A Letter from La’Toya
Have you ever made a perfectly good money decision and then talked yourself out of it before you got up from the chair?
You decide you’re going to look at your bank account tonight. Or call about that bill. Or move a little into savings on Friday. It’s a sound decision. You know it is. Nobody has to convince you.
Then the negotiation starts.
I’ll do it tomorrow.I’m too tired to deal with that right now.Once things settle down.One more purchase isn’t going to make a difference.
What strikes me is that nobody else is in the room for this conversation. From the outside, it looks like nothing happened. On the inside, a whole meeting took place, the motion was debated, and the motion failed.
There’s a saying I come back to for moments like this: “Can’t nobody tell the kid what to do. Not even the kid.”
We laugh, but it’s true. Some of the hardest pushback we ever get comes from ourselves.
I know this one personally. There was a deck that needed to be stained. It would have cost less than $1,000, one time, and I knew it needed to be done. But it never felt urgent, so I kept putting it off.
By the time I dealt with it, staining wasn’t an option anymore. We had to tear the whole deck down and rebuild it. That cost $12,500.
The task didn’t go away while I was negotiating with myself. It just got more expensive.
The Root of It
The easy explanation is that people who don’t follow through are lazy or “bad with money.” I don’t accept that, and I hope you won’t either. The pause between knowing and doing almost always has a reason, and the reasons aren’t all the same.
Sometimes it’s fear of what you’ll find. If you don’t open the statement, the number can’t hurt you yet.
Sometimes it’s overwhelm. The problem feels so big that there’s no obvious place to start, so you don’t start.
Sometimes it’s familiarity. You’re repeating a pattern you watched growing up, or one that kept you safe at some earlier point in your life, even though it isn’t serving you now.
Sometimes it’s competing priorities. The car, the kids, the job, and everything else are all asking for the same limited time and energy.
And sometimes it’s real limitation. If the money truly isn’t there, no amount of motivation will produce it, and you shouldn’t be made to feel like a failure because of that.
These situations need different responses, which is why the first step is honesty, not pressure. Before asking why won’t I just do it?, ask what is actually going on here?
Some of the answers live underneath the surface: the beliefs, the history, and the feelings that shape your choices before you’re even aware of them. Paying attention to that layer is what I call Financial Healing.
Other answers are practical. How the account works. What your options are. What happens if you wait, and what happens if you don’t. (Ask my deck.) Understanding that layer is Financial Knowledge.
Most of the time, it’s both. Say you’ve been avoiding a credit card balance. Part of the avoidance might be shame about how it got there. Part might be that nobody ever explained how the interest actually builds, or what your options are for paying it down. If you only get the knowledge, you can know every step and still freeze. If you only get the healing, you can understand why you’ve been avoiding it and still not know what to do once you look. Real change tends to happen when both are present.
Practical Blueprint
The longer the internal meeting runs, the more likely the motion fails. So the goal isn’t to win the argument with yourself. It’s to cut the meeting short.
Here’s what I’d offer: when you notice yourself negotiating, make the smallest reasonable first move.
Don’t try to solve the whole thing. Don’t make a plan. Just do the first step.
Open the statement. You don’t have to pay it yet. Log into the account. You don’t have to fix it yet. Pull up the number. You don’t have to feel fine about it yet.
One caution: acting promptly is not the same as acting impulsively. Moving quickly to look at your situation is very different from moving quickly to make a big financial commitment. The first step only has to get you information. Decisions can come later, once you can see clearly. And they’ll be better decisions because you can.
Reflection
The next time you hear yourself say “I’ll deal with it later” about money, what do you think that voice is trying to protect you from?
You don’t need an answer today. Just notice when that voice shows up.
Money Move of the Week
Pick one money task you’ve been avoiding. Just one: the one that comes to mind first, not the biggest or the most important.
Write it down, and next to it, write the smallest first step it would take to start. Not the whole fix, just the first move.
If you’re ready to take that step this week, take it. If you’re not, that’s okay too. Naming the task and its first step gets you much closer than you were.
Thanks for reading. If this letter helped you, forward it to someone who might need it too.
With you beneath the numbers,
La’Toya
The Long Money Letter offers general financial education, not individualized tax, legal, investment, or mental health advice.
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About La'Toya
La’Toya Ray is a CPA and the founder of Long Money Concepts. Her book, Abundance Blueprint: A Journey to Financial Harmony, is coming in January 2027.
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