Reason Your Way to Better Personal Finances

Financial anxiety is common, but avoidance is not the answer. As a young lawyer, you have the skills to assess and address your financial situation. Don’t let your paycheck fool you: a large income does not mean more spending, and a small income does not mean decades of debt.

Taking Control of Your Finances Is as Simple as Applying IRAC to an Exam Question

With the rise of credit cards and automated banking, we’ve lost the tangible sensation of losing money, making it much easier to outspend your income. An essential component of behavioral change is turning the abstract concrete, making it feel real and controllable. By doing so, you will understand the magnitude and direction of your spot on the issues, analyze your situation, and select the appropriate budget model. Consider the following questions.

What Is Your Financial Fact Pattern?

Two exercises will help to establish your full financial fact pattern.

1. Create a conceptual map or a series of columns with the suggested major groups: income, savings, housing, utilities, food, transportation, insurance, debt, education, personal, people, and fun. Branch into more specific sub-themes as appropriate.
2. Research your financial accounts for the previous six months. Pull your bank, credit card, and income statements and assign each credit and debit to a subtheme.

Whether you do these activities concurrently or sequentially, melded or separate, you should do both thoroughly.

What Are the Financial Issues You Seek to Solve?

With the facts now in front of you, start spotting the issues. Beyond concretizing, an important but often overlooked financial issue is your emotions. Money is often associated with negative emotions like fear, guilt, shame, envy, and embarrassment. Furthermore, individuals who experience high stress tend to spend money excessively. If your financial situation is a source of anxiety, critically analyze your fact pattern as a reasonable third party. What trends are apparent? What worries you the most?

Consider the key parties, including yourself. Assign “liability” for the income and expenses: where is the money going and why? What events triggered expenditures? Every identified issue is an opportunity to improve your financial outlook. Prioritize the issues you’ve written down and focus on one to start.

What Financial Rules Apply?

Clearly state the rules limiting your financial control and contributing to your spending. Formal obligations include minimum monthly payment amounts, late fees, and interest rates, while informal financial expectations are contributions to family, civic organizations, or faith tithes.

What implicit social expectations affect you financially? Are you in a practice area where the appearance of wealth is important? Does driving between multiple courts increase your car expenses? Financial peer pressure, masked as the “cost of doing business,” can quickly balloon expenses.

What Is the Analysis of Your Financial Situation?

Thus far, you’ve connected the facts to the issues and controlling rules. Your next goal is to research the advantages of different budgeting models like:

• 50%30%20%
• zero-based
• cash-only
• snowball
• traditional
• reverse or pay-yourself-first
• values-based
• continuous
• priorities-based budgeting

These techniques can help you decrease spending, repay debt, or increase savings. However, the elements of each budget style vary greatly. Some styles are highly time- and effort-intensive, while others are simple divisions of cost. Are you looking to change some bad habits or your whole lifestyle? Your analysis should match your financial reality with future goals.

What Is Your Budget Conclusion?

State your budget conclusion for each issue. There is no right or wrong answer.

If the issue is unnecessary expenses, evidenced by multiple late fees and high interest under the credit card policy, you may conclude that priority-based budgeting is ideal. On the other hand, snowball budgeting may be best if the issue includes multiple credit card balances.

Perhaps you’re anxious about anemic savings and no rainy-day fund. If the facts indicate multiple video streaming services and frequent dinners out, you may choose the 50%/30%/20% or the pay-yourself-first model to prioritize your savings before spending.

Do You Manage Your Money, or Does Your Money Manage You?

Financial self-awareness is an iterative and recursive process that takes time and revision. Start with one issue, but invest in the process as you reframe your thinking. You’re not cutting out fun; you’re behaving smarter as you spend, save, borrow, and plan your financial well-being.