Aligning Money and Values: The Secret to Paying Yourself First

How can you find a bigger and bigger YES! when it comes to spending money such that it’s easier and easier to say NO to the things that will distract you from your deepest values?

I’ve read many financial books that offer advice about budgeting and investing. The common denominator in all those books is “Pay yourself first.”

What does this mean? And how do we DO it?

That’s what we’ll talk about today. Please remember my perspective: I’m not a financial advisor. I’m a life coach who is practiced at helping people figure out systems, habits, and how to get yourself to do the things you know you should do, but can’t manage to get done.

That’s the perspective I’ll be taking today.

I told you last week that I’ve been listening to Ramit Sethi’s podcast called Money for Couples. I love how Ramit boils financial complexities down into simple, understandable steps.

When it comes to money, Ramit says we all need to learn three things:

• We need to learn how to earn money.
• We need to learn how to save money.
• We need to learn how to spend money.

Today I’ll tell you the story of how my son learned those three lessons. And, disclaimer here: I’m completely biased and I think my son is great.

I think these three lessons can be boiled down into the phrase, “Pay yourself first.” Hopefully, by the end of my story, you’ll not only want to pay yourself, you’ll see how to make that happen.

 

Chapter 1: The summer of the 12-year-old boy or slow is the only fast

When my son, Logan, was 12 years old, he wanted a particular nerf gun more than anything else in the world. So he was thrilled when I suggested he could get paid to mow our lawn.

His plan was to mow the lawn on Thursday because I was going to the nerf gun store on Friday, and he could tag along, spend his money, and come home with the coveted nerf gun.

Good plan, right? He’s learning two of the money skills: how to earn and how to spend.

Except, it’s really hot outside in the summer and our yard is HUGE.

He got tired—as any 12-year-old is apt to do—and he came inside to watch some cartoons, get a snack, and cool off.

It wasn’t easy to go back outside.

At this point in Logan’s money journey, paying himself first meant watching more cartoons and sipping something cold. 12-year-olds live in the present moment. What he most wanted was the ease of cartoons, so that’s what he gave to himself. Good for him.

But the nerf gun beckoned. And our grass got taller.

I don’t remember if I told him I’d go out and mow the grass so he’d lose his chance at earning the nerf-gun-money, or if the cartoons just got boring, but he did go outside, and the lawn did get mowed.

I’d point out how happy he seemed whenever he came in from working. He’d eagerly agree and make resolutions about tomorrow, but that was never enough to draw him out to the grass.

The trick with learning to pay yourself first.

My intention with pointing out his good mood was to give my son a giant YES to the work of mowing the grass. A YES so big that it would help him say NO to the cartoons.

A week would go by with no mowing and finally I’d break down and ask the question I’d promised myself not to ask, “When do you think you might be ready to mow?”

A small explosion would erupt between the two of us and finally, in a huff, he’d go outside and get it done.

The endorphins and the pride would do their work. He’d come in glowing.

“I really do love the feeling of doing a job,” he said as he’d filled his glass of water.

“What is it that you love so much?” I asked.

“You look at all that neat, trimmed grass and it’s a great feeling.”

“That makes you feel like you can make a difference,” I said, smiling at him.

“Yeah. I’m gonna get out there early next week so it doesn’t have a chance to get long.”
“I think that’s a great idea, Buddy. I think you’re really getting the idea that work brings more than a paycheck.”

Can you feel my son developing his big YES! that would allow him to pay his future self first by mowing instead of watching TV?

But next week would come and those reruns of reruns of Bugs Bunny were just too hard to say NO to.

It was incredibly tempting to take over. Many times, I wanted to say, “You’ll mow the grass on Thursdays and that’s that.” But my son was learning the first rule of money: how to earn. He needed to find that giant YES! inside his own skin, not hear it from his mother.

Lesson number 1 of pay yourself first is to find the pride and ownership that comes from earning your own money. Not because you have a boss, and not because you want to buy a nerf gun, but because you know the greatest joy in life comes from a sense of engagement in the world around you.

My son needed someone to believe that somewhere inside of him there lived the motivation and maturity to be in business for himself. To earn. Not just to earn money, but to earn his own identity.

The 12-year-old summer was long and fraught between the two of us.
But a year later I never once asked my son to mow the lawn. In fact, one day he mowed our neighbor’s lawn. “He hates mowing his lawn and I’ve got time, so why not?” said my son, the earner.

He paid himself first with pride. He owned his work, and that was where he learned to earn money. He found the giant YES! that allowed him to say NO.

 

Chapter 2: Learning to save

From that 12-year-old summer on, my son was a worker and an earner. With each successive job he held—selling shoes, owning a food truck, and learning the trade of HVAC—he paid himself first by pouring his energy, his curiosity, and his passion into the work.

A job well done pays far more than a paycheck. You can get handed a paycheck, but you earn an identity.

He was in his twenties, and he was single. So he did what most 20-something boys do: he bought toys. He bought toys that were expensive enough that he couldn’t pay for them unless he learned the second rule about paying yourself first: saving money.

I remember the flatbed truck he bought. It was loud and it was big—just what a 20-something, Colorado boy wants to drive. He was so proud because he’d saved the money to buy it from a friend. No loans. No credit. Savings bought his 20-year-old desire.

He paid himself first.

I know people are going to argue with this application of the phrase. I know people are going to say to me, “Rebecca, you’re missing the point. Pay yourself first means to pay into a savings account for your future self.”

But I’m pushing back.

The lesson of finding your giant YES! so that it’s actually easy to say NO comes one step at a time.

I believe that if my 20-something son was thinking about an IRA instead of that truck there’s no way he’d be able to find the YES! to inspire enough NO’s to save the money. It’s just too distant. Too far away from his present circumstance.

We need to spend our money on what we value. And your values change as you mature. When you are patient with yourself and let yourself find the YES! that is just one step beyond where you are, you’re able to continue to pay your future self first. But if you reach too far, you give up and spend money on what’s right in front of you. Those expenditures often carry regret.

This has been my biggest take away from listening to Ramit Sethi. While the guy is amazing at saving and optimizing money, one of the core tenets he teaches is that, while it’s important to learn to save money; ultimately money is meant to be spent.

Saving just for the sake of hoarding buys you nothing.

I think that big, loud truck was so appealing, and just enough out of financial reach, that my son got to learn the second two lessons of money. He learned the patience and tenacity it takes to deny a present-day desire—like eating out, or buying a thrill—in favor of saving for a larger desire.

You pay yourself first when you can deny a desire-of-the-moment in favor of a desire-for-tomorrow. Most tomorrow-desires, when satisfied, contribute to a much larger sense of self and identity.

This is the self you’re learning to pay first: your largest self. You do it when you find your big YES! that makes saying NO easy.

My 20-something son learned to practice saving so he could spend his money on something that fit his 20-something values. The skill of finding your YES! is the important part.

But what happens when your desires are larger than a truck you can afford by saving for a year?

 

Chapter 3: My son finds a YES big enough to justify lots of NO’s

Much later in his twenties, after he sold the flatbed truck, my son fell in love with a woman who had a 9-year-old boy. From the time he was little, my son wanted to be a father, and he eloped with that woman and he embraced her boy and their new family whole-heartedly.

As a family, they bought a set of dishes, and they enjoyed pizza-night-out, and then that 9-year-old boy needed a new pair of shoes. Then he needed new pants (didn’t we just buy him new pants two months ago?” thought my son). But the truth is 9-year-olds grow fast, and wear out shoes even faster.

And then their washing machine broke.

And their checking account was empty. It was a horrible feeling.

Here he was, a man who loved to earn, and knew how to save so he could spend on the things that exemplified his values.

The problem was that what he valued was getting more expensive.

This is the moment in my son’s life that makes me want to tell you this story.

You’re going to learn how to pay yourself first over and over in life. Because you—as a person—are going to grow year after year. As you grow and mature and embrace larger desires, it’s going to take more creativity and more ability to pay your emerging self first.

At this point in the story, it sounds like I’m taking a detour, but indulge me for just a moment.

The autumn after the broken washing machine, my son and his dad went into the woods to hunt and fill our two freezers so that both our households would have something to eat for the next year.

I think you can tell at this point in the story that one of my son’s top values is to be a provider. He has always wanted to provide. He’s the guy who always stops when someone is parked on the side of the road, “How can I help?” he asks.

And, as a kid, anytime he saw smoke in the sky, he was on his bike in a flash, headed to the neighbor’s house to pick up a shovel or a hose to help fight a fire.

This particular autumn, the snow came early and my son and my husband trudged through knee-deep snow in search of a herd of elk.

“Logan’s boots were full of holes,” my husband told me when he came home. “The guy was adding duct tape to his boots each night as we tried to warm up and get ready for the next day’s hike.”

My husband told me this because he wanted to buy him a new pair of boots for Christmas. The boots he wanted to buy were more expensive than what we typically spend on presents, “But,” said my husband, “That guy never once complained while we were in the woods. I couldn’t believe it. His feet had to be soaked. And freezing.”

My son didn’t know his dad had noticed his boots. And I didn’t say anything about them when I called to chat with him one day as he drove home from work.

We talked about his job, and we talked about what Trenton, his new son, was doing. And then I asked him a question we’ve been asking in our family for years, “What’s making you feel fortunate today?” I asked.

On this particular day my son said, “You know what would make me feel most rich, Mom?” He knew I wanted to know. “I want to have enough money so that, when the washing machine breaks, I have the money to pay for it in my bank account.”

Pay yourself first.

Pay into the account that invites your values you grow.

When your values grow, and you apply your dollars and cents to those growing values, you will live happily ever after.

Pay yourself first means learn how to earn. Learn that hard work first feels good because you take pride in what you do. Then that earning can turn into savings that you can spend on your dreams and desires as they grow.

First, all you might want is a really cool nerf gun so you can have fun chasing your friends through the woods.

Then, you might want a really big and a really loud truck because it’s super cool.
But if you’re lucky enough to find someone to love, your values will change.

You’ll find that toys aren’t as fun as providing a life to the people who share your front door and your toilet. Money can—in this way—buy love.

Money that’s not spent on boots to hike through the snowy woods can pay for a washing machine to clean the pants that 9-year-old boy keeps growing out of as fast as you bring them home.

My questions for you:

• Who do you long to become?
• What story do you want your mother, your father, or that person in your life you most want to make proud—what story do you want them to tell about the way you used money to become the biggest version of yourself?
• Can you name the desires that money bought you when you were young?
• Can you name how those desires changed when you were first living on your own? How about now?

My son found a YES! so big that he was willing to say NO to new boots that would have kept his feet warm and dry.

What is your YES! that would inspire a NO like that?

Today, I told a story about my son, who is a hunter. However, I also have a daughter who decided to stop eating meat at a young age. I invite you to listen to my TEDx talk about how, through stories, we were able to find peace at the dinner table.