Climb Your Prosperity Arc: Tiny Tweaks Big Rewards
Feeling stuck at the base of your financial beanstalk? Discover how small steps lead to prosperity!
TL;DR:
Feeling stuck at the base of your financial beanstalk? Taking small, consistent steps toward prosperity can lead to monumental growth. Learn how embracing discomfort, aligning investments with values, and taking intentional action can transform your financial and emotional abundance. Join the Spring Into Prosperity workshop to climb higher toward your goals.
Facing Financial Doubt: The March Mindset Shift
After February’s victories, , March feels like a pause at the base of a towering beanstalk—filled with both promise and doubt.
I imagine myself as Jack standing at the base of a beanstalk that reaches into the clouds.
How will I ever reach the top? What will I see when I get there? Is it safe? Am I better off staying where I am?
The only thing I know is if I never take a step, I'll never get there. The future may be uncertain, but staying where I am is no guarantee of safety.
Setting the beanstalk aside, what is it I really want?
I want to continue to watch my level of prosperity increase, and a major part of that is growing my business and my impact. Right now, both of those seem the size of beans in my hands.
Taking the First Step: Building Your Financial Emergency Fund
The funny thing is when I started to place my attention towards prosperity – with both financial and emotional elements – a couple years back, what I have now seems monumental compared to where I was then. I remember starting with a simple goal of having a thousand dollar emergency fund. I had my doubts about whether or not if I would ever reach that at-the-time lofty goal.
That emergency fund is several levels below where I am today.
But I have new lofty goals.
I began to invest in the stock market again. As I hovered over the 'Buy' button, a thousand questions raced through my mind—Is this the right step? What if I lose everything? But beneath the noise was a quiet knowing: I couldn’t climb the beanstalk by staying rooted to the ground.
As I’m learning reading Overcoming Underearning, part of the transformation away from underearning is to be willing to be uncomfortable. Climb the beanstalk!
I don’t know which is scarier: thinking I’ll always remain where I am, or how far I might fall if I were to reach the top.
In storytelling that’s why the refusal of the call – staying where you are – can be such a transformational part of the story. It’s the decision to take the first step into the unknown.
I believe a crucial part of making that transition is coming to grips with the parts of the story:
I may be where I am today, but that doesn’t mean I have to stay here.
Heading towards the top doesn’t mean I will fall to the bottom.
As a wise person once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
My journey from where I was financially a couple years ago, worrying how I could ever build an emergency fund of a thousand dollars, began with saving five dollars a day. Recently, my wife began building her own emergency fund with $2.50 a day. How much matters less than the direction and the consistency.
Progress is a Journey: From Limitation to Liberation
We can also look to other stories of gradual progress for perspective and inspiration. Consider the journey of women's financial rights: for decades, women faced systemic barriers in banking and credit. It wasn't until the landmark Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 that women gained the legal right to open credit cards, secure loans, and access financial services independently of their husbands. Just as women won the right to vote in 1919 after decades of suffrage, the path to financial equality has been a long and deliberate process of dismantling discriminatory practices.
Civil rights, women's rights, and queer rights have all followed similar trajectories—hard-won victories achieved through persistent advocacy, with each breakthrough building upon the last. And while significant progress has been made, we still have a distance to go. Each step forward, no matter how incremental, has expanded opportunities and challenged systemic inequalities.
If these steps were never taken, and retaken after setbacks, we wouldn't enjoy the prosperity and personal autonomy we do today.
Aligning Investments with Values: The DEI ETF Choice
I kept much of this in mind, last week, when I finally took the money I have had parked in my Roth IRA in a money market and invested it in ETFs, both stocks and bonds.
It involved risk, and a degree of uncertainty. And to be honest, I realized I had made a mistake right after I completed the trade. One of the primary funds I invested in had companies, like Tesla and Meta, in its top 10 holdings. That doesn’t align with my values. Even if the possible financial returns were greater than I might have them elsewhere, those companies don’t represent the future I want be investing in.
By pivoting to a DEI ETF, I took a step higher up the beanstalk—aligning my financial choices with my values. It was a reminder that even if the climb is uncertain, each step can reflect who I truly am.
It was a small correction – a $7 loss – not a major fall.
The arc of prosperity can seem both insignificant in the present moment and precipitous over time, but by managing our journey and our story, we can enjoy greater freedom and prosperity.
Join the Journey: Spring Into Prosperity Workshop
If you’re ready to take your first step up your own beanstalk of prosperity, join me at the Spring Into Prosperity workshop on March 21st. Let’s climb together—one step, one story, one act of courage at a time.
Join me at the Spring Into Prosperity workshop!
What’s the first step you’re taking to climb your own beanstalk of prosperity?
If this story resonates with you, share it with someone who’s ready to climb their own financial beanstalk!