“….as much as talent counts, effort counts twice”
— Angela Duckworth
Grit, we all have it. Sitting for national exam after exam, scoring high on our admission exams for professional school. Delayed gratification is our middle name, we eat it for breakfast. We take on more and more clinical responsibilities and say “thank-you, may I have another” without skipping a beat. We’ve seen more patients, finished more charts and signed more orders before some people get up for work. It’s easy for us to stick it out and get the job done. We do it all the time. We pride ourselves on working and with high acuity.
But do we give the same attention to one of the most important factors that will determine how we spend our not-so-distant futures, managing our money?
Through out my journey to F.I. I was actually dismayed to learn that a lot of us in our 40’s and maybe even in our 50’s still owe on student loans, don’t have 10 years of living expenses in our retirement accounts and most scary, don’t know where the money went out the door and to whom last month.
I have definitely had moments of “damn- I thought I paid that bill already”. How about the feeling of shock and amazement when you open up your credit card statement? “Was I drunk? Did I get scammed?”
Putting effort into our finances gets pushed to the back of a very long list. We just don’t have the time to deal with it or feel overwhelmed and give the responsibility to someone else such as a “financial professional”.
The theory of grit has changed the game in educating our children for the last several years. I think it’s an ingenious concept that can transform one’s outlook on personal finance.
A comforting realization about Angela Duckworth’s premise is that as in any skill, managing your money can be learned and with hard work and some perseverance you can become extremely good at it and yes, even a smashing success.
Grit especially speaks to me since all these factors describe a great healthcare professional. How can we extrapolate financial tools from having grit?
5 Factors of Grit
COURAGE
Only YOU will put your best interest first with your money. No financial professional, well-intentioned friend, family member or even your spouse should have total control or take on the responsibility for your money-management decisions. Make the time and effort to do what ever you need to do to feel more comfortable about this very important subject in your life.
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
Paying attention to detail has saved my ass on the “floor” more times than I can count. Who knew my participation in examining “near misses” for RCA’s (root cause analysis) in umpteen M & M’s would enhance and facilitate my finances? Umm, Angela Duckworth knew. Having diligence and paying attention to the details can put your financial goals into the stratosphere!
PERSEVERANCE & RESILIENCE
Your ability to successfully manage your money is directly proportional to your efforts, not intricate knowledge of money.
I incorporated true-grit into my finances by brut force. I paid off my student loans and purchased a house in a HCOL area at the same time. This meant NO fancy vacations for two years, no destination birthdays or weddings, extra call, living in a small apartment, putting the minimum away in retirement accounts (umph, this one hurt a lot) and putting every single dollar of my bonuses to debt! We put down 23% on our home which then got us a better interest rate.
The added benefit was way less stress for me because our monthly payments were well within our budget.
There’s always going to be an “at the same time”
When you are paying off debt, especially massive student loans, there’s always going to be an “at the same time”…. buying a house at the same time, doing a Fellowship at the same time, getting married at the same time, having a baby at the same time, and many many more.
You are a master at juggling anyway, this is no different. Suck it up buttercup (in my Doc Martin voice) and………just do it! If you mis-step like I did (keep reading), then just get back on the horse.
PASSION
I went no where and did nothing for about two years. I was a beast! It was literally like a fire sale, I did stupid things like carry credit card debt so that I could bust it on my monthly payments to my student loans.
All my doctor-friends asked us when were we going to buy a house or when will I get a new car?
I implemented any and every trick I learned through reading books and different Blogs, every dollar and “extra” cash I could find to pay off my student loans and save for a down payment on a house in a HCOL area.
After discovering that what I was doing was actually pursuing freedom through being financially independent, it became a game for me.
How much of a percentage (you know I like percentages) could I bring my debt down this month? When I re-entered the new balances on my favorite debt snowball website, I would do a happy dance (list to the right).
Seeing the “months-to pay off your loan” get shorter and shorter, sometimes even by 8 or 9 months was exhilarating! Ha, what a dopamine booster! If you’re interested in an on-line debt snowball tracker, I used powerpay.org
Just like Miss Piggy loves chocolate and Kermit equally- they are not always in balance.
I can’t go without mentioning the bad and the ugly of having a high grit factor with your finances. It’s not true grit unless you have some regrets, right? I won’t rehash all of them here but I’ll mention a few for completeness sake.
Eventually I realized I had no balance. We should have purchased a very cheap and lucrative rental property that fell into our laps, I missed weddings, babies being born, and countless celebrations that I regret.
Stupidly I carried credit card debt so I could pay more on my never-ending/enormous student loans. All in the name of saving for our future. Click here for more about delayed gratification biting me in my ass.
Suffice it to say, even with the missteps and the marathon-like aspect of getting my finances to the point of success was WORTH IT.
“Just never forget to be dextrous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left. And will you succeed? Yes! You will indeed!”
– Dr. Seuss
Ok, got to go……. DJ Spinna’s on Twitch
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