Asking for a Raise Beats Cutting Your Expenses | Lewis Howes
episodePreviously titled “How To Take Control Of Your Financial Health To Create Lasting Abundance” — renamed by the publisher on Sep 3, 2026
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How can I improve my financial health?
If someone is financially sick and unwell and their financial health is unstable, what are a few strategies they can do to either increase their income or get back to financial wholeness?
I would say something that people struggle with realizing is that these changes you'll have to make, they're not permanent. They're only temporary. Yes. And you are going to be uncomfortable. It's not going to be fun. And I am very anti. Cut out the avocado toast. Don't buy the coffee. Rah, rah. OK, I am. Yeah, but. If you are in a truly a dark, dark hole and there's no ladder to crawl out. Cut it out. Like you literally have to cut it out. You have to make some temporary changes that are very uncomfortable. And to your point, like we focus so much on cutting out every single little discretionary cost. Do you know how hard it is to cut out $5,000 worth of expenses? Do you know how easy it is to ask for a $5,000 raise? A $5,000 raise happens every single day.
That is par for the course. That's not anything special. Cutting out $5,000, do you have any coffees you have to cut out? You know how many meals you can't go out to? Do you know how many friends you might lose in that process? So again, I think it's really, really important to be asking for that raise. And I mean 10%, 15% every single year. Are you going to get it every year? Probably not. But... You get 7%, great. You get 8%, great. You gotta ask and you gotta remind them pretty much for six months out of the year that you deserve that raise and that you want money, that you are money motivated. Because if you ask in December when everybody else is asking for money, You're at the back of the list, back of the line.
You want to be on top of the pile when your boss starts thinking about who's getting a raise this year.
What can someone do who is an employee to be really smart and intentional about getting a raise? Yeah. How can they show their value, their work ethic, that they're getting the results that's going to increase revenue in the business? As opposed to just saying, give me a 20% raise or a 10% raise because I deserve it.
Yeah.
How do they enroll through actual results as opposed to, I just want a raise.
Yeah.
Give it to me. Otherwise, I'm not happy.
Yeah. So you remember those two guys on Wall Street? You've got the executioners and then you've got the knife and fork guys.
Yeah.
So on the execution side, make yourself a brag book. So it's a literal folder. A brag book. A brag book, raise receipts, promo pitch, whatever you want to call it. Just make one. It's a folder in your email. And every time something good happens to you, every time you get a pat on the back from another team member from your company, forward it to that folder. A client says, wow, you did such a great job, whatever, put it in that folder. Anything that good that happens, you put in that folder. Because that way, when you go and you have to write those really annoying self-assessments, you can go back and literally look through those emails and be like, oh, remember that time I did that one thing and that thing and that thing?
And now you have quantifiable results that you can point to. The second piece is the knife and fork piece. There's a study and it shows that the smartest person is not the one that gets paid the most. Right. They're like second most paid, second or third most paid. Yeah. Being smart and being the best employee gets you to a certain point.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How can I improve my financial health?
0:44–6:21
2
What is the STRIP method for financial wellness?
6:21–8:19
3
Why is asking for a raise better than cutting expenses?
8:19–12:02
4
How do retirement savings work?
12:02–14:24
5
What are the key elements of a financial plan?
14:24–17:22
6
How does money affect relationships?
17:22–31:49
7
What makes billionaires different from millionaires?
31:49–34:48
8
How can I achieve true success?
34:48–1:16:57
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The School of Greatness
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Rebuild Your Identity in 3 Steps and Finally Make Habits Last | Dr. Kim Foster
You're Not Bad With Money, You Inherited Bad Beliefs | Lewis Howes
Your Pain Pushes You Until Your Vision Pulls You | Michael Beckwith