I was talking to one of my clients yesterday about goal setting and how she wanted to be making more money in her business.
I said “of course you want to make more money, but WHY?“, to which she responded with a list of things she had to pay for, one of which was a tax bill.
I shuddered.
Ew, taxes.
No one likes paying taxes, which is why most people who work for themselves tends to get behind on paying them or just gets really fucking annoyed about having to hand over their hard-earned cash to the government.
It’s no wonder I had a bunch of money in back-taxes due when I was in debt a few years ago. Again: ew, taxes.
As much as I hate paying taxes, and as much as I’m sure YOU hate paying taxes, that’s what we have to do. That’s one big way that we contribute to the area that we live. But here’s the thing:
Paying taxes is boring. Paying off your mortgage is boring. Paying off credit card debt is boring.
And let’s face it –
If it’s not fun, we don’t want to do it, and so we RESIST RESIST RESIST, and the debt continues to pile up until it gets to the point that we can’t ignore it anymore, which is when we get super pissed at ourselves for letting it go as far as it did..
And then we do it all over again anyway –
Because paying off debts is fucking BORING.
So what the hell do you do? How do you pay off the debts you owe, or simply pay for things you don’t WANT to pay for, but must, if you don’t energetically “feel like” generating the money to pay for them?
This is what I told my client:
You need to combine FUN goals with BORING goals.
Whenever you have a financial goal that you deem as “boring” (such as mortgage payments, paying taxes, etc.), you must combine that money goal with another, FUN goal.
For example, let’s say you owe $10,000 in taxes this year.
You also want to travel for a week with your partner, which will cost $5,000.
That’s $15,000 total for both of those things.
What MOST people will do is pay for the week of travel FIRST, and then figure out the $10,000 tax bill later (which they often just leave as long as is possible before the government practically threatens to start taking money out of their bank account directly!).
But here’s a better idea:
Set a goal for $15,000. Once your $10,000 tax bill is paid in full, you can use the $5,000 to pay for the week-long trip with your partner. You can’t enjoy the fun goal until you first take care of the boring goal. But instead of separating the two, make both goals ONE.
One of the main reasons that so many people can’t make more money is because the stuff they keep saying they want the money for is bills! And bills are boring! So they stay small, keep making the same small amount of money month after month, year after year –
Constantly complaining about how HARD it is to make money!
Except it’s not hard. It’s actually REALLY fucking easy.
If you want to make more money, you need to be having more FUN. Which means setting and working towards fun goals needs to be a part of your routine as much as it is your other goals.
It’s basically you’re like a child and you want a lollipop for doing your chores.
Except you’re an adult and you want to be rewarded with a vacation for paying off your debts.
And that’s totally okay. 🙂
I had this conversation with my husband a few months ago around paying off our mortgage so we could use the equity to invest in a few income properties, but I was all BLEHHHHH, no thanks, that’s boring.
As I sat with the idea for a few hours, I realized that while paying off the mortgage itself was boring, freeing up all of that equity was a smart move (since we DO want to get into real estate). But paying off a mortgage was still a boring idea for me.
So I decided that for every $10,000 I put towards the mortgage, I would go away for the weekend with my husband in a super swanky 5-star LUXURY hotel (it often costs around $3,000 or so for the weekend, including food and transportation, sometimes more, depending on where we go).
Now THAT was a more exciting idea. I actually LOOK FORWARD to putting yet another $10,000 towards the mortgage each month (often multiple times per month), so I can get a weekend away with my husband (sometimes we will do other things with the money, such as buy ourselves something we really want - last month he bought a $7,500 bike and I bought new clothes).
We’ve paid off way more toward our mortgage this year (and it’s only April!) than we did for ALL of 2016!
We’re getting debts paid off by having FUN, instead of waiting to have fun until AFTER the debt is gone.
Are you allowing your debts to stop you from having fun?
Try incorporating more FUN into your life by combining your “boring” goals with fun goals and watch just how much easier it is for you to achieve BOTH of them. 🙂