A goodbye from Tasha.
Hi i’m tasha with one big happy life on behalf of the financial diet and this is the lifestyle fix brought to you by skillshare welcome to the very last episode of the lifestyle fix it’s been so awesome hanging out with you here every single friday for an entire year but all good things must come to an end and so i thought i’d leave you with some nuggets of wisdom
That i hope will serve you as you go on in life now of course while i am leaving the lifestyle fix i am still here on youtube at one big happy life so you are more than welcome to come visit me there so now let’s get to those nuggets of wisdom number one you can change your life and your circumstances now there are so many things about life that we can’t change
We can’t change our childhoods we can’t change our families we can’t change where we started we can’t change anything about our past but what is in our power is to change the story of our lives and how it unfolds in the future and to do that you have to believe that you can change your life almost twenty years ago when i was a teen single mom struggling to make
Ends meet i was really lucky that even back then i believed that i could do anything that i set my mind to and that’s how i was able to go from living in a $300 one-bedroom apartment roach-infested above a seedy bar to buying my first house within just a few months after having my daughter i was 19 years old and then putting myself through college first community
College and then getting my bachelor’s degree and then ultimately going to yale for law school so yes you absolutely can change your life and change your circumstances and my story is not unique there are so many people that have overcome way harder things than i had to and have gone on to be incredibly successful and the thing that they all have in common is
That they decided that they wanted something different from their life and they were committed to doing whatever it took to make that happen and so i invite you to feel empowered to change your life and to make decisions that can get you to where you want to be no matter where you’re starting out right now number two there’s no one-size-fits-all way to be happy
We all have our own individual visions of what our ideal life looks like and so you should feel totally okay with rejecting any societal norms or even ways of thought that you don’t agree with so if you don’t really want to be a minimalist if you kind of like having some stuff some decor do you or if you really don’t like having to deal with things and you just
Want to live in a tiny house do you both are equally valid ways of living and i think that we can choose to live in alignment and in integrity with our own values without having to belittle the choices of others someone else’s choices don’t make our own choices any less valid so along those lines also don’t feel tempted to do what other people are doing because
They quote-unquote look happy and i know that it’s easy for us to succumb to that feeling of we’re not good enough we’re not doing enough our lives are not enough because we see a lot of things on social media that cause us to question our decisions and the thing to remember there is we don’t know what’s going on on the inside on the other side of that person’s
Life behind the camera behind the pretty pictures we don’t know what that reality is and we don’t really want that reality because if we did we would actually be living that so just be comfortable finding your own version of happiness and following through on that every single day number three i encourage you to always remember that your goal is to reach financial
Independence and not necessarily to be debt free now this is something that we talk a lot about over on one big happy life a lot of people equate the idea of being debt-free with being financially free but the truth is that they’re not equivalent you can be debt free but not beef financially free and actually be pretty financially unstable because you don’t have
Any kind of assets to protect yourself if you were to encounter a financial emergency on the other hand you can reach financial freedom meaning that you don’t have to work you’re financially independent you can live entirely off of your nest egg and passive income and not be debt free so financial freedom is having enough money to support yourself at the lifestyle
That you want indefinitely without having to work that definition doesn’t have anything to do with how much debt you have so i really encourage you as you’re making your financial decisions to think long and hard about how your money is best spent which is to say that you should be working to maximize your wealth building so that you can reach financial independence
And financial stability sooner and so what that means is also making sure that as you’re creating your debt payoff plan and you absolutely should have a debt payoff plan that you’re not so focused and invested into a debt is bad anteye debt rhetoric that it causes you to actually do yourself more financial harm than good so some examples of that would be where
You don’t have sufficient insurance and you’re not carrying sufficient insurance because you’re trying to pay down your debt as quickly as possible so that’s putting your your whole life at risk because if you become disabled and you don’t have health insurance you don’t have short term or long term disability insurance that could be financially devastating for
You or if you are so focused on rapid debt payoff that you’re not also making sure that you’re setting aside money in an emergency fund to protect yourself if something else were to happen if you were to lose your job or if you were to need to fix something on your car so that you can go to work having liquid assets having money in the bank that you can use to
Protect yourself is so incredibly important third if a focus on rapid debt payoff is causing you to miss out on the all-important employer matching in your 401k then you really need to stop crunch the numbers and think really hard before you make that decision because in reality that could be compromising your long-term wealth and for an example of this you can
Check out the video that i did over on one big happy life a couple of years ago where we talked about why we don’t follow dave ramsey’s baby steps and we show the actual numbers and show how it would cost us millions of dollars in lost net worth over time number four it’s okay to want money to have money and to spend money something else i’ve noticed a lot in the
Personal finance media is that we typically are only okay with people talking about money when they’ve either don’t have a lot of money right so they’re struggling with money or when they deprive themselves for a long time so that they could retire early i think those are the two types of stories that you see a lot in the personal finance media and you’ll often
See comments where the minute someone buys something if someone buys a nice car if someone buys a nice house they’re immediately ridiculed as trying to keep up with the joneses or they’re wasting money and i think it’s time that we reframe that narrative like i said in one of my earlier points we all have different visions for what we want our lives to look like
And there is room in personal finance and in life for us to each pursue our individual financial and life goals and so i’m gonna plant my flag i love planting flags and say that yes for those of you out there who aspire to have larger incomes and to buy nice things and to travel with your kids and yes travel luxuriously that is okay and you should feel comfortable
Doing you and i hope that there are more spaces in addition to one big happy life where those kinds of conversations can be had in a comfortable positive and non-judgmental way and the way that happens is with us speaking openly about it being okay to want to make more money and to want to spend more money now i will just give you a little caveat and say as long
As you’re also making sure that you’re building financial stability and you’re building wealth along the way you get to decide how you want to spend your surplus income your life number five making the world a better place starts with us and i want to thank each and every one of you that have left a kind and supportive and thoughtful and thought-provoking but in a
Nice way comment over the past year here on the lifestyle fix it has meant so much to me to be a part of this community to be a part of your lives so thank you every single person that has watched these videos and been here to support the lifestyle fix and just going forward everyone who watches this video i just want to remind you all that we are all part of one
Big community and i know i’ve talked about this before i mentioned it in the last video but i just really want to encourage you as you go through your day both in person and online to spread joy and kindness and happiness to the other people in the world when you’re grabbing your coffee and your barista says have a good day stop look them in the eyes and actually
Say have a good day too and smile take a few seconds out of your day to be present to be kind and to be thoughtful to the other people in your lives whether it’s online or in-person now that i’ve shared a little bit of wisdom that’s near and dear to my heart let’s talk about a great place to learn some new things skillshare skillshare is an online learning community
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Over 25,000 classes for free act now so you don’t miss out and start today thank you so much for watching this very last episode of the lifestyle fix it’s been such a pleasure being here with you and don’t be afraid to come on over to one big happy life and say hello and i’m sure i’ll do a cameo or two here on the financial diet sometime in the future see you around you
Transcribed from video
5 Things You Should Know By The Financial Diet