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Welcome to Money Talk for Real, a podcast where I talk about making money, spending money, and everything in between. I'm Nick, and in this episode, I want to talk about kind of the difference between a money problem, which is what I would typically talk about on this show, and more of a behavior problem because behavior problems can disguise themselves as money problems, meaning you think you have a money problem, but really maybe you have a behavior problem or a habit problem. A lot of people think that they have a money problem. They don't, they think, okay, well, I don't make enough money or I need more income. That's why I'm stuck. Right? But in a lot of cases, that's not actually the real issue. So in this episode, I want to break down what the real problem usually is because once you see it, everything starts to make more sense. And I'm generalizing here a little bit, so this certainly will not be the case for everyone. So please don't take it personally. But it is something to consider. Um again, because it it it is a lot more common than what people realize, and maybe even what they want to admit. But again, I don't uh I don't think that, you know, I don't think that most people have a money problem. I think they have a behavior problem. Now, to be clear, income does certainly matter. Um, I'm not gonna downplay the money aspect here. I'm not saying that income doesn't matter, but there are people making decent money that are still struggling. We all know that it's an expense type problem. And there's uh also people, the flip side of that coin is that there's people making less that are doing just fine. So what's the difference? And the answer to that is how money is handled, not just how much comes in. I've talked about this several times on several episodes. The first real problem is that there's no system. The money comes in, the money goes out, and that's it. There's no plan, there's no structure, um, there's no telling your money what to do. And I've I've said the line before that if you're not telling your money what to do, then it disappears quietly sometimes. You don't even know where it's going. There needs to be a plan. And that plan is typically in the form of a budget. But even if you do not want a written budget uh like structured to a T, you can at least have a notes app or you know something in place, legitimate plan for your money. And that is very that involves detail. That involves saying, okay, this amount of money is for this. This amount let's just run through an example. $200 is for the power bill, $100 for the water bill, $300 for the car insurance, a specific plan. And then you deduct those out from how much you make each month, and then whatever's left over is your savings. If your money does not have a system, again, it's not gonna stay. Um, the big one though is habits, daily spending habits, daily decisions, daily patterns. Oftentimes these are very small. They don't feel very painful, so you don't think a bunch, you don't think much of them, right? You don't feel like you pay it no attention because they're so small, it's $2 coffee, it's a $5 hamburger, it's a you know, $3 candy bar at the gas station that you don't think about it because it's just such a small amount of money. But then at the end of the month, if you were to go through your bank statement and track your money, you would notice that all of that may have added up to $200 for the month. That's $200 flipping doll for the month. Um, these daily habits, again, we're talking impulse spending. You're not even thinking about it. You're not tracking it for sure, most of the time. And a lot of times it's convenience spending. Um, your habits, your daily decisions, daily habits, honestly are either building your future or they're draining your future. The lifestyle inflation, I've talked about that as well. As people make more, they spend more. There's always somewhere for the money to go. You can never have enough money, right? We could all use some more because of lifestyle inflation, not economical inflation. Lifestyle inflation is you live on what you make. If you get a raise, you spend more, right? That's lifestyle inflation. Instead of locking in your expenses and continuing to live on the same fixed amount, pretending as if you had a fixed income, even though you do get raises. So if people make more and they spend more, they never feel ahead. You're literally living on what you're what you make. More money does not fix this problem. It just makes it bigger because, again, more money, how could it fix it? If you're making more money, that's not going to fix anything. If you're spending more, that's lifestyle inflation. There's also, and this is a big one, there's no gap between the income and the expenses. Again, they're living on everything they make. There's no margin. Everything gets spent. And if nothing is left over, then nothing can grow. Right? There's no savings, nothing left over. A lot of people also avoid their money. I would say avoidance is an issue as well. They don't check it, they don't track it, they don't plan it. Again, this is primarily seen in the small spending, the $2, the $3. Why track it? It's $2. I won't notice $2 missing, so they don't track it. But more importantly, and what I've seen personally is people that um don't track their money because it stresses them out. There's a lot of people in the world that get anxiety, they feel overwhelmed, they feel stressed, just the thought of talking about money. It's almost like if you can't see it, it's not there. That's the mindset they have. The mindset is, well, if I don't think about it, we're good. We're good. It's just a temporary comfort thing. You need to track your money. You need to obsess over your money. You need to understand your money. You need to be in control of your money. And a lot of people don't do this again because it's negative emotions that they feel. They do feel stressed, they do feel overwhelmed, anxiety, et cetera. Avoiding your money does not make the problem go away. In fact, I would argue that it makes it worse. You need to have, you need to at least talk about and strategize and structure your money somehow. Most decisions for people as well are made in the short term. They have a short-term thinking mindset. They have the, they're they're they're doing the what feels good now versus what feels good or what helps later. Short-term comfort often creates long-term problems. And you have got there, there's a there's a lot of people online that will use the term delayed gratification, meaning just put off feeling good for a second. Just breathe. Not everything has to be right flipping now. We've gotten into this society of same-day shipping. We need it right now. We're gonna pay extra right now so we can get it right now because oh my God, I can't wait. That's not the case. Just breathe a second, give it a second. Delayed gratification. Look at the bigger goal. Stop being so tunnel-visioned on the here and the now. Look at the bigger goal, the bigger picture. The bigger picture is your lifetime financial peace, your lifetime financial goals, financial freedom. And again, long-term is better to focus on. Short-term comfort often creates long-term problems. Now, let's talk about what the real fix is. If it's not just about money, then your question may be what actually fixes it? Number one, build a system, have something in place. Number two is fix the habits. Number three is create the gap. And number four is think long term. I just talked about those. When your behavior changes, your money is going to follow. But you've got to change your money behavior. These things that I've talked about are 100% behaviors. You notice how I only talked about money a little bit here and there as far as the actual spending and making of money. Everything else is a behavior thing. Building a system, that's a mindset. Having structure, that's a mindset. Fixing habits, that has nothing to do with money. That's a behavior. Your behavior is your controls your habits. Create the gap. That has to do with money, but it more has to do with your behavior with the money. And then thinking long term, again, that's a mindset. It's right there in the name. Thinking. You have got to think long term. If you can control your behavior, then your money control should begin to follow. It again, it's not always about making more, it's about managing it better, better mindset, better behavior, management better. And once you understand that, everything can slowly start to change. You don't need more money necessarily. You need better control of the money that you already have. If you want more advice like this, real money advice, or want to submit your financial situation, I would love to talk about it and try to help you. Be sure to follow the show, leave a five star review. And if you would like to submit your money situation, you can do so at moneytalkforreal.com slash debt help. That's money talkforreal.com slash D E B T H E L P. You can submit an audio version, or if you're uncomfortable doing that, you can type it out. But please send in your financial situation. I'd like to walk through it on the show and be able to help uh talk, you know, talk you through it and help you with it. And if you'd like to leave a comment, I'd like to hear from you. Uh, what do you think your biggest issue is? Is it your income legitimately, or is it your habits? Again, we can talk about all that if you feel like submitting it. Anyways, I'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you so much for listening. This is Money Talk for Real.