Music Mondays - Physical
Let's Get Physical!
Physical is an Olivia Newton John song that has numerous sexual overtones; however, thanks to her ultimate 80’s cheese video released with the song (which you can watch below for a good laugh and lots of banana hammock action), every time I hear the song I think about working out.Many of you know that I gained a bunch of weight around the time I had my son and then needed to lose over 50 pounds to get to a healthy weight for my body type. I have also shared here, that I continue to struggle with my weight and have to work hard to keep myself in check or I can easily get back to that chubby version of myself that I don’t want to see again.
When I feel off-track, getting physical gets me right back
When I feel myself getting off course with my weight, it’s usually because I am not working out enough. I am not getting physical enough. We all get busy with life, family and friends; and for me when times get busy I forgo the workout. I justify dropping the workout because of time constraints, which may help my work productivity; however, it has a negative impact on my physical appearance.Many of us set work out goals for ourselves because we understand the importance of working out to help us maintain our physical health. Even if we do not always achieve our workout goal, we know that the time spent getting physical has a positive end result on our bodies.
What amazes me, though, is how people don’t make this connection with money.
Do you get physical?
Most of my clients, before we started working together, spent very little time thinking about their money or doing exercises to help them hone their money skills. In my book, Train Your Way To Financial Fitness, I shared a number of financial exercises for people to try because most people don’t even know what exercises they should be doing to help them get their finances in shape.I know that I could do sit ups, or run or lift weights to get my body in shape, but I didn’t always know what I could do to get my bank account in shape. However, even if you didn’t have my book and still didn’t know what to do, one of the first steps to getting your finances in shape is to actually schedule time for them.
Schedule physical time for your money
Most of us set a goal of 3-5 days of working out, how much time do we set as a goal for spending time with our money? Just like my butt won’t get smaller if I don’t do squats, your debt won’t get smaller if you don’t take the time to look at it and make a plan for it.
Most of us spend more time planning vacations than we do planning for retirement.
Think about a typical week or month in your life and try to calculate how much time you spend on your money and your financial health? If it is less than an hour, my guess would be that you have money troubles and can’t figure out why. Your financial health is like anything else in your life, the more time you devote to it, the stronger it will get, and when you neglect it, your financial health will deteriorate.
Here's How to Get Physical
So let’s stop neglecting our money and start getting physical with it. When you set other goals for yourself, make sure you set a goal for time spent on working on your financial health. Things that you can do during this time include:
- Building a budget
- Tracking your expenses
- Researching investment ideas
- Reading personal finance blogs
- Monitoring your credit
- Reviewing your student loans
The more physical you get with your body, the more in shape it will get and the more physical you get with your finances, the healthier they will become as well.Image Source: FreeDigitalPhotos.Net Naypong