Financial Anxiety is surging in the wake the coronavirus crisis. Here are some ways to manage it and get through it without making financial moves you will later regret. 

Some ways you can manage financial anxiety:

• Resist the urge to do something - like sell stocks- just for the sake of doing something

• Be sure that you are making regular contributions through your paycheck to your retirement account

• if you aren’t already, automate as much of your finances as you can- including debt repayments and savings.

• Try to lower your interest rates on any debt you have

• Spend time at home with family

• Catch up on some reading

• Watch a movie at home (throw in some popcorn if you want)

• Take a walk in the park or around your neighborhood

• Listen to some music

• Practice some meditation

• Talk with a Financial and/or Mental Health Therapist- Many of which are available remotely

• Anti-Anxiety Medications- After talking with your doctor, of course

• Be mindful about where you are getting your news

• Do the things you meant to do, but could never find the time

Stay healthy everyone!

Episode Links:

• Headspace app

• Tally

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Entrepreneur coach Cait Scudder built a 6 figure business while living abroad overcoming numerous obstacles. She shares her specific strategies to help build a grownup business focused on sustainable product growth and revenue streams. 

5 essential ways to create a successful business

Cait Scudder:
Well, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here and I'm so excited to be talking about this. I think for so many entrepreneurs, creating a successful business, whether you're running it from a laptop or abroad or whether you're running it out of your living room, feels like it's this enigmatic thing. So, I'm really excited to break down some really tangible steps to help your listeners apply it to their own businesses.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, and I'm a little bit of a snob about this. I don't like all this mumbo jumbo. You are specific, and focused, and I love that. So, you've got five tips and then we have some other special stuff after this. So, stick with us, guys. Number one is basically, figure out the problem that you're going to solve for people, right?

Cait Scudder:
Absolutely. So, the first thing I would say if you are looking to build a six-figure business, and scale it to multiple six figures and beyond, is you have to be so crystal clear on the problem that you help people solve. It is not enough to just say, "Well, I want to be a consultant for leaders" or "I want to be a health coach" or whatever other niche that you're in. Dial that right in to get so specifically clear on the problem that you help your clients solve and how you do that with the solution that you offer.

Bobbi Rebell:
So, what would be an example of a client that had this problem and how do they really figure out what problem they were solving for?

Cait Scudder:
So, one of the exercises that I lead my clients through, let's take a health-coaching coach, for example. If you are looking to build out a health-coaching business, somebody who helps their clients achieve either weight loss or higher levels of energy, the problem that you might help somebody solve is losing 15 pounds or losing 20 pounds. What you need to do if you want to dial that right in and then be able to build a compelling brand and a compelling message from that is, get super clear. Not only on that problem point as if it's a bullet point in your notebook, but what's the pain that somebody is experiencing as a result of having that problem? So, one of the things that I think happens a lot is entrepreneurs get stuck in this messaging spiral of, well, I'm listing out my client's problems, but they're not responding.

Cait Scudder:
I think the biggest thing that happens when we do that is that we're not actually speaking to the pain, the ripple effect pain I call it, that those problems caused. So, for example, if a client is struggling with low energy, they're feeling overweight, they're feeling not confident in their bodies, how is that actually playing out in their lives? Maybe they can't walk up the stairs without running out of breath. Maybe they can't bend over to pick up their grandchild and not feel like they have to sit down. So, really dialing your messaging straight in to the problem that you help people solve. The pain that it's going to help them get out of in painting the picture and creating offers that help somebody do that in a step-by-step way is such a powerful step for your business and for your marketing.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which brings us to your second tip, which is to figure out what exactly the offer is.

Cait Scudder:
Exactly. So, the second thing that you need to do is build out an offer. I always say to my clients, especially who offer their services, so consultants, any kind of strategists is, it's very, very important to be able to build a product in your client's mind as if it were a tangible product that you could put on top of your desk. So, if you're offering a six-month consultancy package or a retainer offer, what does that look like? What's the result that somebody is going to get? And the way that you want to think about your offers is in two different pieces. The first is the framework, and the second are the features. So, your framework might look like, for example, in my business coaching consultancy, I have a framework that's based on three different things: energy, strategy, and sales. When you can nail all three of those as a business owner, you are golden.

Cait Scudder:
So, the energy piece is, what does your vibe put out? How are you attracting your ideal client, how you are attracting your audience. The second piece of strategy is, what are the offers that you're building out? How are we marketing you in a way that is magnetic in a way that draws your people in? And thirdly, in sales, obviously, we need to make sales if we're going to be in business. So, what I really recommend entrepreneurs to do if they're struggling to build out an offer, is think about what's the framework that you move somebody through and what are the features? How long is your package for? What does it include? What's the scope of work? And when you can be so specifically clear on the process that you move somebody through, the framework, and the way that you do that in the tangible breakdown, the features, that's when you really have a rock-solid offer to bring to the market.

Bobbi Rebell:
The third thing is something I am so uncomfortable with myself, get comfortable with marketing. It is so hard, Cait. I feel this personally.

Cait Scudder:
Really, Bobbi? You're definitely not alone. And I have to be honest, at the beginning when I started my business, I felt so uncomfortable with it. I felt like, "Hang on, squawking about all of this stuff that I do for other people like this is so uncomfortable." Here's what I've come to see it as. When you are marketing your services or your products or your free content even, because let's be real, promoting a podcast or promoting a blog article, all of that is marketing. You are educating and you are empowering your audience with pieces of content, with pieces of information, and pieces of education that help them move towards a result. And I think that when you can have that internal shift as an entrepreneur from, "Oh, this is so self-indulgent. Who would want to read about this? This is so self-aggrandizing." And really flip that script to say, "Hey, me showing up and waving this flag loud and proud is helping somebody else who's seeing this achieve a result," and that is such an empowered place both for you and for your audience.

Bobbi Rebell:
The fourth one, also a pain point for me, confidence in selling. I always struggle with this, Cait. I really do.

Cait Scudder:
You know what? I hear you and especially for women, Bobbi, I personally think that we are not necessarily taught to move into a sales conversation or move into a sales context, with the same level of permission and confidence that for whatever reason I feel like men just intrinsically feel. I'm sure that's not the case for everybody, but I definitely know so many women who struggle with this piece.

Cait Scudder:
Here's my take on this. When you sell somebody your product or your service, you are giving them the pathway to a solution. If you don't sell, if you don't speak about what your offer is, if you never let somebody know how they can work with you and what's possible as a result, you are literally robbing from them the possibility for getting that result and you helping them. And I think when you really flip that script and look at, "Hang on, this is not just some selfish manipulative, greasy car salesman tactic. This is me showcasing the possibility that somebody has to achieve this solution with me." You really put yourself in the game, and you give your market confidence to buy from you.

Bobbi Rebell:
And the fifth thing is, be consistent.

Cait Scudder:
That is absolutely right. I think that there is no... One of the best pieces of advice, Bobbi, that I've ever been given in entrepreneurship is, don't get too high and don't get too low. When it comes to being your own boss and running things your own way, creating your own schedule, running your own team, there's so many opportunities to get knocked off your horse to feel like you just want to throw in the towel and crawl back into bed and you just don't want to do it. And that is the biggest thing that I think swipes entrepreneurs off their path is, feeling like I had a good day, I want to show up, had a bad day, I don't want to show up. Guys, if you take one thing away from this, let it be this. You are going to have great days. You're going to have hard days. It's your commitment to staying the course. That is the thing that's going to see you through. Just remember, you cannot fail if you just keep going.

Bobbi Rebell:
I also want you to share, it's kind of a bonus for our listeners. You have a lot of everyday things that you do. Some things I do too that really help in terms of the day-to-day, like the way that you schedule your week, which is something I do as well.

Cait Scudder:
Yes, absolutely. So, one of the best hacks, oh my gosh, this just saves so much time, so much mental bandwidth for me is scheduling a CEO day. So, on Mondays, I mean, I'm on the phone a lot of the time, whether it's on the phone with clients, group calls, individual calls, collaborators, I'm on the phone a lot. Mondays are my CEO day, which means I don't take any calls. Monday is my day to work completely on my business, and not be in anybody else's business. And that has been so helpful for not only block scheduling and batching out what I need to do in a week, but also for keeping me super on point when I'm coaching on the other days and just very, very focused on what I need to do. I think that as entrepreneurs and as CEOs, one of our biggest forms of currency is our focus and our attention. So, scheduling in a CEO day is going to massively help you feel organized and sane as you move into the week. And I recommend doing it on a Monday because who doesn't love moving into the week feeling organized and sane?

Cait Scudder:
The second thing I would say is, create a little routine for yourself on a daily basis. And I don't mean wake up at 5:00 AM, meditate, do power yoga, sit in lotus for 25 minutes. No, you don't have to do any of that. For me, one of the things that I have is a non-negotiable. I wake up, I have some water with lemon, I exercise for half an hour to 45 minutes, and I move into my day after doing a little bit of gratitude practice. And I might think about things in the shower. I don't spend hours journaling in the morning. But I think that if you can mentally and physically prime your body in the morning, you're really setting yourself up for success.

Bobbi Rebell:
You also talk a lot about the mindset that's involved because it's important that we be aware of what other people are doing. First of all, we learn from them and you should just always be aware of competition, let's be real. And also, I believe a lot of competition, it's actually expanding businesses. So, I believe in cooperation over competition in general, but it's also important not to compare too much, right?

Cait Scudder:
Absolutely. So, I think one of the biggest things that knocks us off our horse is this feeling of imposter syndrome of, "She's doing it better than me" or "they already have this established company" or "who am I to come into this space?" And I think whenever that happens, and let's be real, it happens for all of us, the most important way that we can shift out of that is moving your attention from comparison, from analyzing all of your flaws and your worthiness and your capability. Taking your attention off of all of that comparison and "not good enough" noise, and moving it back to a place of service, and moving it back to a place of all of the reasons why you and you alone are the best equipped to serve your people. Why you have moved through everything that you've been through in your life, in your business and your experience in order to be able to offer what you're doing.

Cait Scudder:
And just remember, if you are not showing up for your people, you're taking away from them the opportunity that they have to experience what's possible on the other side. So, the more that you can give yourself permission to let go of the comparing mind, which is our ego's way of keeping us safe, and go back to all of the ways that you're equipped to help somebody, you're going to be of so much more service and you're going to make a heck of a lot more money.

Bobbi Rebell:
I want to finally just touch on something that you have some strong opinions on. And that is MLMs, multilevel marketing. It's important. There's some really good ones out there, but you also have a lot to say about the fact that some of them are scammy. What do people need to know?

Cait Scudder:
I think that there are a lot of amazing people out there building a successful business in network marketing. I think there are great companies out there that offer possibilities for people, but do your homework, guys. I think it's very important to know what you're getting into and to really... And this is the case, whether you're in an MLM or you're building your own business or you're working for somebody else, quite frankly, is you need to be 100% behind the mission, the ethos, the values of whatever it is that you're selling.

Cait Scudder:
So, rather than just looking at a shiny object as a way to make a little bit more money in your bank account month after month, really ask yourself, "Is being affiliated with this community or this company something that I'm going to feel proud of in 10 years? Do I align with the values and the greater impact that this company is making?" Because ultimately, whether you are just one person in a rank or you are an entrepreneur under your own brand, you are representing a brand and that brand is yourself. And so, you really want to make sure that you align at a deep level with whatever it is that you're standing behind.

Episode Links:

• Cait's website - www.caitscudder.com

• Cait’s podcast - Born To Rise

• Cait’s Ted Talk - www.caitscudder.com/episode/tedxtalk

Follow Cait!

• Instagram - @caitscudder

• YouTube

• Facebook - @caitloneragan

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Learn how to make 2020 the year you up your net worth with these specific and very do-able strategies that will motivate and inspire you. 

4 ways to increase your net worth in 2020

Bobbi:
And we're going to talk more about the specifics of the book, but first I want to get to these four ways to increase your net worth in 2020 that you have brought to us for this Financial Grownup guide episode. One whole chapter before we get into the four, one whole chapter of your book is actually becoming a net worth warrior.

Norm Champ:
Exactly. And so much of what's in the book is really basic financial literacy and financial planning kind of ideas. Unfortunately those ideas have really gotten lost in it's the consumer society and we don't really give messages to people about financial literacy and how to build your net worth. So the whole idea of the book is to get some real concrete tips on how to build net worth.

Bobbi:
Before we get into your four ways that you brought to increase your net worth in 2020, let's just explain what exactly is your net worth. How do you calculate that? Because people kind of think they have an idea of what that is, but they may not know exactly how that is calculated, what's included and what's not.

Norm Champ:
The way to calculate your net worth is to make a balance sheet just like a business would. On the left hand side you list your assets. That's everything that you own, including things you own with debt. So home, car, savings accounts, securities account, your 401(k), any other retirement accounts. So all the assets on the left side. Then on the right hand side you put all of your liabilities, your mortgage, any other debt that you have, anything else where you owe money and it subtracts from the asset side.

Norm Champ:
So then you total up the left side, all your assets, you total up the right hand side, the liabilities, you subtract that and then the resulting number is your net worth. So what we're trying to do is build up that left hand side, build up the assets and cut down on the right hand side, cut down on the debt, so that you can increase your net worth.

Bobbi:
Great. And it takes patience. And it takes a lot of frankly being intentional. So we're going to go through these steps that you can take. And again, this is lifetime goals. This isn't something that's just going to happen overnight, but you have to start now. So the first thing that you talk about is cutting spending. And this isn't just about don't have those lattes. You talk about finding your inner governor. What does that mean? That's not a political statement.

Norm Champ:
No. And exactly is a joke in the book, it's not finding the politician running your State. So essentially we are living in a consumer society. You hear that all the time. What that means is our economy right now is primarily driven by consumer spending. I'm not so much of an unrealistic person to think we're going to stop that. However, consumer spending is not each person's friend when it comes to building their net worth. So I love your point about intentionality. You need to be intentional to reduce the spending side, because until you get the spending under control, any idea of getting out of debt, any idea of building net worth is a pretty distant goal. One of the things I talk about in the book is the subscription service mentality that we're in.

Bobbi:
Right. You say think before you click.

Norm Champ:
Think before you click. Every time you're on your phone, and literally, I mean it's gotten to absurd levels. Every time you download an app, Oh, just open an account and have a free trial and then you can always cancel. Well, human behavior and studies have shown people don't cancel. And I think the side in the book is people have nine apps that they don't use and that they're still being charged for. It's the average or something like that.

Norm Champ:
So it's just an example of how the consumer society gets you to spend and if we're going to get into positive net worth territory, we've got to get spending down. The apps are an easy one. You know the latte one is funny because you hear that all the time. I'm actually not a huge believer in that. If you want to get a cup of coffee, I would get a cup of coffee. But-

Bobbi:
It's meant to be a metaphor.

Norm Champ:
Exactly. And I think you want to be very, very conscious of every message in our society is to buy and I think some of the best learning on this ever is the thought of listen, what do I really need? There's a great principle of, Hey, you could buy the 72 inch TV and do it on a layaway plan and all these other things, but do you really need that TV? Is your current 62 inch TV okay? And starting to really think through, do I need to buy these things?

Norm Champ:
Here's another great example. This one I didn't learn about until after I did the book. Almost a majority of Americans who have a car loan owe more on the car than the car is worth mostly by two to one. So around 40,000 in debt on cars that are worth around 20,000 you're asking how can that possibly be? It's because as you trade in cars and you get different ones, the debt keeps going up and you're never making any progress. Right? So the whole cutting spending side has to be the first principle. That's where we start out in the book with, because you've got to get a control of that side if you want to get to net worth.

Bobbi:
Right, and I think you make a good point about layaway plans. People are taking longer and longer loans for cars and that's why those car loans are getting a lot more attention. It's something we've covered actually on my other podcast, Money with Friends. We've done a bunch of episodes about how that consumer behavior towards cars and car buying is evolving. Let's get to number two and that is kind of the flip side. The sister to the spending is pay down your debt.

Norm Champ:
Debt has to be, if I want to single out one thing, it's the single most corrosive thing going on in our society. This is from the very top of the country all the way down. So we are now running massive deficits at the top level, at the government level. We have had low interest rates, although somewhat better return to more normal rates now, but we had zero interest rates for all the entire Obama administration.

Norm Champ:
So the whole society has moved towards debt. The problem with debt is that people keep incurring it for the spending we were talking about, and they're always incurring new debt and they're not paying off the old debt. And so that's how you end up with these balances rising up. And so it's very important to think about, you'll think super carefully about debt, I quote, it's Benjamin Franklin in the book.

Bobbi:
Yes, I love that quote. I was about to mention that.

Norm Champ:
It's just that debt gives someone else power over you and if want to make it to be a net worth warrior, if you want to get there, you've got to get out of debt. And so it's correlated to the first principle, right? You got to cut down on the spending so you can devote that money to paying down debt and the goal should be to get out of debt.

Norm Champ:
And one of the biggest ones which I devote an entire chapter to is home buying. Our government and our society continue to press home buying as a route to wealth. The only problem with that is talk to all those people that were closed on in 2009, in 2010, they're not going to tell you the home buying was a path to wealth. Before you buy a home, it's a financial decision just like any other, and it's the number one debt, typically the biggest debt any US citizens take on their life is their home debt. Make sure that you do that with an appropriate down payment and you're really intentional about what you're doing.

Norm Champ:
As I say in the book, everyone says rent is a waste of money. Well, in a mortgage, all you're doing is renting that money from the bank. So we've got to get real on the things we're spending and going into debt for and get that debt down. And it is tough, right? It's always easier to do the new spending than pay off the old, but it's a critical part of building net worth.

Bobbi:
Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. Okay, the third way to increase your net worth, you talk about taking advantage of a 401(k) and that really goes ... I mean in your book you talk about the tax free investing. You have a whole chapter on that.

Norm Champ:
Exactly. You know something is good if the government is trying to get at it. So remember that the Obama administration proposed taxing people's 529 college savings plans, that quickly to hide a political death. But the 529s, the 401(k)s, IRAs, these are all the rare gifts of the tax code. Generally the tax code takes from you. These accounts allow you to grow money tax free. Now whether it's a Roth or traditional, it has different tax impacts, but either way you are allowed to grow your money in those accounts tax free.

Norm Champ:
There's no better way to build net worth than to take advantage of those tax free accounts and they are part of your net worth. Don't think of them as retirement accounts. Think of them as part of your net worth. And if you get, you should max your contribution to them and max any employer contribution to them.

Bobbi:
Right and don't exactly. The employer contribution is very important. Let's explain that. You can basically get in some cases as much as 100% return on whatever part the employer is matching, which is a better return than you're going to get in almost any mainstream investment, right?

Norm Champ:
As I say in the book, it's free money and anytime they offer you free money, there's the old saying, when they hand you money take it. When you get the chance to get free money from your employer in your 401(k), you have to take it. Unfortunately, statistics show low participation rates in 401(k) and then low participation with the match. And that's just free money that people are leaving on the table. And to your point, your return on that money is 100% because it's just free to you.

Norm Champ:
And then secondly, once you have it in your account and it grows tax free, then you get a compounding effect of that. And particularly for young people. But even later in life you're talking decades of investing in tax free and compounding in that account, there's nothing more valuable. And I just urge people to think of those accounts as part of their net worth, not as retirement accounts. They are part of your net worth.

Bobbi:
Right. And the fourth way to increase your net worth in 2020 that you want to talk about is the actual investing component. You say in the book that if you can read, you can manage your portfolio. A lot of people are intimidated. It's important also to understand that the vehicle we just talk about, the vehicles are buckets effectively. You don't just put money into a 401(k), you then have to invest it, it has to go somewhere. And those are choices that you have to make. You can't just put it there or it's basically like stuffing it under a mattress. Yes, you're getting the tax savings in the match, but then it has to go somewhere.

Norm Champ:
Exactly. And this point about investing, if I think of my time in the US government at the Securities Exchange Commission, this had to be the most traumatic thing I learned there, which is you see headlines about the SEC working on big cases around big financial firms and all that kind of stuff. But the vast majority of those cases are a teeny little percentage. The vast majority of what the SEC works on is something called affinity fraud.

Norm Champ:
This is where someone in your church group, someone in your community group, someone in your friend group, unfortunately people turn money over to them and that money typically gets stolen. And the reason for this is that people are scared of investing. To your point, they just don't know what to do with it. Don't know where to go with it. Oh, the nice young man in my church group said he would handle it. And of course the money's never seen again.

Norm Champ:
And so, one of the basic points that I make in the book is until you get to, I just picked half a million dollars, but there's no magic number. But until you get to a significant net worth, there's no reason to do anything other than divide your money between stocks and bonds and mutual funds. Mutual funds are low cost. They're regulated very closely by the federal government. We have never had a mutual fund failure that cost anyone money. It doesn't mean the investments are going to go up, but they are heavily regulated. They're intended for the retail investor and they've become very cheap. if you look at the cost ratios, they've gotten incredibly cheap as far as fees.

Norm Champ:
My real point on this is don't be afraid because it's the fear of investing that leads people to the scam artists, the affinity frauds. And so don't be afraid. Do the simple formula that I have in the book of the split between stocks and bonds, go into your 401(k) or your taxable County, you're absolutely right. These are just buckets of money, taxable and nontaxable. Go in there and get your asset allocation set up and then forget about it. You're not going to trade, you're a busy person, you're hiring those mutual fund managers to do it for you. And it's a very safe way to invest.

Norm Champ:
Again, it doesn't mean you're going to make money. However, over the longterm, I just was reading an article over the longterm stocks remain at about an 11% return per year. There's obviously big ups and downs in that. The key is to stay in these funds and let them reinvest and let them ride out over time. And on a longterm average, you're going to make a ton of money and in the 401(k) you're not going to be taxed on it. So it's just trying to get people away from the risky investments, unfortunately, because of the fear of investing, people reach for investments that they shouldn't be investing in.

Bobbi:
Yeah, and I do want to just give some context to the comments that you're making. You are a former director of the division of investment management at the SEC, and also under your leadership I should say, the SEC did adopt a new rule to reform money market mutual funds. So this really is an issue that's very close to heart. You were there right after the Bernie Madoff scandal and you know Bernie Madoff, a lot of that happened because people trusted him. He was in these affinity groups. He had validation having been in leadership at the Nasdaq and so on and so that is a very real thing. So thank you for bringing that up. Before we wrap it up, anything more to share about the book? I mean it's very readable I think, and it's only 150 pages, but it is packed with a lot of great information.

Norm Champ:
Oh, thanks so much. This is a passion project. Financial literacy is something I believe in deeply. I'm starting a nonprofit organization to pursue that mission of trying to get these messages out there and I'd love to do, if anyone wants to do an event, I'd be happy to come and bring books and just give them away. Frankly, I want this message to get out there, it's really something I feel very, very strongly about.

Episode Links:

• Norm's website - www.normchamp.com

• Norm’s Book - Mastering Money: How to Beat Debt, Build Wealth and Be Prepared for Any Financial Crisis

Follow Norm!

• Instagram - @authornormchamp

• Twitter - @NormBChamp

• Facebook - @NormChampAuthor

• LinkedIn - @normchamp

• YouTube

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Reese Everson was able to drive off in a Mercedes on a Nissan budget by making some creative choices and getting real about her priorities. We also preview her latest book and share a money tip that will help you get past procrastination and feeling overwhelmed.

Reese’s Money Story:

Bobbi Rebell:

there's a lot more to the story. There's a lot of dramatic twists and turns. And what I loved about the book is that you use it as a foundation to share a lot of information about things that people don't know about in terms of how finances work, especially in terms of the things that you're talking about. Inheritance, reverse mortgage and so on. So that's a little teaser for the book, so everyone needs to check out The Babes Guide to Generational Wealth. Let's talk about your money story. It's something that you kind of mentioned briefly but I want you to expand on. It's about going shopping for a car and you were originally going to buy a Nissan and then again you're so dramatic Reese, another twist in the story.

Reese Everson:
Yes. I got to the dealership to go pick up my Nissan and they were just giving me all sorts of hoops to jump through. Oh, we don't have that color. Because, here's the thing. They posted an advertisement that said the Nissan Maximas were $199 with no money down. Now when we hear those things, we think, oh, okay, that sounds good, but when you really get there, there's a couple other stipulations. They may limit it to a certain color and then when you get there they don't have that color. Kind of like when you want something from Target but they're sold out and you can't just get a rain check. And so I got to the dealership and they were trying to give me all this runaround because they really wanted me to pay a much higher price and that advertisement was just to get me in the door.

Reese Everson:
So I told them, I said, "Listen, I'm going to go to lunch and I'm going for a walk. When I get back, I'll be ready to sign off on the car and you'd better have the color or whatever you need to have so that I can have the price that you advertised and I'm not paying a penny more." During my walk, I walked across the street to the Mercedes dealership and I saw the car of my dreams. I said, "Oh my gosh, I just want to take a picture inside this car so I can put it on my vision board." I need to see myself in this vehicle. So I walked in and I sat down and I told the guys, I said, "Excuse me, can you take a picture for me? He said, "Of course." So I take this picture, and he said, "Well, what car are you looking at today?" I said, "Oh, a Nissan Maxima." He said, "You don't look like a Nissan girl to me. You look like a Mercedes girl."

Bobbi Rebell:
He's a good salesperson.

Reese Everson:
And so I was so caught off guard by that, I mean, he was really talking to what really gets most people to buy is our emotional validation feeling. And of course we all want to be affiliated with a much higher fancy luxury brand than just a regular Nissan. He said, "Well, what's your budget?" I said, "$199 no money down." Because I wasn't going to spend more just because it was a Mercedes. I literally had a budget and I was going to stick to it. And so when I told the guy that he was just, "Well, you've got to come up with a little more for a Mercedes of course."

Reese Everson:
And you know what? I stuck to my guns and I want to say that I walked in there around 12 noon and I drove out at 7:00 PM in a brand new Mercedes. But here's the trick to it. I wanted a new car. Well, what Mercedes has available sometimes are cars that have been used but they've only been leased for a year. Those cars are substantially less than a car that's the brand new model but it has all of the features and gadgets of the brand new model usually. So I was able to get a car at a much lower price, which was almost the same as what I was going to pay for a Nissan, maybe $10 more. You just really have to be willing to negotiate but also realize that cars depreciate 40% as soon as you drive them off the lot. So having a new car, it sounds good, but is it the best financial fit for most of us? And the answer is usually no

“What really gets people to buy is our emotional validation feeling. ”

Reese’s Money Lesson:

Reese Everson:

The one thing I realized is that you have to be willing to walk away and you have to be willing to say no. A lot of times when we're shopping it can get emotional. It's about, oh, this makes me feel good, this makes me look good. People will look at me a certain way in a Mercedes. But the truth of the matter is when you're really happy none of that stuff matters. Fast forwarding from that experience, I was actually in California maybe two years after I had gotten my Mercedes and I was riding up the coast, the Pacific Highway, past Malibu and all of that stuff. And I was driving a rental car, a Hyundai, and it's just a basic Hyundai, nothing fancy about it.

Reese Everson:
But I was just as happy and just as peaceful in this Hyundai as I was in my Mercedes. So what I realized is when you're really happy it's not about the car that you're in, it's about how you feel about yourself and inside yourself. And so when you really are at a place where you've made sure that you are walking in your happiness and you're not putting up with unnecessary drama or going through stress and harassment at work, you're going to be perfectly fine with whatever vehicle gets you from point A to point B.

“You have to be willing to walk away. And you have to be willing to say no.”

Reese’s Money Tip:

Reese Everson:
Well, one of the first tips I have for people is, open your mail. And it sounds really, really elementary and simple but here's the truth of the matter. When I've done coaching with clients, one of my clients, I remember walking into her kitchen and I opened up her kitchen cabinet and she said, "I'm embarrassed to show you this. Don't ever tell anyone this, but I need to tell you guys it's a big deal." I opened her kitchen cabinet where her pots and pans were supposed to be and the door swung open and piles of mail for maybe two or three years were stuffed in her kitchen cabinet. And it made me realize you can't be in control of your money if you're not even opening your mail.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which we assume but that's amazing. I mean this had to have been some kind of a denial situation where she just couldn't handle it.

Reese Everson:
Absolutely. So what we have is a person who had gone through a divorce and to some extent things kind of started to pile up and when it overwhelmed her, instead of saying, "You know what? I'm going to get a system. I'm going to have a desk where I spread things out where I maybe hole punch things and keep them in a binder." It began to intimidate her and she buried her head in the sand. And so all of that mail instead of reading it and hearing more and more bad news because it started to bother her, she just started to throw it under the cabinet. Well probably in a drawer.

Reese Everson:
Some of us start with a drawer and then I think it just overwhelmed the drawer and somehow just filled up a cabinet and she had years of documents in a cabinet and what I'm learning is that if you don't know how to handle what you're dealing with and what's coming at you, you've got to get some help. We've got to say, "Wait a minute, pause. This is starting to overwhelm me." And when you realize that, keep in mind this is going to affect my credit. It's easier to stop the train early on and get some help than to try to pull the train from the river.

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

Create reasons to open the mail. Stay with me here. This may sound silly, but because I personally do have a habit of letting the mail go a few days, sometimes even a week. I have recently started creating reasons to open the mail. Specifically the idea that money could be coming in good things. So for example, I have an account on Rakuten. It's a browser extension that pays you a few percent back on things that you buy. It doesn't always add up to that much. Although I've gotten as much as $99 in a month, which is not all that bad. It's still nice to get a check, a paper check. It's kind of retro, but it feels good. I've set it up so that I get those checks in the snail mail rather than say auto deposit or points in their system, whatever.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

I love when Reese says to just walk away. As a consumer, we need to be reminded, but we should always remember that it is our money. If the purchase doesn't fit your needs and especially if somebody tries to pull what was clearly a bait and switch on you like they tried to do with Reese, she didn't fall for it, hit the road or at least hit pause like she did and figure out what you can do with that situation. And by the way, as long as your expectation is reasonable and they can make a profit, you'll almost always certainly get some version of your way in the end.

What's your take on deciding when to walk away and how have you been able to upgrade the things that you want? DM me on Instagram at Bobbi Rebell one or on Twitter. I'm at Bobbi Rebell. Please help us grow the show by subscribing and telling your friends and if you have a few minutes, please take the time to review the show. I read and truly appreciate every one. Pick up a copy of The Babes Guide to Generational Wealth. It's a great read. I truly enjoyed it and recommend it and big thanks to Reese Everson for helping us all be financial grownups.

Episode Links:

• Reese's website - www.babesintheworkplace.com

• Reese’s Book - The B.A.B.E.’s Guide to Generational Wealth

Follow Reese!

• Instagram - @thebabesguide

• Twitter - @thebabesguide

• Facebook - @TheBABESGuide

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Bobbi reveals her favorite new money related books, and how to decide if they are right for you. This month’s picks include Don’t Keep Your Day Job by Cathy Heller, The Big Stretch by Teneshia Warner, The Future is Faster Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Napkin Finance by Tina Hay and Bow Dow by Lindsay Goldwert.

These are recommendations so I am going to focus on why I was drawn to them and what I got out of them- and full disclosure we do focus  on books written by authors that appear on the podcast- because if we are being honest when I love a book- I want to know more and I want to share that with you guys so we tend to reach out and try to get them on.

Book #1: Don’t Keep Your Day Job: How to Turn your Passion into your Career by Cathy Heller

Here’s what I liked about it: 

-The book is practical and specific. She gives down to earth advice about how to realistically follow your passion but in a very practical way. 

- She shares advice from experts including authors Jen Sincero and Gretchen Rubin and actress Jenna Fischer. There are also stories about every day people to make it relatable.

-There are lots of inspirational quotes like "Why did it have to be an ‘either-or’ when it could be a ‘yes and’?”

Who is this book for:

Don’t keep your day job will motivate just about anyone but it is especially for people looking for advice on well.. how to leave their corporate jobs. Also Entrepreneurs who need a little nudge to connect doing what they love, with doing something that another person or entity will pay for. Emphasis on getting paid.  

Book #2: The Big Stretch: 90 Days to Expand Your Dreams, Crush Your Goals, and Create Your Own Success by Teneshia Warner

Here’s what I liked about the book: 

-It shares the success stories of some of the dreamers that have spoken at those conferences

-It has a time line: 90 days with specific assignments

-Teneshia’s personality shines through and is the real gem in this book

Who is this book for:

It’s for people willing to do the work to get to their goals and The Big Stretch will help you decide if that is you. Not everyone is ready to go for it- and Teneshia sets expectations that will push you to get there- but only if you are ready. 

Book #3: The Future is Faster Thank You Think. How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

Here’s what I liked about it: 

-At first I was intimidated by the book- in part because it’s authors are so accomplished as “Big” Thought Leaders. But once I started reading it, this actually became a page turner because of the very accessible way they approach what are often complicated topics, 

-It’s a little like looking into a crystal ball except after- and only after they lay out theories and predictions, you realize that to a large degree. the way things play out was logical all along. They touch on everything from AI, to digital biology, virtual reality, robotics and blockchain.

-The book made me smarter about our world and who doesn’t love just feeling like they have a better handle on our world. 

Who is this book for:

Truth- This is all stuff I just wasn’t that into- until I started reading the book. So even if this isn’t your thing- move out of your comfort zone and just start. You might be surprised how much you like it, just like I did. 

Book #4: Napkin Finance: Build your Wealth in 30 seconds or less by Tina Hay.

Here’s what I liked about the book: 

-It addresses the very basics of financial literacy in a unique and approachable way

-Napkin Finance explains some of the most misunderstood and confusing topics ranging from blockchain to credit scores and paying off student debt.

-Fun fact: Napkin Finance partnered with Michelle Obama’s Better Make Room campaign 

Who is this book for:

Napkin Finance is a book for beginners- and for those of us that can benefit from some re-enforcement and sometimes clarification of financial concepts- most basic but some kind of complicated. 

Bonus Book: Bow Down: Lessons from Dominatrixes on How to Get Everything You Want by Lindsay Goldwert.

Here’s what I liked about it: 

-Lindsay is very revealing about her own challenges and makes you feel like you are in it together with her

-The doms- as Lindsay often refers to the dominatrixes share some very specific advice about how they negotiate and hold on to power

-There is a lot of psychology and real insights into human behavior and what triggers certain reactions. By revealing these Lindsay helps us see why we get the reactions we do, and how we can pivot to get.. well everything we want. 

Who is this book for:

Everyone that wants to get everything they want- of course. 

Episode Links:

Cathy Heller’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Don’t Keep Your Day Job: How to Turn your Passion into your Career

Teneshia Warner’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of The Big Stretch: 90 Days to Expand Your Dreams, Crush Your Goals, and Create Your Own Success

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of The Future is Faster Thank You Think. How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives

Tina Hay’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Napkin Finance: Build your Wealth in 30 seconds or less

Lindsay Goldwert’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Bow Down: Lessons from Dominatrixes on How to Get Everything You Want.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Starting your life is expensive, and so is starting a business. Canvas and Hyde Founder Lisa Pongrass quickly learned that not having insurance, or ordering in bulk to save money can come back to hit your bottom line before you even have a top line. 

Lisa’s Money Story:

Lisa Pongrass:
So interestingly, I'm self-funded and when I started the business I had to go out and source all of the materials. And having never worked in this field before, I went door to door, found the great leathers. In fact, I flew to Miami to get the hides hat I was using initially for the bags. What I found, and because I guess when there's skin in the game, your own skin in the game, so much of it you really want to get the best prices for everything. And I found that people offered me greater discounts when I bought volume, which is pretty much standard in the industry. So of course what did I do? I bought volume in the assumption that I would be making certain amount of inventory.

Bobbi Rebell:
Did you have any presales at this point?

Lisa Pongrass:
None.

Bobbi Rebell:
You had no orders. Okay.

Lisa Pongrass:
No orders at this point. I'm a brand new brand. Never made a bag before. And I guess someone had said to me once that one of the single biggest contributing factors to small business failure is a lack of cashflow. And it obviously didn't resonate enough because I found quite quickly that I had all this great material but not the cashflow to use it to go into production with all the bags. So had I had my time again, I definitely would have done that a little bit differently.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what happened? How'd you get out of this mess?

Lisa Pongrass:
How did I get out of the mess? Well, I didn't use all my capital and I did start selling the bags quite quickly. I got into 23 stores and that was then able to bring money back into the business. There were a few sleepless nights in there. In this industry, in the fashion industry, you make things and you, unless everything is for order, you never know if it's going to work or not. There's a little bit of a risk and a lot of luck. Fear is a little bit paralyzing. So I tried to not come from a place of fear. I had to have confidence and I did have confidence in what I was creating. I was just very lucky to be around women friends who empowered me and kept me going. For example, when you're buying the skins, you get a better price to buy more. But when you buy the hardware, I use the very best nickel plated brass, the best hardware, and it's expensive.

Lisa Pongrass:
But if you buy a thousand of something, it's not as expensive. So I was buying in the thousands of these pieces of hardware. I use them all in the end. I mean, it's three years in, so I've actually had a chance to use them all, thank goodness. I've still got some skins sitting in storage, but how did I get out of it? I think just then the cash flow started to change the sales. So I would be getting checks from my retailers and I was able to get myself out of it. You know, looking back, if someone had said to me, "Pay a little extra but get less so you're not in the hole for that amount of money." I probably would have listened and that would've been a more prudent way to go about it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Did it motivate you in a way because you suddenly had a clock ticking, even though you had a little extra cash? There's something to be said for that pressure, whether it's welcome or not, it was there.

Lisa Pongrass:
Absolutely. Look, it's a catch 22, because by getting a better price when you're doing your costings, you're able to use that better price to put together what it actually costs you to make. However, if the money is tied up on developed or manufactured bags, then it's dead money.

Bobbi Rebell:
Did you have any business background? I mean, what were you basing all these ideas on?

Lisa Pongrass:
So I'd worked in PR and Marketing. I'd worked for a magazine as a Deputy Editor of a fashion mag, and I'd also worked as an agent, a fashion agent. So I'd been in sales, but I'd never been in the business side of production before. The logistics of just going into production, of sourcing materials, of getting the best prices for things. I'd never done any of that and I had zero experience. Luckily I was very naive, because I look back now and had I known what I know now, I think I would have been too fearful to go into it. But I was ... ignorance is bliss in a bit of a way, and I thought, "How hard can it be? It's not brain surgery."

Bobbi Rebell:
How did you educate yourself?

Lisa Pongrass:
Trial and error. I've made some mistakes that were very costly. One mistake that cost me $8,000, that I'll never see is my manufacturer delivered my first order from overseas. So now I've diversified manufacturing. It's New York and Italy, and they just sent the order and they didn't insure it. I didn't know, I just assumed that that was part of the shipment. They didn't insure it and FedEx lost one of my boxes. So they didn't cover it. My manufacturer didn't cover it and I had to wear it.

“Slow down and don’t rush into committing to things you don’t need.”

Lisa’s Money Lesson:

Lisa Pongrass:
You know, one of the ones that I've learned is there are lots of hidden costs that you don't see day to day. For example, when you have a website and you're with Square, there's a monthly fee. When you sell something, there is a vendor's fee, which is I think three or 4% transaction fee. Google Drive. There's a monthly fee. QuickBooks, there's a monthly fee. There are so many fees that you sign up for at the beginning and then after a while you're thinking, "Wow, why is the bank balance diminishing so rapidly?" And then when you go back in and you check it out, you think, "Well, I don't really need that anymore. I don't need QuickBooks yet." Certain businesses, every business is different, but I certainly learnt that I signed up for things like Yelp or certain social media things that I really didn't need to do and I thought I did.

Bobbi Rebell:
So it sounds like basically when you started your business you had costs, whether it be from buying too much inventory initially, too much supplies, and also maybe signing up for so many things that are ongoing subscriptions that maybe you found out you didn't necessarily need, they weren't quite right. What is the lesson from all of this for our listeners?

Lisa Pongrass:
I think take it slow. I think probably slow down and don't rush into committing to things that you don't really need. At the time, you think that you do need them. And then maybe revise it more regularly than I did. I certainly know that for the first year I worked out of my home, which was a good thing to do. I had that advice from people, don't go and get an office or a showroom too quickly, which I didn't do. And I'm very glad I have an office and a showroom now and I don't think I could ever work from home again, because I've just grown too much. But take it slow, take it slow.

“Unless everything is for order, you never know if it’s going to work or not. It’s a little risk and a lot of luck.”

Lisa’s Money Tip:

Lisa Pongrass:
I recently was going through my finances and I saw that one of the biggest expenses I had monthly was my dry cleaning bill.

Bobbi Rebell:
We can all relate.

Lisa Pongrass:
I do buy quality, so I'm wearing things that are from 10 years ago, [inaudible 00:10:49] beautiful quality. So I bought a steamer and I realized that you can have something that's beautiful that says dry clean only, but it doesn't literally mean that you have to dry clean it. You can steam it yourself. So I'm hoping that that's going to really reduce my cost.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, you also, and I'm going to force you to throw in another one that you mentioned to me before we started recording, about your dog, which is another fun, easy way to save money. Maybe not always fun.

Lisa Pongrass:
My baby. Well, grooming is so expensive. So, now I obviously I can't cut him myself, but I wash him myself and it's a really nice bonding experience for my baby and I, but it also saves me between 80 and $100 for a wash. So I do that. We do that every three or four weeks and he loves it and I love it.

Bobbi Rebell:
And it's so cute. It's so cute. And that's significant money. That's for real. I mean, if you're saving a hundred bucks a month, that's $1,200 a year. That is a lot of money.

Lisa Pongrass:
Yeah. Not only am I saving money, but he and I are having a fun time. In fact, it always seems like one of those things, "Oh, I've got to wash the dog." And then the minute you started, it's so much fun.

Bobbi Rebell:
It is. We actually, we wash our dog. My listeners know my dog is Waffles, she's a Morkie and my husband's really primarily in charge of the washing. I am in charge of the drying. And she loves it, she loves it.

Lisa Pongrass:
Does she love it?

Bobbi Rebell:
She goes into the shower? Yes, and she's super cute and she always looks so good when she comes out all clean.

Lisa Pongrass:
Does your dog run around the house crazy when she's wet?

Bobbi Rebell:
No, she does not. She stands nicely and waits for us to dry her. She's a very well behaved dog, so I take it yours does.

Lisa Pongrass:
When he's wet. He can't wait to get out of the towel and then he just zooms around the house and rubs up against the sofa. It's very funny.

“Luckily I was very naive, because I look back now and had I known what I know now, I think I would have been too fearful to go into it.”

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

Lisa went through her business expenses and realized that all the little things were really adding up to big things. This applies to apps, subscriptions, and probably a lot of things that I'm not even thinking of right now. Some of them may be worth it, but sometimes you realize maybe you don't need the premium version of everything. Maybe you can step it down a notch. Do an inventory of all the little things, cut as many as you possibly can, maybe cut all of them even and then just add them back in one by one, the ones that you feel you really need or you miss.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

Lisa talks about buying a steamer and slashing her dry cleaning bill. She also washes her dog at home. The truth is we can all do a lot more at home. If you're into facials, maybe go sometimes, but do some at home for example, or find ways to make things last longer. Take your shoes and have new soles put on them instead of going out and purchasing new ones. It's also a lot more sustainable, better for the environment.

Episode Links:

• Lisa's website - www.canvasandhyde.com

Follow Lisa + Canvas & Hyde!

• Instagram - @canvasandhyde

• Facebook - @canvasandhyde

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, authors of "The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries And Our Lives" join Bobbi with a preview of their latest book, and specific ways money-related changes will impact us in the coming years. 

8 Ways Money Will Change the Future

1. We’re going to live longer—we’ll need to approach retirement very differently

2. Demonetization is going to radically alter education, travel etc.

3. Convergence means that future financial investment opportunities can lie between industries and in mash-up markets

4. New players in Finance (Google, for example, just went into banking)

5. Insurance is going to radically change and whole categories will vanish

6. Your AI is going to be making a lot of your buying decisions for you.

7 You also say we are moving to a cashless future 

8 -Blockchain will continue to disrupt traditional banking, spreading widely into the developed world much like it’s already transformed financial systems in developing countries.

Episode Links:

• Peter's website - www.diamandis.com

• Steven’s website - www.stevenkotler.com

Follow Peter!

• Twitter - @PeterDiamandis

• Facebook - @PeterDiamandis

• LinkedIn - @peterdiamandis

Follow Steven!

• Instagram - @kotler.steven

• Twitter - @steven_kotler

• Facebook - @KotlerSteven

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Transcription

Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us a little bit about the book, just quickly before we get into some really cool stuff you're going to share with us.

Steven Kotler:
The future we talk about in the book, for some people is scary, because people are not used to this rapid rate of change. The best solution for that fear is really having an understanding of where the world is going. Part of the mission of the book is to give people a clear vision of the future that these converging technologies are enabling. For most of the case, this is an incredible win for consumers, an uplifting of abundance in the world, where ultimately these exponential converging technologies are helping to meet the need of every man, woman, and child on the planet. That makes for a world that is, in my ... in our mind, I would say safer and better for humanity, so this is a hopeful book that builds the case for creating a better world for tomorrow.

Bobbi Rebell:
It's really a roadmap into how money is going to change in the future and, most importantly, how we can and frankly need to be ready. A lot of this is not just you guys talking. There's a lot of scientific research here and a lot tying in technology to money and how it's going to specifically impact our lives. You're going to give us a preview, and you brought with you a list of different ways that all these things are going to affect money and our lives. Let's start with the first thing on your list. This is about our approach to retirement and longevity.

Peter Diamandis:
Sure, let me jump in there, because it's an area that I spend a lot of time investing in and time building companies around, and it's the notion that we're going to be heading to a world in which we're not dying at age 70 or 80, that we're living a healthy lifespan to 90, to 100, to 110, eventually 120. In our book, The Future is Faster Than You Think, we have an entire chapter on healthcare and a chapter on longevity that tracks these different technologies, billions of dollars flowing into them. If you think about it, there's no larger business opportunity than extending the healthy human lifespan. So, I think this is a reality and I think people need to start thinking about, "Do I have to save enough money to live to be 100 years old or 110 years old?" Because if you can have the aesthetics, the cognition and mobility at 100 that you had at 60, why wouldn't you want to? It's not about living in a wheelchair, it's about living a vibrant life. So, that's the first thing. We're going to live longer. We're going to live healthier, and we have to prepare for that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Such a great point. Let's move onto the second point. This is fascinating, demonetization, because this goes into things that we love, like travel, right, Steven?

Steven Kotler:
Yeah, so demonetization is essentially the removal of money from the equation. The simple example that we're all familiar with is the smartphone. So when Peter and I wrote the first book in the trilogy, [inaudible 00:05:30], we're calling the Exponential Mindset trilogy, with our latest book, The Future is Faster Than You Think is the third installment in. In Abundance, back when we started, we looked at all the technology that shows up for free, demonetized completely, in your smartphone. In 1980s prices, it was over a million dollars-

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh.

Steven Kotler:
In music players, in Encyclopedias, in GPS, and on and on and on. So, this is a million dollars worth of stuff that has been dematerialized. It doesn't exist anymore. It comes for free in your phone. This is ... Whenever technologies go exponential, one of the things that starts to happen almost automatically is they begin to demonetize, and this is going into every industry. Travel is a really radical example, both because we're seeing ... over the next 10 years, we're going to see technology such as the Hyperloop, which is high speed trains, maglev trains, 750 miles an hour, so suddenly San Francisco to LA is a 20-minute commute or Las Vegas to San Francisco is a 20-minute commute, which, by the way, totally changes the real estate picture and your local school metric and your dating pool and all that stuff, besides the point, but you've got five or six other technologies, autonomous cars, flying cars, rockets, et cetera.

Steven Kotler:
Then, you have avatars and virtual reality, which completely demonetizes travel. Now we already have avatars and virtual worlds, but if you can put on VR goggles and have an avatar attend a meeting that you need to attend and you've got haptic technology so you can shake hands with other people and be there, or you can have telepresence robots waiting for you that you sort of rent by the hour in your destination city and you can port your senses using VR into the robot and then send the robot onto stage to give a speech for you or whatnot. This sounds crazy far future, but Peter's company, the X Prize, it's [nepon 00:07:29], right, Peter?

Peter Diamandis:
It's all Nepon Airways, ANA Airlines, has basically said, "How do we displace the need for airplanes? How do you not put yourself in an aluminum tube and fly someplace?" They launched a $10 million dollar avatar X Prize. Can we build the avatars, like Steven was saying, then I can transport my consciousness, my senses, and my actions hundreds or thousands of miles away instead of flying in an airplane.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wow, so cool. Let's talk about the investment opportunities angle here, because you say convergence means that future of financial investment opportunities can lie between industries and mashup markets. What does that mean?

Peter Diamandis:
It means that we have pure play investments before in a computer company or communications company or a healthcare company, but all of these things are beginning to blur, right? We're seeing Amazon all of a sudden going from a bookseller to a food company when it buys Whole Foods and it's now moving into healthcare and into finance. So, we're going to start to see companies that are blurring the lines between what have been traditional areas. A lot of the companies that are going to be crushing it are data-driven companies. Google and Amazon and Apple are in our home and they're going to start to play increasingly different roles. It was interesting that Tim Cook, we talk about this in The Future is Faster Than You Think. Tim Cook makes a statement like, "In the future, Apple is going to be best known for its impact on healthcare." Wow. So, we're going to start to see a lot of these blurred lines. So, when you are excited about investing in a particular industry or particular area, it's not going to be the traditional players. It's going to be a new set of players coming in from unpredictable adjacencies.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which dovetails to your point that there's going to be a lot of new players in finance.

Steven Kotler:
There are going to be a lot of new players in finance and finance as a whole is going to radically change. We've seen this already. We've seen what AI did to finance. At this point, when there's height rating volume, for example, 90% of the trades on Wall Street are being made by computers at this point. That's just today and where we are, but to Peter's point, the advantage you get is data, right? The more data you have, the bigger understanding you have of markets. We'll see this in traditional finance. We're going to see this playing huge roles in insurance. We're going to see this show up in real estate. It's really going to transform the financial landscape. The first inklings of it, companies like IBM, lots in doing wealth management services, right? It's going to mean that people working in the finance space, creativity is going to become the most important skill going forward. This was not a skill 20 years ago you would have really associated with finance and now it's the key skill because everything else that can be automatized will probably be automatized.

Bobbi Rebell:
Insurance, it is going to radically change.

Peter Diamandis:
Insurance is going to change dramatically and we are going to go away from what was the old actuarial tables of, statistically, over a population of 100,000 people, here's the probability. That's not going to be the case. Now it's like, okay, this is specifically the probability for you, given the technology you're enabling, given the way you eat, exercise, and so forth, your genetics and such. We're going to insure you personally and we're going to work to keep you healthier longer, alive longer, fire free, theft free, and that's our job now. So, interesting change, which makes the world a better place, and people will want that kind of insurance over the "We'll pay you after the disaster occurred."

Steven Kotler:
The other thing I want to add to that is, of course with autonomous cars, car insurance as a category goes away. Right? If the cars are driving themselves and they don't crash, car insurance goes away or at least the risk, it shifts from the consumer, right? Google, with Waymo, [inaudible 00:11:33] with Waymo, they provide ... everybody who gets in the car automatically gets insurance because they're the one who controls the autonomous car, so that's another category that's going to disappear.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about artificial intelligence. How will this affect, for example, the everyday consumer, people buying stuff?

Peter Diamandis:
So, interestingly enough, we're all going to have a version of Jarvis from Iron Man. If you remember Jarvis, Tony Stark had this AI that was in his suit and in his home. He would talk to it and Jarvis would be like a personal, intelligent butler or assistant in this regard. We have the early versions of this with Amazon Echo. We have the early versions of that with Google Home and such, but one thing that's going to happen in the consumer world is that your AI's going to do your buying for you. If your AI is doing your buying for you of foods or consumer products in general, what's that do to advertising, right? If I'm not making the decisions anymore, you can throw all the ads at me you want, but my AI is actually looking at my genetics and the molecular makeup of the toothpaste and saying, "This toothpaste is better for you than this one. Everyone in your peer group, Peter, is buying this and enjoying it and it's cheaper, so I'm buying that for you." You get a new toothpaste and go, "Oh, I like this one better." Right? So the world becomes auto-magical.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love it, because it can save a lot of money for consumers, and time and energy, to not have that decision making stress, because every decision is stress.

Steven Kotler:
Absolutely. These are parts of where the world is going, and not in 30 years or 20 years, this next decade, which is what we outlined in the book.

Bobbi Rebell:
Last thing I want to go through is you say we're moving to a cashless future, to the surprise of, really, no one, I think. I think everyone kind of sees the writing on the wall with this one.

Steven Kotler:
Where it starts to get really interesting is, for example, Amazon Go. This is a cashierless checkout where you scan a QR code on your way into the store on your phone, you take the items off the shelf, sensors in the items notice that you've taken it, the AI cameras pick it up, and it's automatically deducted from your account, which is linked, too, in your cellphone and there's no more cash in the equation. This is ... Those stores are here. They're rolling out at scale over the next couple of years. I'm sure there are probably always going to be craft retail stores, like throwback stores. We still have [inaudible 00:13:50] and the chain here, but at convenience stores, at gas stations, at grocery stores, places we're already seeing automated checkout anyways, right? We're checking ourselves out and it's a pain in the butt, but now the hassle is gone. Obviously the savings for retail is enormous. There's no way to compete.

Bobbi Rebell:
What can the average person be doing to get ready for this future?

Peter Diamandis:
We put out something called Abundance Insider, which is a weekly email of how the world is getting more abundant and how to see this positive news. There are amazing books that Steven have written. Please read Abundance and Bold, which are the first two books in the Exponential Mindset series.

Steven Kotler:
Yeah, the only other thing I would add is, there's a human performance side of this, which I tend to work on the Flow Research Collective, so if you want to know what you can do in your own life to keep up in an accelerating world, the website for the flowresearchcollective.com will give you tons and tons of information there.

Music entrepreneur, author, coach and podcast host Cathy Heller was crushed early in her career when her record label dropped her. But she discovered another way to make money from her music and staged the ultimate multi-million dollar comeback. 

Cathy’s Money Story:

Cathy Heller:
Yeah. My money story. I came out to LA wanting to write music. That was all I knew I loved doing as a kid. I thought, all right, I'm going to do that thing that you see them do in movies. I'm going to go out to LA. I grew up on the East Coast. I was going to figure it out and I had to get a job and pay the bills. I got a job as an assistant in an office and I had a roommate and she was an actress and I was doing my thing. And eventually I started writing music and I wrote some mediocre songs and they got better. And I finally got a record deal. I actually did. I remember sitting with Ron Fair at Interscope, I had just signed and Lady Gaga was there recording Paparazzi and I was like, oh my God, I'm sitting in this room. It's amazing.

Bobbi Rebell:
That must've been so surreal.

Cathy Heller:
It was really surreal. And by the way, hearing Paparazzi recorded is really cool because if you go back now and listen, you'll hear what I'm referring to. There's all these strings on the recording and it makes the pop music just sound like some other dimension is going on and it's beautiful. It was just amazing. But I got dropped from the label a few months later. While I was actually sitting there in the studio, Ron Fair, my producer at the time, he said to me, "You know Cathy, when I first came out to LA, I met with Bill Conti." Bill Conti is the guy who did the music for Rocky and so many other iconic movies and he said to him, "You know Ron, you're a really good songwriter but you're an amazing producer." And he said, "And I wound up making a living really as one of the best producers in the industry."

Cathy Heller:
And I remember that story and I didn't know three, four months later that I'd get dropped from the label, but I did and I wound up going and getting a quote unquote real job and I did so many things. I worked in a floral design studio. I thought, oh, if I can't do the thing I love that's creative, I'll do something else creative. As if it's going to scratch that same itch and it doesn't. I think we all have tried that. And then a friend of mine said, "If you're not going to do what you love, just make money." And I said, "Well how do you do that?" She said, "You do real estate." She said, "I know a guy who works in commercial real estate, he lives in Brentwood. You should go work for him."

Cathy Heller:
She introduces me and I start working in commercial real estate. I don't know the first thing about cap rates or mortgages and he says, "All you have to do is pick up the phone, call about 20 to 30 people a day and set some meetings for me and I'll give you good money if you can set meetings." And I wound up being pretty good at it and then I was there for two years and it was really like golden handcuffs because he was paying me a 150 grand to sit at this desk and make phone calls for him.

Bobbi Rebell:
Life is going by and you're not in the music business.

Cathy Heller:
No, I wasn't doing anything I loved. And I remember one day I was driving and I was crying so hard, I had to pull over to the side of the road and I thought to myself, I just, I don't know where I went, but I don't recognize myself. I am not this girl. I don't wear pantsuits. I don't blow my hair out. I don't talk this way. And I thought, gosh, we were talking about Tony Robbins before because he wrote the forward to your book and he always says, "Success without fulfillment is like the ultimate failure." And I felt like I couldn't breathe. I was like, I don't care that I'm driving a cute little Mercedes convertible. I don't care that I can eat sushi whenever I want. I don't feel like myself. I am so not me.

Cathy Heller:
And I decided I was going to quit and I quit my job, which I don't recommend to people. What I recommend to people now is that you build a runway and build a side hustle and validate your idea. And there's so many great tools and ways to do that so that you don't have to just jump. But I did. I couldn't take it. I just jumped.

Bobbi Rebell:
What was that like when you went in? You just went in one day and quit. Did you have overhead? Rent? You didn't have a family at the time, I assume.

Cathy Heller:
No, I was only 26. I quit and I thought to myself, oh by the time I run out of whatever tiny amount of savings I have from this job, I'm sure I'll be making money in music. And I saw that there was a whole world of musicians who were licensing their songs to TV shows, like Grey's Anatomy in One Tree Hill at the time and ads for McDonald's and Pepsi and Walmart. And I was like, what is this whole road? I wish I would've known about it.

Bobbi Rebell:
I'm thinking that now. I never even thought about that whole world. And you're just observing it and there's a business behind that.

Cathy Heller:
Oh, it's a huge business. And this article, this article was really opening my eyes. It was telling me that people in this field were making hundreds of thousands of dollars because ad agencies were paying the artists 50, 60, $70,000 a pop for just the use, just the license, not the ownership to use the song in an ad. And television shows were spending something like five or $10,000 per song in an episode. Of course it's more for an ad because there might be one retail ad for a campaign versus 22 episodes and six songs an episode, but still five or 10 grand to have your song used in a show or $50,000 to have your song used in a Walmart spot.

Cathy Heller:
I was getting pretty excited about that and so I made that decision that I would do everything I could to figure out who were the clients, who were the people choosing songs at Paramount and NBC and Lion's Gate and ad agencies like Ogilvy and Deutsche and McCann. Who were those people? And what did they need? And I had never asked myself that question before. Up until that moment, I thought that you either did something you loved that came completely from your heart or you built someone else's dream and you sold out. I never really understood that you could marry the two things, that you could be who you were and feel authentic and at the same time you could know that someone else has a need and a want and that you could answer that with your gifts. And then that's really how you make a living.

Cathy Heller:
And it made so much sense. All of a sudden it's like the lights went on and I thought, wow. And I started telling songwriter friends of mine who were starving and working jobs that they hated, barista jobs and insurance jobs, and I said to them, "Look, have you ever looked at this this way?" And they said, "Oh my gosh, you're going to be such a sell out. You're going to hate the music you write." And I said, "Oh my God."

Bobbi Rebell:
They said that?

Cathy Heller:
Oh, they had so much resistance.

Bobbi Rebell:
Really?

Cathy Heller:
Because people, especially artists believe that if you're really an artist, then you're probably starving because you're so authentic. And that definitely doesn't account for people like Michelangelo who died with $50 million to his name before inflation. He would be a billionaire today. It doesn't account for people like John Williams who's written all the scores to Star Wars and Jaws and all of these movies. It doesn't account for any of the people you've ever supported. Whether it's somebody concert, you go to a piece of art. Why? Because all of the people that I just mentioned are people who absolutely care what their customer, what their audience needs and wants.

Cathy Heller:
And I realize that the difference between a hobby and a business is that a hobby is something you do for you. But a business has to have at its core, radical, radical, radical empathy because it means that something that I'm doing in this world, someone else is going to value and they're going to pay me for it. I got that. And so I got excited. I actually got excited to find out how I could serve and I started to do the next thing which I tell people to do, which is I think everybody has Michael Jordan talent at something. But we're really missing momentum. And what we need to do is validate our ideas and we need to get feedback by going out and talking to human beings about what they need.

Cathy Heller:
And so I started to do that really scary, scary thing, which was pick up the phone and call Warner Brothers and call all these ad agencies and call Disney and call brands and ask questions about what kinds of campaigns, what kinds of stories they were telling, what kinds of things they needed musically. What kinds of sonic palettes. Did they like strings? Did they like ukuleles? Is the story this year about sisters? Is it about female empowerment? Is it about being there for someone? And people I am telling you, they were so happy to tell me what they needed. They were so happy that for the first time in a long time somebody reached out and it was refreshing to them that I wasn't calling to pitch myself and to read a script and try to be impressive.

Cathy Heller:
I was calling to ask what I could do to use my talent to help and long story short, within 18 months I started making $100,000 writing songs for film and TV and then that grew second and third year I started making $300,000 a year and then I got written about in Variety and Billboard and the LA Weekly and when I say written about, it wasn't a two line blurb about this girl who was writing music for film and TV. It was a full page story, not just digitally but in print magazines with a picture of me telling the story about how I was taking matters into my own hands and I was really successful.

“A hobby is something you do for you. But a business has to have at it’s core radical empathy. Because it means that something that I am doing in this world someone else is going to value and they are going to pay me for it.”

Cathy’s Money Lesson:

Cathy Heller:
You've got to validate your idea and I think what most people do is they think about businesses backwards where they think to themselves, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to sit in my little cave and I'm going to come up with this line of cupcakes or this jewelry I'm going to do or I'm going to write the whole book before they ever test it. Before they ever figure out who would buy this jewelry? Who would eat these cupcakes? And maybe I should go and in tandem with this person who I'm making it for, maybe I should be getting their input, getting feedback and then weaving that feedback into my process. I think that people just don't realize that we make it harder than it needs to be and if you look at any successful company, they are testing ideas all the time. They are paying for your feedback. They are doing focus groups because it works.

Cathy Heller:
And then this sounds really simple but it's usually really hard. You have to go out and tell people about your idea. You have to make sure that you're going out in the world and you are letting people know about it and instead of saying, "Well, I'm going to think about this and noodle around on my about page for 40 hours." No, it's pick up the phone and make the call. Let them know what's so awesome about what you're doing as opposed to telling them, how you do what you do. People forget that we don't buy things, we buy feelings, we buy results. And so often when you ask someone, "Tell me about the thing that you're creating or service you're offering." People sort of get tongue tied.

Bobbi Rebell:
How many people do you think you called for every time you place a song in the early years before you were known?

Cathy Heller:
It's hundreds.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hundreds?

Cathy Heller:
Yeah. And when people would say no to me, and there were times that people not only said no, but said, "Don't ever send music like this. It's so mediocre." And instead of me being completely devastated, because obviously I wasn't completely devastated. I felt bad, I felt gross, I felt stupid sometimes. But I would take the feedback and I knew that I would give myself the grace to get better at it.

“I would take the feedback. And I would give myself the grace to get better at it.”

Cathy’s Money Tip:

Cathy Heller:
Yeah. My everyday money tip is something that I learned from Jen Sincero who wrote, You are a Badass. When she was on my podcast, she was living at 40 years old in a, she was living in a garage eating cans of tuna fish and she's like, something's got to change. And she did a bunch of self help stuff. And finally somebody said to her, why don't you write a letter to money? And she's like, what does that mean? And she wrote a letter to money and she was like, money, I hate you. Money, you're the reason for everyone's problems. And she realized at the end of the letter that she was carrying around feeling so much resistance to money because deep down money is something that she felt would make her less of a kind person. And that was a choice she didn't want to make. She didn't want to either have money and be a jerk or not have money, but she chose not having money if it meant she would have her integrity.

Cathy Heller:
And so I often tell people, "Why don't you write a letter to money?" Because sometimes what we find out is that at the root of it we might be sabotaging ourself because we might believe that money is something we feel shame around. If it's not shame for having it and being a jerk, sometimes it's shame like who am I to deserve to have good things? And when we can get to the root of that, it's very important because ultimately in life the results of our life, it has to do with what we really deep down want.

Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us more about where people can follow up and learn more about you and your podcast and your book and all things Cathy Heller.

“We don’t buy things. We buy feelings. We buy results.”

Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:

Financial Grownup Tip #1:

Some of Cathy's best clients were the very ones who rejected her earlier in her career. When I asked Cathy about this after the interview, she explained that if she was being honest with herself, her work just was not that good initially when she pitched them. She had to get better at her craft. It's business. It's not personal. Early rejection is not forever rejection. Try to find out why your work wasn't accepted and then work on the work.

Financial Grownup Tip #2:

Cathy talked about how some of her musician friends called her a sellout. Look guys, making an honest living is not selling out. There is no glory in being a starving artist. It doesn't make you a better artist to not earn money. Nor by the way, is there any historical precedent for this over romanticized idea. Professional artists, Michelangelo, for example, died in 1564 at the age of 88. His net worth by many reports in the ballpark of $7 million.

Episode Links:

• Cathy's website - CathyHeller.com

• Cathy’s podcast Don’t Keep Your Day Job

• Cathy’s book Don’t Keep Your Day Job

Follow Cathy!

• Instagram - @cathy.heller

• Twitter - @NoDayJobs

• Facebook - @dontkeepyourdayjob

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

New Year, New Grownup attitude towards your money. We chat with Tina Hay, author of  the new book Napkin Finance: Build Wealth in 30 seconds or less, about how grownups can approach savings, investing, retirement strategies and philanthropy in 2020. 

4 Simple and fun ways to be a financial grownup for the New Year

1. Savings

2. Investing

3. Retirement

4. Philanthropy

Episode Links:

• Tina's website www.napkinfinance.com

• Tina’s book Napkin Finance

Follow Tina + Napkin Finance!

• Instagram - @napkinfinance

• Twitter - @napkinfinance

• Facebook - @napkinfinance

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Performance coach Jen Cohen is a master at ab crunches— and crunching numbers. She shares the story of how she talked her way into a job at Olive Garden before she was even old enough to work- and then reveals her secrets to eating healthier on a tight budget. 

Jennifer’s Money Story:

Thanks, Bobbi. When you asked that question, it makes you think and go back into your brain a little bit to think why someone is the way they are, subconsciously. I think it really goes back to when I was really small, four, five years old when my mom and dad did get divorced, and I guess money was quite tight. I do remember my mom, to make extra money, my mom is a psychiatric nurse, and she had a full-time job, but she had now two kids also, and it wasn't enough, so she would have these odd jobs.

Jen Cohen:
I don't remember all the details, but I do remember her working to sell stuff. She sold Mary Kay cosmetics on the side. She would also cut out pieces of the carpet in our apartment where she was selling them, and I think that vision or that imagery really stuck in my brain in a negative way. It told me right at that moment, "I don't want to be poor, or I always want to make my own money and feel financially stable and secure, not to rely on somebody else for my financial security."

Jen Cohen:
From that moment, I guess even as a small, small child, I went through life thinking of ways of having side hustles or working and doing things. When I was 12 years old, I remember bargaining and hustling with the manager of the Olive Garden down my street about working for him.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wait, you were 12 years old, and you were working at Olive Garden?

Jen Cohen:
I was. I was a greeter. They wouldn't allow me at 12 because you're too young to get ... I wasn't allowed in the actual restaurant because it was illegal, but I negotiated my way with this guy and just begged him and just hawked him enough where he gave me a job as a greeter. I was able to open up the front door for customers when they walk in. When they first get there, the first person you see was me, and I'm like, "Hello, welcome to Olive Garden." That was really my first real legit job when I was in nine, no, seventh, eighth grade, something really ... I was young, where I remember people in my neighborhood be like coming to the restaurant and be like, "What are you doing here?" It was very odd.

Bobbi Rebell:
But it sounds like you were actually really proud to be earning money, even at that young age. You weren't embarrassed about it. You were excited.

Jen Cohen:
Oh, God. No. I loved it. I always loved having my own money. I always loved having that option, never having to ask my mom or whoever. If I wanted something, I would have it, but here's a caveat. I would never spend my money, so all of this was for me to have savings. It wasn't for me to actually buy stuff. I've never been a very materialistic person. It's really about having in my head knowing that I had that backup, having that security blanket. I would literally save everything.

Jen Cohen:
Then through high school, through college, I always had multiple jobs just so I had it where very comfortable later on, but it was never about that. I've been very rich, and I've been poor, or in the middle, but it's never been that story that's driven me. It's really about that I think one experience when I was a little girl that just has always been subconsciously in my brain where I'm driven to make and create financial security just to have it.

Jennifer’s Money Lesson:

The takeaway is, A, number one, always spend below your means, not above, just so you have that ability, and find and figure out ways to save money. There's so many ways now. You can eat cheaply. You can figure out ways. You can work out for free. You can eat for less than $7 a day. There's a lot of ways to be crafty and resourceful if you want to be.

Jennifer’s Money Tip:

People can actually be much healthier on a very restricted budget. First of all, eating canned salmon. Canned salmon is automatically wild.

Bobbi Rebell:
I didn't know that.

Jen Cohen:
Yeah.

Bobbi Rebell:
And wild salmon is better. That's not just a myth to charge you more at the store.

Jen Cohen:
Absolutely not. Farmed salmon has a lot of toxins and maybe a lot of mercury. It could have a lot of different things in it. That's why people say limit your fish intake to maybe once a week, twice at max.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right, and that wild salmon is really expensive near me.

Jen Cohen:
It's expensive everywhere, but if you buy canned salmon, just make sure you look on the can. If it says wild Alaskan, that can of salmon would be maybe $2.50 to $3 at most, and that's higher quality than salmon that you would buy that would normally cost about $14 a pound anywhere else, maybe $17 a pound, depending on where you live. That is the perfect portion. That in itself is a meal.

Bobbi Rebell:
How do you usually eat it? Do you put it on a salad? What do you do with it usually?

Jen Cohen:
You could do anything. You could put it on a salad. You could actually ... When I'm starving and I need something to satiate me, I could just take the can of salmon, mash it a little bit of Vegenaise or mayonnaise whatever you'd like, or just put it in a bowl or whatever, eat out of the can as a snack. When I was on a budget I would eat that all the time, and I still eat that.

Jen Cohen:
The other thing is frozen vegetables. Frozen vegetables are a higher quality-sourced produce than what you find at the store because by the time it's at the store, it's been sitting on trucks, it's already half rotten. When you buy frozen vegetables, they flash-freeze them when it's at its peak, so the quality is better.

Bobbi Rebell:
So frozen vegetables, but not canned vegetables? What's the difference there?

Jen Cohen:
Listen. Canned corn, there's nothing wrong with canned corn. I mean, the reality is this: I don't like canned vegetables as much because I think when you do that in the cans, they have to add sodium. I try to stay away from that, but when it's the frozen vegetables, it's typically just the vegetable in itself flash-freeze in a bag so there's no added anything. It's just the vegetables. Canned vegetables typically have to have a preservative to keep it because it's not frozen, and also added salt. That's why I choose to have the frozen vegetables.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that all.

Jen Cohen:
And frozen fruit, by the way, too.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes, and I do that in smoothies a lot, actually. I did that even today in a smoothie.

Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:

Financial grownup tip number one:

Don't be a food snob. Jen talked about eating frozen veggies and canned fish and how, quote, "fresh" isn't always better even if it's organic. Oh, my goodness. Could you imagine? Organic not being the absolute best? You need to pay attention. You can really get burned paying up for all that so-called fresh food because when you take away all those chemicals, which you should, we don't want the chemicals on our food, of course, but sometimes, the shelf life is just really short.

Recently, I splurged on these organic grapes at Whole Foods, and they went bad so fast. I had paid $8 for a bunch because I really wanted the grapes and I wanted to feel like I was eating healthy, and they barely lasted. That is also, by the way, a reason not to go shopping with your kids because I was with my son, and he also felt we should get the grapes, even though they were really expensive, and it's really hard to say no to a kid with they ask for food that's actually not junk food. Even if it's not the absolute healthiest fruit, it's not junk food, and that hard not to encourage, so try to leave your kids at home when you shop, although that's not always realistic.

Financial grownup tip number two:

The power of persuasion is very real. Good for Jen. Jen really shouldn't have been working at the Olive Garden at age 12 because it was not actually fully legal, but she got her way because she was creative and she found a way to get to yes with a reluctant manager and find a way to work there without technically working there and not technically breaking the law. That was a great lesson for all of us, Jen. Be persuasive and find a way around obstacles.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Jennifer’s website - jennifercohen.com

• How to save money and cut calories on your morning coffee from Starbucks

• Jen's book Badass Body Goals

Follow Jennifer!

• Instagram - @TheRealJenCohen

• Twitter - @TheRealJenCohen

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

How to Buy Art Like a Financial Grownup

The art market is intimidating for many of us. But it can be a great way to both invest or just collect pieces you love and want to enjoy having. Gallerist and art advisor Janis Cecil walks us through exactly how to get started, what to look for, and how to get the best price. 

Bobbi Rebell:

A lot of our listeners are very curious about investing in art and what it takes to get started, so I wanted to bring you on to kind of give us the inside scoop in, I hate to say a safe environment because so many galleries seem intimidating even as your friend walking into that beautiful space in Chelsea, it's vast. You see this stunning art on the wall and you don't really know how it all works. How does it work? How do you start buying art, Janis?

Janis Cecil:

The primary market are galleries that represent artists who are making art now, which they are then presenting and selling to the public. There are other types of galleries called secondary market galleries, which just specialize in selling works that had been sold before. These works were sold from an artist at one point and now they're back on the market, either because the owners decided to sell them for whatever reason. The three Ds are often thought of, which is death, divorce, or debt.

Bobbi Rebell:

Oh my gosh.

Janis Cecil:

Sometimes people sell for those three reasons. Other times people just want to upgrade their collections or they've moved and they can't take their big painting with them. There are all sorts of reasons why people sell.

Bobbi Rebell:

So the first step is to figure out what you like? Let's say you're ready for a transaction. I know when I've gone in, for example, to your gallery, there is no price tag next to these paintings.

Janis Cecil:

That's true. Very observant, Bobbi. There is actually a rule in New York that galleries are supposed to have available a price list upon request. I would suggest that if there's something that someone likes in a gallery, just say, "Hi," either there'll be someone, a staff member of the gallery, it could be a sales director who will talk to you about prices, there could be a price list available upon request at the front desk at the gallery. Every gallery will be somewhat different about this. They may have someone come out and talk to the person who's asking about prices so that way they can give a fuller understanding of the artist and their career, and kind of help the viewer understand what they're looking at and how things are priced.

Janis Cecil:

A price that's quoted by the person at the gallery is somewhat negotiable, especially if it's primary market. An artist who is selling will have an agreement with the gallery where they split the proceeds from the work that's sold and usually there is between a five and a 15% discount that can be given to a buyer.

Bobbi Rebell:

What is the language that you would use to ask for that? I mean, what do you say?

Janis Cecil:

One of the negotiating tactics would be to say, "Hi, I really like this painting. What's the price?" Then someone tells you the price. You can say, "Well, is that the best you can do?" Or, "What do you think the best price is?" I think the nomenclature here would be best price. And then also there are things that can be negotiated, which could be, if it's a larger work that would cost money to send someplace, right? To ship somewhere, you can kind of negotiate shipping costs. Maybe the gallery can ship for free, or they can actually pay for the crating.

Janis Cecil:

Imagine now, paintings that are really expensive to build a crate that's actually museum, or where they that can travel across large distances costs thousands and thousands of dollars. In this case if you're buying something smaller or something that is less valuable, you could use something called a master pack box, which they can actually order and it'll fit their artwork perfectly and keep it super safe so it can be sent by Federal Express or another courier or hand-trucked.

Bobbi Rebell:

New York is somewhat of an art gallery every day and a fair every day because there's so many galleries, but many people do enjoy going to art fairs. I know I've gone to them and I've actually bought art at them. Tell me how those work differently from walking into a gallery.

Janis Cecil:

Okay. The art fair is kind of like the art buying experience on steroids. I mean, it is just all about the transaction and all about introducing people to new artists or to a new body of work they haven't seen by an artist. If you see something you like, I would advise going in and introducing yourself to whoever looks like they're in charge in that booth. I would just start a conversation and say, "Hi, I like this. Tell me about the artist. Where are they from? What's the material? What's the medium of this work I'm looking at? Is it an oil, is it acrylic, is it a watercolor?" If it's a sculpture, "What's it made out of?" And then they can talk to you about the artist's inspiration or their goals that they're trying to achieve with this work.

Bobbi Rebell:

And again, how negotiable is it? And does that negotiability change depending on how early or how late in the fair you're there?

Janis Cecil:

Yes, things are negotiable always. Again, I would go by the five to 15% rule remembering, of course, that there is no incentive necessarily for a gallery to give a discount to an artist that's super hot when they're pretty much going to sell everything out. They may not give discounts at all or they may decide, "Look, if a collector's coming to us and they buy it from us a lot, we're going to always give them kind of a 10% discount." It's going to depend, really depending on the artist that is of interest and the gallery where you're looking.

Janis Cecil:

And then at the end of the fair, so say the fair starts on a Wednesday, that's the VIP day. Then on Sunday comes and you could be at the end of the week when the fair's about the close, there could be perhaps more flexibility and prices just because the fair's almost over and they tried to sell things before they leave.

Bobbi Rebell:

Because it's expensive to ship things back, right?

Janis Cecil:

It is expensive to ship things back. Or you know what? Shipping things back when they're sold, everyone's happy to do that.

Bobbi Rebell:

Of course.

Janis Cecil:

Of course, they'd rather ship it to its next home.

Bobbi Rebell:

Yes. Okay, are there things to look for if you're buying for what you love, that goes without saying, but if you're buying and you do hope that this will appreciate in value, so you're buying as an investment. What are some things that people should keep in mind?

Janis Cecil:

Things you're looking at are condition of the work. Doing homework, say on a database that records auction sales. That could be Live Art Auction, or Artnet, and looking at what other works of art have sold by that artist in similar years or similar media. And then also having a condition report and doing basic due diligence on what the work is being sold.

Bobbi Rebell:

How much of this is available online? What can people find out if they don't have access to an art expert like you?

Janis Cecil:

Well, there's a couple of different ways of doing this. Both Artsy and Artnet have auction records online. Artsy, also provides kind of more of a bio and understanding of where that artist's work is in the firmament of contemporary art today. So artsy.net and you would basically go on the site and say, "Okay, I'm interested in a painting by," let's say, the American Alex Katz, or, "I'm interested in a sculpture by," let's say, the British sculptor, Lynn Chadwick. Like, "What museums are this work in and what are the prices at auction? How do we find sculpture or paintings by these artists?"

Janis Cecil:

There's a whole way of doing that. There'll be galleries you can search, you can google the artist's name and see who represents the artist or the estate of the artist. And remembering that if you fall in love with something that's very, very expensive, say a Jasper Johns painting. Jasper Johns paintings will cost deca millions. Even if you love Jasper Johns, and you can't afford that, which by the way, most people cannot, you can still buy a beautiful work on paper by the artist or a limited edition print. Our firm in itself is really good in print making. It could be etchings, it could be lithographs, right? Like Warhol, silkscreens, all these things are ways to buy art by artists who are famous, who are eternally recognized and to make it affordable.

Bobbi Rebell:

Well, I was even looking at Blain Southern's website before we started recording and there's a lot of really accessible stuff as inexpensive, by the way, as when artists had a mug that was 10. It was 10 pounds in this case because it was from your British branch. But there's very affordable works and works that are from the artists, but as you said, they're editions, they're prints. That means there's not only one, but there's only one of the one that you have. That's right.

Janis Cecil:

And that's the edition of 50.

Bobbi Rebell:

Exactly.

Janis Cecil:

At the edition of 50 you will get your own edition number and it will be edition to of a 50, or 10 or 50. And there's something else to know, which is that most editions have what's called an artist's proof. Or in French you'd say [French 00:11:34], and so there'll be a limited edition say of 10 and then there could be two artists proofs. They're actually, it means there are 12 in existence, but the say, at the edition of 10 when you buy something it'll either be one of that 10, or it could be an artist proof if the artist does decide to sell them.

Janis Cecil:

Another way to find really beautiful limited editions is to shop at museum stores and I love museum stores because it's great. You're supporting artists, you're supporting the health of the institution when you buy from museum shops, and if you're a member at a museum then you also get a discount when you do that.

Bobbi Rebell:

Even though you're buying this artist at a lower price point, a more accessible price point, it is fully work of that artist and could also appreciate. It is a limited edition. It is potentially an investment, it could be-

Janis Cecil:

Oh, for sure.

Bobbi Rebell:

Nothing's ever guaranteed, but it is a way to buy these artists at much more affordable prices.

Janis Cecil:

Exactly. I mean Jasper Johns, Prince by Jasper Johns, when he made them were incredibly affordable. They are now worth over a million dollars. And the important thing when looking at art is to think about what is it that I can buy with the budget that I have. I'd rather buy one or two things a year that are really good quality that are representative of the artist. In other words, that means they're kind of emblematic of what the artist does, right?

Janis Cecil:

If you're wanting to buy a work by an artist who's famous for painting portraits, maybe if you're going to buy just one thing by that artist, buy something that's actually figurative, right? That represents a portrait or a person. And that's kind of what that artist is known for. Whereas what if you want to buy something like by the British artist, David Hockney, and he's known for doing interiors but also these incredibly lush landscapes. In that case, a landscape by David Hockney makes perfect sense.

Bobbi Rebell:

What should people do when they walk into the galleries and it's just dead quiet and they've just got, there's just somebody at the desk kind of staring at them. You can feel so awkward, Janis.

Janis Cecil:

Well, I mean, most front desk people that I've had anyone at the front desk, I've always encouraged them to be friendly and smile and be welcoming. I think it's just to say, "Hi," and then when you leave say, "Thank you." And if you're like, "Oh wow, I love that. Can you tell me more?" And if the front desk person is super busy or can't talk to you, then they'll usually get someone who can.

Bobbi Rebell:

Amazing. Such great advice.

Episode Links:

• artsy.net is free

• artnet.com is paid but there is a lot of free information

• The Art Dealers Association of America - www.artdealers.org

Follow Janis!

• Instagram - @janisgcecil

• Twitter - @JanisGCecil

• LinkedIn

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Author, Podcast host and Entrepreneur magazine’s Editor in Chief Jason Feifer shares specifically how he raised his speaking fees, and confesses to a massive and very un-grownup recent financial blunder.

Jason’s Money Story:

Jason Feifer:
So I had done a lot of unpaid public speaking and then felt like it was time to actually start charging for this. And I didn't know how to because I was genuinely uncomfortable saying you should pay me for this. Actually, I just hadn't really done that. It's weird. I have been very successful in my career. I have a high profile job, but the ways that I've been paid have largely been these very established methods. I get a salary and that is it.

Jason Feifer:
And now here, I am telling someone, you have asked me to do a thing, I know that I could do it for free because I've done it before, and you probably know that too. But instead I'm going to set a very high fee and expect that you pay me that. And I was so uncomfortable doing that that I kept undervaluing myself. I had a friend who's in this industry who had told me what my value would be and I just literally couldn't say it to people. And so I was telling them half or a quarter of it.

Bobbi Rebell:
How did this evolve? So someone reaches out and says, Jason, we want you to speak at our events. What happens next?

Jason Feifer:
So here's how the conversation would start at the beginning of this. Somebody would invite me to their event and I would gush over the event. And I would tell them how excited I could be, and we would talk about literally everything except for money. And then, they would bring up the money, and then I would have a number in my head that I was supposed to say and that I couldn't say it, and I said something lower. And that is not what happens now. What happens now is that, very upfront, as soon as somebody reaches out to me, I say, do you have a speaker budget for this?

Jason Feifer:
And sometimes I will also say, do you ever speak your budget for this? I would do this for free if I could, but I have two kids and a very busy job and I can only do these kinds of things if there's compensation. Sometimes they don't. But oftentimes, they do. They say they have a budget and then they'll ask me what the budget is, or what my fee is, and I'll tell them. And I'm just really upfront about it because that is my worth, and I have over time taught myself that I am worth something and that there's no shame in being worth something. But it took a long time to get there.

Bobbi Rebell:
What was the tipping point?

Jason Feifer:
The tipping point was actually my wife getting extremely annoyed that I was leaving New York to go speak at these things and not getting as much as she thought I probably could get. But honestly, it was talking to other people and seeing what they were being paid and realizing that I was doing the same work, and I was I think better than a lot of them, and yet I was getting paid less. And that told me, most importantly, that I could stand up for my own value and I wouldn't put other people off.

Jason Feifer:
The thing is you don't know what the marketplace is and so you don't know what people are willing to pay and you are afraid. Everybody's afraid, I think, of showing themselves to be too full of hubris, and say I'm worth this crazy amount of money, and that people will look at you. It'd be like, no, you're actually just a jerk. But once you understand the marketplace and you get a sense of what people actually will pay, then you realize, Oh no, wait a second, I am valuable and I'm not being obnoxious in my value. I'm just being straightforward in my value.

Bobbi Rebell:
But how do you know what the marketplace is? And for example, in the market that you're talking about, which is speaking, which is very often doing keynote speeches, moderating panels, emceeing events. There's no database where everyone says what they make. How do you know?

Jason Feifer:
No, there's no database. I wish there was a database, but there are a lot of people who do it, or there are a lot of people who work with people who do it. And so, I just started asking everybody. Every single person who I interacted with at any event or just in the course of my work, we would start talking about speaking and I would just start asking them either, are you willing to share what you make or are you willing to share what the ballpark is for people in our range or whatever.

Jason Feifer:
Because the thing is that people do not volunteer this information upfront because I think oftentimes people are uncomfortable sharing numbers and being the one to broach that subject. But if you open up the door to it, a lot of people actually are fine sharing information because they understand that information is power for everybody. And if they share something with you, you'll share something with them. And just starting that conversation and having so many of those conversations, you start to triangulate what your value is or what other people did to get more valuable, which is also so important.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what was that? What did people do to get more valuable?

Jason Feifer:
Well, one of the things that they did is that they did a lot of add ons. That was not something that was intuitive to me. So you would go to an event and you'd find some fee, but then you would start upselling people. You'd be like, I'd be happy to come in the evening before and have a dinner with your sponsors or whatever. I'm around. Is that something you'd be interested in because we could just throw on an additional fee for that? And people are happy to do it. And that's how I've upped my fee often for taking time that I would be... What would else would I be doing? I might as well be having dinner with somebody and making a little extra money.

Jason Feifer:
But yeah, it was a lot of add ons. I found that the key to the add ons is not just that you're willing to do stuff, but that you're showing them that you're invested in them and invested in helping their whatever it is be as successful as possible. And so, here they have an asset. The asset is you, and there are two ways that asset could be, it could either somebody who just blows through and doesn't really care and just collects the check or, someone who says, hey, I've invested, I care, I want to do what's great for you. It's going to cost a little bit more, but I'm there and I want to do it. And I think that they also want to pay me just because they like me and that matters.

Bobbi Rebell:
How do you handle it when someone says, I don't have the budget that you're asking for it.

Jason Feifer:
So I take it on a case by case. Is it something that I really want to do? Is there some other value that I can extract from them? Because sometimes, there is. I could, for example say, Oh, I'll do it for this lesser fee that you're offering, but can you buy copies of my book? Can you buy some subscriptions to the magazine for people who are attending? Can you give me the email addresses of everyone in attendance so that I can follow up with them and maybe get them to sign up for my newsletter or whatever. If there's something that makes sense for me for other reasons and it doesn't really put me out, I'll do it for a little less.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners from your story?

“I have over time taught myself that I am worth something and there is no shame in being worth something but it took a long time to get there.”

Jason’s Money Lesson:

Jason Feifer:
The lesson is lead with value and be confident in your value. I hear from people a lot, if I could just turn it around as me as a recipient of people pitching, I hear from people a lot who want a lot of things from me. They're pitching me because they want me to write about their company or they're pitching me because they want me to assign them a story or whatever. And a phrase that they use all the time, I literally just read about this in the magazine, a phrase they use all the time when they write to me is, let me know if you ever need a dot dot dot. Let me know if you ever need a writer. Let me know if you ever need a good story. Let me know if you ever need a customer service solution or whatever it is.

Jason Feifer:
And that is a terrible, terrible way to pitch yourself because it actually puts the sales onus on me, the person who's supposed to be sold to. Now, I have to research them and go back to them and say, Oh, you know what I actually do. Here's the thing; nobody ever just needs a blah, blah, blah. They never do. I am full of writers. I am full of stories. I don't need any more of them. So why would I take any more of them? Because if somebody comes to me and isn't shy about their value and is instead value forward, if they understand what I'm looking for and what kind of value they can provide to me, if they're upfront about that and good at communicating that, then I see the value and I want the value.

Bobbi Rebell:
Such great advice. Let's move on to your everyday money tip because, Jason, you're being very brave. You're going to admit to having done something that you're no longer doing, right?

“I was doing the same work and I think better than they were and I was being paid less. And that told me that I could stand up for my own value and I wouldn’t put other people off.”

Jason’s Money Tip:

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's move on to your everyday money tip because, Jason, you're being very brave. You're going to admit to having done something that you're no longer doing, right?

Jason Feifer:
Right.

Bobbi Rebell:
... that costs you thousands of dollars. Tell us your everyday money. Thousands of dollars. Oh my goodness.

Jason Feifer:
I know. I'm so embarrassed and annoyed that I have done this. It is the most basic piece of advice. Look at your statements... Go through them line by line, your credit card statements. There were some services that I had signed up for that I either forgot about or in one case it was a fairly expensive service that I thought I had signed up for a month of, but it turns out it was a recurring fee.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh, that's your worst nightmare. And can you get them to refund a few months back at least? Is there any recourse at that point? because you clearly weren't using it. Do you want to tell us what kind of thing it was? Was it a really expensive magazine, Jason?

Jason Feifer:
No, it was a social media management thing. It was $400 a month.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my God. Oh my God. How many months did this go on, Jason?

Jason Feifer:
Ten.

Bobbi Rebell:
You didn't catch a $400 charge for ten months?

Jason Feifer:
No, I didn't.

Bobbi Rebell:
Jason.

Jason Feifer:
I know, it's awful. It's awful. And now you're like, what kind of completely irresponsible financial person is this? And the answer is that I do too many things myself and I have a number of different income streams from speaking and podcasting and I'm just throwing it all into the same account and I just wasn't being mindful of where the number was. And so there was this giant hole being poked in my finances, and it was just pouring out $400 a month.

Jason Feifer:
I contacted the company and they were not really willing to be helpful, and I've gotten in touch with the head guy. And he just kept putting me off and putting me off, and I can tell what's happening, which is that he's hoping that he is going to wait me out, and that I'm going to just give up on this and forget about it. And so, I literally have on my reminders app that tells me all the things that I should be doing. One of them is to keep texting this guy.

Bobbi Rebell:
So this is unresolved right now. So you're not paying ongoing, but you've now paid 10 months, you paid $4,000 to this company?

Jason Feifer:
That's right, and I proposed a deal to them too, and I just haven't gotten the money back. I'm a little resolved to just eat it as a very, very expensive lesson in keeping tabs on your credit card forms. But I am also going to text this dude for the rest of my life demanding my money back.

Bobbi Rebell:
I think you can automate that. So Jason's going to un-automate his bill paying and he's going to automate, I'm sure there's an app you can download that can charge you another monthly fee to automatically text this guy. I'm going to text him for you, too.

“If you open up the door to it, a lot of people actually are fine sharing information because they understand that information is power for everybody. ”

Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:

Financial grownup tip number one:

Like Jason did, work up the courage to ask, but also, as he did, keep it reasonable so you can get to the yes. People ask how I got such high profile people to be in my book, How To Be A Financial Grownup; those included Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, designer Cynthia Rowley, and even Tony Robbins. A lot of it was simply working up the courage to ask, but I also kept the ask really simple. It was two questions, similar format to this podcast. You'll have more success if you ask for something that's easier for them to do.

Financial grownup tip number two:

Jason talks about add ons and up-selling. Not only does this bring in more money, it also provides more value for clients. Most important, it often strengthens the bond and creates a relationship where you're probably going to have a better shot at getting hired again. Play the long game.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Jason’s website - www.jasonfeifer.com

Follow Jason!

• Instagram - @heyfeifer

• Facebook - @jasonfeifer

• Twitter - @heyfeifer

• LinkedIn

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Journalist Jeanne Pinder, founder of ClearHeathCosts reveals how medical costs can vary widely for the same products and procedures- and how we can find out- and negotiate- to get the best price.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Jeanne’s website - clearhealthcosts.com

• GOODRX.com

• Negotiating Bills

• wnyc.org/healthcosts

Follow Jeanne + Clear Health Costs!

• Facebook - @ClearHealthCosts

• Twitter - @chcosts

• LinkedIn - @jeannepinder

• Pinterest - @chcosts

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Transcription

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup Guide, how to pay less for healthcare. Like a Financial Grownup with Clear Health Costs, Jeanne Pinder. You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, Certified Financial Planner, Bobbi Rebell. Author of How to Be a Financial Grownup. And you know what? Being a grownup is really hard, especially when it comes to money. But it's okay. We're going to get there together. We've got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
No secret. Our healthcare costs are ridiculous. What makes matters even worse is that it is one of the few things that we buy where we don't even know what it costs. In fact, we don't even ask ahead of time. Very often we don't negotiate. We don't know what the competition is charging and there is often zero transparency. The costs are all over the place. For example, a simple blood test could be $500 in one place, $7 nearby. An MRI routine procedure can cost $300 to $6,000 in another location just a few blocks away. Very few of us even think to compare costs and shop around the way we do almost obsessively sometimes for everyday items.

Bobbi Rebell:
This is an urgent episode. I worked to bring it to you for a very long time. I am really excited about it. As you can tell as a journalist, I can tell you I really appreciate the work that goes in to getting the data that I just shared. Before my New York Times reporter, Jeanne Pinder is nailing it with the company that she founded, Clear Health Costs. Their work in bringing transparency to the healthcare marketplace by telling people simply what stuff costs is amazing. She has been called a benevolent genius for good reason.

Bobbi Rebell:
Listened to the end of the episode. It's not that long. Take notes or listen again, or go to the show notes at bobbirebell.com for a transcript. And by the way all the episodes are there. Use the search bar in the top right corner to get more info about our guests, or more info about the content of any of the episodes. But first, listen to this one. Here is Clear Health Costs founder and CEO, Jeanne Pinder. Jeanne Pinder, I'm so excited you're here with us. I've been trying to get you on the show for quite a while, but you're a busy lady. You are the founder and CEO of Clear Health Costs, and you are here to basically give us the lowdown on how we can be better financial grownups when it comes to what we pay for our healthcare. Tell us first about Clear Health Costs, and how it came about and what it does.

Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. We're a New York City journalism company, no longer startup, bringing transparency to healthcare by telling people what stuff costs. We do this not only on our home site, but also in partnership with other news organizations in long running consumer friendly investigations. We're partnering now with CBS national news and WNYC public radio, and Gothamist here in New York, telling people what stuff costs.

Bobbi Rebell:
How do we even know where to begin with controlling our healthcare costs, because obviously, we often don't have that much choice when it comes to insurance, and we all feel like we're overpaying for insurance, and then we still do pay for this stuff.

Jeanne Pinder:
Right. Yeah, so we recommend that people just, whenever it's feasible, ask what stuff is going to cost you. We know that not everything is shoppable. Like we wouldn't expect you to shop your emergency up, inducted me or your cancer treatment, but if you think about it, somewhere around 80% of our healthcare system interactions are shoppable, where are you going to get that sore throat looked at, where are you going to get that MRI. Do you have choice in scheduling your surgery? So once you've ascertain that it is shoppable in some sense, you can start out by asking simple questions. Ask the insurance company if applicable and the hospital or doctor, how much will this cost me on my insurance?

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. Meaning what's the net cost to you?

Jeanne Pinder:
Yes, and what's the cash price? Quite often they'll say, "Well, we don't know or we can't tell you," but our view is that if we make that behavior a normal behavior if everybody's asking. And increasingly, we hear that people are able, doctors, hospitals, labs, clinics are able to come up with a number.

Bobbi Rebell:
And then how do you even know where to go to start comparing? Because sometimes to go to get a second opinion, I would think you maybe have to go get a second appointment with another doctor, which is not only money but also time. Should you be going to second appointments just for the cost of it? How does that actually work in practice?

Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah, we usually suggest something simple like an MRI. You can call three separate providers, and ask them those questions. How much will that cost me on my insurance? What's your cash price? Very important, ask for the cash price.

Bobbi Rebell:
Can you explain that?

Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah. So we're hearing increasingly that people are finding if they put away their insurance card and pay cash. They can get a better rate. It doesn't necessarily fall against your deductible. Although, you should be able to take something like that from your HSA if you have one. But increasingly, we're hearing that people who are choosing to put away their insurance carrier didn't pay cash, do better. Not in every case.

Bobbi Rebell:
What is the thinking behind that? Because my gut instinct, which is clearly wrong, is that it's better to have insurance, right?

Jeanne Pinder:
Well, you have to ask every time. All bets are off. There are no rules. Everything we thought we knew about healthcare, we don't really know that anymore. So for example, we all grew up thinking that our insurance premiums gave us access to the lowest price. That is no longer true necessarily in every case.

Bobbi Rebell:
How do you even know?

Jeanne Pinder:
In most cases, making three phone calls to ask the price, it might take you half an hour. It might take you an hour in advance of a procedure that you'd be surprised what you find out. Yes, in fact, we've heard that a simple blood test could be $500 one place in $7 another place. And if you haven't met your deductible, it really makes a difference. A simple MRI could be $300 one place and 6,000 in another, a few blocks away in the same city.

Bobbi Rebell:
So explain why there's such a cost differential? Does one person pay higher rent? Is one place subsidized by the government, one isn't? Why such a big differential?

Jeanne Pinder:
Well, the biggest reason why is that there is no transparency in healthcare. So people aren't used to publishing prices, and people aren't used to asking for prices. A few rules of thumb. We generally think that any procedure in a hospital is going to be much more expensive. So let's say that lab test, if you get it at LabCorp on cash can be dramatically cheaper than if you get it in a hospital lab.

Bobbi Rebell:
With that, can you negotiate? Let's say for some reason you want to have it at the hospital, can you tell the hospital, "Well, if I go to a lab it's going to be less." Can you match that price? Is that something that people do yet?

Jeanne Pinder:
Yes. People are doing that increasingly. I did it myself actually. I needed an MRI for a member of my family. The orthopedist in question gave us a list of three radiology providers that he uses. And because I know how to do this, so I called the first one and said, "I'm a cash customer. I'm not using my insurance. What's your price for the MRI, the particular code number?" And she said, "$900." I called the second one and had the same conversation. She said, "$600." And then the first one called me back and said, "If you can be here at seven o'clock tonight, it'll be 450." Right. So it's like surge pricing on Uber. Right?

Bobbi Rebell:
Jeannie's reacting to seeing my face. I have a look of surprise for our listeners that obviously can't see me. I was like, "You got to be kidding." Oh my gosh. It's like, are they going to have Black Friday sales one day? I don't know.

Jeanne Pinder:
It is. You never.

Bobbi Rebell:
So you can definitely negotiate. And is it the thing where you can say, "I'm willing to come in last minute and fill an empty slot." Because they're trying to manage their business. That's crazy.

Jeanne Pinder:
And you can say anything that you feel comfortable with. Not everybody is. Well, like for example, my friend Cindy, she was going to a doctor, and she had to get slightly gross. She had to get wax removed from her ear. So she went in and the first thing they said at the billing office was, "Give us your credit card." And she said, "How much is it going to cost?" And they said, "We don't know." And she said, "Well then, why should I give you my credit card?" And she left.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that.

Jeanne Pinder:
Well, not everybody wants to do that. And again, we don't expect you to behave like that when you're on the gurney waiting to have your appendix removed. But increasingly, people are asking because people are getting these terrifying bills, making decisions not to go to the doctor because they get a terrifying bill.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is some of the language that people could use when you want to negotiate beyond saying, "Well, your competitor offers this price." Can you make a hardship argument, especially if you have insurance but then the insurance isn't going to cover it that well? What are the kinds of techniques that are most successful in negotiating a healthcare bill both before and after you get the bill?

Jeanne Pinder:
Right. Generally, we say just those simple questions, how much is this going to cost me on my insurance? What's the cash price? Yes, I'm shopping around. We don't hear a lot of people who are having a lot of success they're saying, "Well, your competitor up the streets charging 6,000 and we'd rather have it for 4,000." But we do hear a lot of people who are asking that question very specifically, and asking it of several providers because quite often the providers do know what their competitors are charging and they do want your business.

Bobbi Rebell:
We'll talk a little bit about that because I think people don't always understand that there's the other side to this, that they also in some cases are not necessarily getting rich off of us. They have their own business issues going on.

Jeanne Pinder:
Right. And one of the issues that they do have going on is that there are people who are not paying their co-insurance and their deductibles. There's a huge conversation in healthcare finance these days about people who are just not paying. So as a reaction to that, we think these cash prices are coming to the fore. Not every time, not every place, but quite often.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about prescriptions. What can people do to lower their prescription costs? Because we were joking before we started taping that I have a prescription that would be very, very expensive, but my doctor gave me this kind of coupon that goes directly to the manufacturer, and that made it only $25, and it's a monthly thing, which is great, but what if you didn't get that coupon? How would you even know what you don't know what to ask for?

Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah. So we say ask that same question at the pharmacy. How much is this going to cost me on my insurance and what's your cash price? You can also go online to goodrx.com and get an idea of what the prices are going to be there. They have coupons that the issue. In general, we hear a lot of people who are saying that they are finding that their copay, like they might have a $35 copay for a common medication, but they can buy it on cash for $4. It's crazy.

Bobbi Rebell:
That makes no sense though.

Jeanne Pinder:
It makes no sense. Right. Again, you think that your insurance policy gives you access to a lower price. That's no longer true.

Bobbi Rebell:
What tips do you have for getting the right amount of money back from your insurance provider? Because I find, how do you know if your doctor even coded it correctly? Are there certain ways you can research that yourself, and make sure when they submitted it's submitted in the best possible way for you? Because I find, a lot of times they're not necessarily paying attention.

Jeanne Pinder:
I think you're right about that. We generally suggest, and again, I'm not saying that this is right because they feel like when people are not healthy, they're not at their best. They would rather not be arguing over nickels and dimes, but we do recommend that people ask on the front end, how much is this going to cost me, and then scrutinize the bill on the backend, like is this what they said they were going to do, and does everything look kosher here? We have a little handbook on how to argue bills on our website.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that. We'll leave a link in the show notes. Make sure to send that to us.

Jeanne Pinder:
Okay.

Bobbi Rebell:
But in short, go ahead. How do you argue the bills?

Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah, so I have argued many a bill over the years.

Bobbi Rebell:
I'm not surprised. And probably very successfully.

Jeanne Pinder:
Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no, but you should document everything. Do it in writing. Don't do it on the phone because doing it on the phone, you're not going to have any record of stuff. I have sent stacks and stacks of copies to CEOs of hospitals and of insurance companies complaining about my treatment. I can get a little bit enthusiastic about arguing bills, but it's worked out for me in many cases. And I think if everybody was reading their bills and challenging them, I think we would be able to reduce the amount of shenanigans that goes on in hospital and doctor billing.

Bobbi Rebell:
Do you think there's a lot of... we just calling it shenanigans? I would call it fraud over-billing.

Jeanne Pinder:
Well, In some places I think it is fraud. In some places that shenanigans. In some places it's just so complicated. The doctor submits one code and the insurance company says, "Well, we don't code it that way. We code it another way." The sum total is that the patient gets stuck in the middle.

Bobbi Rebell:
What are the things we can control it? So for example, I noticed that one doctor, they have multiple labs. They can send a test out to, not all the labs, maybe on your insurance. Can you tell the doctor, "Please send it to this lab, not the other lab."

Jeanne Pinder:
Yes. And try to in every case. Again, it's really hard to place that burden on you as the patient. They should be doing it automatically, but you can remind them. And also when you're doing this prep work, I always recommend that people take notes, take names and take numbers. You can ask for something in writing, for example, a hospital estimate in writing, which will then make it easier for you to argue on the back end should you want to. For many of us, we're a little bit squeamish about talking about body parts and money because it feels like, "Ooh, well, maybe my doctor's going to think that I'm like a cheapskate or something." But I really think it's time for this to come out into the open, and for all of us to get comfortable with the fact that asking that question is going to make us, and our doctors frankly feel a lot better.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, you are a tremendous resource. One more question. We're talking in general about medical procedures that are not necessarily elective. Do you have any negotiability when it comes to things that are elective?

Jeanne Pinder:
The elective procedures that we price on in our database are pretty much already negotiable. They're basically a cash marketplace. So we do pricing on Botox, LASIK and teeth whitening, and they really are pretty much an open marketplace.

Bobbi Rebell:
Fascinating. So they're probably more negotiable because they're really running purely as a business where you can truly take your business somewhere else?

Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah, they'll have specials, special on the LASIK, special on teeth whitening.

Bobbi Rebell:
All good to note. Jeanne, where can people find out more about you and Clear Health Costs?

Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah, clearhealthcosts.com. You can also find us on cbsnews.com/healthcosts, wnyc.org/healthcosts, and gothamist.com/healthcosts.

Bobbi Rebell:
Tremendous resources. We are so grateful to you. Thank you so much and happy holidays.

Jeanne Pinder:
Thank you Bobbi. Thank you. Happy holidays to you too.

Bobbi Rebell:
That was awesome. Big things to Jeanne Pinder. Be sure to check out Clear Health Costs as Jeanne said in all the places, including their partnership with WNYC public radio and Gothamist. That's wnyc.org/health costs. You can also check out their partnership with CBS national news at cbsnews.com/health costs. This is one of those episodes you definitely want to go to the show notes. You could do that at bobbirebell.com/podcast/jeannepinder.

Bobbi Rebell:
You can also just search for her name, J-E-A-N-N-E P-I-N-D-E-R in the search box. That also goes for all the episodes of Financial Grownup. You can get show notes and resources for all of them. And if you like this podcast, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review. And if you have other ways to save on healthcare DM, so that I can share it with the whole community. On Instagram, I am @bobbirebell1, and on Twitter @bobbirebell. And of course, check out Money With Friends. My other podcast with my friend Joe Saul-Sehy. You may know him from Stacking Benjamins. Be sure to follow Money With Friends also. On all the socials, it's at moneyfriendspod. Thank you everyone. Infinite things to Clear Health Costs, Jeanne Pinder for helping us all get our healthcare costs under control. Like the financial grownups, we are. By everyone. Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.

When all her friends seemed to be buying houses, sculptor and novelist Georgia Lee Hussey took the plunge. She quickly realized how much she didn’t know about home ownership, credit scores, and adjustable mortgages- and how much it was going to cost her. But the way out of the debacle was also the way in to the career she never knew she always wanted. 

Georgia’s Money Story:

Georgia Lee Hussey:
Well, thank you so much. It's fun to be able to talk about money stories, my favorite topic.

Bobbi Rebell:
let's get into that now. It has to do with your first real estate purchase, you were just 27 years old. Tell us your money story.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
Sure. So, when I moved back to Portland from New York, I thought, well, I want to move back and I want to buy a house because everybody I know is buying houses. And they were telling me how it easy it was and how great it was and how much the values of the houses were going up. And it seemed too good to be true, and as we know, things that are too good to be true often are.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
And so I qualified for a mortgage ... You'll love this. I had a five 50 credit score, I had no money down and I had two loans. So I had one loan that I had a seven and a half percent fixed rate and then a second loan at an 11 and a half percent adjustable rate. And I literally did not know what any of that meant. So the process of buying this home as a single person and trying to figure out how to make the cash flow for that work when I was working basically a high-end sales job with irregular income, was quite an awakening to what it meant to be a financial grownup.

Bobbi Rebell:
When you were getting this loan, did the loan salesperson, for lack of a better word, did they explain any of this to you?

Georgia Lee Hussey:
You know, they may have, but it was such a blur because everything was new. I didn't know what any of the terms really meant. I'd never been around somebody who bought a house before. And I'm a pretty smart person and savvy, but not in the world of finance. So they may have explained it to me, but I was surprised two years later when I was trying to figure out what to do with the house and that I was going to have an adjustable rate. I literally didn't understand that about-

Bobbi Rebell:
How long was it before it adjusted?

Georgia Lee Hussey:
I think I had ... It was a three year ARM.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's short. Wow.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
Ugh, God. As a CFP it just makes me cringe inside to think about that. Although I was very lucky, thanks to a lot of privilege to be able to get out of that house.

Bobbi Rebell:
So how did it play out? So you're in this house, it becomes pretty clear that with your irregular income from a sales job, this is not sustainable. What happens?

Georgia Lee Hussey:
Sure. So I did all the scrappy, punk rock, arty things that I had always done. I got renters, I rented my garage, I rented the extra bedrooms, I did work trade with people to paint it. And I was working in modern interior design, that's how I leveraged my sculpture background. And so I can make it look really good. So I was really leveraging the resources in my community, in my friend group to be able to do that.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
But as I was realizing the extent of the problem of not understanding how to budget really, because nobody I'd ever been around had budgeted. I started learning everything I could from basically personal finance blogs, which were the equivalent of personal finance podcasts in the early [inaudible 00:06:11]. And I realized how much structural ignorance I had about how money operated and how mortgages worked and how taxes worked. And so I just started teaching myself everything I could. And talking to my friends about it, because I was really surprised by how little I understood. And then I started talking with my friends and they were really ashamed that they didn't know either.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
And that's really what struck me, was that these incredibly intelligent, successful creatives were as dumbfounded as I was by money. And I realized that nobody had taught us anything about money. And I think that's pretty intersectional. A lot of my friends were female, a lot of my friends were queer, a lot of my friends were creatives or artists of one kind or another. And all of us in our individual groups, has been disenfranchised from the world of wealth and wealth accumulation for a variety of reasons and a variety of money stories.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
And so that really is what lit the fire under me to become a CFP, because I realized there were so many people who were being excluded from the financial world of stability and safety. And so I realized there had to be some job that did this. I was looking for a career change anyway, and I really loved the analytical element of money and the creativity of problem solving, which ... It's basically, my joke is that financial planning is exactly the same as installation sculpture, but it's just instead of using money, you're using clementines or glass or whatever your medium of choices.

Bobbi Rebell:
So wait, what happened with the house?

Georgia Lee Hussey:
So, I had the house for three years, that was when I was starting to learn about the personal residency exclusion.

Bobbi Rebell:
What does that mean?

Georgia Lee Hussey:
Yeah, so if you own a house and it's your personal residence and you sell it and you've lived in it, you are able to not have to take the gains on the sale. So there's a $250,000 exclusion. That was not going to be a problem that I had, I think I had a $10,000 gain on the house. It wasn't going to be a big deal. But if you don't live in the house at the sale, you have a certain period of time that the IRS can look back and tax you on the gain.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
So I was renting the house, because I had moved in with my partner at that point and I realized that I sort of had a ... I had a moment where I had to either sell it or commit to renting it for the longterm. And I think that was really my first opportunity to analyze an investment and make a decision on whether this was a good choice to sell or hold. I ultimately decided that I wanted to sell because I did not like owning real estate, too much time and energy required to maintain it.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you sold it at a slight profit?

Georgia Lee Hussey:
A tiny profit. But really if you look at how much money and energy I put into that house, it was basically a forced savings account with a very high rent.

“I realized how much structural ignorance I had about how money operated and how mortgages worked and how taxes worked and so I just started teaching myself everything I could.”

Georgia’s Money Lesson:

Georgia Lee Hussey:
Well, I think there's a couple. One is that self-efficacy is a skill that we built. I didn't know anything about money, but I was able to access information about money and how to build my own self-efficacy around this new skill set. So that's one thing. I would also say that identifying your money story is essential. Because when I was at the beginning of my journey, I was learning a lot of new skills around budgeting and money management. But until I paired that with the work I was doing in therapy around behavior change and personal awareness, I couldn't utilize those tools and structures very well. I wasn't utilizing them. I knew them, but I couldn't implement it. It's like a doctor saying, "You need to lose weight." And that's the only tool that we're given.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
And money is so emotional now, there's plenty of research now showing that all of our decisions are emotional and we just make them seem rational and logical. So once I understood that I had been told I couldn't be good with money as a creative and as a woman, I had been told that budgeting was dumb or not cool, that there were all these layers of money stories. Once I identified those and could pick them apart a bit, it was much easier for me to step into these structures with a sense of personal awareness and clarity about how they were going to serve me, and how they were going to help me change that story going forward.

“What struck me was that these incredibly intelligent successful creatives were as dumbfounded as I was by money. And I realized that nobody had taught us anything about money.”

Georgia’s Money Tip:

Georgia Lee Hussey:
There's a series of questions we ask our clients, and I would highly recommend asking your friends and family because we're heading into the holiday season. It's a great opportunity to have some more substantial conversations about what's important to us and what we value in the various relationship circles we live in.

Georgia Lee Hussey:
So one thing that I think is an interesting question is, what did your mother teach you about money? What did your father teach you about money? Often there are not explicit lessons, like sitting down and having the talk. But there are usually things we gather from watching the world around us, and they're usually different for each parent or guardian that we have in our life. And then I think it's really interesting to ask our parents, "What did your mom and your dad teach you?" And what do you think their moms and dads taught them.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that part of it, because we often just relate to our own generation and one up, but if we have the opportunity, if we are with our parents and the older generations, ask them what they learned from their ancestors. Because we rarely get that and I know we don't have time to get into it now, but people can follow up and read in all the places you're interviewed, and I'll leave some links in our show notes, but you have a very interesting multigenerational story about money that really formed who you are today.

“Identifying your money story is essential.”

Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:

Financial grownup tip number one:

Don't sign anything you don't understand, even if all the cool kids are doing it. Georgia's friends were buying homes and I'll bet most of them were just as clueless about what they were signing. No excuses, ask questions, read the documents. For those of you guys who have not been at a real estate closing, you write checks and everyone else leaves with checks that they cash. You are paying these people, make them explain everything. Don't let them rush you. You're the one who is paying, you are the one who is on the hook. I have not done this all the time, I have signed documents I have not known. You know what? I now know better, so I'm passing that knowledge onto you. Take the time, no matter how long it takes.

Financial grownup tip number two:

Speaking of friends, Georgia's decision to buy a home was influenced by her friends, who truly meant well. But beware of well-intentioned, pure influence, kind of a cousin to peer pressure. Your friends most likely don't know your actual full financial picture, including your goals, and you don't have to share it with them. When they encourage you to, for example, treat yourself to whatever, especially this holiday season, they mean well but they aren't paying. Thank them for their advice and support and just say you'll think about it to deflect any persistence.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Georgia’s website - modernistfinancial.com

Follow Georgia + Modernist Financial!

• Instagram - @modernistfinancial

• Facebook

• LinkedIn - @georgialeehussey

• LinkedIn - @modernist-financial

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Black Friday can be a great time to kick off your holiday shopping and maximize your budget. Family Finance expert Andrea Woroch joins us with her best tips and favorite apps to get it down like a grownup. 

11 tips and tricks for Black Friday shopping

1. Derivative goods.

2. Misleading discount claims.

3. Sale price isn’t always the best price.

4. Save more with discount gift cards.

5. Some retailers promising best deals on Black Friday.

6. Beware of bundle deals and rebates.

7. Think about your impulse purchasing triggers.

8. Avoid extended warranty.

9. Watch out for fees.

10. What to buy, what to skip.

11. How to shop safely.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Andrea’s website - andreaworoch.com

• Parabis - The website where you can find out if stores owe you a refund - https://paribus.co

Follow Andrea!

• Instagram - @andreaworoch

• Facebook - @AndreaWoroch

• Twitter - @andreaworoch

• LinkedIn - @andreaworoch

• Pinterest - @andreaworoch

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Entrepreneur and author Teneshia Warner shares a childhood story of being paid less because she was female, and being told that it would always be that way- by her own grandmother. Teneshia also shares her advice on how to handle the dream bullies and previews her new book.

Teneshia’s Money Story:

Teneshia Warner:
All right, so The Big Stretch, I am thrilled about my second book. As you just mentioned, I'm the founder of The Dream Project, and I was able to take a lot of the key learnings from speaking to over 180,000 dreamers, iconic dreamers, as well as my own story, and put it in a book format of a 12 week dreamers bootcamp.

Bobbi Rebell:
And I can tell you the book literally lays it out in very easy to follow steps and there's a lot of accountability in the book. We're going to get to that soon, but I don't want to hesitate to get to your money story, because this is kind of an epic story. There's a big twist, it has to do with your great grandmother and a lesson she taught you. But the lesson she taught you was not the one that she intended to teach you. Go for it.

Teneshia Warner:
All right, so my money story, it actually dates back until I was a young kid. I was in the third grade, so think I'm eight or nine. I had an idea that I wanted to work the summer over at my great grandmother's farm. She owned a farm with hundreds of acres of land. And my uncle, who was also very younger, he's only five years older than me, I went to him, and his name was Gerald. I said, "Gerald, I have an idea. I think I can convince our grandma, [Osi 00:03:43], to allow us to work the farm and pay us versus pay other people."

Teneshia Warner:
So he was down for it. And I went over to my grandmother and I pitched her on this concept. You should keep the money in the family, let Gerald and I work for you this summer. And so I landed us a job, Bobbi. And we were working the farm. We would get to work around 4:30 AM. I would go with my grandmother and Gerald would go with my great grandfather. And for my great grandmother, we would go and get eggs out of the chicken coop, we would clean the porches, we would pick fresh vegetables, we had to cook dinner. I mean it was a long, long day. And then as for Gerald, he was doing things in the field like picking corn, all types of hard labor things.

Bobbi Rebell::
But you're both working.

Teneshia Warner:
We both are not only working, we are working hard. At the end of the day we're exhausted.

Bobbi Rebell::
So then comes payday.

Teneshia Warner:
Yes. So we do this for about two weeks and payday comes. Prior to this, I didn't negotiate how much she was going to pay us, I was just happy to have a summer job. And so she gave us these envelopes, and I didn't want to be rude and open it in front of her.

Teneshia Warner:
So we got in the car and we went back home. And we open our envelopes. So Gerald tore his envelope open and out comes this money that's folding. And then I tear my envelope open, and coins drop out.

Teneshia Warner:
And so I'm looking, and I'm like, wait a minute, something's wrong here. Where's my money? There was no money, there was not folding money in there. And so I went to my mom and I said, "I need you to take me back over to my great grandmother, Osi's house."

Teneshia Warner:
So she took me back and I said, "Hey you, you must have made a mistake because I don't have any folding dollars and I only have coins, so you didn't pay me the right amount." And we kind of went back and forth. She told me she was very clear on the amount that she paid me. And I kept pushing, pushing.

Teneshia Warner:
And then finally she said, "You know what, Neshia." She called me Neshia. "I'm not going to pay you the same amount that I paid Gerald, because the world is not going to do that." She said, "No matter what, girls do not make what boys make, and I'm not going to start doing that." Yes. So it really pierced my heart.

Bobbi Rebell:
And this was a statement, not a discussion.

Teneshia Warner:
This was a statement, yes. It was like, the end. And so I was really, really courageous with what I did next, Bobbi. I put my hands on my hip, I looked at her in the eyes and I said, "If you're not going to pay me what you pay Gerald, I need you to know I quit." And I took off running because she definitely believed in the rod and she would have spanked me, but it was worth it for me to stand up for myself.

Bobbi Rebell:
And what did Gerald say?

Teneshia Warner:
So my dearest Gerald. Gerald felt sorry for me. However, Gerald continued to work and collected that check for the rest of the summer.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wow. And that folded money. And what did your mom say? And did you have any further discussions as you got older about this with any of the people involved?

Teneshia Warner:
So my mom, she's just awesome. I told her how I felt, and she told me that I did not have to go back and work there, that if I really wanted to quit, that I could. Hindsight looking back, I realized she really wanted to teach me a lesson, and she knew that that was going to give me an experience to stand up for myself and to actually demand my value, which leads me to, that's why it's my money story because one of my biggest lessons I took away from that, and that's, it's okay to demand your value and stand by that.

Bobbi Rebell:
And the amazing thing is, that was not the lesson that your great grandmother was teaching you.

Teneshia Warner:
Absolutely not.

Bobbi Rebell:
She is from a different era, and we love our grandmas, but that was not the lesson that we want to teach people today. What is your lesson for our listeners from that story?

“It’s ok to demand your value and stand by that.”

Teneshia’s Money Lesson:

Teneshia Warner:
So my lesson for your listeners is, if you are a small business owner, and or, if you're working in corporate America, there comes a time that you have to be extremely comfortable with what you bring to the table and the value that's associated with that, and willing to negotiate based on that value, and not compromising that.

Bobbi Rebell:
One thing in the book that I've asked you to talk about as your money tip, your everyday money tip is, how to do a dream detox specifically. If there are people in your life that are what you call a dream bullies, what do you do specifically to get rid of those people? Do you just ghost them? What do you do?

“When you have a dream and you have a big idea, it is important that you safeguard your dream.”

Teneshia’s Money Tip:

Bobbi Rebell:
One thing in the book that I've asked you to talk about as your money tip, your everyday money tip is, how to do a dream detox specifically. If there are people in your life that are what you call a dream bullies, what do you do specifically to get rid of those people? Do you just ghost them? What do you do?

Teneshia Warner:
Well, I definitely wouldn't say ghost them. Well, first, I think it's very important to know that when you have a dream, and you have a big idea, especially when you really originally get that idea, it's important that you safeguard your dream. So you have to become aware of who is in your circle.

Teneshia Warner:
Do you have a circle of dream champions? Champions reflect back to you the best of who you're becoming, they're going to reflect back to you the possibility that this dream can become a reality. And or, you have dream bullies. And dream bullies are those that are within our circle that potentially just cannot see the vision that you've been given for that dream. Sometimes your dream bully can be the people that are the closest to you, that actually love you the most, and they will actually try to protect you as you stretch to become more uncomfortable and to step outside of that comfort zone, you will find that you start to disrupt the comfort zone of sometimes the people that are really close to you.

Teneshia Warner:
Those individuals can sometimes want to protect you. Instead, they're becoming a dream bully. They're working against your vision. So for me, my best friend in the whole world is my grandmother. Not my great grandmother, but my grandmother. Her name is [Noretha Hearns and 00:09:24], and she is the biggest dream bully I've ever encountered.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my goodness.

Teneshia Warner:
And so I've had to learn, when I have a big idea, and I have a concept, I don't share those visions with my grandmother because she's not going to support me in having them turn out. So for the listeners, how do you do a dream detox and how do you protect yourself from the bullies? Well, number one, first you need to identify who they are. Second, you need to alter your conversations accordingly. That's not the place to go and share your next big idea, that's not the place you call where you want to know, do I continue to go or do I stop?

Teneshia Warner:
And so it's not about cutting out dream bullies completely out of your life. I don't want you sort of ghosting everybody and then saying Teneshia and Bobbi told you to tell everybody peace out. No, that's not what we're saying. However, I will say it's about becoming conscious, and aware, and protecting your ideas and your dreams accordingly. And it may mean altering your relationships with the person, especially as you're in a season of birthing a new dream. You may not find yourself hanging out with the old best friend where you know you guys used to gossip, or you weren't doing anything productive. Maybe that's not the person that you will be spending the majority of your time with in this new season of bringing your dream to reality.

Teneshia Warner:
One of the things that you talk about in your book also is doing a time audit. Absolutely. And, Bobbi, you and I were just talking. You talked about the fact that your book was in Cosmo, or in these business magazines. It wasn't that it just appeared there, but you did a lot of hard work. And so the hard work that goes into where you invested your time. So when you have this idea and this dream, you need to also do a time audit to say what time can you get back, and work that time for you and your dream.

“Your big idea and your dream, I can 100% bet it is not going to dwell within the zip code of your comfort zone. You are going to have to stretch beyond that, and it is probably going to take some radical action.”

Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:

Financial grownup tip number one:

Bobbi Rebell:
I totally related to tenacious experiences with dream bullies. I probably had more bullies, as she calls it, than supporters when I announced, a few years ago, that I was going to write a book with candid and personal money stories from super successful people while working full time in media, with three kids and a husband, and of course a dog.

Bobbi Rebell:
People were not only skeptical, some made really hurtful comments, and I know there was chatter behind my back at work. It was pretty bad. They really thought I would never pull it off. I had some supporters, don't get me wrong, but I wish I had Teneshia in my corner back then. But she's right, sometimes it's better to just not share your plans with them early on, especially if you kind of know they're not going to be supportive.

Financial grownup tip number two:

Do a time audit, kind of like those weight loss diaries where if you're write it down, you see what's going on, and that act in and of itself will change your behavior, and you'll have a better focus and be able to better allocate your time. You become more accountable. Don't necessarily though, share it with those dream bullies.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Teneshia’s website - egamigroup.com

• Teneshia’s new book The Big Stretch

Follow Teneshia!

• Instagram - @teneshiajwarner

• Facebook - @teneshiajwarner

• Twitter - @teneshiajwarner

• LinkedIn - @teneshiajackson

• Pinterest - @dreamcreative

Follow Egami Group!

• Instagram - @egamigroup

• Facebook - @EgamiConsulting

• Twitter - @egamigroup

• LinkedIn - @egami-consulting-group

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Bobbi reveals her favorite new money related books for financial grownups, and how to decide if they are right for you. This month’s picks include Becoming Super Woman: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Go from Burnout to Balance by Nicole Lapin. Money for the Rest of Us: 10 Questions to Master Successful Investing by David Stein, and Pay off Your Debt for Good: 21 Days to Change Your Relationship with Money & Improve Your Sending Habits So You Can Get Out of Debt Fast by Jen Smith.  

Book #1: Becoming Super Woman: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Go from Burnout to Balance by Nicole Lapin

Here’s what I liked about it: 

-If you look at Nicole’s social media and the content she puts out- she looks like the total perfect person you and I will never be. This book gets real about what’s going on behind the scenes. It's a book about burnout from someone who not only has been totally burned out, but who admitted to being so burned out while writing the book about burnout that she delayed the books release. 

-while there is definitely the familiar take care of yourself vibe, Nicole gives extremely specific things you can do - including worksheets and exercises, to actually fix the problems and streamline your life. And some are super easy to do - but we just don’t seem to think of doing them- at least I don’t. Things as simple as deleting apps that waste time. Why not, It’s not like they won’t have you back. Remove the temptation. There’s a ton of simple obvious but not obvious stuff that will literally make you feel a weight off your shoulders. 

-She flips the switch on a lot of things we buy into. For example: don’t just have a to do list- have a done list so you can appreciate your progress. And I loved this Mark Twain quote she included- “never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Because seriously, the world will not end if you don’t do it all. 

Who is this book for? 

Besides this being an excellent book for you if you are feeling burned out- It’s also a book that your hyper over achievers friends could probably use- on the outside, but who you worry don’t know when to stop themselves. Rather than a direct intervention- gifting a book can be a subtle hint that you are worried they aren’t taking enough care of themselves. So on that note a great holiday gift book. 

Book #2: Money for the Rest of Us: 10 Questions to Master Successful Investing by David Stein

Here’s what I liked about the book: 

-David is a natural teacher but his style is inviting and accepting. He doesn’t keep it super simple- but he invites you to re-read chapters when the material is dense. This is not a page turner, and not a book you can read while multi-tasking- and because of that you will learn a lot from it. Stein will literally make you smarter. 

-The book speaks to all levels of investing- it is simple enough for beginners- who are willing to really focus. But the concepts are sometimes sophisticated which is something many mainstream books are lacking.

-David makes great use of storytelling, which can help bring complicated concepts to life and resonate with readers. 

Who is this book for? 

The book largely summarizes a lot of the concepts that fans of his podcast are already familiar with- but the written format and the way it is organized adds a new dimension.  

David is just really good at taking complicated topics and making making them accessible. A lot of books out there rehash the same lessons we’ve all heard- this book simply operates at a higher level, and the reader will literally know more about investing and be able to apply those lessons to their long term financial plans.  

Book #3: Pay off Your Debt for Good: 21 Days to Change Your Relationship with Money & Improve Your Sending Habits So You Can Get Out of Debt Fast by Jen Smith.

Here’s what I liked about it: 

-The focus of the book is on habits. There’s no quick fix here but there are proven strategies that are realistic. 

-Jen is sunshine on a cloudy day. Jen has a positivity about her that shines in her writing and can really motivate people in what is really an often depressing situation. Jen has herself paid off a mountain of debt 78-thousand dollars in jus 23 months- so she doesn’t judge- and her experience and empathy come through 

-This book is part of an ecosystem so there is complimentary support everywhere you turn, from the blog, to the email newsletter you can sign up for and of course the podcast. You feel like you are part of a community with a great cheerleader. 

Who is this book right for:

This is a book that is designed to solve a problem: debt. So if you have debt, this is for you. 

If you are part of the debt free community- or are working on what has come to be known as the FIRE movement- that stands for Financial Independence Retire Early- you are 100% the target audience here and you will love this book. That said, who can’t benefit from some no bs talk about getting rid of debt- or making sure you don’t get into debt. 

Episode Links:

Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

Nicole Lapin’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Becoming Super Woman: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Go from Burnout to Balance

David Stein’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Money for the Rest of Us: 10 Questions to Master Successful Investing

Jen Smith’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Pay off Your Debt for Good: 21 Days to Change Your Relationship with Money & Improve Your Sending Habits So You Can Get Out of Debt Fast

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Sometimes the best career role models are your first ones. For Ellevate Network CEO Kristy Wallace unfiltered advice from waitresses at a summer job she started as a teen still ring true. Plus her money tip that will instantly save us all cash and extra pounds this holiday season. 

Kristy’s Money Story:

Kristy Wallace:
Yeah, it was really interesting. I grew up in this tiny town in New Jersey, called Sea Isle City, and my sister and I worked at this Italian restaurant Bono's and we were teenagers when we did this. We worked there for years every summer, but all of the other waitresses were older. They were oftentimes already in college or many of them were teachers and this was their summer job when school was out. And they really helped instill in us values and perspective when it came to the work we were doing. Waitressing is so interesting because you get tips, you walk out of the door with cash every night and you can easily, especially if you're a young teenager want to go spend that money. But we saw from the teachers how much they saved that money. They worked really hard to get the tips. To keep track of that money and then saved it because that was what was helping to pay their bills and helping them during the school year.

Bobbi Rebell:
Were you tempted when you first started waitressing to just go out and spend the money?

Kristy Wallace:
Of course, of course. And especially I think when new have new driving cars. And so we wanted to go to the mall and buy things and just always going to Wawa, which was this convenience store there and buying drinks and sandwiches. I mean, it's so easy to just throw money away. And the advice that these other waitresses gave us around saving that money and using it more meaningfully. It really stood out. It stood out to me and it continues to stand out to me today because I think oftentimes it's, particularly now with credit cards and you just put your card down and buy, buy, buy and then suddenly you get the bill and it's wide eyes, sticker shock.

Bobbi Rebell:
How did the conversations start? I mean you guys were the new kids there, did they just see what was going on that you were spending your money? What happened?

Kristy Wallace:
I think the conversation started earlier in the season when things were a little bit slower and they would be talking about, how much money did you make last night or tonight, things are a bit slow. Here's how much I'm hoping to make this summer. This is why it's important to make X amount of dollars a summer and how it helps with rent or helps pay my bills during these months and into the winter. So they were just with each other very honest and transparent about their expectations for how much money they wanted to make or needed to make, how they were going to use it and spend it. And we're very inclusive of my sister and I in those conversations. So clearly we didn't, we were still living at home, we were younger, we didn't have that perspective. And we I'm sure would say in this kind of some flippant comments like, Oh, we just go out and buy a bunch of stuff.

Kristy Wallace:
That's great. We have cash. And so they definitely sat us down and said, "Listen, waitressing is a great job but you end up with a lot of cash and it can be easy to not keep track of how much you're making and to put it in the bank and to manage it wisely. And you know, just for now, and especially when you're going to college in a few years and you're older, it's really important that you understand how you spend your money and you spend it wisely." A few years later when I was going to college and using the money I made in the summer to pay for my bills and expenses once I was in school, I came out of the gate just, with all the insights I needed to be successful in that budgeting and in that planning.

“Take the extra shifts.. Put in 110%. Understand how your work relates to the money you are making.”

Kristy’s Money Lesson:

Kristy Wallace:
Be mindful of how you spend your money. You really want to understand ways you can save how you spend the money, but then also the impact you personally can have on driving that income, right? And when I was waitressing, something that I learned from the other waitresses was tips are relational to service. So if you have good service and you work hard to be the best at your job, then you get some money or take the extra shifts. There were a number of summers, particularly once I was in college then I didn't take a single day off the entire summer. I worked every day and I loved it because that meant I was making money and I had my little book where I was keeping track of how much I was making and how much I wanted to make.

Kristy Wallace:
So the lesson is just put in 110%, understand how your work relates to the money that you're making, particularly as you get into the workforce into a corporate environment. Really looking at the work that you do, how that ties to the business and the business success, and using that as a motivator for you to do great work, but then also make that extra money and ask for it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Speaking of extra money, you have extra money because of the everyday money tip that you're going to share. Tell us your everyday money tip.

“Do great work but also make that extra money. Ask for it. ”

Kristy’s Money Tip:

Kristy Wallace:
I have three kids at home. They are little kids and every month or week the grocery bills were astronomical. And at the same time I was finding that I was spending a lot of cash every week and I couldn't quite understand why. So I spent a lot of time, I looked at all my budgets, my numbers, and where I was spending money and how I was spending it. I love Excel spreadsheets, so I categorized everything. And realized it was spending not just a lot of money at the grocery store, but a lot of money eating out just during the week. Getting coffee, grabbing breakfast, lunch could easily add up to $20, $30 a day. And when you think about that over five days a week, plus the grocery bills, it really adds up. So I stopped doing that. I stopped eating out. I would bring my breakfast and lunch. My husband and I would make these little egg muffins.

Kristy Wallace:
You make eggs in a muffin tin, so they're easy to just grab and go and make coffee at home. A pound of coffee is $12 versus a $4 cup of coffee when you're out. I love making soups and stews. They're relatively inexpensive to make and they freeze and they last a long time, so I make a big pot every weekend of something and just found it to be not only easy but financially healthy. And healthy for me in terms of the food I was eating.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, and I think the everyday money tip there is actually look at the numbers because this is not something new. It's not something that we haven't all thought of. We all know that we shouldn't be spending so much money out, but it takes a lot to actually sit down and say, "Wait, look at what I'm actually spending," to actually add up the receipts.

Bobbi Rebell:
Especially when your grocery bill was high as well, so you might've thought, well I don't want to spend more money on groceries and if you eat at home in theory you'd be spending more on groceries so it's all going to work out. Not so much. I think you have a great example and making things like soups and stews in batches. I think that's a key thing that you have it ready in advance. It's something that I need to work on more is to actually plan in advance what you're going to be bringing with you when you go out so you're not left scrounging for coffee because you didn't have the coffee machine set the night before. And also maybe have a coffee cup that's portable that you can bring with you because you don't have something to bring in the coffee with you and it's time to go. You're kind of stuck and you're going to buy that coffee on the run.

Kristy Wallace:
Plan ahead, be creative. There's lots of great sites and recipes out there.

Bobbi Rebell:
What's your favorite site?

Kristy Wallace:
I like all recipes actually because it's crowdsourced and so there's kind of some fun things and the comments are really interesting. Food 52 is always great. There's some great bloggers out there. We will sometimes try to eat Paleo or maybe Whole 30, so some really great sites out there with some good modifications to recipes that are really healthy and delicious.

“Plan ahead. Be creative. There’s lot of great sites and recipes out there.”

Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:

Financial grownup tip number one:

Let's talk about work ethic and the fact that while it's nice to enjoy your work, we all should. It is also about the money. In fact, if we're being honest, there is nothing wrong with admitting you are showing up because they are paying you money. I love that we're paying attention more these days to things like self-care and "work life" balance and it's about time that matters, but let's not forget Kristy's advice. Take the extra shifts because work is about making money. Not saying we can't all benefit from a little yoga. All that stuff matters too, but paying bills is also a form of wellness. Think of all the reduced stress by having extra cash in the bank. Don't lose sight of that.

Financial grownup tip number two:

Christie talks a lot about meal planning.With the holidays coming up maybe also do some shopping planning. We're just a smidge ahead of black Friday and there's nothing wrong with shopping, but if you plan out ahead of time what you're going to buy, those plans will go a long way to keeping you from buying something not on your list because it's on sale. That's not a good reason. I've fallen into that trap. Trust me, and also don't forget if you do fall into that trap and buy something and you regret it. As I've said before, don't be afraid to return it. You usually can. Problem solved.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Kristy’s website - www.ellevatenetwork.com

• Ellevate’s new peer networking circle Squads

• www.allrecipes.com

• food52.com

Follow Kristy!

• Instagram - @kristyawallace

• Twitter - @kristyawallace

• LinkedIn

Follow Ellevate Network!

• Instagram - @Ellevate_Ntwk

• Facebook - @EllevateNetwork

• Twitter - @EllevateNtwk

• Pinterest - @ellevatenetwork

• LinkedIn

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Just in time for the holidays, Jen Smith, co-host of the Frugal Friends podcast and the author of the new book "Pay Off Your Debt For Good" joins us with her spending strategies so we can all shop like Financial Grownups.

3 strategies to spend money like a Financial Grownup

1. Focus on your habits

2. Figure out what you value

3. Let go of guilt and shame

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Jen’s Website - www.modernfrugality.com

• Jen’s podcast The Frugal Friends Podcast

• Jen’s new book - Pay Off Your Debt For Good

Follow Jen!

• Instagram - @modernfrugality

• Facebook - @modernfrugality

• Twitter - @modernfrugality

• Pinterest - @modernfrugality

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Money coach Whitney Hansen, who hosts the Money Nerds podcast, reveals how the pain of poverty and family instability almost led her to a tragic decision as a teenager. We also discuss how the challenges of true financial struggle can impact a family and inform priorities as an adult. 

Whitney’s Money Story:

Whitney Hansen:
I still get choked up about this too, even to this day. But it was a really tough time in my life because my parents were going through this divorce and they were married for a long time, six kids, so they had a really great life together. But my dad started a business and that business led to unhealthy habits. So he had really, I guess some issues with boundaries. It was a 365, 24/7 business. And so he turned to-

Bobbi Rebell:
What was the business?

Whitney Hansen:
Pallet distributing.

Bobbi Rebell:
What's that?

Whitney Hansen:
Pallets, you always see him on Pinterest when people make like coffee tables and furniture and stuff from them, but it's what carries goods across the country in semi-trucks. So it's the wooden like crates almost. That's what his business was, was fixing those up and selling them.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. And so had he had that business before your parents got divorced or was it a new thing, so that was another change?

Whitney Hansen:
So it was before they officially got divorced. He started the business probably about 10 years before they officially divorced. And so it was just a really consuming business. He was terrible at delegating, could not find the right type of help. So instead of trusting people, he put all of that pressure on himself. And that led to having to take pallet calls at like two in the morning sometimes. It was just a nightmare. It really was.

Bobbi Rebell:
So then something happened with a mattress?

Whitney Hansen:
Yeah, so with the mattress, after they divorced, my mom moved up to Boise and truly she left that relationship for her life. The abuse was getting so bad and it was just a terrible situation. And so she moved up to Boise making $7.25 an hour at a hobby and craft store and trying to support six kids in this little two bedroom apartment. And we were so broke, Bobbi, like we were broke. We didn't have any money at all, so we were sleeping on the floor.

Whitney Hansen:
My mom and I, one day we were walking and we found a mattress in the garbage can. So we went home, we grabbed her car, threw this on the top of the car. It's really that ridiculous. We both like had our hands out the window holding the mattress down and we took it home. But we were so freaking excited because for our family, that meant we didn't have to sleep on the floor. And it was such a sad moment, but such a powerful one. I was 16 and I will never forget that. It taught me my first personal finance lesson.

Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us more about that.

Whitney Hansen:
Well, I started to really reflect on that and what I learned is that there's really a difference between a want and a need. A lot of times we say that we need something. Oh I need to get this new shirt, I need to get this new mattress, I need to get whatever it is.

Whitney Hansen:
But there's a huge difference between what we truly want and what we truly need. So I always carried that with me throughout my entire adulthood and my being a grownup. I mean that's something that I've always looked at, is this truly a want, Whitney, or is this a need? Of course it's like giving yourself permission to buy what you want on occasion, but always putting that in that perspective.

Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us more about that time of your life. I mean, how did you survive? How did you get other things? Were you able to get it through people that were helpful to you? You were you working as a 16 year old?

Whitney Hansen:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, so that's the sad thing. When you come from a really poor, poverty type situation, the families all working together to support everybody. So I had my own job. I had a job when I was actually 14 is when I officially started working. But I bought the family car when I was 16. My mom took out a loan, I made the payment, and I paid for the car insurance. That's just the way we did it.

Whitney Hansen:
We had a ton of help. Our church was super great. They were really helpful from that perspective as well. But I didn't deal with it well. I've actually never shared this publicly, but when I was 16 I was hospitalized for suicide.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my goodness.

Whitney Hansen:
Yeah, it was a terrible time. It really was not great. But what I started learning from all of this stuff was that when you have control over your money, you have options, and that's what I decided when I was 16, I was never going to be stuck in a really crappy situation because of money. I knew that was something I always wanted to have control over.

Bobbi Rebell:
What kind of conversations were you having with your mom? Because at 16 you're not that young. You know what's up.

Whitney Hansen:
Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely did know what was up. One of the biggest conversations that she shared with me was the importance of education. That was the one thing she had regretted her entire life. Her family did pretty well. Her parents died when she was really young. They did well enough that they left her some money for college, but she blew through it all with my dad. They just were very financially irresponsible. So that was one of the big conversations was Whitney, you need to get an education. You need to make sure you can take care of yourself no matter what. So that was always the focus of the conversation when I was a kid.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where were you in the sibling order? What were your other siblings doing at this time in your life?

Whitney Hansen:
Second oldest. My oldest sister, she had quite a rough childhood herself, of course. She ended up moving out of the house officially when she was 16. She moved in with her boyfriend at that time. She has four kids now, so she's doing super great. But she was running her own family. She got pregnant when she was 17 in high school.

“When you have control over your money you have options. ”

Whitney’s Money Lesson:

Whitney Hansen:
I think the biggest lesson is how much control you have when you have money. When you have that money instead of just immediately blowing it on stuff that we don't really need, if you start to prioritize your own financial responsibility, and as a woman especially, you have to be able to take care of yourself in some capacity.

Whitney Hansen:
Now that's not saying don't be a stay at home mom if that's your dream, do it. But make sure that you have some skills that you can fall back on. I think that's one of the biggest lessons I can impart for people is just make sure you can take care of yourself, whether it's divorce or death or disease, we don't know what's going to happen in life with our partners, so you have to be able to really financially take care of yourself and be a grownup.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's so impactful what you're saying and really hits home with so many people because we don't know it. It may be something like a divorce, but also sometimes people become injured. Your partner may lose their job. There can be a lot of unintended things that happen and things that you can't possibly plan for, but you have to always be able to have an income stream, even if you take it up and down at different points in your life. Having that ability and the education to do that is really important.

“Make sure you can take care of yourself..we don’t know what is going in life with our partners so you have to really be able to take care of yourself financially and really be a grownup.”

Whitney’s Money Tip:

Whitney Hansen:
Oh, I love this. This is such a nerdy one, but it works wonders. My favorite tip in the world is for any person that's trying to better their financial life and doesn't quite know where their money's going, to print off your past 30 days of your bank statement and or your credit card statement anymore, we have Venmo as well, that all counts. Print those off, have those sitting in front of you and then assign three different categories that you tend to overspend on. So for me it's eating out, it's coffee, and it's Amazon. Amazon's the worst for me. So I will print off those statements, I'll write those at the top, and I will literally go line by line and highlight each of the different transactions as a specific color to make sure that I am looking at every single transaction.

Whitney Hansen:
It works like crazy because you have to highlight those transactions and you have to remember I'm the one that swiped my card this many times. This is on me. I think it's so much more personal than just like a roll up thing. I love apps and software. I think they're amazing, but when it's just a roll up number, it's not the same as when you actually have to physically highlight those things. It really does trigger a lot of changes in your financial life.

Bobbi Rebell:
Give us an example of something, especially when you first started doing this, that you noticed that you were surprised by.

Whitney Hansen:
For me, I've always been pretty frugal because of my background, but what I can tell you is I did this in a group with a bunch of college students, actually. We were doing this exercise and one guy kind of looked up and he had this deer in the headlights look. He was all white, and I'm not a nurse, but I'm like "Dude, are you all right? Do you need to get out of here? What's going on?" And he's like "Well, I just finally realized how much I spent on eating out." I'm like "Okay, cool. Well, how much should you spend?"

Whitney Hansen:
"I spent $400."

Whitney Hansen:
Now I think you and I get that that's not necessarily good or bad, it's all a proportion of your income. But he told me his income was $800 per month.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh no.

Whitney Hansen:
I was like "Well, homie, I think 50% going directly towards eating out is probably not great." But he had no idea because he was just mindlessly spending and not even paying attention. I think it's really normal.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, a lot of us don't know. What about for you personally, what have you noticed?

Whitney Hansen:
For what I've noticed, this is really interesting, whenever I feel insecure or not so great about myself or I'm like dealing with some self esteem issues or whatever it might be, I'm not feeling as confident, I tend to spend more money on clothes and things that I don't need. I see this in my spending. If I'm having a crap week where I'm just not feeling great about myself, I don't feel like I'm cute enough. I don't feel like I'm skinny enough, whatever the heck it might be, I see that in my spending. So for me, I have to really pay attention to that and just monitor my spending to make sure if I do have a bad week, I'm not actually just blowing money because I'm not feeling super great about myself.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, and what's good about that is with things like clothing, everybody, you can return it.

Whitney Hansen:
Yes, you can.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you haven't taken the tags off or anything.

Whitney Hansen:
That's right.

Bobbi Rebell:
So don't wear it. So versus like going out and eating, like the gentleman you were talking about, that can be at least corrected, right?

Whitney Hansen:
Absolutely. I think that awareness is key. So when you do this exercise, you're going to get that awareness. Then you can start to say, am I okay with these charges? Or if you want to fix it, you can. I think that's the beautiful thing.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that. Let's talk more about The Money Nerds Podcast, because this is one of my go to's. I love it that it's three days a week and you do different things. So you do Mondays, you talk about just kind of what you like. Then another day you have your sort of normal format where you do interviews, and then Fridays are always these five tips that are things you can really do in your life right away.

“Whenever I feel insecure.. I tend to spend more money on clothes and things I don’t need.”

Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:

Financial grownup tip number one:

If your financial problems are weighing on you mentally, you must get help. Please find the right professional. You are not alone. We've all been there and there are many organizations out there that can work with your budget, even if that budget is zero. Many employers also offer mental health counseling that is often a free benefits.

Financial grownup tip number two:

We talk a lot about apps and online resources for your finances on this show, and yes, there are a lot of resources also for mental health online. I'm going to give you links to some articles in the show notes that list options, but here are some that stand out that are pretty popular. One is Talkspace. Another one is BetterHelp, and then 7 Cups of Tea, which is more of a peer to peer resource where someone, maybe like you, can just be someone to listen to you and hear what's going on in your life. I want to caution you guys. I have no affiliation with any of these and I have not vetted them directly myself, but they are places to start and do your own homework.

Episode Links:

• Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.

• Whitney’s website - www.whitneyhansen.com/

• Whitney’s podcast - The Money Nerds

Follow Whitney!

• Instagram - @whitney_hansen_co

• Facebook - @WhitneyHansenCo

• Twitter - @whitneyhansenco

• YouTube - @thewhitneyhansen

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.