ep 54: ADHD and Finances: Smart Money Strategies with Sherry Andrew

Are you struggling with financial management? In this insightful episode, Sherry, a financial coach specializing in ADHD, delves into the complexities of managing finances when you have an ADHD brain. She explores how ADHD can impact financial decisions and provides practical strategies to help you overcome these challenges.

Learn how to break the cycle of impulsive spending, develop a budget that works for you, and build a healthier relationship with money. Sherry's advice will help you transform financial stress into financial empowerment, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally.

What you'll learn:

• How ADHD entrepreneurs can leverage their resourcefulness to achieve financial goals.

• The importance of mindset in managing money effectively.

• Techniques for curbing impulse spending and managing online shopping habits.

• Tips for creating effective spending plans and using tools like Profit First.

• The role of communication in financial management within relationships.

  
  

"Instead of being like, 'Where the heck did our money go?', being able to have a plan and seeing that it leads to financial freedom and not restriction is really key." -Sherry Andrew

Throughout this episode, Sherry shares actionable advice and personal experiences to help you harness your ADHD strengths for financial success. Whether you're struggling with impulse spending or looking for ways to optimize your budgeting process, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you thrive financially.

Useful Links Mentioned:

• Sherry's podcast: The Mind and Money Podcast

• Book recommendation: "Profit First" by Mike Michalowicz

• App recommendation: Be Present (for reducing screen time)

• Learn more about working with Sherry: https://www.moneymindsetfc.com/
  

• Send Mande a text message: https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1954263/open_sms

• Learn more about private coaching with Mande: https://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/getcoached
  

No matter how daunting managing finances might seem with ADHD, this episode is a powerful reminder that embracing your neurodiversity can lead to remarkable growth. Sherry, a financial coach with a focus on ADHD entrepreneurs, shares actionable strategies to help you align your financial habits with your unique brain wiring.

Share your biggest takeaways and "aha" moments with us in the comments or on social media. We're here to support your journey toward financial empowerment!

Remember: By embracing your ADHD strengths and implementing personalized financial strategies, you can turn perceived obstacles into powerful advantages. Your financial future is in your hands, and with the right approach, you can thrive in a way that aligns perfectly with your authentic self.

#ADHDandMoney #FinancialFreedom #ADHDentrepreneur #MoneyMindset #BudgetingTips #ImpulseControl #ProfitFirst #FinancialWellbeing

Listen to the Episode:

Or watch the video on Youtube

Enjoying the show?

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or RSS

Leave a 5-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts

Click here to read the transcript:

All right. Welcome back, guys. We have a super fun guest on today. And I if you have been around very long, you know, I like to talk about money. I just think money is fun. And I really wanted to have somebody on and about and to talk about money. So we have Sherry here who not only are we going to talk about money, but we're going to talk about money and ADHD.

But can you introduce yourself and tell them what you do?

Of course. I'm so glad to be here. And I. My name is Sherry. I'm a financial coach and I focus on helping service based ADHD entrepreneurs because we've got extra layers to deal with when it comes to our finances and we're also really resourceful. And when we get clarity on our money and we learn exactly what we need to bring in, in our business, we figure out how to do that versus somebody that maybe has a regular job and they're not able to increase their income.

That makes it more challenging to build a plan for your money because it can take longer to work towards goals versus entrepreneurs who can just figure out things and launch something, especially ADHD entrepreneurs. We we just figure things out because we have to sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. I think the most challenging clients I've had where I've worked when I don't work specifically around money, but it comes up right where I've worked with money are the ones that have kind of the 9 to 5 job and they, they don't really have a lot of wiggle room.

And in my brain I'm like, Of course you do. You're not at work all day long. Like there's surely something you can do to bring in more income. But that's very interesting that you talk about it that way. But you talk about your podcast. I like that you you have both pieces here that I think are so important when it comes to money.

Yeah, I have a podcast called The Mind and Money Podcast and not the Word and the plus sign if you're searching for it, where my co-host and I, we talk about money and we talk about ADHD and sometimes those two things intertwine and we talk about both, but we love the flexibility of being able to focus on strictly a money topic or strictly an ADHD topic, because those are both things that my co-host and I are very passionate about learning about and helping others dig into and understand better.

Well, and when I hear mind, I think of mindset. And mindset to me makes all the difference when it comes to money, especially like people that have a mindset of of lack or of abundance. And it doesn't matter. Like what's your bank account number says you can have an abundant mindset and when you do, I just find, especially in my own life, I find that when I've always had an abundant mindset, more money just kept coming.

Like somehow we would. We would figure it out and more money would come. But if we had a lack mindset, we're always just finding all the evidence about how how we don't have money. And and then it just seems to go away so much faster. Just that kind of topic come up on your podcast. We haven't specifically focused on that yet, but we're still pretty new like 25 ish episodes in.

So it's definitely something that is probably not surprising. We have a laundry list of topics that we want to cover that seems to only get longer and not shorter. Even as we record and publish episodes. But mindset is a big part of it, and I just wrote a blog topic idea down today about the connection between gratitude and mindset around your money, and there's so intertwined, and when you're regularly thinking about things you're grateful for, you have a practice of writing down three or four things you're grateful for every morning or every evening.

That starts to shift your mindset because you're looking for the positives in your life, and that helps you look less at what the people down the block are doing or what your friends are doing and the things that they have that you might want because you're able to focus more on what I'm really grateful for. For me personally, one of the big things I'm grateful for is a flexible schedule and being able to work when I want and take time to take care of myself every day.

Because my background, I came from working in manufacturing and I had shift work and I had overtime and weekends and it's just so far removed from that that it helps me be super grateful for the schedule that I'm able to create for myself today. Yeah, and, and in that you're talking about, you know, the people down the street comparison, how much does that come in to the work that you're doing with people?

Like how much are you finding that maybe they're purchasing things that they didn't actually even want A lot? And we live in a world that it's so easy to hit, buy and have something, show up on your doorstep in a day or two. And it creates that that want and that need and that that ability to be able to get it on our doorstep so quickly helps us not have to pause.

We don't have to get up and go to the store. And a lot of times the online sites will help us out and save our credit card for us so we don't even have to get up from the couch or the dining room table. And we just we have things right away. So really focusing on helping my clients find ways to hit pause or removing the credit card from Amazon and those other sites so that you do have to get up and get your card, which sometimes is enough of a a cycle breaker in the the path that you're following to be able to think, wait a minute, I have a laundry list of things

in my Amazon cart in my save for later because me too. I'm really good. I'm really good at pausing and thinking, okay, do I really need this? And then the next time I go back, I shake my head at what's in my cart and I remove them and because it's not something that I really actually needed or wanted because it was just in that time you see something on Amazon, you see something on social media, or you see somebody else with something and you think you really want it.

And then when you're removed from that situation, you're like, Wait, no, I want money in my bank account more. I have an indoor trampoline sitting in a box in my living room. It's been sitting in that box for a month because I had it in the cart and I didn't put it in and save for later and my husband just bought it.

And I'm like, I didn't actually want that. He's like, That was in the garage. But he didn't understand my process of like sometimes I just put things in the cart just to think about them, to put in that pause. And so that's so funny. But a lot of my clients talk about that, like scrolling in the evening. What do you like?

What do you do to help people with that? Because what happens is, you know, the algorithm is so good at advertising to us what we want and with what they figured out that we want from things that we've looked at. And sometimes that scrolling in the evening is the habit that my clients know they need to break in order to stop the shopping.

So what But tips do you have for that algorithm is, good. So you click on one ad and it gives you five more of those in the next like 5 minutes. It's so good to it, like to our detriment a lot of times. So one of the things that I've really been working on and this is a challenge for me to I probably about six or eight months ago I looked at my screen time and was bowled over by how much time I was spending on my phone.

And some of the justification as well. Some some of it's work. I'm posting on social media and posting on my stories. And some of it's work, but not not a lot of it was work. So I actually went looking for different apps and resources and I do use the screen time settings on my phone, but they're really easy to, you know, just snooze for 15 minutes and get access to those apps again.

So I found it app and I think it's still iPhone only, but it's called be present and it's just not sponsored at all. Maybe it should be, but it helps to create blocks of time that it's enough to have that reset. So I have it automatically set up for certain chunks of the day to block out apps that I specify.

And the big ones are social media app. So it's enough like I'll pick up my phone and I'll go to Instagram for example, and it will say like, No, you're in a you're in a be present session. So like, do you want to snooze it? And then if you do, you have to go to the app and like break the session and they've got leaderboards where you can move up different levels.

They've got you can love create with, with your friends, You can create groups where you're seeing their points and you're seeing theirs. And they've they're a new app and they've they're adding things all the time and modifying things and they're they're a work in progress. Sometimes it doesn't work the best, but the bugs are getting worked out. What are the things they recently added is you can set up for specific apps how many times you want to open the app in a day and how long you want to be able to have access to the app each time you open it.

So again, that's that limitation. If I only want to go on Instagram five times in a day and I don't want to be on there for more than 10 minutes, you open that app and it's like, Do you want to have one of your sessions right now? And you're like, it just helps you just reset and pause and think, Do I really want to spend time on Instagram right now or do I want to save it for later?

Because so those things have really been helpful for me to really significantly cut my social media time. Like full disclosure, I was probably like 5 to 6 hours a day before I started doing this on my phone. And I think that's pretty common these days, especially the scrolling in the evening. And I'm generally now down to like under 2 hours a day.

And I've I've found workarounds. I'm using a scheduler to post to social media. So I have to spend less time on it to help grow my business and just all those different strategies to be able to have my phone not be a weight. That's pulling me down time wise, but also financially. Well, and I'm always talking with my clients.

And it's true for social media or for food or for substances or whatever it is like you get that impulse to do something and you answer the impulse. You're going to answer it so much quicker the next time, and it just makes it easier on the way to break that cycle is to not answer the impulse enough times that you just sort of quit, which is something I, I started doing a long time ago.

And so that's why social media is not really a problem for me anymore. And it's also true with spending too two hour subjects like I would just see it and buy it. And I had to like, really play games with myself where it's like, okay, I'm on a spending fast this week and, and they would stop that impulse of like immediately doing it and so many of us impulse control issues anyway and we think there's nothing we can do about it.

But that pause every time of like, I want the cookie, I'm not going to have the cookie right now. I can have it. I read somewhere where somebody had said telling yourself, you can have it later. And that would be true with spending two works way better than telling yourself you can't have it. Because when you say you can't do it, then you just want it all them all the more.

But yeah, and that's where mindset plays into it a little bit more too, is how you think and how you talk to yourself about money. And one of the phrases that I just hate is I can't afford it. And and we talk about we say this a lot of times as an excuse to just like for lack of a better term, like shut somebody up right?

Like a kid in the store being like, Mom, mom, can I have this? Or a friend saying, hey, do you want to go here for a weekend? And maybe it's maybe there's not the financial resources to buy that thing or go on that trip. But a lot of times it's just that you don't want that toy in your house or you want to do something different with your time.

And instead of, you know, being brave and saying to your kid, you know, that's not something we want in our house, like we've got enough toys or too the friend. I don't I don't want to spend my weekend doing that. I've got some other things to do that are more important to me. Those things can get pushback from other people.

So we often can default to I can't afford it because that that ends the conversation a lot faster. But then that does create, you know, what we say and what we think does become reality. And I never believed in things like this before. Like, yeah, that's cheesy. You're working on your mindset. That's that's not going to help anything.

But being able to pay attention to how we're talking to ourselves and how we're thinking really does have a big impact. And if we can eliminate that phrase in the like, Hey, that's not in our budget right now. If it's something you want to do or being brave. And if it's there's another reason you want to say no to that, put that reason, that true reason out there and it it shifts things a lot.

I'm 100% on board with that. I never say I can't afford things. And I think that started years ago. There was a time where my husband and I were $90,000 in debt from like student loans and just being irresponsible with credit cards and things like that. And we genuinely couldn't afford things at that time because there was no money.

We that's all we would fight about. We never thought about other things. We would fight about money, and it would be because he would come home with a check and want to buy something. And I'm like, Nope, that's gone. And he's like, What do you mean? I just gave it to you? And I'm like, You already spent it.

It's gone. And so we did have that period of time where we probably could have said, I can't afford it. But now it just sounds like something so ridiculous to me to say, because I think we could afford anything that we want. Well, let's be fair. Like not in every household probably, but people could find a way they could do without something in order to get to the thing that they want.

The other thing that's a lot like that is and it's a lot of times people compare money and time is I'm so busy. I really, really don't. I don't like that one either. And it's like it's a badge of honor these days almost to think and say how busy you are and it's interesting to me, my my friends and I are in much different stages of life.

So my husband and I were empty nesters. We have an adult. It was after school living. They're alive, taking care of themselves. And our friends have kids that are a lot younger, like teen agers, so we're not busy. And I that's a badge of honor that I love to wear because I can do things and make time a priority for the things that I want to do.

And my husband's a big golfer and it's not a source of contention that he's out golfing every weekend and a couple of nights a week because we have that time flexibility and it doesn't leave me driving around to all of the things. And there's so much pressure on parents these days, I think, to have their kids in so many activities and sports and I just I just don't ever want to be busy.

And I think I think they can be a little overwhelmed with it. But a lot of them, it's kids love the sports and you taking your kid out of a sport that they really love or saying, we're not going to this tournament, we're not going. It's just it's heartbreaking because the kid loves it. So you want to find that time and that balance to be able to make things a priority that are a priority and look for things that you can maybe cut out of your life and say no to and time and money.

There's so many similarities there between what you focus on and what you prioritize. Yeah, one of my clients who happens to be, I don't know the official title, but she's some sort of financial advisor and she has two young kids and they wanted to play this particular sport. But what was going to happen is it was going to take a whole lot of their time and as a family, a lot of her time driving them around and going to games and practices.

And it's it's so interesting that she basically like sat them down and said, is this how we want to spend our time? And somebody could do that with money as well. It is no different. Is this how we want to spend our money? And I, I do that with my kids all the time. It's like, well, this thing is, you know, $2,000 or this thing is like $100.

Like, which one do you think is the smarter version or choice, I guess I should say? And so, yeah, thinking about how we spend our time is very similar to how we spend our money. One thing that we talked about that was so funny that I didn't know that this was was even in a book as I was talking about how I have a tendency and it came from the way and I want you to talk about your system of like buckets and things like that.

But you mentioned like having a separate account for your spending, and I likened that to like when I have a product and then I use the example of toothpaste, like if I have a full tube of toothpaste, I'm going to put far more toothpaste on my brush than if my toothpaste is almost gone. Even if there's another one in the cabinet, it doesn't matter.

And I said, it's the same with like face cream. If I have a full container, I'm going to really dip my fingers in there. But if it's almost gone, I'm going to be really careful. Even if there's like three back ups, it doesn't matter. But tell us about that book and where that stemmed from as far as the conversation, as far as how you work with people.

Yeah. So the book is called Profit First that I Love, and it's a system that I help my clients implement in their business and that I use personally in my business. And the analogy of the toothpaste is actually in that book where they talk about that resourcefulness that you get when there's less toothpaste in the tube or less face cream in the jar and they the analogy wasn't related to an expense account for your business.

So in the profit first system, you have multiple accounts for your business and one account is specific to your business expenses and making decisions around what you're going to spend or not spend on in your business based on the balance in this account. And it's so true. You you figure out a way to find the thing you need to do for low or no cost when you're back's against the wall and there's not a whole lot of money in this account and it's the whole system.

The premise is around paying yourself first. So instead of taking your income minus your expenses and you pay yourself whatever's left over, it flips the script, you have your income and you divide your income based on percentages that you determine for your business into an account, to pay yourself, an account for your expenses, and an account for your taxes among a couple other accounts.

And it really helps you see where your money is going and it helps you pay yourself consistently from your business. So getting to the point where you pay yourself a salary from your business instead of the scraps or whatever's left over, especially early on in your business, is really transformational. And I do this on the personal side, too.

And one thing for me is I, I lost my job. We made changes with our money that involved lots of different accounts and buckets for the personal side. And then I started getting caught up on ADHD. Tick tock with like nodding along going, yeah, this, this sounds familiar to me and learning that lots of people with ADHD have challenges with their money related to like impulse shopping and all those things.

And then it had me reflecting, well, why am I able to be really effective with managing our household finances? And then it's like, it's the buckets, it's the systems, the automations. So on the personal side, I align my pay day, my salary for my business with my husband's pay day. So every two weeks it's pay day and automatically money goes into different buckets for different things.

So one of the things that helps is probably not get in a lot of disagreements about money as we each have a spending account that money goes into every two weeks. It's for us to, you know, blow every two weeks, hoard up and save for something or spend on whatever we want, no questions asked, no impact on the overall finances.

But we also have lots of different savings accounts for things like vacation ends and like car maintenance is a big one that we've been dipping into a lot because we have some older cars. So just being able to look at these really clearly and see, okay, we've got this much in our travel fund, can we go on that vacation we're talking about?

But then on the spending side to having an account for spending on needs, essentials like groceries and gas and other food separate from your bills account because when we have a bigger pot of money that tends to increase our spending and reduce our clarity. But if you want to spend $700 every two weeks on these expenses around groceries and gas and things like that, you put that money in that account based on whatever time period and whatever amount you've set up in your overall plan.

And then you're able to, at a glance, make a decision around, you know, how much time do I have left before this money is going to be replenished, How much money is in the account? Do we need groceries? Is your gas as your gas tank empty or needing to be filled? And you could really decide, you know, am I making that Amazon purchase or does it need to wait for another time?

Because you're able to have a really quick feedback and easy to see answer around? Is this something that we can buy right now? Yeah, Yeah. And I've heard other ADHD. Many people talk about actually helping people reduce the amount of accounts, and that's that's my only thought as far as that maybe being problematic. Is it that it's all within the same bank.

And so when you log in, you're seeing the accounts named in, you know, exactly what it is like. How do you make that simple? The naming of the accounts is a big one. So finding a financial institution that allows you to give custom names to the accounts, because if I logged in and I just saw multiple savings accounts with different balances and I didn't know what that was for, it would be very overwhelming.

But it's about understanding yourself and what is going to be best suited for you. There's no one size fits all plan, even for individuals with ADHD, because some of my clients, they need to have their main spending account. They need to have their balance be, you know, at least $1,000 or they start to get panicked and there's other clients, one in particular who I've worked with for a long time.

She needs to be bare bones on her spending account or she no, she's going to go out and do things that aren't part of her plan. So as soon as she gets paid, she's looking at her spreadsheet. She's looking at her cash flow to determine how much extra is going towards her current goal, to have that account kind of like taken down to the bare minimum, which personally that would stress me out.

But a lot of accounts would stress some people out, some people like to have all their different savings accounts all together and just track it another way. So it's figuring out what is going to work the best for your brain to reduce your stress and anxiety around money as much as possible. And then it's trial and error, a lot to maybe you add multiple accounts and you're like, Whoa, nope, not for me too much.

And then you see which ones you can combine that align and make sense for you. Yeah, very good.

So you talked about like looking further out. And that's something that we can be really bad about. Like, I can't remember how you put it, but the mindset I talk about is like it's now or it's just not now.

And and I know that when I was paying off the debt, I was the spreadsheet nerd that was like not just going like a month out or two months out. I was going like neck into next year. And yes, I redid the spreadsheet like 100 times, but it was fun for me to do and it was just so rewarding to see like, okay, after six months this bill will be gone and then I can apply that money to something else.

And then that's going to make that be gone and I can apply that money to something else. So you talked about like it just being helpful to look further out. How do you do that exactly with your clients? Through a good spreadsheet. I love a good spreadsheet. And the benefit is it does all the math for you and you don't have to go in and do all the calculations.

So it's basically the spreadsheet version of an old school checkbook where you would mark what was coming in and what was going out. So having a budget is great, but in practicality, being able to manage your budget, you have to also manage your cash flow. And when you're just when you have a budget and you don't have a system for managing your cash flow, you can often be at the end of the month and looking back like, we were so far off track on our groceries or on our Amazon online shopping and there's nothing you can do about it at that point except maybe return the trampoline.

But when you're already past and you've already spent the money, you can't undo it in most cases. So being able to shift it and see, okay, what does this look like two months from now? If we implement our plan, when is money coming in, When is the money going out? How does that look and being able to look further and further out?

So generally, we're at least six months out. My clients and I and I had one specific client who was just feeling, you know what, there's a lot going on right now. She had some bigger bills that she was paying off because life just threw her a couple curveballs all at once. And like like, let's just take a beat and let's look at what this looks like six months from now, eight months from now.

And we map out her cash flow up till the end of the year. And this was at the beginning of the year, and we started to see, hey, this bill gets paid off here. Where is that money going to go? It's going to go towards your travel fund or something that you love and enjoy. And then you get to see at the end of the year, you know, and yes, you sometimes have to change it.

Life does happen. But if everything goes based on this plan, at the end of the year, you'll have X amount towards your goal that you're able to be able to slowly work towards versus like the right now was every extra penny had to go towards that financial commitment she had and it was just feeling really heavy. And the further you look out, the better idea you get over what a decision right now does to future you.

And it really brings in the what is the future? there is a future in that going from the now and not now into now and next month and two months from now helps you gain clarity and understand, okay, if we go and spend $500 on this thing today, what does that do to impact next month and what does that do towards our goals?

And I don't think how many people I don't think a lot of people with ADHD realize how foggy that future can be without like hard numbers in front of you. And and that's true for everything, not just money. It could be true for like goals with your your fitness or whatever that might be, that that can be really foggy.

But I can see how this would be super helpful. Now when I did this, when I paid off all this debt, we ended up going with a cash budget. But that freaks people out. A lot of people. I shouldn't say everybody. That's that was our spending account. So if it wasn't a bill, then it was pulled out in a certain amount of cash and it was a small amount in the beginning when we were having to pay off debt.

And then it grew as as we could grow it. But if people aren't doing something like that where, you know, we can see the cash and we can see when the cash is getting low and when the cash is gone, are they having to check their numbers every day? I know that's a challenge with a lot of my clients.

It's looking at their numbers. Yeah, cash can be really great. I kind of find as years go on, it gets less and less great because there's more options to access things. As far as accessibility, especially for ADHD individuals too. So for me, one of the barriers would be I love to order my groceries online and that sets me up for success.

The most because I am like a seven year old when I go into the grocery store and my cart just fills up with things I don't need. So having cash for that is sometimes a barrier because you can't order online. And I have been known to drive away from gas pumps that I have to go in and pay for.

So just some of those barriers with cash. So having that separate account can be similar to using cash. So kind of creating different accounts to substitute those spending envelopes or cash envelopes. And there's lots of options these days with no fee online bank accounts that you can do that for. But it does involve checking those account balances more.

But there's really no substitute for cash because it's a physical thing we touch. We see it spending cash just registers more with our brains than tapping a card or swiping a card, because it's a physical thing that we see, not this electronic money kind of off in another universe. So if there's one area that you're specifically struggling with, if there's the opportunity to use cash for it, even adjusting that one category to use cash for can be really helpful.

So maybe you love to go out to the local coffee shop every once in a while, but you know you're going more often than aligns with your overall plan. Maybe take out $20 every week and that's that's your physical budget for that and it's got a hard stop. Yeah. And I suppose these days with cash aren't cash apps sorry not cash apps, but with banking apps you can probably just click an app on your phone and look at your numbers quite easily that way, I assume.

I don't know. I haven't tried it, but yeah, there's and I've even seen some people add like I don't know how they do it. I'm not super like tech savvy when it comes to this, but like, have things on their home screen, on their phone to show like a specific bank account ballot. So there's ways that you can make it more visual or ways you can create habits to be, you know, you're having your coffee in the morning, you just hop on to your accounts to see what your balances are and just being able to develop those habits that align with you, that work with you to figure out what's setting yourself up for long

term success. As far as maybe it's a little bit of cash, maybe it's different bank accounts and finding what works and not not trying to shove yourself into a box because so-and-so is doing such and such and it works for them. That's not good for us because when people, you have to do this, we're going to be the first people to say, no, no, we are not doing that because we don't want to specifically because you told us to.

Yeah, we don't like to do what we're told to do, even if we're telling ourselves sometimes. So that is so true. What about relationships and money? Because when we did have all that debt, it really took me going and saying, Hey, we need a budget. And my husband was very resistant to it and I just kind of would let it go.

And then I'd come back and go, you know, we need a budget. And, you know, we kind of just like push back and forth. And finally I got him on board with the budget. And a lot of people hate that word, but it's it's necessary. It's just like managing your time with a calendar and you need to know where your money is going.

You need to know where your time is going. And now it's the best thing that we could have ever done. And he knows that. And he's not he's not a difficult person. It was just in this one area. I think through through the way he grew up, a budget was just not a good idea. He didn't realize that his family did have a budget.

Yes, but what about when, like one partner's not on board? How do you handle that? That can be really challenging. And I like I'm working a little bit at a time to help people shift how they feel about budgets, because when people hear about budgets, they think about restriction and we can't have any fun. We can't do the things and being able to flip that, to say like a budget isn't about restricting, it's about prioritizing and figuring out where we want our money to go.

Instead of being like, where the heck did our money go? So being able to have a plan and seeing that it leads to financial freedom and not restriction is is really key. But yeah, couples and money, it's very challenging to navigate and I work mainly with females and being able to see the the intricacies of the different relationships that they have with partners if they're married and in traditional like male female relationships, I'm seeing when there's joint finances, a lot of that falls on the the wife, the woman in the relationship because it's just another or another thing, another administrative thing that falls on their shoulders.

And it can create stress and animosity between spouses because you can be the one saying, okay, you're spending the money and I'm trying to manage it, whether that's through a credit card or through a bank account and not having a plan and not, you know, sticking to a plan we already have can be super challenging. But I'm also seeing a lot more frequently where your your finances aren't necessarily combined with a spouse or partner, where there's maybe a joint household account or maybe you've divided up what bills you pay.

And that can also can be challenging too, and create a lot of difficult conversations because if there's income disparity between the two, but you're trying to split everything 5050, it's there's just so many different dynamics. So no matter what you decide to do as far as like joining or combining, having regular conversations is really key. And when it's new, finding ways to make those conversations be special and be something that you look forward to.

Maybe you go out for dinner and you have that conversation, maybe there's a brewery or a winery that you love to go to. So having those conversations not just be all, it's the money talk. It's Friday. We're going to have the money talk that, you know, it's we're going to have the money talk, but we're going to go out to a nice restaurant that we like, that we've built into our plan.

And figuring out what works best for each individual couple is is challenging but really important and finding ways to get on the same page. Often that comes with some external help too, whether that's a financial coach or a financial advisor, somebody kind of walking along the path with you when you're when you're really butting heads with things. Because you know, when somebody from the outside is looking with I don't have the emotions attached to the things that you have attached to your money.

So sometimes that external like, wait, let's put a pause on this, Let's look at things and see our reality and then build a plan for what that's going to look like as far as partners managing money together to work towards similar goals, because often there are those similar goals. We just don't necessarily see them if we're not having money conversations because that avoidance can create a lot of animosity.

Yeah, and I think if in in our particular situation, if I had pushed hard or like turned it into a fight which I could tend to do, that is in my personality. But I didn't happen to do that with this particular thing. But if I had done that, I think there would have been even more resistance and he would have never like saw that.

And all I had to do was just keep showing him like, look, like I did the spreadsheet. And if we do this, we can be here by then. And then you talked about having the fun conversations. I have more than one set of clients that has what they call Financial Fridays, and that's where they, you know, have a fun conversation about money.

And I remember one of the fun conversations we had about money when we had paid off a lot of our debt. I we were at out to dinner and I'm like, what do you want in life? And he's like, Well, what do you mean? And I'm like, Well, what do you like? What do you want in the future?

And he's like, You know, I'd really like to buy a gym someday. And I'm like, me too. And if but if we do, I want it to be set up like this gym. And we, we described this particular gym that we had in our town. And because we had paid off all this debt and because we had gotten financially responsible and financially stable, years later, maybe like 6 to 10 years later, we were offered that gym to purchase.

And that gym is the reason I'm sitting here in front of you today as a coach, because it helped pay for my certification and it's just like Domino after Domino, where I feel like the more we get financially, financially responsible, the more blessings that we get is the way I like to put it. But you could say maybe the more the more the universe rewards you or you know.

However, however that works for you. But I do feel that the more responsible we get, the more responsibility we get as far as like income coming in and coming to us and being able to do those things that you want to do. So three years ago, just over three years ago, my husband and I purchased a cottage on the water is something that was kind of like, yeah, like it'd be nice to have a waterfront cottage.

But but, but, but because. And then honestly, getting fired led to. It's remarkable how there's no arguments when you're having a very hard money conversation when you just lost one of your household income. So it's like our backs were against the wall. We had to make those changes. But then those changes, the budget was tight. Like after losing my job, we had no wiggle room.

And then when things started to happen and I started my business and we started to have that wiggle room, that wiggle room felt like way more money, even though it was less money. But then before I lost my job and it allowed us to be able to do more with it because like, this is this is nice, this extra little bit, what do we want to do with it?

So we actually started focusing on paying down our mortgage for our our home. And then we paid I'll pay that off. And then that led to a okay, now what? And then we started looking at properties like that's it's not that crazy for us to think about purchasing a property on the water. And we did it during during the end of like lockdowns and things like that.

So that gave us something to do to get out of the house too is like go look at houses. And I just I remember the day that we got the call and my husband was still working from home and I was working from home with my business. And he just came back into my office with this look on his face, like, we just bought a cottage and we'd lost out on several.

So it kind of felt like a bit of a shock. I kind of tried to get less and less invested with each offer we put in on it, But being able to have a place where we can go to and it's just you feel different. It's just like a different vibe when you're by the water and less stressful and leads to that slower life that I really want to keep working towards.

I love hearing that because I'm always it used to be a joke, but I would tell my husband, Well, when I get my beach house and he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now it's just getting to be more and more of a reality. And now I look at it now and I'm like, Well, I don't even know if I would want to buy a beach house, but I could Airbnb one like anytime I want because a friend of ours actually just bought his beach house and I'm like, is that where I want to spend my money?

Because we're in California where I don't know where are you located? So I'm actually in Canada, in southwestern Ontario. Yeah. All right. Well, in California, beach houses are pretty penny. And you know, it is I do foresee that being a possibility in future if I want it to be. And I think speaking to the things that we want, it's turned into less and less of a joke and it's getting pretty exciting.

But we better end here. But I want you to tell people like how they can find you, how they can work with you, anything they need to know about you. Yeah. So I will show their link and you can come find me on Instagram. It's where I hang out the most, where I publish the most. But I also have a couple of freebies on my website that you can go check out.

One is a more basic budget template where you can start to put your numbers together. Peel back the bandaid and look at where your money has been going. But I also have a really great resource for entrepreneurs that helps you put together your numbers and start to implement this profit first system in your business based on your specific numbers because it's really a game changer.

I highly recommend you read the book. There's not a basic version, but like a generalized version kind of for every industry. But there have been some spin offs specific to industries for like hairstylists or general contractors and things like that. But being able to have that system has been a game changer for me in my business and having a buffer in an account that I can pay my salary for for two, three, four months helps me to shift my perspective in my business and it helps me to be in that place of an abundance mindset.

And your clients and your potential clients feel that when you're having conversations with them around working together. Because if you're in a spot where you're not going to be able to pay your rent or your mortgage next month unless you sign on a client, you're going to have that desperation in you, and your potential targets are going to be real bad.

And yeah, that it's not about that. It's not about welcoming them into your business and having them consciously want to work with you. You might come up with some shady tactics. You might lean on them really hard and that could just give them a really bad feeling and have them running the other way. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I've, I've, I've felt that from other coaches and I've seen, seen people do that where it's like, okay, you got it.

You got to pull back like, calm down. This is about them, not about you. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, thank you. I love talking about money. I think it's so much fun. And I really appreciate you being on. Thank you. Thank you so much.