We have become a culture who poorly plans our finances, and it is not only wrecking our personal lives but it has a tremendous impact on the work we choose to do. As much as we all love coaching and mentoring our clients, the hard truth is that too many coaches leave the industry early because they “can’t” make enough money. I don’t believe this has to be your truth.
Here are a few habits AND mindsets shaping our financial futures:
- We work for what we want instead of wanting what we have.
- We adjust our lifestyles to match the periodic wage increases.
- We think of our financial life as starting with what we make instead of what we want to accomplish.
- We make decisions based on fear and not freedom when we live in financial constraints.
Your deepest passions have landed you in the fitness industry; it will behoove you to have solid financial habits. This will prevent exterior forces from putting you in a position to have to walk away from what you love. Things you can’t control like government regulations, shutdowns, clients moving, rents going up, on and on and on. You worry less about exterior threats when you have the capacity to respond to it.
Leave yourself financial margin — basically never spend it all — ever. Financial margin looks different for everyone but a personal formula I like to use is this:
- 30% of income on overhead, things like my house, car (if you have one get rid of that payment yesterday), insurance, phone and so on.
- 30% straight to savings and once this passes your one-year total of overhead, it becomes money you can use to invest in people and things that you believe in.
- 20%, I call this Gods purse, you can call it whatever you want but basically this is what you give away to your local church, non-profit or even sponsor kids in your community who can’t afford their school lunch.
- 20% goes to continuing education, maybe you want to learn a new language, play guitar or learn to fly.
These are just a few tips to get you thinking. It’s important to assess what you want and how you are going to get there. Be patient and do the work. It will be worth it.
