I have difficulty finding time to spend on my finances. I want to be on top of them, but it really takes time. How much time should I spend on them?
It may surprise you, but you can organize your finances in a way that allows you to manage your money and build wealth with less than an hour of maintenance per week.
People often think that managing their finances is a very time-consuming task. but it’s not like that. Here are some common mistakes that make it more time-consuming than necessary:
Chasing tips, tricks and tips. There’s a whole world of money management tips that focus on short-term wins — whether it’s the challenge of bargaining and not spending to save money, or jumping from one investment to another in search of a quick profit.
These tips may provide short-term benefits, but they are short-term in nature. You’ll always be stuck on the hamster wheel looking for the next quick win.
This is what makes it feel ‘hard’ and ‘a lot of work’. If saving money is dependent on you constantly monitoring your behavior, second-guessing every purchase, micromanaging every dollar, your experience of saving money will be mentally and emotionally taxing.
Most of your time is not being spent “working on your finances.” This is being spent in an emotional reaction to your finances.
If growing an investment portfolio means constantly keeping an eye on the market, reading finance news, monitoring your portfolio, buying and selling lots of investments, you would think that investing is a very time-consuming activity (because for you, it is).
My preference is to focus on strategies that provide long-term benefits. For example – creating a well-organized savings system that manages your income, expenses and savings for you instead of relying on savings tips.
Or having an investment strategy you can maintain over the long term (ie 10+ years) rather than accumulating a random assortment of investments that may perform well over a few years.
Long-term strategies require little extra work in the short term, but in the long term they yield greater results with less work because the combination grows faster.
Spending more time thinking and procrastinating than doing. If you think about the individual actions you need to take, they probably won’t take that much time.
Clicking a few buttons to transfer your money from your bank account to your investment account and buy investments? Doesn’t take much time. Are you looking to move your retirement from a default portfolio to a high-growth portfolio? Doesn’t take much time.
Typically, a lot of your time is wasted mental and emotional energy that you spend thinking about your financial operations.
You may spend more time thinking – “I should do this”, “Ooh, I don’t feel like doing that, it’ll take so much time” – than actually taking action.
Even when you sit down to work, you’re spending more time dealing with the emotions coming up than doing the work — the dread of looking at your bank statement, the dread of looking at your portfolio after a market decline, the boredom of trying to figure out your taxes.
If you think about it, most of your time isn’t being spent “working on your finances.” This is being spent in an emotional reaction to your finances. This creates the illusion that it takes a lot of time.
But it gets better if you stick with it. The beginning will seem difficult. You will feel a lot of resistance. But if you can keep it on a consistent schedule and work through the feelings that come up, it will feel less painful over time. Eventually, this will become your new normal.
Making it overly complicated. Like many people, at the beginning of my personal finance journey I overcomplicated it. But eventually, I realized: Half the things I was spending time on had no impact on my financial growth. It was busy work that made me feel smart at best and stressed at worst.
You can have many different apps, tools, templates, spreadsheets. You can stay abreast of finance news, monitor the markets, keep a close eye on your portfolio, always looking for small optimizations so that you have perfectly optimized finances.
If it makes you happy then adopt it. But for the rest of the population who want to spend less time on their finances and more time living their lives, the good news is that these bells and whistles aren’t necessary.
You can create a simple financial system that manages your money and builds wealth with minimal maintenance. I know it’s possible because I’ve helped many of my clients do it.
This requires you to get clear on the few things that make a real difference, create systems to streamline and automate them where possible, and give yourself permission to let go of the rest.
Paridhi Jain is a money and mindset coach who combines practical strategies with mindset change to help clients create more freedom and fulfillment in money, work, and life.
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Paridhi Jain is a money and mindset coach who combines practical strategies with mindset transformation to help clients create more freedom and fulfillment in money, work, and life.