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Psychology Money with George Grombacher
102 Plays8 months ago
In this podcast episode, George Grombacher, a seasoned finance professional, joins psychiatrists Fara and Grant to explore the psychological dimensions of financial behavior. They discuss how childhood experiences and observed behaviors from adults shape our financial habits, whether we lean towards saving or spending. Grombacher emphasizes the need to confront limiting beliefs about money, drawing parallels between people's discomfort with finances and math. The conversation touches on the impact of trauma on self-care, including financial health, and the importance of designing a life aligned with personal values. Grombacher's journey from a corporate environment to a more creative financial advisory role illustrates the transformative power of addressing one's relationship with money.
Key Takeaways
- Childhood experiences and observed financial habits shape our approach to money and views on success and relationships.
- "Doorknob comments" can reveal deep-seated feelings and attitudes towards money.
- Emotional barriers and negative beliefs about money can hinder financial success.
- Overcoming financial challenges can improve self-confidence and discipline, impacting overall well-being.
- Financial self-care is crucial, especially for those with past traumas
- Money management is about achieving a balance in life, not just in finances
In This Episode:
- [[01:03] Introduction to George Grombacher
- [02:10] George’s background and philosophy
- [04:37] Negative beliefs about money
- [05:40] George’s career journey
- [07:40] Connection and collaboration
- [09:21] Financial challenges and seeking help
- [12:39] Common financial mistakes and debt
- [16:14] Designing the life you want
- [17:48] Wealth accumulation and financial mindset
- [21:10] Balancing present enjoyment and future planning
- [22:37] The evolution of money personalities
- [25:47] Intergenerational transmission of trauma
- [27:09] Understanding limiting beliefs
- [28:55] Impact of childhood experiences on financial habits
- [32:20] Psychological aspects of financial decision-making
- [35:03] Positive spillover effect of financial empowerment
- [37:12] Seeking mental health support for financial well-being
- [38:22] Financial success and personal responsibility
Resources and Links
Doorknob Comments
George Grombacher
Dr. Fara White
Dr. Grant Brenner
Recommended
Transcript
Role of Childhood in Money Perception
00:00:00
Speaker
an investment is required to live the life that you want. And whether we're hardwired to be savers or spenders, certainly our lived experience and those around us and the adults that were around us when we were kids and what we learned from them, from watching them, it all goes to inform the way that we interact with money and everything else, success and relationships, which y'all know.
Introduction to the Podcast: Doorknob Comments
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello, I'm Dr. Farah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner.
00:00:29
Speaker
We're psychiatrists and therapists in private practice in New York. We started this podcast in 2019 to draw attention to a phenomenon called the doorknob comment. Doorknob comments are important things we all say from time to time, just as we're leaving the office, sometimes literally hand on the doorknob.
00:00:46
Speaker
Doorknob comments happen not only during therapy but also in everyday life. The point is that sometimes we aren't sure how to express the deeply meaningful things we're feeling, thinking and experiencing. Maybe we're afraid to bring certain things out into the open or are on the fence about wanting to discuss them. Sometimes we know we've got something we're unsure about sharing and are keeping it to ourselves and sometimes we surprise ourselves by what comes out.
Introducing George Grombacher: Finance Expert
00:01:14
Speaker
Hey, welcome to Dornob Comments. I'm Grant Brenner. I'm here with my co-host Farrah White and our guest George Grombacher. George is a 20-year finance industry veteran, podcaster, writer, and speaker. George is working to help people get better at money and life how they want.
00:01:31
Speaker
He spent 10 years with a Fortune 100 company as an advisor and in leadership positions where he impacted thousands of people and developed training curriculums. He's the president of Financial Consulting Professionals, the founder and chief community officer of Money Alignment Academy, and the host of the Lifeblood Podcast and the Aligned Money Show. He's been named to Investopedia's list of the top 100 most influential financial advisors, five years running.
00:02:00
Speaker
his husband to Emily and dad to James, Jack, and Josephine.
Mission to Improve Financial Behavior
00:02:05
Speaker
Welcome, George. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and some of your books? Well, thanks for having me, Grant and Farrah. I'm thrilled to be here. Always mildly uncomfortable to sit through a biography like that, but I do it to people almost every day, so I appreciate that. I'm working to help people get better at money so they can live how they want, and I do that by
00:02:30
Speaker
by my direct work as an advisor, by talking about money and a lot of the thinking and feeling around it and I write books and just try to find ways to get people to change their behavior more to the positive. So maybe not unlike what y'all are trying to do through your work, but I am doing my best. I try to be the best George Grombacher I can be on a daily basis and some days it works and some days it does not. That's my philosophy as well, but with my name.
00:03:01
Speaker
It's true. You know, I try to be the best version of myself, you know, because people are often looking to be sort of something they aren't and that doesn't always work out well.
00:03:11
Speaker
Farrah, are you trying to be the best version of you right now, specifically? I'd really like to overexert, George. I guess it depends on how motivated I'm feeling, but definitely a lot of what you said resonates. I feel like part of our job is, yes, we are looking at symptoms and pathology, but my favorite part of my job is helping people design the life that they want.
Designing Life and Financial Focus
00:03:39
Speaker
And it's really, really fun and really gratifying to see that emerge over time. And I'm sure you see it on an even more practical level with your clients. It's just super specific. My part of that is the money piece.
00:03:58
Speaker
clumsily trying to do what you said, help them design the life that they want. And my piece of that is, is the financial stuff. And so I think that I do experience drift when I get into talking about other aspects, but there's just not that many people out there that are only interested in talking about
Avoidance of Financial Discussions
00:04:17
Speaker
money. And when we start talking about money, maybe their eyes glass over the glaze over whatever it might be. And they're like,
00:04:24
Speaker
I can't right now. Why do you think that is? I've noticed that too. It's kind of like math. Like some people just, they, they could do math, but there's some emotional response or something. What cycle, what do you think? I think that that's a perfect way to think about it because I have that hang up with math. If you were to say, how are you with math? I'd be like, Oh, I don't math. I, I have a bad relationship with numbers and I've never really turned that mirror on myself and recognized I have,
00:04:53
Speaker
really negative and limiting beliefs about math. And I think a lot of people have negative and limiting beliefs about money. So when they say, you know, Hey, let's talk about your finance, like, ah, I'm just not good with money. And so we built those walls up where I have that construct and it's kind of becomes a, like a self-imposed glass ceiling. We're going to keep bumping up against maybe I don't know. I don't probably don't even know it's there, but I'm putting it there.
00:05:18
Speaker
That's really interesting. I think we're going to come to that later more in the psychology and sometimes the term is used like a self-schema, like that version of myself that I imagine isn't, I'm not good at that or this or there can be lots of different hangups around money in particular.
George's Journey into Finance
00:05:34
Speaker
How did you get into the work that you do? Let's roll it back a little bit. What's your story?
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I happened into it. So growing up, I had a lot of interests, like a lot of people. I had a background in athletics, so I still identify as a competitor athletically, and maybe even more so as I get older. But I loved writing. I was in plays in high school.
00:06:04
Speaker
This gets people, but I'm 45, I graduated high school in 97, and I received a diversity scholarship in college. And today, that's the most hilarious thing in the world. But back then, it was more a diversity from the perspective of I was in student government, theater, athletics, all these things that one would consider to be diverse, and I still do.
00:06:31
Speaker
I then graduated college with a political science degree thinking I was going to go to law school, not because I wanted to be a lawyer. I just had no idea what I wanted to do. I was not exposed to a lot of different careers growing up, even though I was probably around them. I wasn't paying close attention. So I decided I didn't want to go to law school and was like, okay, I guess I just take a year off and sort of
00:06:53
Speaker
try to figure it out. And I met somebody who said, come talk to me about personal finance or financial services. I said, sure, why not? I've got nothing else going on. And so that's how I got into it. And I spent 13 years in a very corporate environment that is not interested in my creativity at all or was not very compliance driven. And when I left that kind of environment, it allowed me to get my creativity flowing again.
00:07:21
Speaker
And that allowed me to start thinking and writing and creating podcasts and stuff like that. So my brain was essentially hibernating for about 13 years. And then it turned back on about 10 years ago. So thank goodness. Thank goodness. How did you guys initially link up? I'm just curious because I know I think it was, I think it was my PR agent. Oh, really?
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to try to say something pithy or funny, but I couldn't think of anything like Grant and I ran into each other in some strange place. But yeah, I think it was just, uh, sort of the internet, Farrah connected, brought Grant and I together. Right. If you're, if you're into mysticism, you can read into that. But, um, I was on your podcast, uh, twice, right? Once talking about disaster work and the other time, probably the first time talking about making your crazy work for you. One of the books that I've co-authored. That's right. Yeah.
00:08:21
Speaker
So I think the reason that this came up, Grant and I both have a background in sort of treating trauma. And one of the hallmarks of people who are dealing with trauma, processing it, working through it, is that self-care is always a real challenge. So that means taking care of their bodies medically and also their finances.
00:08:51
Speaker
and that we see a lot of these sort of forces at play. So I guess one of the things is to talk sort of on a more general level about why people seek you out and seek out your services. And then also, is there anything that has come up right from the other side of this that has in terms of like the psychology of it that you sort of want to discuss?
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. There's a lot going on there.
Engaging the Uninterested in Finance
00:09:24
Speaker
I think a lot of really interesting stuff going on there. First and foremost, it's not common for people to just seek me out. I think that there's going to be a distribution of folks on one end of the spectrum that are super proactive. I don't know if it's 10% of the population, but probably. And they've got their act together financially. And then 10%, maybe more, will unfortunately just never get their act together.
00:09:49
Speaker
which leaves us with 80 to 90%, you can check my math on that one, of folks that are influenceable. And so they're available, I think, to move in the right direction towards financial security and financial success.
00:10:06
Speaker
But it's not something that we proactively will go out and do. I read this piece a long time ago. It said if you're in the habit of talking to people that are interested in talking to you about money stuff, probably going to go out of business. You need to make a habit of talking to people who aren't necessarily interested in talking about it just because
00:10:24
Speaker
I think that we run into this problem of well enough where i've got so many different competing masters that i'm trying to serve and. It just causes me to leave well enough alone like things are going just fine i've got so much work to do i've got so many family commitments i'm hungry i'm tired i'm horny i'm bored so i pulled it so many different directions and thinking about putting together my budget.
00:10:53
Speaker
and talking to a financial professional, not super appealing. I'd rather do lots of other things instead of that. Let me make a dentist appointment first. I've been putting off that tooth cleaning and those extractions.
00:11:05
Speaker
go to the NVD, get something updated. I'm going to get my driver says I would much rather do that. That's one of the beautiful things, by the way, of having more onerous tasks that we avoid. It motivates us to do the other stuff. In some ways I can relate to that in my field as well, because people often
00:11:24
Speaker
show up when there's a problem. And then you have to, how do you receive people in that state? Cause I'm sure you have to be very adept and welcoming and nonjudgmental. What's that like for you?
00:11:35
Speaker
It's such a huge opportunity when I do have an audience. If I'm brought in to speak to, I do a lot of, I speak to big companies, to all their employees. And that's usually when, okay, I didn't necessarily proactively call George, but he's here now. And so I'm gonna have the opportunity to ask a question that it's been thinking about forever. So
Empathy and Relatability in Finance
00:11:59
Speaker
it gives you the opportunity to
00:12:01
Speaker
really meet people where they are just because I am where they are. And I always start by telling people about how I've made lots of great financial decisions over the course of my life and I've made all the bad financial decisions. So wherever you're at, I'm pretty sure that I've been there. More importantly, I've overcome those challenges and I'm pretty sure I can help you get a little bit closer to whatever it is that you want.
00:12:26
Speaker
So what are some of the most common, either you want to say mistakes or paths people have traveled down from which they've learned to travel down paths that work better? What do you see most often? Yeah, I think that one of the biggest killers is debt.
00:12:45
Speaker
So we can say that overconsumption is what then leads to the credit card debt, which becomes just a crushing weight that follows us around everywhere we go. It prevents us from maybe taking risks from a career perspective or pursuing different career options because now I've got debt to service, I've got car bills, I've got a mortgage, I've got this credit card debt, so I have to be working
00:13:13
Speaker
to earn money to service this debt. And that's just sort of something that locks you in. You kind of become a dentured to your own debt. 100%. Yeah. Chief Seattle, he was the head of the Native American First Nations tribe in the area of Seattle. The United States government tried to buy his land way back in the day. And he wrote back this beautiful letter
00:13:38
Speaker
And at the end of it was the end of living, the beginning of survival. And I read that, I was like, oh, it hit me like a ton of bricks. And the whole thing was when we're kids, all we're doing is living.
00:13:48
Speaker
We're just living every day. Then we go to college, we take on student loan debt, we get out, we start buying stuff, and that is the trigger from living to now just surviving. And it sucks. It's going from like back, it's the inverse of those old movies where it was in black and white, and then all of a sudden it's in color. Well, it's all in color when you're a kid, and then now it's the dredgeries of adulting, and that's super sucky.
00:14:13
Speaker
I definitely hear that a lot, especially from kind of younger patients,
Intentional vs. Burdensome Debt
00:14:18
Speaker
younger people, sort of the gen, the gen Z, the gen A, they kind of look at what is available and they kind of go, that doesn't seem very appealing. Why, why did you do that? And the sense of kind of like, well, what's the promise though, if I work hard,
00:14:34
Speaker
Am I going to get a good job and be able to retire? It's like, I don't know if that's going to work out anymore, but, but maybe we're getting over our skis. So, so that's one thing you see is the debt is a big problem for people, which has got to be different from say taking debt in order to grow like a business development loan and having a plan and taking a kind of a leveraged risk.
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that you put your finger on the difference there. I think it's just intention where I am intentionally taking on debt to grow something, to grow some kind of an endeavor to get to where it is that I want to go. And it's all on purpose. I have a plan to get something that I want versus I'm just getting carried along by the currents of life. And this is what I do now. I go to college and I study this because that's what my dad did or my mom did.
00:15:25
Speaker
I'm gonna live in this neighborhood because of those same reasons and these are the way that we do things. We live under so many different assumptions, so many different systems, and there's so many different expectations that are put on us by other people. Is any of that what I actually want? And all too often the answer is no. Okay, so when you see someone who's in that exact situation,
00:15:48
Speaker
What is your role? How do you advise them? And is that sort of the equivalent of like, Grant, you were saying people come in to see us when they're in crisis, right? Not usually when things are going well, but they just wanna like level up, right? And so I guess if people are coming to you because they feel overwhelmed and now these finances have become a problem, how do you help them? It's a super tricky thing.
00:16:17
Speaker
It's a super tricky thing. People can feel a sense of hopelessness. People can feel a sense of a lot of shame, stress and anxiety, and there's lots of negative feelings about it. And it's too late, and this, that, and the other thing. And it might be. I'm not saying that it's not.
00:16:35
Speaker
to be able to retire today if that's something you're interested in doing requires a large sum of money. So obviously, the earlier we get started pursuing our financial goals and objectives, the better off it is. But as the saying goes, best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago next, best time is today. So the reason I talk so much about
00:16:54
Speaker
purpose, goals, beliefs, values, habits, is because I think it's really important to think and talk about designing the life you want to create a compelling vision for your future that can pull you towards it versus me all of a sudden simply cutting lifestyle, stopping due to the fun things in life that I actually enjoy to get to what. So I'm cutting lifestyle for the sake of cutting,
00:17:21
Speaker
I don't think that that's sustainable. Just like losing weight for the sake of losing weight is not going to be sustainable. So I work hard to try to help people figure out what they want their life to look like and make it worth, make sure the juice is worth the squeeze. Money really is in a lot of ways is the lifeblood
00:17:42
Speaker
Though there is a lot of psychology as to how people deploy their financial resources, I'm also reminded, now I understand why you called your podcast that, I also was thinking of something a management consultant was fond of saying, which is no one ever saved their way to wealth, which doesn't mean not to be responsible. But if your dream is to get rich, maybe that doesn't work. On the other hand, I also hear about very conservative people who have retired
00:18:10
Speaker
with very nice nest eggs who really just sock away a little bit of money starting early and it compounds and it doesn't have to be a huge sacrifice. Well, that begs the question, what's rich? The story I heard was someone who worked in a kind of a very respectable blue collar job and never traveled and well, you know, didn't want to write and just socked it away and he passed away and
00:18:36
Speaker
Everyone was very surprised in his hometown that he had $8 million saved up. And he gave it all to the local educational system, I think, if I remember correctly. But that's not necessarily how everyone thinks. There's that great book written years ago at this point called The Millionaire Next Door. And they tracked first generation millionaires and what the drivers that helped them to become that
00:19:01
Speaker
It's easy to inherit money, less easy to make that happen twice because generational wealth uncommonly lasts more than three generations. So what does it take to go from scratch to a working class person to become a millionaire? There's a handful of things. There's number one, you do need to live mildly frugally and adopt the
Power of Small Consistent Savings
00:19:25
Speaker
The belief that I would rather be wealthy than appear to be wealthy, it's a huge important distinction. So I think that there's a lot of us that just want to appear to be wealthy and by pursuit of that appearance, be wealthy.
00:19:37
Speaker
essentially make it so we will never actually be wealthy because there's only so much money to go around. So when I make a decision to lease a fancy car or live in too much home, that just means I'm not putting that money to work for actually accumulating and building wealth. So that's a big part of it. And I think one of the big takeaways because people are always interested, how much do I need to be saving?
00:19:59
Speaker
As they said, if you're able to save 15% of your pre-tax income, then you will become financially successful long-term. And that is just a little bit at a time. So I'm all here for helping people to get rich and take big swings at it, and we could certainly talk about that, but there is a path. And I think that that's really important. There is a path to accumulating over a million dollars in one's lifetime, just a little bit at a time.
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it's what I'm curious about is how much sort of pushback you get from people and why, right? Grant, you mentioned someone who was able to live very well within his means. And I think if people could do that, yeah, we would all be better off. But
00:20:52
Speaker
there is a sort of sacrifice there. And so what are the things that come up when you are trying to, let's say, convince people not to take that trip, not to lease that car? Is it a feeling of, well, I deserve this and the money is coming in and this is how I want to spend it? For sure. Yeah.
00:21:12
Speaker
I think that I know that FOMO and YOLO and those very old terms probably at this point are very real. I'm interested in having fun and doing nice things and having nice things and I recognize
00:21:30
Speaker
the finite nature of time and that things are going to be here before maybe I think that they're going to and a lot of that just comes with a little bit of age and experience. That's why it's hard to get 20-year-olds and 25-year-olds to be socking away a lot of money unless you are kind of a saver. And I don't begrudge people that.
00:21:55
Speaker
It just is trying to encourage people to take that step back and to say, okay, if I make these choices, where am I going to end up? And is that where I want to be? What's the worst case scenario? What's the best? What's the most likely? Just to have those kinds of conversations. You know the way that adults learn and make decisions is you're going to come to it on your own.
00:22:19
Speaker
I can give you the greatest financial advice in the world, but if you think it sucks, then it's gonna suck. So I need to help you figure out, okay, yeah, I sorta understand what you're saying, George. I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna leave that, and kind of put a plan together. Well, and do you see the saver in people emerge over time? Do you think that as they start working with you,
00:22:47
Speaker
they become a little bit more encouraged and sort of lock in? Yes, yes. And while it is true that some people are savers and some people are spenders, those are not necessarily good things. And I, you know, just really quickly, when you're actually in retirement, when you've accumulated enough money to be able to step away from full time work,
00:23:14
Speaker
Being a saver is not a good thing because you are going to end up not spending any of your money. You're going to live hand to mouth even though you can afford to have a better lifestyle. So there it's a double-edged sword, both. You don't want to be a spendthrift in retirement and blow through all your money too soon, but you also don't want to live for 30 years in retirement and be terrified to spend any money because you're worried about going broke.
00:23:41
Speaker
So there's problems to both of those things. Um, and I sort of forgot the first part of your question. Well, I think what I was asking is, is really sort of the evolution of people. And I guess I'm kind of curious, you know, with your own kids, is it something that you could see, I know they're young, but like that you could see early on, is it like a sort of personality trait? Is it,
00:24:09
Speaker
something that gets passed down, right? Is there a sort of story about it? A lot of people who grew up with parents who lived through the Great Depression will say, oh yeah, they were always very, very conservative because of that. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's for sure right. And I can look to my grandparents who literally did go through the Great Depression or World War II and were very financially successful and very financially conservative.
00:24:36
Speaker
And then my mom, who has never had two pennies to rub together. Thankfully she was a school teacher so she has a pension that she could rely on. And now me, I'm sort of the product of both of those things, where I did spend my 20s
00:24:52
Speaker
chasing after it as hard as i possibly could and spending all the money that i earned and then some and now in my thirties and now forties just recognizing okay. I can balance all of these things i can balance all of these interests and living within your means is a crappy term and so is making sacrifices.
00:25:14
Speaker
They're both bad terms. I'm not interested in making sacrifices. I am interested in investing in my future. So I've changed that a little bit in investment is required.
00:25:25
Speaker
to live the life that you want. And whether we're hardwired to be savers or spenders, certainly our lived experience and those around us and the adults that were around us when we were kids and what we learned from them, from watching them, it all goes to inform the way that we interact with money and everything else, success and relationships, which y'all know.
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think Farah, you're bringing up the psychological term is intergenerational transmission of trauma. And, you know, there's plenty of research that can get passed on through the generations. And I think in a simplistic way, what you tend to see is the next generation
00:26:02
Speaker
either reacts against the prior generation's, say, frugality. My father, who is no longer living, also grew up during the Great Depression. And so those lessons get learned really strong. And the thing is, the lessons of the older generations don't necessarily apply to the present.
00:26:24
Speaker
So if you have a kind of a starvation mentality, but that's not the environment that you're living in, then that goes back to what you were saying. There's going to be like surviving rather than thriving or flourishing. And it also makes me think going back to the saver versus spender, I think that's probably like a false dichotomy because everyone has to be a saver and a spender.
00:26:47
Speaker
It's really about, like you said, the balance. So I'm curious when you work with clients, how much does their own psychology come up or their own history? How much of that is an explicit part of the conversation and how much of it is kind of like, okay, that's relevant, but let's focus on like the future and the decisions you're making. Like how much drift is there into the psychological? Quite a bit, quite a bit. I think it's really, really important that people,
00:27:15
Speaker
grapple with, explore, try to identify how they were raised with money in hopes of uncovering negative or limiting beliefs about money. I think that most of us can trace back to our early childhood, our early money memories, and that can help us make sense of how we're interacting with our finances today.
00:27:42
Speaker
I like the use of the word limiting and it's really good to know your limits in order to go beyond them. Do you have any stories you can share of any situations that really stood out where that came up and how that sort of released people in some way?
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, I can certainly share a personal story that would be. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know how confidentiality works in your line of work, but we are very careful to sort of disguise or lump together fictionalized, you know, clinical stuff. Yeah. So I grew up in northern Minnesota and a town called Duluth, about 80,000 people. My mom, who I mentioned, was a school teacher and my folks divorced when I was five. And
00:28:28
Speaker
I had a great childhood, grew up wonderfully. My mom did an awesome job. She raised my brother and I, but they didn't pay school teachers very much back then any more than they pay them today. So money was always tight. It was always scarce. And once a month, my mom would pay bills. And that simply meant that she would literally spread out all of our bills on our wooden dining room table.
00:28:50
Speaker
And it was on a Sunday and my brother and I just knew we got to give mom space. We got to stay away because there's just not enough money. And so she's trying to figure out how to make it all work. It was stressful. And so associating
00:29:06
Speaker
Money, financial matters with stress and avoid stay away month after month, year after year. No wonder why I never tracked my cash flow. No wonder why I never budgeted. No wonder I waited till the last minute to pay my bills and file my taxes. No wonder.
00:29:27
Speaker
Now, I did invest money and I did save money, but I just wasn't paying close attention. And when I learned about limiting beliefs, that's when I started to trace it back and I discovered that, like, okay,
00:29:45
Speaker
And even today, my wife maintains our family budget, even though I'm the financial person. So she does our budget, and I still don't like budgeting. I recognize budgeting for what it is, which is a tool and a plan for our money, and I know it to be an empowering thing.
00:30:03
Speaker
that tells us if we can afford to go out for dinner, buy Bitcoin, go on vacation, tells us if we're tracking to reach our goals or if we're behind. So that's all good. But when she says we need to go through the budget, I still feel like I'm in trouble or I did something stupid or I'm not excited about it. So while I'm working hard to overcome my limiting beliefs, I know how hard they are.
00:30:34
Speaker
You know, it is wired in there, man. Can I ask a shrinky question? Please. So do you ever remember trying to approach your mom and then how she would react? Or do you just remember learning to avoid it? You know, do you ever remember any index cases where it got conflated with, you know, tied in with the connection with mom, the attachment, like we say?
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah, I could certainly remember just, you know, asking for something. If it was, can we go outside or whatever and getting a really, really, really short, terse, tense response. So, but she was not afraid to yell at us. So, which is not a, that just is what it is. I think a lot of teachers yell at kids also. Yeah, which I've got three kids, so it makes all sense in the world to me.
00:31:23
Speaker
Thanks for sharing that.
Personal Struggles with Budgeting
00:31:26
Speaker
So is it a goal of yours to like, you know, pay bills and budget? For sure. For sure. I just, I know how important it is. It is, it is a, it's, it is a foundational essential piece of financial security and financial success are doing those things. And there's a lot of things I do that I don't like to do.
00:31:53
Speaker
And maybe that maybe that requires more. I need to sit across from y'all more often and have deeper conversations about that. But it's true of my fitness, you know, just cause I eat what I eat, not cause I just love it all the time. It's just certain things I eat cause I have to and I take my vitamins and I don't eat certain things and I move my body. Not because I just in love with it. It's cause these are things that have to be done. But I think that,
00:32:21
Speaker
what is always shocking to me in my sort of practice, I will see people do these unimaginably difficult things, whether it's cleaning up their diet or just like some feat that they accomplish that's so inspirational, but then seemingly small things, right? And we always have to wonder why are just impossible, you know? And so I do think that's information.
00:32:52
Speaker
That usually dates back to something that happened or didn't happen in childhood or some real drive to avoid. Let's say, you know, why can we do certain things, but not others, you know, your wife.
00:33:07
Speaker
is happy to budget, and I think that that's a great thing. I think finding a partner who's maybe not necessarily exactly like someone, but who can compliment maybe one good solution because I'm sure that you don't dread it as much now as you did at the beginning of your marriage. I mean, maybe you do, but I think that's kind of the point is you get to realize that this thing that you were so scared of is a little bit less scary, you know?
00:33:37
Speaker
Over time. Yeah. I mean, there's other philosophies for things like this for listeners. So there can be huge amounts of anxiety. There can be past traumas, you know, all that stuff tied in with lots of different things. And yeah, we totally see it with money a lot because money is so important to survival. It's so much a part of what parents are supposed to quote unquote supposed to be able to do. Parents are supposed to be able to provide
00:34:02
Speaker
basic resources and then and then some maybe in an ideal world and so i do think it gets kind of wired in to our basic core attachment system and then george as you said earlier it becomes part of a person's own sense of self it's their own identity and it's almost like there's this alter ego like there's this other version of me
00:34:23
Speaker
who is different from the way I see myself, who is the guy who deals with money. And maybe we feel critical of that side of ourselves. I hear a lot of what you're saying is not being positive in a kind of a two dimensional way, but really altering the person's relationship with themself around money. And I would bet, and I'm curious what you've seen is when people
00:34:48
Speaker
get their relationship with their money self together, do you start to see positive changes or desirable changes, or do they start to be freed up in other areas of life above and beyond what money allows people to do? I definitely see it spill over, positively bleed over into other aspects.
00:35:11
Speaker
When you make the decision that you are going to get out of debt, for example, what makes Dave Ramsey such a wonderful, wonderful human being and a successful and useful financial person is that he helped people get out of debt.
00:35:27
Speaker
And he gets a lot of criticism because he's not super fancy about it, but that's not relevant to me. He's effective. But when you go on a two or three year journey of getting out of credit card debt and saving up an emergency fund, a lot of really, really wonderful, virtuous things are happening is you are proving to yourself that you could do it. So you're developing.
00:35:48
Speaker
self-confidence, you're developing discipline. Probably most importantly, you're developing habits and routines. You are showing yourself that you are able to do hard things. You're able to accomplish incredible things. And so that's going to help you to be more effective with your diet, your exercise routine, your family relationships, and everything else.
00:36:11
Speaker
Farrah, I know we're coming toward the end of our conversation today. Hopefully there will be more. I have one or two more questions we could ask, but any thoughts about what we just said? No, I just really like this idea. I think it parallels a lot with what we do.
00:36:29
Speaker
And that sort of, you know, one awareness of these limiting beliefs and how do we overcome them? And then, you know, what's on the other side, right? There's a more empowered sort of self that we grow into, which I think is the goal. And it's what we all probably want for the people that we work with.
00:36:52
Speaker
Right. There's this kind of discipline trap too, where people don't understand it takes a little while and then they set themselves up. I'm going to do it overnight, but it's really sort of little habits. Do you ever, do you ever suggest to people or bring up whether it would be helpful for them to talk with a mental health professional? I would imagine you can't be like, you need a therapist, but how does it come up for you? Yeah. Sometimes I'll be talking to somebody, be like you.
00:37:15
Speaker
need a therapist. Not soon, like now. For sure, for sure. I make referrals to all kinds of different people. I think one of the big pieces is that you need to accept responsibility for your financial future, but that doesn't mean you need to do all of it. So some of it you can outsource.
00:37:37
Speaker
You need to accept responsibility for your relationships. But when you're lacking in expertise in certain areas, you need to bring in the people that can help you to do it. So be that an accountant or a psychologist or a therapist, whatever it might be. Let's be honest with ourselves. Life is too short. Life's long enough to do most everything we want, but we don't have enough time to waste, and I don't want people to BS themselves.
00:38:03
Speaker
and try to white knuckle through stuff that they're just never going to do or they're not capable of doing. So certainly therapy is an answer a lot of the time.
Financial Success for Everyone
00:38:12
Speaker
That's right. You can get more money, but you can't get more time, though you can treat yourself right and live healthier and longer. Anything else you want listeners to know in particular? I really, I believe that financial success is available to everyone.
00:38:26
Speaker
regardless of where you've come from, the things you've done, it's available. I think that everybody is worthy of financial peace of mind. I even think that they deserve it, but none of us are entitled to it. So we need to be moving in the direction and making those investments. And if you do that, you'll probably end up getting a little closer to where you want to be, but it's not going to happen on its own.
00:38:54
Speaker
I think that's great advice. Thank you so much for joining us today. And if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you? Probably the best place is the website. It's moneyalignmentacademy.com. You can check out the Lifeblood podcast. Grant's been a guest twice. I also have another podcast called the Aligned Money Show. So yeah, those are probably the best places to find me.
00:39:22
Speaker
Awesome. Thanks so much. Thank you, George. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Remember, the Doorknob Comments podcast is not medical advice. If you may be in need of professional assistance, please seek consultation without delay.