Treat Your Financial Condition Like a Physical One
What if we started to treat our finances the same way we do fitness – doing what we can, changing as needed, and gradually getting stronger?
I take Les Mills group fitness classes at the YMCA, and the instructors always remind us that every exercise includes a “low option” (low in this case means low impact) for people who want modified workouts – like they remind us, still coaching .
Just because you do side steps instead of jumping, or squats instead of burpees, does not mean that you are not improving your fitness. Doing whatever you can, be it a headstand person or a chair yoga person, is a great way to improve your overall health.
Madison T. Clark of The Financial Diet argues that we should feel the same way about our finances. She suggests applying the crossfit concept of “scaling,” that is, adjusting our workouts according to our abilities, to the way we manage money.
In other words: not all of us will be able to save the recommended 15-20% of our income for retirement. This does not mean that we should completely abandon economy. Nor does it mean that we cannot work to improve our financial situation at our own pace, even if we are moving slower than our peers.
Clarke also suggests that we remain honest about our abilities and boundaries as a way to “crush assumptions”:
Are you the last friend on your team to pay off undergraduate student loans? Offer to have Sunday brunch for lunch instead of forgoing $ 40 for a binge outside the home. Invite your friends to enjoy the warm weather by taking a long walk or throwing a frisbee in a nearby park. Be honest with these people who seem to love you; knowing that you need to channel money towards that specific goal right now should generate additional support and more creative ideas for how to spend time together. One of the best things I’ve done since my meniscus tear is tell my core group of friends at the gym that my workouts will be very different from theirs. No need to deal with comments like “Oh, take it easy today?” or “I wish I was cycling instead of running” meant that all my mental work could be focused on my own recovery and strengthening, rather than refuting assumptions.
Yes, it can mean learning to say no to your friends, over-budget purchases, and the notion that you should be in a certain place in your financial life (or that you should already have a certain amount of money saved by present tense).
But scaling, as many CrossFitters have found, works. You do what you can today, you do what you can the next day, and over time you get better.
So if you don’t think you can achieve the financial goal that the headlines are now writing about, ask yourself what a big version of that goal might be.
Then do it, because the one thing you shouldn’t be doing when you think of finance as fitness is telling yourself to put it off until tomorrow.