Ep.29 - Making Money a Positive and Empowering Experience
Episode Description
Are you struggling in making changes with your money? Join me as I share practical tips to help you shift your mindset and feel better about your finances. Learn how to align your money with your values, make mistakes and learn from them, and protect your mindset from negative influences.
Key Takeaways:
Recognizing and avoiding blaming others for your finances.
How to act in ways that reflect your future/dream self.
How making mistakes are a natural part of financial growth.
Recognizing the biases and dishonesty in online money-related content.
-
Michelle [00:00:12]:
Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for listening to the podcast. I am Michelle Moses, your host. I am a certified financial planner realtor and former ecommerce store owner. And today, we are gonna be talking about money mindset and how to get an alignment with your money. I get a lot of people that come to me, and they are feeling guilty. I think that's a huge, huge I don't know if it's an issue or just a common problem that we that people have in general, but they feel guilty about the things that they've spent their money on or that they've been irresponsible with it, that they've made bad investments, that they've given their money away or they spend too much. I am here to tell you that every single person on this planet feels guilty about money. I mean, even if you've got boatloads of money or you don't have any money, I mean, you feel guilty about the way that you're spending it.
Michelle [00:01:04]:
And I so I'm kind of hoping that through this podcast, I can just give you some tips of ways to easily feel better about your money, and just, you know, like, if you're having a panic to attack about your money, just ways that you just simple mindset tricks that you can get back into the swing of things. Because what I've learned over the years, it's, you know, it's it doesn't serve you any good at all to sit and be in that guilt and to sit there and be beat yourself up. That's the way you should we should say it. It it does no good. And for you to sit there and be worried about money, it it's not gonna bring more to you. What's gonna bring more money to you is being positive about your life and feeling good about it and feeling like you're making some steps and giving hope. I say that a lot with, like, dating, with my friends, that, you know, as long as you've got someone to date and there's hope or there's at least, like, somebody out there that you're kind of interested in, then you feel okay about dating. And I feel like it's the same way with money.
Michelle [00:02:09]:
If you get have some hope that, hey. I, you know, whatever. I just shopped around for my health insurance, and I'm saving $200 a month, or I am working towards a new program or something at work where I might get a raise, and you're feeling valued. That all feels good. Right? I mean, that is kind of the space that you wanna be in. You wanna be in a space of I'm doing something. I'm taking control of my life. And that is something that really bugs me online is the victim mentality, and I know that we all do this.
Michelle [00:02:44]:
But the victim mentality is used a lot to sell us stuff, and all it really does is create guilt and shame. And I'm gonna go over a couple of the, just social media posts that I saw over the last week. Honestly, I didn't even go back that far, and it drives me nuts. I really hate the way that people try to make other people feel guilty in order to sell things or to get you to subscribe to a newsletter. You know, you really want to protect your mindset. Right? I mean, I think with anything, it's protecting, like, your mentality, your consciousness. And when I say that, I think of Deepak. But you do.
Michelle [00:03:24]:
You want to protect all of that. You that's what you're trying to do is maintain that positivity So then you can try to build on it. You know, if you're doing something, I mean, take me for instance. You know, I had my business. I was feeling stagnant. And so then this podcast comes along. I'm like, oh, I'm doing something. I'm meeting people.
Michelle [00:03:42]:
I'm out there, and I am trying something new. And when you have that feeling even with just your money, I mean, even if you're trying to budget or you sit down and actually think about your money. And that's another thing I'm going to talk about is getting an alignment with your money. What I mean by that is, are you doing what you want with it? And at any point in you know, so I I'm torn because sometimes, you know, I can talk to people that have no money, and sometimes I can talk to people that have a lot of money. But I think this applies to everybody, is that you getting into the right mindset about it, you can get an alignment with your money, and you can be giving away $3 or $5. You can be giving away 1,000 of dollars. It doesn't matter how much you're making or how much you have. It's really all in the action of it and how you're feeling when you're doing it.
Michelle [00:04:39]:
And I I don't I don't know that there's anything else to say about that. I hope that there's some examples that you can go back to in your life to think about how you felt, like, when you feel really good about giving a gift and when you feel like, oh, I really can't afford this. You know? And when you get in alignment with your money about, hey, I really want to give some money away to animal charities. That's my thing. If you follow me online, I I post a lot about animals. And, that is one of my things, is I really like to do that. And I also like to support my friends. So if my friends ever I think it's really important that you sit down and you get an alignment with your money.
Michelle [00:05:26]:
And that means, you know, what is your dream life? And even if you can't have that dream life, how could you do a little bit of that now? And that's where you're going to build. That's where you're gonna have that hope that I was talking about. So if you say I'll just use me for an example. I could spend 1,000 and 1,000 of dollars. My dream is honestly spending 4 or $5,000 just on, like, my body and my clothes and my accessories and facials and massages and skin care and hair care. I know that sounds like a lot, but once I added it up, I was like, damn. That's that's a lot of money. And so I don't spend that much.
Michelle [00:06:03]:
It's definitely an area that I need to control, but I do do some of it. You know? I will get a massage every once in a while. I do do go get a facial every once in a while. And And so whatever your thing is, I mean, maybe you like to buy sneakers. Okay. So buy some sneakers every few months. And maybe you don't need to buy them new. Maybe you could buy them online on eBay or or something like that.
Michelle [00:06:25]:
So finding ways to get the essence of what you want, I think, is really, really important. And that will put you in the right mindset of, hey. I'm being responsible. I am in It's just the way that you wanna be every day. My I I do have a client where whenever she is getting, upset about money, she has, like, a little Post it that and there she's older and, going into retirement, but she has a list of all the income that they have coming in every month. And so it might be like a pension or what we have coming from their accounts, and then they're getting paid off from some of these businesses. And anytime she's feeling stressed, she looks at that and is like, okay. Okay.
Michelle [00:07:18]:
It's it's all okay, because she's okay right now. And if you've ever read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, that's really all that is, is you're getting back into the moment. Am I okay right now? And I know this is kinda going off on it might seem like a tangent, but it all kinda goes together because people write to me, and they're like, well, I made such a bad investment in, you know, medical marijuana, and then I lost my shirt. And then I made an investment in this company, and I I lost everything. Everybody loses money. Everybody. I invested in medical marijuana. I invested in oil and gas.
Michelle [00:07:55]:
I've lost my shirt on that a couple times, but I've also had some home runs. And you got to make mistakes in order to learn about finances because finances are like anything else. I mean, just like this podcast. You listen to my first one. It's not as good. I'm getting better. Hopefully, in another year, I'll be better. You have to make mistakes.
Michelle [00:08:15]:
You have to learn what is right for you and what your money life is going to look like. And you're not gonna know that unless you actually experiment with things. And we're taught these things that if you lose any money or if you make any of these wrong decisions, you're, you know, it's, honestly, it's like the end of the world. I mean, and I know I get that way. I always tend to lose not lose, but, like, spend, like, $1,000 frivolously. Like, we moved to Kansas City, and I renewed my tax here in Arizona. And it was $800 down the drain for 2 weeks of having tax. And I beat myself up about it for, like, 2 months.
Michelle [00:08:57]:
I was like, why the heck did I do that? You know? And I know that we all have examples like this of just stupid money that we just wasted. And I'm here to tell you that everybody does it. And no matter what you see on the outside of somebody driving a nice car or anything, and if you go back to my credit, episode, you will hear how nothing is what it appears. And so I really just want you to go back to what is important to you and get back. Like, if you're starting to feel guilty, you gotta you gotta switch it. You've gotta switch your mindset to what is working right. And back to the mistake thing, I just read, Adam Adam Grant's book, Hidden Potential, and that's one of the things he has in there is that he talks about people learning languages. And the number one instance of them learning the language the fastest is making the most mistakes.
Michelle [00:09:48]:
So the more mistakes you make, the faster you're going to learn. And I think that honestly applies to anything. And reading his book has actually given me more motivation to do this podcast and to do other things, other business things that I'm doing and to mess up because that's it truly is what you have to do. I mean, I have to listen to this and listen to my voice, and I said, and so. I say that so a lot. So, yeah, I was about to say it again. And you try you're just trying better every time, and it's exact same thing with money. Just try a little bit better next time.
Michelle [00:10:23]:
And you might be able to wait 2 more weeks until you buy that cashmere sweater, or you might be able to wait another week until you go and get the, pedicure that you were putting off. Just little things like that, and you're gonna feel like you're in control of it rather than it controlling you. And that's where we get is that we think we're just in this, like, sea of you know, it's just it's we're just in this, you know, you're in a boat and you're in a sea of of stormy waters, and you're just out of control. And I'm telling you, the way that you can get in control is to get in there and pay attention to your money and make some action. And even if it's, I'm going to merge these 2 Roth IRAs together so that I don't have 2 accounts at, you know, 1 at Vanguard and 1 at Fidelity. That is taking action. That is you feeling like you are taking part in your financial world. And so I wanna go into a lot, some of the social media things that I see because I think it's also important to protect your mindset.
Michelle [00:11:21]:
And I think this is gonna become even more important, you guys, from what I see from VR sets and, you know, just all the gaming and how much we're online with our phones and computers, I mean, obviously, it is awesome. All this AI, I mean, there is so much that is just so awesome. But we are going to have to be able to step back and control our mindset and our consciousness, our minds. It's going to become very important. I really believe that it has been like this fitness thing of, you know, we we need to protect what's in our bodies. I think in the next 10, 15 years, it's gonna become you need to control what you're putting in your brain because we all know what you put in your brain is what's going to come out your mouth. It's what you're thinking about. When I got off Twitter, I stopped being so worried about the world.
Michelle [00:12:11]:
I I mean, I really was getting paranoid. And so I can see how these people that watch the news all the time that they, get so paranoid that they go out and, you know, do something crazy. So I I just think it's really, really important that you protect your mindset. And, you know, it's just like what people talk about. Watch who you hang out with and what they're you know, how you feel after you're hanging out with certain people, how you feel after you spend money doing something. It's all about awareness and, you know, do I feel good doing this? Do I wanna go return what I bought? You know, sometimes I do that where I think I'm yes. These are, you know, whatever, the pants that I wanted, and, no, I need to go return those. You know, that happens.
Michelle [00:12:52]:
But then there are the the instances where you do make a mistake, and you've just you gotta get over it. I mean, that's just the you you just need to keep moving forward and know that you're learning that I don't wanna do that again. And so I'm going to make a different choice, and I'm going to start learning about money, or I'm going to hire someone, or I'm going to go online and have someone pick my investments. All of those things, you do not need and in in today's day and age, especially when you're investing, like, your 401 k, your Roth, any of those, people it's like people think that you should know what stocks. And I love I love these posts. I'm kinda jumping into the social media, but the post where it's like, if you bought Apple 20 years ago and put $10,000 in, this is how much you would have. Okay. What a way to make people feel like crap, honestly.
Michelle [00:13:40]:
I mean, that I can think of no worse headline because most of us did not buy Apple stock. Most of us didn't buy Amazon or hold it. I I mean, even if you bought it at $20, most of us would probably sell it at a 100. We wouldn't hold it until it was at $3,000. So it's just, you know, those kinds of headlines are just just media. They're just trying to, you know, get you to click on it just as something to read. But you need to be aware of what you're doing to yourself and making you're shaming yourself. You're making yourself feel guilty.
Michelle [00:14:14]:
I should have been making fun and I should have done this, and I should have done that, and you didn't. And so what? I mean, you gotta move, and you're just like, we're here now, and so what are you gonna do differently? Like, what did you learn from it? And then what are you gonna do differently going forward? So these are just a couple of the social media posts that I have seen in the last, couple days was one was every morning, a new retirement plan, and they wanted you to sign up for their newsletter. Okay. I can think of nothing more stressful than to have a new retirement strategy every single morning. I mean, that would be so confusing because that's what's confusing about finance is person a over here is buying stocks, person b over here is buying index, you know, indexes. And then the other person over here is just putting it into their target date fund, you know, the 2030, and they're just kind of just ignoring it. Which one is right? Whatever one you feel good about and you can sleep well at night, that's the right one. So if you not everybody is going to be a stock picker.
Michelle [00:15:17]:
The honestly, the only people I think that should be in individual stocks are the people that follow it all the time. I know people like, that is their life. Every day, they're getting up, and they're checking the stock market. They're checking their stocks. They're reading about the industries that they're interested in. Cool. They should be in stocks. But if that's not your life and you work a full time job, then you need to set it and forget it, and you need to feel okay with that.
Michelle [00:15:40]:
And I'm only telling you that you feel guilty is because you're reading all of these things that say, if you would have invested in Apple stock 20 years ago, that's the only thing that's making you feel guilty is is that marketing message. And I'm here to tell you that it is okay to just pick the target date fund in your 401 k and just save as much as you possibly can and pay attention to where your money's going. And that is gonna take your mindset so much further than any other stock pick or knowing and research that you can do. And, honestly, my experience is that the more you let it go and the more that you don't touch it, the better off you are. And so if you're even just putting it in the index funds or the mutual funds, I I see tons of people that retire doing that. And the difference is that they ignore it, and they're just focused on making money and not spending a lot of money versus whatever their income is. And that's how they make it. And they just keep going.
Michelle [00:16:42]:
They're they're focused on making money. And I'll never forget when a client said this to me, because she, is she's just money just, like, shows up for her. And we were in a meeting, and they were getting ready to retire. And she said something to the effect of, well, it's always there. I always have money whenever I need it. It's just always there. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks of this is why money just comes to her is because she just expects it, and she's just living her life. And she's she lives pretty frugally.
Michelle [00:17:12]:
You know? I mean, not she's not trying to go out and spend a ton of money or anything like that, but she just lives with the expectation, like, it's all okay. And that's where you're trying to get to so that you can then go through life thinking clearly. Right? And so that you can then make decisions that you're feeling good about. Another headline that I've got is and I love this one. So and most of this is from, like, influencers trying to sell their, like, you know, their course or, you know, a sunk sign sign up for my newsletter or something like that. From November 2nd to December 2nd, my business made $200,000. There were no Black Friday deals, and these are all on different lines. So you can see it with the spaces.
Michelle [00:17:55]:
Right? What I did, shut down my agency, launched a new product, and stopped doing 80% of what I was doing. You know, subscribe now. Okay. Again, a whole another thing of I need to be doing this. He's doing it the right way. And I can also tell you that most of these people are lying, especially from what I have been researching a lot the these posts, about how much they make just to get you to buy. And I think that's what we're starting to realize is online, it's a lot of people that are just lying to get you to watch, to get you to click, you know, and and buy. And I think it's really sad because I'm a really honest person.
Michelle [00:18:44]:
And now what's happening online is I'm starting to realize that I don't believe anything that I see. And maybe we need to get to that point. I don't know. I it but I I trust very few people because I do think that they are massaging the numbers, or they're massaging what their business is actually doing or the time that they're spending. And, yeah, I just think that we need to question it, and that will go and help you with your money mindset. So, I mean, really, the whole gist of my podcast today is really to I just want you to think positively about what you're doing. You know? I mean, you might be broke, but if you've got, like, little kids at home, you know, you're in a whole another stage of just making sure that your kids are great and that you're there for them. And you aren't going to be giving a 100% to earning money, and you're not gonna be able to give a 100% to managing your money.
Michelle [00:19:43]:
But you can give some of your effort. But, you know, a lot of your effort is in having your little kids and, you know, getting them to school age and all of that. And so it's just you can't always be comparing yourself to others, and I know that we hear this all the time. But then the step to get you into the right mindset is to kind of focus on what's going right or take some action. Take some action towards whatever is in alignment with what you want in your life. And so if you wanna be able to give money away or you want a bigger house, I mean, it or it might be, I wanna be able to create generational wealth for my family. Okay. Then start doing that.
Michelle [00:20:20]:
And even if you're doing $25 a month and you set up the account, like, hey. I set up the account. I know that maybe in a year, I can start, you know, adding some more to it, and it will start to build on that. And I'm telling you, almost a 100% of your money is paying attention to it. Paying attention to it, knowing where it goes, and knowing kind of what you like and where you wanna go is most of the deal. And sometimes it's just gonna take longer. Like some people, it'll take, you know, messing up through all their twenties thirties in order to figure that out, and then other people are just kinda born with it. So I hope that this makes you feel better and that everybody makes mistakes and just, you know, just keep moving forward.
Michelle [00:21:04]:
And it's I I just think money is so, it's just entrenched in so much of what we have. I mean, it dictates the people that you hang out with, the car you drive, the neighborhood you live in. I mean, just so much of what your daily life is. So I get people's obsession with it and why they don't feel like they can make any mistakes with it. But the only way you learn is through mistakes. And so you've, you know, when you make a mistake or look back on those mistakes that you made, and then just say, what do I wanna do differently? I mean, just kinda like how you would with your kids. You know, Did you learn from this? Okay. How would you do differently? And it might take you a couple times.
Michelle [00:21:42]:
You know? Sometimes it just takes us a couple times. But it's just the way humans are, and money is no different than anything else. You know? With eating, you don't figure it out right away. You gotta try all these different things. And different things work for different people. And it's the same thing with money. Different kinds of strategies are gonna work with different people. You know, and that's why I have a job.
Michelle [00:22:03]:
I have a job because my I listen to people. And then I put, you know, I go into the toolbox and I put all these things together of what would work for them and what is their priority in life. And if you're out there trying to figure that out on your own, then, yeah, it's, I mean, I give you kudos to listening to this. So hopefully, you've learned something, and then hopefully, you're listening and reading other things so that you can do it in your life too, or you're calling someone to help you. So I really hope that this helped you feel a little bit better. That's what I want with this podcast is I want people to feel better about money and their life and their lifestyle and just about themselves. So thank you so much for listening, and be sure to tell your friends and to subscribe, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as professional financial advice. Always consult with a qualified financial advisor or professional before making any financial decisions. The hosts and guests of this podcast are not responsible for any actions taken based on the information presented.