly that you should probably make once, then automate. Maybe it's how much you save, maybe it's how much you invest, maybe it's when you save and invest, maybe it's when you review your finances, maybe it's how you handle salary increases, maybe it's the amount you're willing to spend on housing, the amount you make available for family support, whatever it is, find three things and ask yourself can I make, can I turn this from a recurring decision into a recurring system? Because every decision you automate is one less decision you have to negotiate with later. And every decision you make consistently has a potential to compound over time. Now, I want to bring us back to those two people again. Ten years have passed, one has built something, the other is still trying. And maybe the one person, and maybe the person who's still trying is actually the smarter one. And maybe they're more informed. Maybe they know more about markets, maybe they're more read on the subject, maybe they understand more financial terminology. That doesn't matter. Because wealth doesn't reward you for knowing the most, it rewards you for doing the right things long enough. That's why consistency is so powerful. Consistency turns small decisions that seem insignificant into huge outcomes. It turns a monthly contribution into a portfolio, an emergency reserve into resilience, a spending rule into financial margin, a salary increase into assets. It turns years into options. And those options are what wealth or financial stability actually buy you. Not just things, options. The option to leave a job that you don't enjoy, the option to take a career break, the option to help your parents without destroying your own future, the option to send your children to school without panicking, to survive an economic shock without immediately going into crisis, the option to retire because you choose to, not because circumstances have forced you to. That's what you're really building. So if you've been wondering why some people seem to build wealth almost quietly while others are consistently talking about money but never seem to move, look beyond the investment product, look beyond the salary, look beyond intelligence and ask a different question. What decisions have they made permanent? Because that's where the difference usually begins. And maybe today, that's the question you need to ask yourself. Not how can I become more disciplined, not what investment should I buy next? Not how can I make more money, start with this. What good financial decision am I still making manually that should already be part of my system? Because once you answer that, you found something you can actually challenge. And I'll leave you with this. You don't need to become the most financially sophisticated person in the room. You don't need to predict markets, you don't have to make brilliant decisions every month. You need to make good decisions that can survive your bad months. That's the standard. Good enough, repeatable, protected by structure. And then give it time. Because the people who consistently build wealth aren't usually winning because they found some secret nobody else knows. They're winning because they stopped restarting. They stopped improvising, they stopped waiting for motivation, they made the decision, built the system, and kept going year after year, day after day, month after month. Sometimes imperfectly, sometimes painfully, but always consistently. And eventually, what looked like an ordinary decision became an extraordinary result. So if you're listening to this thinking, I want to become one of those people, don't start by looking for another strategy. Look at your current system. Because your future wealth may already be hiding inside a few decisions you just haven't made permanent yet. I'll see you in the next episode of the Money Blueprint Podcast. I've been your host, Isaac Musi. And before we go, we're going to have three questions from our audience that have come in, and my producer is going to read them out.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

First question from Chantal, a finance manager here in Kigali. I actually earn a good salary, but I noticed that some people I know seem to keep building their savings and investments every year, while I keep going through cycles. Some months I do very well, and then something happens and I use what I had built. What do people who consistently build wealth actually do differently from those of us who keep starting and stopping?

SPEAKER_01 31:27

This is a very good question, uh Chantel. I mean, it's one that those of us who are in this spin cycle of constantly starting and then drawing down what we've built and then starting again and then being depressed or being uh discouraged, building up the energy and willingness to start again and then repeat the process. It can be quite draining. The answer is quite simple. When we have a spending culture, a structure for the way we use our money, when that becomes not what we are, sorry, not what we do, but who we are, part of who we are. We are conscientious managers of our funds, then that's when this habit changes, this cycle changes. Because life again is always going to happen. There's always going to be circumstances that show up that derail your best-laid plans. So, what do you do about that? The first thing, obviously, is to acknowledge that shocks happen and prepare for them. But the second, and I want to say most prevalent problem that I've seen in the years that I've been doing this work is that when these shocks happen, when these situations come up, uh family member, a friend, um, an opportunity that you feel you can't live without, when these things show up and we don't have a strict structure to process whether we should or should not get involved, or how much we should get involved if we should if we do into these circumstances, in these situations, somebody's asking you for support. Should you be supporting them based on what? Is there a point at which you should say no? Is there a point where you should say, I can only do so much? When these structures don't exist in our day-to-day life, and then don't discount that this is very, very difficult to do, especially depending on how much your sense of community, your sense of contribution, your sense of uh togetherness is questioned by your either denying a request from someone or letting somebody know that you can only partially support them. These are the questions that need to be, these are the difficult questions that need some reflection, some soul searching, and some clear direction. Because when that happens, then you know whether you should or should not get involved in something that is derailing you from your plans. And that is the resilience we were referring to earlier in today's episode. But very good question. I know it's not easy to do, but it is necessary if we're going to be responsible managers of our finances.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Second question from Samuel working in the development sector in Nairobi. I understand the importance of saving an investment, but life keeps interrupting the plan. There are family responsibilities, school fees, medical expenses, and unexpected situations that sometimes force me to use money I had set aside. How do people who build wealth consistently create a system that can survive these interruptions without constantly taking them back to zero?

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Yeah, I mean, Samuel, this is a very similar question. I think that effectively what's happening is either a function of few things. Either your lifestyle, for most people, this is true, our lifestyle exceeds our resources. So I have a lifestyle, I have responsibilities, I have bills, I have obligations that exceed how much I earn. Maybe because I haven't taken the time to look at how I'm spending what I have. I haven't taken the time to allocate it, or it could even be something as simple as I'm trying to take on more than I can handle on my own. All of this is going to eat at your best laid plans, let alone when a financial shock happens and really rocks your structure. Like, for example, losing a job or an uninsured family member gets ill that needs medical attention, you know, when a real financial emergency, medical emergency for a loved one, uh, a loss of an income. These things will shake your financial structure to a core to the core. But the question now becomes if it's not a medical emergency for a loved one, and it's not the loss of a source of income, what is exactly taking us down to zero? For the most part, it comes down to how we have allocated and structured our money and how well we hold to those ideals, that identity that I'd mentioned before with Chantel's question. So if we often find ourselves regularly drawn down to zero from our investment or saving activities, it's usually a function of living outside our means for whatever reason, noble or ignoble, and and then a function of not necessarily holding dear to the structures that we're building for ourselves. Again, if we're going to be diligent with our resource management, then it needs to stop being something that you do and start becoming part of who you are. This is who I am. I live this way. I organize my life this way. This isn't just merely an action to take once in a while. You take a shower, you wash yourself because it's part of your identity. You want to be hygienic, you want to be clean, you want to be pleasant to be around, you want to prevent getting sick, right? Or passing disease. You want to stay clean. This is not just a task you do, this is who you are. In the same way, you want to keep your financial house clean by creating structures and living by them, not just executing them, making sure they're relevant and that they're permanent. Very good question.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Last question from Miriam, a medical professional in Kampala. I know about budgeting, compound interest, investing, and diversification. But when I compare myself with some people who seem to be building wealth steadily, I realize that knowing all these things hasn't necessarily made me consistent. What is the difference between someone who understands how wealth is built and someone who actually builds it year after year?

SPEAKER_01 38:07

What a beautiful question. Thank you for this, Miriam. And uh it's something that I often share in the work that I've been doing over the years. You know, just because I'm a doctor, it doesn't mean that I'm healthy, right? I'm pretty sure we've all interacted with medical professionals, including yourself, Miriam, in that space. We've all interacted with medical professionals that are not necessarily, by definition, healthy people, right? And that's because it's it's not a stab at professionals in the medical space. But what it is is it's an observation that there is often a difference between what we know and what we do. Not every preacher practices what they preach. Not every um, I don't know, not every banker is good at managing their personal money. It's not simply a matter of information, because if it was just a matter of information, if money management was just about knowledge, then everybody who has uh, you know, a search engine on their device and uh AI would be financially successful because they'd have knowledge at the fingertips, permanently available. It's not that simple. Where application comes into play is where many of us fall behind, the vast majority of us, because there's a market difference between not only knowing and doing, but doing consistently, implementing in your day-to-day. This is why, again, culture becomes such an important concept to adopt when we're talking about personal finances. What is our day-to-day culture with money, our monthly culture? What is our identity and a way of being when it comes to how we distribute the money that we have based on what principles, based on what objectives, based on what time frames? And when this doesn't exist, then implementation becomes a big problem. We can learn more, especially those of you who are who absorb information readily, quickly. You can learn more, you can feel more confident that you know more. But learning more is not the same as doing more. And doing happens when you start and maintain. Excellent question from Miriam and Kampala. Thank you for sending these in. Once again, I've been your host, Isaac Nkusi. Thank you for listening to the Money Bloop in podcast. I'll see you next episode. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that today's conversation has given you some of the tools that you need to create the life you want with your money. If you have any questions you'd also like answered, feel free to send them to our email, themoneyblueprintpodcast at gmail.com. You can also reach out to us on our social media platforms. Have a great week.

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