How to Practice Money (Like You Practice Music)
Why thinking of money as a practice changes everything
Time is your most valuable resource.
Money is just the practice that protects it.
I know—it’s a mouthful. But it’s the only way I’ve been able to capture what I’ve actually been doing for the past nine years. And by the end of this, I think you’ll see why these words matter.
Let me tell you what I’m doing here: I’m changing the definition of money.
Not because I think I’m clever, but because I think the current definition is failing us.
I’m a music teacher. I spend my days watching people get better at something through practice—not talent, not luck, just showing up and doing it again. And along the way, I started seeing money the same way I see music.
Not as a thing you have, but as a thing you practice.
Music is a noun, but no musician thinks of it that way. It’s a doing. A returning. A craft you build over time. You don’t “have” music—you practice it until it becomes part of you.
And I think money works the same way.
Right now, for most of us, money is a noun. It’s a thing. Numbers on a screen. Something you have or you don’t have. Something you accumulate, spend, lose, stress about.
And when money is just a noun—just a static object—it defines you.
You’re either rich or poor, secure or struggling, good with money or bad with it.
That’s the problem.
We don’t want money to define us. We want to define it.
We want agency. Choice. Freedom.
But as long as we keep thinking of money as a thing we possess, we stay trapped in that binary: you either have enough or you don’t. You’re either winning or losing.
There’s no room to grow. No room to practice. No room to get better.
Here’s what I’m asking you to do:
Step into the awkwardness of a new definition.
Let money be a verb for a while. A practice. A set of actions you return to.
Because money—whether we like it or not—is woven into everything we do.
Where you live. What you eat. How you spend your Tuesday. Who you help. What risks you can take.
It’s not optional. You can’t opt out of money in modern life.
So if you can’t escape it, and you don’t want it to rule you, then you need to change your relationship with it.
And that starts with language.
When you call money a practice instead of a possession, you step out of a life secretly ruled by a noun—and into a life where you’re actively, consciously building something.
Not perfection. Just rhythm. Awareness. Growth.
Why “Practice” Changes Everything
So what does it mean to practice money?
It means thinking of money as something you do, not something you have.
A set of small, repeated actions that shape your life over time.
Practice means:
You can get better at it
You never “arrive”
The point isn’t perfection—it’s showing up
Small reps compound into something larger
When you practice money, you’re building a relationship with it—one choice, one reflection, one week at a time.
And here’s the promise: when you practice money intentionally, you stop serving it.
You make it serve you instead.
How I Actually Got Good at Money (Spoiler: Not by Having More)
Let me be honest about something:
I didn’t become good at money by having it.
I have money now because I became good at it.
That might sound like a riddle, but it’s the truest thing I know about money.
For years, I thought the problem was that I didn’t have enough. If I just earned a little more, made a little extra on the side, cut back in the right places—then everything would click into place.
But that’s the trap. And I think it’s one of the most universal traps there is.
No matter how much money you have, you’ll probably want more. That’s human. We all delude ourselves into thinking we’re different—that we’d be satisfied if we just got to that next level. But the goalpost keeps moving.
So I stopped trying to solve money by having more of it.
Instead, I started treating it like a puzzle I wanted to understand.
I kept coming back to my bank account.
Not to judge it. Not to fix it. Just to look at it and ask questions.
Why did the money go down this week? Why did it go up?
What are these charges?
I’d see bills debiting from one account, side-gig money going into another. Yearly subscriptions I didn’t recognize. A $200 day at the amusement park with my kid that I forgot was coming.
And all those things added up.
Not in the way people usually mean—like “all these expenses add up to your problem.”
No. They added up to knowledge.
They added up to understanding how this person spends money. (That person being me.)
What do these expenses tell me about who I am and what I want?
That question changed everything.
Because once I started asking it, money stopped being about right or wrong, good or bad, enough or not enough. It became a mirror. A way to see my own patterns, values, fears, and desires more clearly.
I noticed where I felt safe and where I felt scarcity.
I noticed where I spent with joy and where I spent out of anxiety.
I noticed what I prioritized without meaning to.
It took me almost a decade to get here.
And I’m still learning. The more I practice money, the more I learn about myself.
That’s what I want for you—not a quick fix, but a process of greater understanding.
Not a budget that makes you feel restricted, but a practice that makes you feel free.
Because the real work isn’t managing money.
It’s understanding it. And through that, understanding yourself.
Practice Is Something You Return To — Not Something You Finish
When you’re learning an instrument, you don’t start with a performance.
You start with slow, awkward repetition.
And as a music teacher, I can tell you: the beginning is painful.
A classroom of 20 kids playing terrible G chords?
It’s the definition of dissonance.
When a student first starts playing guitar, they’re playing scales and hitting the wrong notes over and over again. Sometimes even the right notes don’t sound good. The strings buzz. The rhythm is off. It’s rough.
And repeating it—asking them to do it again—can feel like saying, “Hey, look at what you’re terrible at. Let’s do it again.”
Pushing through that moment is the hardest part. Not the scale itself.
That’s where most people quit. Not because they can’t play the notes, but because they get bogged down in how it sounds right now. They fixate on one buzzing string or missed note and think, “Why does this sound so bad?”
So I tell my students: It doesn’t matter how it sounds right now.
Not because sound doesn’t matter—it does, eventually.
But if we fix everything based on how it sounds at the beginning, no one would go any further. No one would keep practicing.
First, you need the muscle memory. You need to get the pattern into your hands.
Then we worry about the sound. Then we refine how it feels and how you receive it.
The repetition isn’t the punishment. It’s the path.
And everyone wants the shortcut.
Sometimes I’ll lean in to my students and say,
“I’ll tell you the secret to learning any instrument.”
They lean closer, expecting a hack—
and I whisper, “Practice.”
They roll their eyes every time. They should. I would too.
But I want them to see that it’s both the simplest and the truest answer there is.
That’s it. That’s the whole secret.
Repetition is the work.
It’s the act of showing up, of returning, of building a relationship with effort itself.
That’s what practice is: something you return to, not something you finish.
And money works the same way.
You don’t budget once and solve it forever.
You don’t read one book and understand your relationship with spending.
You don’t make one good choice and become “good with money.”
You practice. You return. You build rhythm.
The goal isn’t to never think about money again.
The goal is to think about it clearly, calmly, regularly—so it stops ambushing you with stress.
Build Your Own Routine (Not Someone Else’s)
You don’t master music by playing every song.
You start with scales—small, repeatable motions that slowly build muscle and meaning.
Money deserves that same kind of gentle repetition.
But here’s what matters: these have to be your routines.
Not mine. Not some finance guru’s. Yours.
I’ve been thinking about this line from the Bhagavad Gita:
“It is better to do one’s own duty imperfectly than to perform another’s duty perfectly.”
In other words: the path that fits you—even done messily—will always serve you better than someone else’s path done flawlessly.
That’s how money routines work too.
Better to struggle honestly with your rhythm than perfect a system that was built for someone else’s life.
You need practices that feel natural to you.
That fit your life.
That you’ll actually return to.
Here’s where I’d start—but adapt them, change them, make them yours:
🔍 The Anthropologist Check (Weekly, 5 minutes)
Open your banking app—but this time, be the anthropologist.
Don’t just glance at the balance.
Study the transactions like you’re building a profile of a stranger.
Ask:
What does this person value?
Where do they feel safe spending?
Where do they hesitate?
What surprises them?
What pattern keeps repeating?
Write down one observation. Just one.
Over time, you’re building a profile.
And that profile is you—but seeing yourself clearly is the hardest work there is.
This routine makes it possible.
🎶 The One-Change Rule (Weekly)
Pick one small shift.
Not five. Not a whole budget overhaul. One.
Cancel a subscription you forgot about
Move $20 to savings
Cook once instead of ordering out
Say no to one impulse purchase
The point isn’t to fix everything.
It’s to build the muscle of intentional change.
🎯 Find Your Money Community
In my guitar classes, students learn together—correcting hand positions, cheering for a clean chord change. That community aspect is both terrifying and motivating.
You need that for money too.
Find one person who understands money better than you do—or who’s just trying to figure it out alongside you. Talk with them. Compare notes. Share what you’re learning.
Some places to start:
Mr. Money Mustache — frugality and simple living
ChooseFI — financial independence community + discussion
Bigger Pockets Money — personal finance conversations and support
Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to Be Rich — systems, conscious spending, supportive community vibe
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
And honestly, you shouldn’t.
⏳ The Future-Hour Question (Before Purchases)
Before buying something, ask:
“Will this help Future-Me get more time back—or will it cost Future-Me more time to pay for it?”
This isn’t about guilt. It’s about clarity.
Sometimes the answer is yes—this meal delivery service saves me hours of cooking, and that’s worth it.
Sometimes the answer is no—and you pause before buying.
The question isn’t about deprivation.
It’s about intention.
🪞 The Monthly Reflection (10 minutes, once a month)
Sit down with a notebook or a note on your phone.
Ask yourself:
What surprised me about money this month?
What stressed me?
What helped me?
What do I want to try next month?
This isn’t budgeting.
It’s self-awareness.
And that’s what turns repetition into growth.
Remember: These aren’t rules. They’re starting points.
Your routine might look totally different from mine.
Maybe you need daily check-ins, not weekly.
Maybe you need an accountability partner, not a community.
Maybe you need to automate everything so you don’t have to think about it.
The practice is in finding what works for you—and then returning to it, even when it’s boring.
Especially when it’s boring.
Because this is the work.
This Is the Work (And the Work Changes as You Grow)
The real work isn’t the exciting part.
It’s doing it when it’s boring. When it seems repetitive.
When you don’t see the quick results you’re hoping for.
Let me tell you what I see with my advanced guitar students:
When a student finally gets good enough that playing itself is easy, they want to play all the time. Sitting there not playing feels boring. Not playing doesn’t show off what they can do. Not playing isn’t why they joined a music group.
And that’s exactly why not playing becomes the work.
If every musician played all the time—if every song was just constant sound with no space—the music would be static.
It wouldn’t have dynamics.
It wouldn’t be good.
It’s like a roller coaster that’s nothing but downhill the entire time.
That becomes one note after a while.
People want variety. They want unpredictability.
They want to be taken on a ride.
The real artistry is in restraint—knowing when to leave space so that when you do play, it means something.
That’s what creates the dynamics that make a song breathe.
Money grows with you the same way.
When you’re just starting out—when money feels scarce or chaotic—the work is basic survival.
Learning to look at your account. Tracking where it goes.
Making small, intentional choices instead of reactive ones.
But as you practice, as money becomes more stable in your life, the work changes.
Now the question isn’t just “Can I afford this?”
It becomes: “Where do I want money to matter in my life—and where do I want it to fade into the background?”
You start making choices about what money should and shouldn’t touch.
Maybe you decide never to scrimp on time with your kids.
Maybe you create space for generosity that feels natural, not stressful.
Maybe you realize you don’t want to think about the cost of coffee—but you do want to think hard about housing.
This is the advanced work: learning when not to let money play.
Choosing where to let it amplify your life, and where to mute it completely.
And on the other end of the spectrum:
I see beginners who play a scale once and think they’ve arrived.
They beam, I give them a high five—and they say, “Okay, what’s next?”
But that first rep isn’t the work.
It’s the beginning of the work.
The real work is doing it again when it’s no longer exciting.
When the results aren’t instant.
When it’s progress without fireworks.
The same is true with money.
Spending it feels like doing money—like we’ve completed the task.
And this is where most people get stuck.
This is what gets them in trouble.
They see money as something to be spent first and foremost.
Money isn’t a practice in that scenario—it’s only a performance.
You earn it, you spend it, you perform the transaction, and you’re done.
But any musician who performs without ever practicing ends up embarrassed or ashamed.
They’re pretending to be something they’re not.
Spending is the easy part.
It’s frictionless. There’s always something ready to be bought.
The real work is in returning—again and again—to the small, often invisible practices that create freedom later.
The tiny reflections, the patient habits, the uncomfortable pauses before we spend.
That’s where growth lives.
That’s where the song starts to have dynamics.
Because here’s what practice does:
It moves things from conscious effort to unconscious fluency.
Musicians don’t practice so they can think harder during a performance.
They practice so they can stop thinking and just play.
You practice money now so you don’t have to think about money later.
So it becomes background music instead of constant noise.
So your attention is freed up for what actually matters.
What Happens When You Actually Practice Money
Musicians don’t practice because they like repetition.
They practice so that music becomes effortless.
Money practice works the same way.
You practice money now so you don’t have to think about money later.
Not because money doesn’t matter.
But because when you’ve practiced enough, the baseline decisions become automatic.
You know what you value. You know your patterns. You know when to spend and when to wait.
And that automation creates space—
the space to think about bigger things,
to be generous without anxiety,
to make creative choices instead of reactive ones.
It’s not about perfection.
It’s about freedom—the freedom to spend your best hours on what matters most.
Here’s what that’s looked like for me:
After nine years of practicing money, my partner and I reached financial independence.
We no longer have to work in the traditional sense—trading hours for dollars, serving someone else’s agenda, organizing our lives around a paycheck.
We protected our time by practicing money.
And now that time is ours to direct.
To teach.
To write.
To build things that matter to us.
To be present with our kid without the constant background hum of financial stress.
That’s what practice gave us.
Not wealth for wealth’s sake—but time.
Agency.
Choice.
If you want to read more about what work really means when you’re no longer obligated to do it, I’ve written about that in my posts
“15 Minutes I Don’t Have“ and
“The Friction Worth Keeping.”
And if you’re curious about our specific financial journey—how we got here over nine years—you can read
“Chasing the Unicorn 🦄: 9 Years to Financial Independence.”
But the point isn’t that you need to reach financial independence.
The point is that practicing money—returning to it, understanding it, building a relationship with it—protects the thing that matters most:
your time.
Because the more you practice, the less money controls you.
The Cadence
Time is your most valuable resource.
Money is just the practice that protects it.
So practice.
Play your financial scales.
Return to them even when they’re boring.
Especially when they’re boring.
Musicians practice music.
Maybe we need financians who practice money.
And little by little,
you’ll write your own song of freedom.
Oh wow -- love this analogy to music! It's not a noun, it's a practice.... and active relationship! Yes yes yes! And love the practical tips and guiding questions - and the idea of going to our bank accounts like archeologists! Thank you for sharing your wisdom in this way!