July 31, 2018
Ah money, a minefield for shame and guilt.
Whether it’s guilt from poor past financial moves or the fear of people finding out you’re a hot money mess, we’ve all got a few money skeletons in our closet. And it can affect every area of our lives, but especially our businesses where we are the ones in charge of the dollars going in and out. I’ve noticed that my clients tend to mainly have guilt around excess spending, not saving for taxes, and not keeping up with their financial records.
Let’s dig into each, release the shame guilt and learn how we can move forward.
You’ve got to spend money to make money. Ever heard that one?
I’m not here to tell you that investing in your business is a bad idea or to not have faith in yourself and your business. But there has to be a balance between giving it your all and giving it all your life savings. If you take a look at your financials and are shocked to see how much you’ve spent on your business, you’re not alone.
If this is bringing up feelings of shame and guilt for you take a second to breathe and let it go. Excess spending doesn’t say anything about who you are as a person. It’s just a choice that was made, at any point we can choose to make a different choice.
One of the things I help my clients do is dig into their numbers, analyze where their money is going, and discuss ways to cut back in key areas.
Action steps
If you’ve come into the entrepreneurial world from the corporate world it can be so easy to forget about taxes. When you work a corporate job the government gets its money before you ever even see your paycheck. When you work for yourself you’ve got to set the government’s money aside before you take your money home. Forgetting about saving for taxes usually leads to feelings of shame and guilt for not remembering or anger at the IRS for taking so much money.
First, let’s let go of the guilt of not taking care of this and appreciate that we get to be a participating member of a functioning society (despite how un-functioning it can appear at times). Next start setting money aside (in a separate bank account) to pay taxes before you pay yourself. You can learn how to calculate your paycheck here.
We can breathe a sigh of relief knowing tax time doesn’t have to be a scary mess.
I see this ALL the time. Every business owner knows they have to keep records, but it just keeps getting shoved to the bottom of the to-do list. It constantly hangs over your head, draining your mental energy. And the longer you let it go, the worse it gets until you finally throw up your hands and pass it off to someone else. Quite possibly handing a stuffed shoebox to your tax preparer and paying crazy rates for them to get it all sorted out for you. Yikes!
But I know you can do better.
You’ve got two options, you can either set yourself a schedule and chip away at it week by week, making the task less daunting. Or you can officially decide that bookkeeping is not something you want to deal with and hire someone to do it for you. Take it from one of my favorite clients, the joy of getting it off your plate is real.
“Can I just tell you what a relief it is to have FINALLY just hired you to do this for me for real?! Everyone should have a bookkeeper. #bliss”.
Forgive yourself for putting off record keeping in the past, decide today that you’re going to get caught up, and put systems in place to keep yourself caught up going forward.
You can absolutely do it!
You know bookkeeping is vital to the success of your business. Stop procrastinating and start getting it done with this simple checklist. You’ll get:
The things that have happened with your money in the past are just that, the past. Today is a new day, and you can make a new choice today. What a world of freedom that opens up.
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