Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

And Neither Are My Good Habits

For anyone who has been reading along, you know that I’ve been on a bit of a journey with habits from 75 Hard to daily writing to simply trying to have some sustainable healthy habits.

I’m not very good with money. I don’t have a gambling problem or a big spending problem. In fact, I think if you were a fly on my wall, you’d probably wish I spent a little more on furniture and decor. Or if you were a fly on my mirror, you might think I should spend more on my own self care & maintenance, more than an annual haircut for instance. But even so, no matter how much I’m earning, money seems to buzz in and out just like those judgmental flies on my wall. I don’t have a natural command of it. It somehow takes command of me.

So the newest thing in my trying-to-be-a-better-human-habit-improvement-experiments, I’m paying more attention to money. I’ve listened to countless episodes of I Will Teach You to Be Rich and read the book. I’ve gone in and out of tracking my expenses with YNAB. I’ve read books like Everyday Millionaires and listened to podcasts like Your First Million, so you might even think that I’m obsessed with wealth or making it rain. But truthfully I think my fear or distaste for lots of money is part of my problem.

In college, I was ashamed of my privilege, while so many people around the world live on less than $2 a day and don’t have the luxury to dream about what their perfect career futures looked like. Katie and I would stay up all night over a bottle of wine dreaming about opening a cafe/ wine tasting bar/ art gallery/ music venue, but I would begin to ask, but what makes us so special that we think we can do that? I would get side tracked and bogged down with the overwhelming burden of having the luxury to dream.

And even though I’m an entrepreneur, I have never charged enough for our services, always shy to receive payment for what our work is really worth. I don’t have an attachment to money and I have an unrealistic faith that things will just work out, so I’ve spent more than I should on coworking spaces I didn’t need, and lunches for our team because to me spending money on them was the most important way to spend money. For many years, I basically ran my social enterprise like a non-profit, under the assumption that you have to spend money to make money (but then forgot about that second part of the adage).

I’m getting better at it, though. The book The Founder’s Dilemma helped me to understand that if I wanted to grow my social mission, I needn’t be afraid to grow financially. I learned how to sell. Over the past few years, I was able to get clients from cold sales tactics for the first time instead of relying on referrals. And I’m getting better at watching where my money goes. Because I have no real attachment to it, I don’t pay attention to how often we eat out or if I spend too much at the grocery store, but I’m using YNAB now to see where it all goes.

If you’ve followed along on Instagram, you’ll notice that Leo is along for my financial literacy education as well. I wasn’t sure how much of this would be over his head, but I figured creating a craft product we could sell would be a fun thing to do together anyway. So we launched a tiny business. I thought about who our market could be - friends and family. How we would sell - social media. What they might buy - something useful and cute. What could we make/sell with little to no investment - recycled paper goods. Leo’s Paper Store was born.

He is trying to buy a batman robot toy worth $90 or $97.43 with tax. I invested $42 worth of equipment as seed money for his startup, which I’m still debating if I’ll ever claw back. Our cost of materials is $0, so the only thing that will come out of his profit is shipping costs. He’s learning (I hope) that work takes time and the things you want in life are accessible with work. I hope he’s also learning that you can easily make something out of nothing if you’re willing to be creative and get your hands dirty.

My mother-in-law offered that he should ask for the money as a loan to pay it back over time, and my brother offered to buy all of his paper so I could just buy the kid the damn toy. But none of that is the point. I know I’m overcompensating for my own fears and insecurities about money, but I don’t want Leo to have any of that. I want him to understand the value of a dollar - what it can buy and what it takes to earn it. I want him to understand that it has energy. That there are many tiny transactions that happen even before the final purchase of the the thing you want, and every step of that process matters. And I want him to find joy in creating things and inventing something new. But even when it doesn’t bring joy, the work still has to get done.

Friends and family have been so supportive of this tiny venture, that he’s already made enough to buy his robot thing and some shark car thing!

Another concept I’m learning about money is to give every dollar a job, to save for the future, save for short term goals, and have money for spending so I don’t feel suffocated by a budget. So for Leo, I’m teaching him to split up his allowance and his earnings into saving, spending, and donations and it’s been interesting to watch how he’s started to think about how his “spending” money can also be for his savings, to buy the bigger stuff he really wants. He doesn’t really understand how much $5 is and how splitting it up affects his financial situation, but he’s enjoying the process of coloring in a thermometer we made to measure how close he is to his toy.

I started writing this blog 2 weeks ago after buying myself a fancy pastry, which goes against my money-saving and health goals. The truth is that this is all a process. I’m learning and I’m taking Leo along for the ride. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are our good habits, but one piece of handmade paper at a time, we’re learning the value of hard work, while trying to have a little fun with it!

Want some paper? Reach out!