9 Signs You're Winning With Money (Even If It Doesn't Feel Like It)

Signs you're winning with money even if it doesn't feel like it. Here's what I want to challenge you with today. The idea that winning with money is about a balance sheet, about a net worth statement. Because I've sat with people who have had really impressive numbers and were horribly miserable. And I've sat with people who had, yeah, they were still starting to, to build, or they built something that was, that was good but not like astronomical. But they had genuine peace. See, the difference wasn't, difference wasn't the balance, it was the bandwidth. And today I'm gonna walk you through the 9 signs that you're actually winning, including some things that maybe you hadn't thought about. So this is Building Your Money Machine, where we help you master your money, eliminate financial stress so you can live a life of choice. Because earning more doesn't make you free, a money machine does. And I'm your host, Mel Abraham. And after 30+ years as a CPA, an an entrepreneur, a money mentor, and someone who's literally walked this path to financial freedom from nothing to something, then broke it and had to rebuild it again, I've seen what works. And it's not about bigger numbers, it's about bigger and better choices. So if you're ready to see how you're winning the game, let's do this. Signs you're winning with money, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. Let me start with something that I haven't talked about much. I maybe was 5 years old and I remember lying in a bed at night listening to my parents argue in the kitchen. And it wasn't loud. It was that low, tight kind of argument, that kind where nobody's really yelling, but the whole house feels this heaviness. And at 5 years old, I got out of bed and I didn't understand numbers. I didn't know what a bill was. I didn't understand what debt meant, but I understood a feeling, something invisible that lived in that house and seemed to be running everything. And I hear— I remember hearing my dad in tears, this tower of power, for the first time seeing him crying, saying, "We can't afford that." And saying, I feel like I'm working so hard to take care of the people I love, but I'm still letting them down. That feeling right there, that's what financial stress actually does to a life. It doesn't just affect the bank account. It takes up space. It takes up mental space. It takes up emotional space. It gets inside your relationships, your decisions, your sleep. It's steals your ability to be fully present in your own life. And here's a number that stopped me cold. Researchers have found that employees dealing with financial stress will spend somewhere between 7 and 14 hours every single month mentally checked out, distracted by personal money issues when they should be somewhere else entirely, when they should be focused on productivity and work. That's nearly two full workdays a month where your brain isn't where your life is. And that's just at work. Imagine what it costs at the dinner table, at your kid's game, in bed at 2 AM when the math starts running on its own. Now flip that. What happens when the pressure lifts? What happens when money stops being the loudest voice in the room? You get those hours back. You get your brain back. You get your life back. You get your emotion back. That's what we're really talking about today. See, I'm going to walk you through the 9 signs that you're actually winning at money, even if it doesn't feel right now. But because here's the thing, some of these you've probably heard before, but some of you might have just checked it off without giving yourself credit for it. But a few of them, I promise you, you've never seen on a list like this. And those might be the ones that shift how you see where you actually are. So grab something to write with. Let's keep score. Let's go. All right. Sign number 1, you can actually handle an unexpected expense without your nervous system catching on fire. Okay, this is huge. Bankrate recently looked at an annual emergency savings report and they said 59% of Americans can't cover a $1,000 unexpected expense from savings. In other words, they didn't have that put away. It's one of the reasons we say we want a comfort fund. See, more than, more than half the country would have to reach for a credit card just to cover a single surprise. If you've got even a couple thousand dollars sitting in a savings account right now, you're already ahead of the majority. See, the standard guidance is 3 to 6 months of expenses. Now, I've always pushed my clients— that's the standard guidance for an emergency fund, but I always push my clients to go further. I want you to have 9 to 18 months in a high-yield savings account because that truly gives you peace of mind. Job loss, medical situation, something. That gives you a bigger runway to deal with. And this isn't about growth. This isn't about investing. This is about protection and peace of mind. And I, I get it. So that's the thing that I think we need to really start to understand because that cushion actually buys you not just financial safety, it buys you time. It buys you options. You're not making desperate decisions from a desperate place. See, there's a version of financial stress that doesn't announce itself loudly, and it runs in the background like a tab you forgot to close. And that mental math at the grocery store, that stomach thing before you open a bank notification— every single time, same thing. See, scientists call it cognitive bandwidth, the mental capacity available for everything that actually matters. Your work, your relationships, your presence with the people you love. See, when you have a real cushion, that tab closes, that noise quiets. The sign isn't just that you can cover the expense. The sign is that your first reaction is, dang it, I hate this, but I'm okay. Not the scramble, not the panic. That reaction means money has stopped stealing from your attention and the bandwidth you get back, that belongs to your life now. All right, sign number 2, debt isn't making your decisions for you. The number to know is your debt-to-income ratio. See, we live in a payment society and all those monthly debt payments divided by your monthly income That's your, that's your debt-to-income ratio. And the higher it goes, the more pressure you're under. So under 36%, you're in a financially fit zone. So take a look at your debt payments compared to your income. What, where are you as a percentage? When you're 36% or below, the debt is being used by you. It's a tool and not a trap. But the average American, you know, they're carrying a credit card balance that that's right around $8,000 at 20-plus percent interest. That's nearly $16,000 by the time they actually pay it off. And when you look at the data right now, the total U.S. consumer debt right now just crossed $18.5 trillion. That's with a T dollars. Okay. If you spent $1 million every single day, it would take you almost 3,000 years to spend a trillion. That's the math on it. That is generational wealth transfer that is happening in the wrong direction. So if your debt is under 36% and you're paying your cards off in full every month and— or most months at least, you're above average. But more importantly, when debt isn't running the show, it stops showing up uninvited in every decision you try to make. So you're not going to be saying things like, I'd love to, but— see, that but is what I want to get rid of. The sign you're winning is that your debt isn't the first voice you hear when an opportunity shows up. All right, sign number 3: you're not living in the gap between paychecks. Here's a scary stat: roughly 2/3 of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck right now. And 44% of people that earn over $100,000 a year, 6 figures a year, are in the exact same position. More income, bigger lifestyle, same anxiety. So it's not an income issue. See, the question isn't how much you make, it's the relationship between what's coming in and what's going out. And if you're sitting there and ever sat there on a Thursday and payday is on Friday and you're refreshing your bank app and you're sitting there going, I'm just waiting. For that text to come in that lets you know that your deposit hit or the bill hit and you didn't make it because the gap was too big. See, I say this, I say it with love, but, and zero judgment because I want you to know how to get this dialed in. And if you don't, then it's a struggle and it is pressure on you and It's there every day. Listen, even a month or two of expenses as a buffer changes your entire psychological game. You see, you stop making reactive decisions. You stop saying yes out of desperation or no out of desperation. See, I remember when I went through a really challenging financial season in my my life early on, small things became big things faster. Not because I was different, but because I was tired. In our relationship, in everything, I was stressed. And that financial noise, that emotional weight that was on me was part of all of the things that were making me tired. But it infected everything else. So the sign isn't just a buffer in the bank. It's your ability to make decisions from choice instead of crisis. And that's a fundamentally different life when you get there. All right. Sign number 4, you spend money and actually feel good about it. See, I remember when I used to spend money and go, "Oh God, how am I gonna get this paid for?" I put it on a credit card. And this one is one of the ones I promised you because it's one of the ones that you haven't seen on a list like this. This. Every single signs you're winning money kind of video you've ever watched have been talking about savings accumulating and not spending. Here's what nobody says. A genuine sign that you're winning with money is that when you spend it, you feel excited. You're present. There's no tension. You're not terrified. You're not guilty. You're not like you need to run the calculations in the parking lot on the way out. That you're good with it. Think about the last significant purchase you made. What happened? Were you stressed? What happened in your body in the moment that you said yes to it? Was there guilt? Was there questioning? See, for a lot of people, even people who can absolutely afford the thing, the moment they buy it, there's this second voice that just shows up and immediately says, "Should I have done that? Was that way too much?" Okay. What if something comes up? See, that's not wealth. That's financial anxiety wearing a receipt. Okay. I've watched people drive a brand new car off the lot, looking like they just made a catastrophic mistake on a game show, sweating, silent, calculating. And here's the thing. They're driving this beautiful car that maybe they earned it. Hopefully they purchased it the right way based on what we tell them, but, and they can absolutely afford it. Maybe they're, they're in that kind of realm, but the joy was gone. If we can't spend in alignment with our values and have joy out of it, why are we doing it? And it was replaced with this guilt math. That's not winning. That, that's penalizing yourself for buying something that you feel like you earned and you planned for. See, when your financial foundation is solid, when you know the numbers, when you're spending a dollar based on a plan, then it was already spent because it was already in the plan. The purchase feels completely different. There's no guilt. There's no shame. There's no stress. You're actually present for it and you experience the thing that you bought. I remember the first vacation that Stephanie and I took. We weren't doing the math because it already was in the plan. And it was Italy. We love Italy. And we did the Italy trip like to the nines. And whether it was first-class tickets, we weren't running scenarios. We weren't calculating. We were present in the moment with each other. With the time, with the moments there in Italy. It wasn't a money moment anymore. It was a memory moment. And that's the thing that I want for you, because those memory moments stacked up. That's the legacy. That's your life. And it was made possible because I got the money stuff right. And that's the difference. So here's where it goes even deeper. When you start to understand this, when your financial foundation is right, You stop making decisions from fear altogether. The vacation you booked because you genuinely want to go on it, not because you're scared you'll never afford one. The career move that you make because it's right, not because you're terrified of losing income. Think about the last truly significant decision in your life. Were you moving towards something you wanted or running away from something you feared? Because financial pressure, it doesn't just affect your spending. It gets into every decision and it colors everything you see. See, the sign you're winning isn't that you've stopped spending. It's that when you spend, you're fully there for it. And when you decide, you're deciding from clarity instead of fear. That's the game. All right, sign number 5, you've had a financial conversation you used to avoid. This is a sign that nobody ever puts on a list ever, but this is a sign of financial maturity. See, because financial avoidance shows up in ways that we don't always recognize as avoidance. The bank statements are piling up unopened. The conversation with your partner about money that keeps getting rescheduled. The retirement account you set up years ago and haven't logged in since because you're not sure what you don't know or what you want to know. Maybe it's the budget you started 4 times but abandoned each time about, I don't know, week 3 when things didn't, didn't feel good. Okay. See, I'm a CPA, 30-plus years in finance, and, and I will tell you with complete professional kind of credibility, authority, and experience that some of the most financially avoidant people I have ever met in my life have accounting degrees. I mean, they're my colleagues. Zero judgment here, but we are deeply avoidant species when it comes to money, especially when we suspect the news might not be great. When you avoid looking at your finances, your brain fills in the blank. It's almost always filled in with the worst possible number, the worst possible fear. The fear of what you might see is almost always worse than what actually is there, but it lives rent-free in your head, in your heart, and it's taking up bandwidth that you could be spending on literally anything else, life and living, to really make it happen. See, the sign you're winning here is that you've actually looked, that you've actually had the conversation with yourself, with your spouse, with someone. You've opened the account, you've opened the envelope even once. That's real financial progress, not some spreadsheet that you're going to try and capture it in. Because the moment you stop avoiding, you stop being controlled by the fear of the unknown. And that's a form of financial freedom that happens before you ever change a single number. All right, so let's go to sign number 6. You're actually in the investing game. Listen, 54% of Americans have a retirement account, but not maxed out, not optimized. They just opened it with something going into it. So they're putting something in it. And, and roughly only 62%, 60% of them own any kind of stocks whatsoever. So what that means is this, nearly half the country is on the sidelines while inflation is just quietly eroding their purchasing power every single year. You cannot, you cannot win the wealth game in the stands or the sidelines. You have to be on the field playing the game. If you have a retirement account, a brokerage account, or anything with money moving into it consistently, you're ahead of the majority of the people that are in the game. But more importantly, if you put it in and start getting it to work for you in ETFs and index funds, man, you just stepped up even more. See, you don't need to be watching financial news at 6:00 AM to, to pick stocks or, or base it on what some guy in an expensive suit is saying. You're not about there to trade things and do day trades and all that stuff. I simply want you to invest in a boring way, a diversified strategy of index funds, ETFs, 3, 4, maybe 5 funds max. Keep it boring. And the beautiful part is time will do the work. Profitably, wonderfully boring. That's it. The data shows it. And so you're not going to be sitting on the sidelines. You don't have to make a lot of decisions. And if you're concerned about, I don't know which ETFs and which index funds, then the easiest way to start is to just pick a target date index fund. You have to make one decision. What's the date, the year that you're going to need the money? If you need the money, you're going to retire in, say, 2055, you buy a 2055 fund. That's it. And then you just decide how much you're going to put in and you do it automatically. And so you're not worried about it, but you're in the game. This sign you're winning isn't just that the account exists, it's that You've built enough conviction in your plan and your process that when the market does what it completely is meant to do, up and down, up and down, you stay the course. You're always investing. You're always maxing out your retirement and doing the things that we say to do, 20 to 25% of your income. That's the difference between an investing account and an anxiety account. That's how, how I look at it. It's time for you to make sure that you get yourself in the game and do it as simple and as boring as possible. But then you're in the game and the, and the game is being played by you, not on you. That's the win here. All right. So now that leads to sign number 7. You make financial decisions from a place of choice and not from fear. This one I really want you to sit with. The quality of your financial life is not just measured by how much you have. It's measured by why you make the moves you make. Two people can have the exact same net worth, the exact same income, the exact same accounts, and one of them is winning and one of them is not, because the one that's making every decision from a place of clarity and intention and choice is the one that's winning. And the other one who's running from fear every single day, making decisions out of fear and desperation, they're losing. See, fear-based financial decisions are everywhere, and most people don't even recognize them when they see— when they're making them. And the marketing uses fear to sell to us every single day. It could look like staying in a job that you've outgrown because the paycheck just feels safe. It could be keeping money in cash because the market feels scary. It's been a little volatile lately, even though the inflation is eating you alive. It could be saying no to an investment that aligns completely with your vision, with your plan, because the what-ifs are way louder in your head than your why. Overspending on things that don't actually— that you don't actually want, but because of temptation, because of scarcity, because of the marketing messages that make you feel like, oh my, this might be your only chance, and you make a decision. See, every single one of those are fear-based financial decisions, and every single one of them is costing you something. And here's how you know. Ask yourself, am I excited about this, or am I just terrified of what happens if I don't do it? Because those two feelings can look identical from the outside. Both involve action, both involve urgency, but one of them is building your future and one of them is just running from your past. Very different outcomes, very different lives, and very different feelings. See, I made fear-based financial decisions for years without recognizing them as fear. I took clients on that I shouldn't have taken on because I was afraid of the gap in my income. I stayed in situations longer than I should have because the known enemy was safer than the unknown. And every single time that I decided from fear instead of from a vision, from clarity, from choice, it cost me. Not just financially, it cost me time, it cost me energy, it cost me emotion. It cost me life and the version of my life that I could have had, you know, had I just been building instead. And it wasn't until I got the clarity, I had a process, I had a system that I was going to start building a financial foundation to support getting there my way, that my decisions finally changed because my identity changed and it changed my character and everything changed with it. See, the sign you're winning isn't that you always make perfect decisions, because trust me, I don't. It's that your decisions are increasingly coming from a place of, "I want this for my life," instead of, "I'm scared of what could happen if I don't." When the fear quiets down, your real voice gets louder, and that voice knows exactly what you want. And that leads me to sign number 8: you actually are sleeping at night. Not metaphorically, but literally. Financial stress is one of the leading drivers of sleep problems. Health and sleep problems will lead to health deterioration and relationship breakdown. It's— it all ties together. And if we don't rid ourselves of that financial stress, there's a parade of effects that get into play. See, consistently one of the top causes of divorce is financial because the sustained financial pressure creates this low-grade state of threat that is on your nervous system. And it's not designed to live with indefinitely. I mean, we have financial stress, but if it's constant, that's where the problem is. When I, when I found out that I had cancer, one of the first things I did was to sit with my estate attorney. I went through the trust. We rewrote it. We updated everything. We made sure that Stephanie was protected. We made sure that my son, my brother, my wife, my granddaughters, my— everyone was protected, that the causes I cared about were all covered and in place. And when I walked out of that office, trust me, I was still scared because of the cancer. I didn't know what I was facing. But I wasn't scared financially. And more importantly, I could look Stephanie in the eye and say, "You're good." The people I loved, I could say, "You're good." And I could fight the cancer battle with peace of mind, knowing that the things that I cared about, the people I cared about, were taken care of. Because that one layer of fear was gone. And every bit of bandwidth I had left could go towards the healing, towards the presence, towards the fight. Towards the people I love. See, real wealth is peace of mind, not some motivational poster, not some fast car or luxury, but a description of what financial freedom actually does to your nervous system or your capacity to show up in your life is freedom. See, the sign that you're winning with money is that not that nothing ever goes wrong, But it is that when something goes wrong, money isn't the thing that makes it a catastrophic event. That's the game. And then sign number 9, you actually know your number. And this is one I want to, want to close on because it is one of the most underrated signs on the list. And I made this mistake. It's almost never talked about. Most people don't know where they're at. They don't know your net worth. They don't know their account balance. The question isn't the net worth or the account balance. The question is, what's your freedom number? That specific number that your money needs to generate, the money machine needs to generate, so your life is fully funded without trading time. So you get to live a life of choice. See, to me, retirement isn't a date. It isn't an age. It's a point in life where you transition from a life that's based on demands and expenses to a life that's based on choice. See, and that freedom number tells you exactly what the trajectory is, what the goal is for the life that you genuinely want to live. And that's exactly why in my book, in my trainings, in my work, we start with life first. We figure out what the vision is for our life, and then we put a price tag on it and we start marching towards that. Otherwise, we're marching towards a number that doesn't matter. And we keep moving the number because we never defined what our enough line is. See, most people don't even have a vague idea of what that number is. And that vague idea of not having it becomes an anxiety for them because you don't have a clear target, which means that you don't know if you've crossed the finish line, it's way behind you, it's way in front of you, or what else you need to do because it's never gonna be enough because you never defined it. Not yet, not sure. Imagine trying to run a race where nobody tells you where the finish line is. You don't know if it's a mile, a 10-mile, an ultra marathon, or a sprint. You just keep running exhausted, wondering if you're close, wondering if you're already behind. And that is a miserable way to run a race. And absolutely, it's a miserable way to build wealth. So that's the game I want you to play. Now, there is a tool that I have that will help you with trying to figure this number out, at least get a ballpark. It's, it's my Freedom Number Calculator. You can go to melabraham.com/number to get it. It'll help you kind of calculate at least so you know, and you have some trajectory. Because I remember the first time that I calculated mine with real clarity. I had this enormously vague number in my head that felt like it was paralyzing. And then I did the math and I remember thinking, oh, that's it. This is real. And something I can actually, actually work towards. All of a sudden the anxiety, you know, that was there, it didn't disappear completely, but it changed its character. It shifted from dread to direction. And that's the thing that I want for you because that single shift changed how I made every financial decision after that. See, there's a profound difference between I don't have enough and I know exactly where I'm going and I'm building toward it every single day. The first one is noise. The second one is a plan. And the moment you have a plan, the financial pressure changes, the emotional load lightens, the decision noise quiets. And you start to get your bandwidth back in ways that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with life. Okay, 9 signs. Some familiar— check your emergency fund, look at your debt ratio, get in the investing game. Those numbers matter. But some of them may be different— whether you actually enjoy your spending and you feel present for it, that you're there, whether you had the conversation that you keep putting off. Whether your decisions are coming from choice, clarity, or fear. Those are the games I want you to play. See, the goal of getting your finances right is not the numbers. The numbers, they're just the mechanism. The goal is your life fully present, fully expressed, not quietly constrained by finances, by financial noise stealing your attention, your joy, your capacity. To show up for the people that actually matter. That's the game. And so you deserve more of that. And if you follow the process, you'll get it. How many of these 9 signs are true for you right now? You can get a chance to look at it and start to score yourself, not in judgment, but in awareness. Let me know which one hits you the most. Drop, drop it in the comments. Send me a DM. And if you've got 4 or 5 of these, you know that you're already better than most. Let's relieve the pressure. Let's move into the presence. If you got all 9, you've done some real work and I wanna celebrate you. I wanna know. And if there's gaps, that's okay. That's not a verdict. That's just the awareness. That's the starting point for you to start to look at what do I need to do? Because remember, it's not about the money. The money was never the goal. It's what the life is that the money can build. That's the goal. Because earning more doesn't make you free. The money machine does. So I hope that you start to look at this and say, hey, you know what? Maybe I'm not as bad as I thought. And be a little softer on yourself, a little more directed with your money, because not only do you deserve it, your life deserves it, your legacy deserves it. All right. I hope that this helps. I hope that you found this valuable, and I can't wait to hear what you think. Send me a comment, send me a DM, and let's have a conversation. While you're at it, hit the subscribe button and give me a thumbs up. YouTube and the algorithm likes it, and it warms my heart too. All right, until I get a chance to see you in the next one or on your path to financial freedom, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. See you in the next one. Cheers for now.