One of the toughest things that I have to do in my job is to help clients create discipline. What I mean is that people often know what they should do but do not always do it. Life happens too much. For example, you have just turned 30, you get married and start to have a family. The slightest thought of a Will and Living Will creep into your head. It is a good idea to have. You know plenty of people who have them in place, and next week, you’re going to call the attorney to set an appointment to discuss it. Except life happens. Your job gets hectic, your mother gets sick, the yard work is piling up, and there is that room in your house that needs to get updated. These things happen to all of us daily. Next thing you know, the thought of a Will, something that has always been in the back of your head, starts to creep out again, but 30 years have gone by. You may go do it, but then again, you may just think that thirty years passed. What’s a couple more weeks? The cycle continues, and you never get it done. It happens too often.
This is where I come in. I try to enter every initial meeting with clients with the sole goal of assessing their situation financially and, more importantly, mentally. Studies have shown that it can take around 30 days to break a habit or create a discipline. I use habit and discipline separately because they do not mean the same thing. Habits can be bad. Smoking is classified as a habit. It is subconscious and automatic, something that you just do without thinking about it. It is easy to form bad habits because we do not have to work at it, once they are there they are just, well, there. Discipline, on the other hand, is something you have to work at. It takes discipline to get up every day and do a 30-minute workout. This is a discipline that I am still working on creating for myself, for it takes work to get yourself to do this. It is good for you, but at times, it just hurts mentally and, in my example, physically to do it every day.
Financial discipline is a must in any household. We all work with a limited amount of resources, and it is our duty as families to do as much as we can with those resources. I often explain this concept with an analogy. Think of a large plastic jug of water, the container itself limiting the amount of water that can be placed inside. Think of this jug as the only source of water you will have for the rest of your life. At times you can fill that container with a little more water when times are good, at others the level is just barely enough to scrape by. Now, let’s talk about life. We have already established that it happens all the time, be it good or bad.
I talked previously about having “The Conversation” with your significant other. This is the start of a positive and beneficial financial discipline. Creating a budget with room to save, protect, and invest in the future are the other components to make sure that you will never run out of water, and even when you stop working, you have the ability to get more if the level starts to dip below a palatable line. The key is to create that discipline early on so that there is time to make a difference. The alternative is to let life happen all around us, allow your water to slowly leak out, and find yourself scrambling at 60 to figure out how you can maintain your lifestyle once you retire. Discipline takes time to develop, but allow yourself that time to take and form the basis of it today. With a solid foundation of discipline, you will be prepared for life as it comes at you, for happy times like the birth of a child or when that child is college-bound, or for the bad times when you’re downsized out of your job or a disability occurs. The discipline you started early on has now created ways to prevent the leaks or repair the jug easily and quickly.
