At iMoneyCoach, we believe that life can be divided into 5 main segments: spiritual, personal, relationships, work, and finances. ALL of these areas are interconnected and interdependent. That means that the first 4 areas all have an impact on your finances. If one of those areas is lacking, it could be putting a serious strain on your finances whether you realize it or not because we tend to use money as a band-aid for the problems in our lives. So this week begins a series of blogs on how you can strengthen each of those areas to ultimately benefit yourself financially. These are general tips and rules, and it may be more beneficial for you to talk to one of our Financial Life Coaches to take a personalized approach and uncover some of the underlying things that could be hurting your finances. So don’t be afraid to get in touch with us if you want more information!

Today I want to talk about how having a better personal life can strengthen your finances. We’ll look at this topic from 2 aspects of “personal life.” These include your physical well-being and your emotional well-being – we’ll start with the physical this week.

Physical

You may wonder how your physical part of your personal life could have anything to do with your finances. It can actually have a HUGE impact! For example, answer these questions: Are you in the “normal” weight range? Are you happy with your appearance? Do you exercise regularly? Do you eat healthy?

If you are spending tons of money on a gym membership that you are not using, that could be putting a strain on your budget. If you are eating out often and as a result spending more than you make, that can be a problem. Often if we have self-esteem issues we end up throwing money at all sorts of things to try and make ourselves feel better: new clothes, fancy cars, botox treatments, therapists.

So how do we begin to change? The simplest answer is to make sure you are exercising regularly and eating healthy. But we can go beyond that. Perhaps instead of that gym membership, you could walk around the neighborhood (maybe even walking with your spouse and building a stronger relationship – but we’ll get to that later!). Did you know that drinking enough water each day can have a big impact on how you feel and how healthy you are? It can even make you more alert (would you get more accomplished at work?). Start setting small goals to improve the physical aspect of your life. Maybe you start by taking a 10 minute walk each day or by doing 20 sit-ups in the morning. Perhaps you could carry a water bottle with you (a re-usable one so you aren’t wasting money on disposable bottles) to make sure you are drinking more water and fewer empty calories from soda.

You can also eat healthier by cooking at home instead of heading out to the restaurants so often. This will save you money both on the food bill and on health-related issues. You can also control your portions better at home – many restaurants offer portions double what we actually need!

After a little while you may notice some great changes in your finances! The money you are saving on eating out less can be used to pay off debt or invest more. You may feel better physically and with more energy get more done around the house or even do a better job at work (that’s a good step towards a raise!). So go ahead and start setting those small goals to get your physical life on track so that you can meet your full potential financially!

 

Next week we’ll talk about the emotional part of our personal lives and how we can make some easy changes that impact our finances tremendously…

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