Are you ready to live a Richer Life?

What do I mean by a richer life?

Well, money has something to do with it. But we've all seen plenty of examples where money ≠ happiness. The celebrity divorces. The lottery winners that go bankrupt. The Scrooges of the world that cannot seem to find much joy in anything, other than hoarding money.

Yet, we can't deny that we live in a world that requires the use of money. As adults, we spend most of our waking hours at our job, where we trade our time, skills, and expertise in exchange for money. As a veterinarian, you know that your job also includes its fair share of blood, sweat, and tears. But your passion for your job doesn't mean that you need to feel broke.

Money & Wellness

There has been a lot of focus on self-care to combat compassion fatigue and burnout in veterinary medicine. But did you know that self-care also involves financial well-being?

Let’s face it: a good self-care program is more than a spa day after a long work week. Self-care means you care about your hard-earned money. You’ve worked way too hard to waste money by making bad financial decisions.

This Merck study shows a clear link between financial problems and overall wellness. It's no surprise that an increasing debt load upon graduation is having a negative effect on veterinary well-being. This debt makes you feel trapped and hopeless. It's really about feeling like you've lost control over your own money and your life.

How about you practice some self-care by taking charge of the money that you’re working so hard for? With basic financial education and literacy, it can be done.

You're a veterinarian and apparently you're supposed to be good with money.

Isn't it funny how society assumes that once you start working at your "real job" after graduation, you're supposed to be good with money? Apparently, you should know how to do the following:

How to pay back your student loans without going broke
How to budget
How to invest
How to use credit cards responsibly
How to save for retirement
How to buy the best insurance products
How to prepare financially for marriage and children
How to talk money with your significant other/spouse
How to choose a great financial advisor

This list could go on and on.

Expecting that we should just know how to be good with money is pure magical thinking.

It's like telling a child that they should know how to ride a bike because

a) you hand them a bike for their birthday, and

b) they happen to be 10 years old.

This sounds ridiculous, right?

Acknowledge the past, look to the future.

The reality is that very few of us learned how to be good with money. You learn this information just like you learn anything else- through your family, your friends, your past experiences, and society at large. If you're lucky, maybe you learned some of this through a formal educational setting.

You can't control the past. What's done is done. The story doesn't have to end here, because YOU can be the catalyst that turns this story around.

Change happens now.

Rather than continue to feel stressed and worried about your money, I hope that you can find the courage to forge ahead and commit to living a richer life.

The first step to living a richer life: Understand that YOU control your money, not the other way around.

The second step: Understand that money is a tool that you will use to provide peace and stability to your present and future life. The goal is not a massive net worth. The goal is to live the life you want, using money as a way to achieve your life goals.

The changes that you make can be small, little tweaks to what you're already doing. Or the changes you make may be truly life-altering. I'm convinced that even the smallest change can make a big difference.

What to expect

I know that numbers can be dry, and eyes tend to glaze over when you see a bunch of numbers and graphs on a screen. THIS IS NOT THAT KIND OF BLOG (whew!)!

To be fair, there will be some numbers and graphs. That's a given, considering that this blog focuses on personal finance. But I care a lot more about the behavioral aspect of finance. Why? Because changing your mindset about money is key if you want to make long-lasting changes.