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Episode 4: Get dat monay
74 Plays2 years ago
Does money freak you out? Have you not looked at your bank statements in a while? Are you a secret millionaire? Wherever you are or however you identify, we highly recommend you tune into this week's episode where we deep dive into money, money habits, money shame and basically all things money. It's relatable, laughable, and a good reminder that no matter your situation, we all likely feel the same.
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Follow us over on Instagram @Rule.Followers and as always, if you have a topic you'd like to hear more about give us a holler! We are happy to spill the tea and share our trauma so you don't have to.
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Transcript
Listener's Experience with 'A Court of Mist and Fury'
00:00:00
Speaker
I am reading the second book of the Akatar series, which is a court of mist and fury. And let me just say, husbands, boyfriends, fucking take notes. I have never been so horny in my life. Reading a book and I'm like looking over and my husband, my husband is asleep next to you and I'm like, opportune moment, missed. Wake up, please.
00:00:28
Speaker
Oh my God. I have to send you this guy. I don't know why I haven't sent this to you. There's this guy who does like cosplay for a guitar and he, he makes a great Lucien. I am in that. Algorithm already. Okay. Great. Have you seen it where he does like Tamlin's voice and then resounds voice? No. Oh, ready. Get just get ready to have your panties drop. I'm sorry, but I've like never been so shooketh from a stranger on the internet.
00:00:58
Speaker
Okay. Well, um, hi guys. Uh, welcome back to the podcast.
Introduction to the Podcast on Beliefs
00:01:03
Speaker
Um, my name is Sarah. I'm Jamie. And this is the podcast where we like to examine commonly held beliefs, life's role, self-imposed and society imposed.
00:01:13
Speaker
and we deconstruct them, re-examine them, and hopefully live a little bit more in the gray.
Exploring Personal Value and Money
00:01:19
Speaker
So today's rule is kind of a little ambiguous, but I really want to talk about why we equate our value as people with money. And I basically just want to talk about money relationships, but also I wanted to talk about the dirty, sexy book first. So thank you for obviously empowering me. Yes. People.
00:01:38
Speaker
Anyway, I really wanted to talk about money because I am in the middle of working on a finance PDF that I'm going to be offering to my audience. And it's just a couple of like quick little finance tips that I've been using for the last five to eight years, something like that. And it's just completely revolutionized my financial situation with my husband. I feel like so many people I talked to were like, I never learned about money. I like had to learn all this on my own and my parents didn't teach me anything. And then I only have one golden child
00:02:08
Speaker
best friend who literally her parents did teach her everything and she will be a millionaire very shortly. But other than that, I feel like most people didn't grow up learning about money. All of us millennials are having to fucking catch up and like now we're facing just like the craziest future when it comes to money and the economy and like we're now in an election year and it's just all wild.
00:02:32
Speaker
I think I would love to begin and just, I want to hear like, what is your relationship to money? Starting like your childhood was money talked about. How did you feel about it? And then kind of, if you're willing to like talk about how that transitioned in your adult life, and then now that you're married and you have a business and you have a kid, what does
Jamie's Financial Background and Strategies
00:02:50
Speaker
that all look like?
00:02:50
Speaker
Growing up, my dad owned his own business as a farrier slash horse shoeer. That's a more common term that you might know, blacksmith. Yep, that was his job, but he was obviously self-employed. And then my mom was a social worker for abused and neglected children.
00:03:11
Speaker
So neither one of my parents, huge money earners, especially my mom, obviously, it's one of the lowest paid jobs in the government and they had this attitude of the less we can spend on everything, the better.
00:03:28
Speaker
so very not necessarily scarcity mindset there was always this idea that like oh we'll just make everything work it'll just my mom is a very positive human being like just in general about everything she's super positive so there was never like fear around money but she didn't really create a budget we never went out to eat we never got to indulge in fun purchases we never were able to buy new clothes we always went to good
00:03:51
Speaker
well. We lived very minimally. They would save up and we would go on trips, so I feel like I probably traveled more than most people, but hard to quantify that as a kid. You're just kind of like, oh, I don't get to go out to eat. I don't get new clothes. You're not getting the things that your peers are getting. Fast forward, obviously, as an adult, I think I got a debit card when I was in high school.
00:04:15
Speaker
I didn't get a credit card till I was in college and that really, you know, ended up being its own experience. I basically, well, I was in film school, so I ended up charging basically my whole, my whole senior project to it, which was a short film. It was like five grand. And then we don't have to talk about this right now, but at some point during the podcast, I personally have a really hard time with self-control when it comes to money in terms of when I get like depressed.
00:04:40
Speaker
And I basically just, any self-control I have around money just goes out the window essentially. That has also kind of affected the way I deal with money, unfortunately.
00:04:52
Speaker
Well, I think it's really good that you know that about yourself. You identify when it happens and, you know, kind of why it happens. I'll give a quick summation of how I got to my relationship with money.
Sarah's Financial Upbringing
00:05:02
Speaker
So in my parents' household, our relationship around money was that we never wanted for anything. We were upper middle class. My dad made great money through Metrographic, through Boeing.
00:05:15
Speaker
And I had everything I could need. I was in dance lessons. I did dance team. I went to all of the camps. I went to, I had all new costumes every single year. If I needed something, my parents would provide it. And that was incredible. My parents paid for my college. That was incredible. But the catch to that was that my dad would say things like, well, how much are you going to cost me this week? How much did this cost?
00:05:39
Speaker
Money just grows on trees around here so you kind of you always feel guilty for needing something that was really really hard and my dad just always talked about money as if we didn't have it but we always did have it and he never trusted the stock market he.
00:05:54
Speaker
would always have like the news on and we talk about like, all the money is going to go away and all this stuff. So we really lived in this, this sense of fear all the time around money. And then come college, my parents, I, I would like to say I come from a lot of privilege. So please no one
00:06:11
Speaker
come at me for this. When I went to college, not only was my college paid for, but I also was given a lump sum of cash. Once again, I was not taught about a budget. I wasn't taught about how to replenish that money, about how to balance it with, you know, having a part-time job and how I could kind of make both those work. So I did the thing where I would just swipe my card and hope that it went through. Like that was the mentality I had.
00:06:36
Speaker
For my entire college career, I would honestly say, and it was really scary. And I had this very scared mindset around money all the time. And my friend, Emily, her parents, they would reimburse her for everything that she spent, but she had to log everything so that she got really used to seeing how much was she spending on each thing. And she kind of went down a different rabbit hole where she was literally tracking her money down to the penny, like the penny. And I was just like, holy shit.
00:07:05
Speaker
It creates a different type of scarcity mindset doing that. Yeah, we would be splitting our bills. And if the final cent number was an odd or an even number, like every other month we would switch who paid the odd and who paid the even, or like we would switch on bills. It was wild. And that is not to any fault of M, but like that's just how meticulous she was being.
Learning Financial Management Post-Marriage
00:07:28
Speaker
And I was in the total other camp. And then I would say that M was a finance major. And when I got married to Heath,
00:07:35
Speaker
we combined finances. I'd gotten fired from Amazon right after our honeymoon. It was a nightmare. That was when I was starting my job. And we literally didn't have like $1,000 in our savings account. We were living paycheck to paycheck because I had lost my job. And it was really scary. We had paid for most of our wedding ourselves. So thankfully, we didn't go into any debt for our wedding. But we had
00:07:57
Speaker
use the majority of our cash on it. Emily being the kind and gracious and loving person she is, she sat me down and was just like, do you want me to teach you? Like, do you want me to show you how to do this? And M has been like my best friend and my little sister since we were both in high school. Um, I was a junior and she was a freshman when we met. And so it was a little, when we were younger, it was like a little like, Oh, I can't believe I'm having my little sister teach me about money.
00:08:23
Speaker
But it ended up being like the best thing ever. And so Em was so used to dealing with money in such an open way. Like she was the first person that talked real numbers to me. She was like, this is what I have in my savings. This is what I make every month. And this is how I literally, there was no information off limits. And I was so embarrassed that when we opened our first TD Ameritrade stock investments account, we scraped together $1,500 to open that account.
00:08:47
Speaker
And when Em was talking to me about it, she was like, yeah, so if you only have like $10,000 to start with, that's totally fine, like whatever it looks like. And I was like, okay, well, I'm just gonna start with this like $1,500 and then I'll just see what I wanna put in later.
00:09:03
Speaker
so i couldn't even admit to her that i didn't have ten thousand dollars to do that her and i have since talked about it and she bless her soul she's always like i'm so sorry if i ever made you feel anyway and she never did it was it was all coming from me i was on my side of the fence and since then she taught me what i now teach other people called like the bucket method and
00:09:22
Speaker
The bucket method is just a way of creating multiple savings account within your checking account so that you have like an account that's labeled student loans. You have something that's for us. We have a nanny fund. Then we have my checking account that automatically pays off my credit cards. And then we have an investments account. There's a book called profit first by Mike Michalowicz. And that's basically so good. And that's basically his method is like, take your savings off, like take your profit off first.
00:09:49
Speaker
and then live your life within what is left over. So that's where your expenses should come from. And I would say that having a friend that was so open about finance, and she still is right now, like when we were doing a lot of investing together in 2021, like we were literally texting each other like, hey, I just bought five shares of this for fun, or my, and she would be like, my dad bought this and he made this much off of it. And it was just,
00:10:14
Speaker
it's so nice to have someone who can be open about it and I feel like it's really changed my ability to talk to people about money but I will say I it's so fascinating because I feel like I have this so much under control and there's still all this shame and fear around when I look at my accounts receivable and how much money am I going to make this year and is it going to cover all this stuff and I remember talking to you and Tay about it and being like
00:10:38
Speaker
I'm freaking the fuck out because you know 2024 for the wedding industry is really it's it's slow it's it's different than other years so yeah I mean this is a good topic to talk about because it is I spend every day thinking about money I spend every night falling asleep thinking about money
00:10:56
Speaker
and being afraid and trying to work out numbers in my head and trying to figure out corners to cut or, you know,
Insights from 'The Psychology of Money'
00:11:03
Speaker
whatever. So I had read half this book and I thought I'd read all of it. So I thought I was rereading it, but truly I had never finished it. And it's a book called, it happens a lot. And so this is, it's this book called,
00:11:15
Speaker
the psychology of money and I forget who writes it but it's just this quick thin book it's like 20 chapters and each chapter is just like a couple pages and it's just about different mindsets around money and one of the things the most recent chapter I read was talking about how
00:11:34
Speaker
You don't need ogles of money to become rich. You have to just know what your means are and how to live within them. In that chapter, they talk about how do you create this abundance mindset towards savings, even when it starts so small.
00:11:52
Speaker
So it's really interesting when I found out I was pregnant, I basically said we got to get debt free. I'm not just I'm just not going to feel secure until we do. So literally in the nine months that I 10 months I was pregnant, I got us out of
00:12:10
Speaker
I wanna say like 20 grand of debt. I just put so much effort into making that happen. And we did, we got completely debt free. And then in, I think you know this, but like I was always working a full-time job while I was also owning my business. And I did like a full-time business. So I still did 15 to 20 weddings a year, but I had that money on top of a full-time salary at a job. So when my,
00:12:40
Speaker
and Brandon's FMLA ran up and our maternity leave ran up. We didn't get into daycare in Bellingham. We were on like five, six different wait lists since he was born, before he was born. We didn't get into any daycare. We couldn't afford a nanny. And so I had to quit my job, my day job and just do the business. And basically I had not prepared us for the shift of basically losing 50 grand a year.
00:13:08
Speaker
And I racked up so much debt in that the first year of Laz's life that I'm still paying for now just because I hadn't prepared myself for that income drop and hadn't budgeted, hadn't thought through money at all. And then of course recently with inflation, it's just been that much
00:13:29
Speaker
worse thankfully i do feel like in the last couple months we've definitely sort of like hit the reality wall i think when people get real with their budgets and they're trying to make lifestyle changes it's always you need to do it slowly right now if you're eating out three nights a week cut it back to two
00:13:46
Speaker
And then in two months, cut it back to one and make it like a special occasion that you go out. I think that those things can always really help. And I looked up a couple statistics before we started our conversation. One in four Americans don't even have a savings account. And then 60% of people who do say they have $500 or less in their checking account.
00:14:08
Speaker
We went to Disney this month to celebrate Heath's parents, their 40th wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary. And we paid for all of the groceries that we ordered to the house and we paid for the anniversary dinner. And I overdrew our checking account because we had paid for those things that I had not budgeted in. The ability for that moment to still take me so low, my richer self still identify as my poor self.
00:14:35
Speaker
I still feel the shame around money, even though I'm in a place where I shouldn't. And I just think it's really fascinating because I am definitely a feminist and definitely love to empower other people and to feel empowered myself. But that shit runs so deep.
00:14:51
Speaker
just the shame of you overspent money and like making money out to be the bad guy and that I'm bad because I did this thing and money is neutral. It is not inherently good or inherently bad, but we give it a story and then that story is reflected onto us and who we are and how we value ourselves. It's silly because as a society, we've given money meaning, right? So it's not even
00:15:15
Speaker
It has no meaning besides what we give it in society. And even within your own home, kind of like you were saying, we're still giving it a meaning. We're still giving it a... A value. A significance, yeah. A value in our heads when we allow ourselves to be anxious about it. So our money lives rent-free in our mind.
00:15:40
Speaker
Ha ha, rude. That's so rude. Do you think, as women, we have different feelings towards money than men?
00:15:49
Speaker
Yes. Yes. But my husband lets me run all of our money because money freaks him out too. For men, I feel like it's more so they're more empowered because I mean, let's be honest, men make more money than us because of the thing between their legs, like not necessarily that they're any smarter or any more capable. It's just like, hello, patriarchy. They have this entitlement to money.
00:16:15
Speaker
And women, that has not been our history with money. You were literally given away as property as an investment of your family to join to another family to make more money. So you were literally a bargaining chip. So I think for women, because of our long history with that and like the similar patterns and relationships that still exist within our patriarchal society, women couldn't even have credit cards, like their own credit card in their own name until like the eighties.
00:16:44
Speaker
What? That's wild to me. What I was thinking is because of that switch in my grandparent's era, then we're in charge of the money. I would say in today's age, which is like within the last hundred years, okay, this is crazy. Within the last hundred years, that has radically shifted. I would say majority of my friends, the woman, if it's a heterosexual relationship,
00:17:11
Speaker
the woman is in charge of the money and the finances. A million percent. There has been such a shift in such a short period of time on who's controlling money, who is in the workforce. I don't know what to do with any of this information, but I do feel like that is one of the reasons why we're not necessarily set up for success in our money in today's age. Well, yeah, because I mean, we're taught that men are inherently worth more than it's this conflicting message of like, but you're going to be in charge of it for your family.
00:17:42
Speaker
But also, if you're a stay-at-home mom and you run the finances, you're actually still not worth that much because your husband's still bringing home the paycheck. And what you do doesn't matter. So I think it's a lot of different conflicting messages. And I think in summation, I think the biggest thing is to know that no matter who you are, how you identify, you are capable of taking charge of your financial situation. To me, it doesn't matter where you're starting from.
Taking Control of Finances
00:18:10
Speaker
knowledge is not necessarily power. I think action is power. So when people, lots of people will learn great things about money, but then they're too scared to act upon it or this like perfectionism of like, well, if I don't do all of it right now and I don't do it perfectly, then why should I even start to begin with?
00:18:26
Speaker
And there's someone from our Seattle area. Her name is Tori Dunlap and she runs the company, her first 100 K and she saved a hundred thousand dollars by the time she was 25 and incredible feat. And she's now like a multimillionaire featured Forbes 30 under 30. Like she's incredible. And she literally is like, just save $5 this month.
00:18:48
Speaker
like whatever it is just getting that small tiny momentum going when we were talking in the minimalist episode of start with one drawer start with one thing i think that's totally true so i think for you like seeing how you literally reached out to ash and you're like
00:19:04
Speaker
please look at this like that's a huge step to a let someone into your space and to see the numbers super vulnerable. But then to be like, I need help. Second huge thing. And then to now have a plan moving forward. I think that's incredible. Like, you're so capable of it. And I think you've shown yourself that
00:19:21
Speaker
so many times in your lifetime, especially with the whole getting 20 grand of debt paid off by the time your son was born. Like that's incredible. And you should be so proud of that. Life happened afterwards and you had to stay home and that's completely normal and okay. And I think you should just feel really empowered to be like, I know I've done that before and I can do it again. I can make our new homework. I can make this new situation work because I'm Jamie and I'm a motherfucking badass.
00:19:53
Speaker
No, I think you're right. I think I just flip flop a lot between feeling like what you're saying, like proud and knowing I can achieve things and feeling good and then just sinking into the opposite of like anxiety and depression and wallowing in that fear mindset, which we've kind of talked about, but I absolutely think we could, I could probably track.
00:20:20
Speaker
when I feel certain ways by just like the monthly cycle, honestly, which I need to get better at somebody today was like, Jamie, your skin is glowing. You look so beautiful. And I was like, yeah, bitch, you don't even know. Like I'm ovulating. Obviously my biology is like making me attractive.
00:20:44
Speaker
Oh my God, I love it. Yeah, well, I'm super bloated and gross right now because I'm about to start my period. So that week prior where you're just like, I'm a gluttonous fiend who needs to just read my sexy boyfriend books and like go to bed. But I really do think that probably I can track like when I'm more likely to spend money based on how I'm feeling in a monthly cycle.
00:21:11
Speaker
One thing I've honestly thought about doing, because I have the tendency to be like, if we need something, and let's say it's not in our budget for the month, I'll put it on a credit card and I'll be like, okay, I know this invoice is coming in next month and I'll pay it off then. So I'll do, I call it, you watched Game of Thrones, right?
00:21:28
Speaker
Jamie, oh my god. Are we even friends? OK, I've spot watched episodes, but like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for you. OK, well, we're just going to catch up really quick. So there is this character, and his nickname is Littlefinger. It's so bad. But he is to the king. He is the master of coin, right? So he manages all the money of the kingdom.
00:21:58
Speaker
And so my husband and I, we joke about me being the master of coin. And that's how I'm the master of coin is like, oh, I'll put this on a credit card. This is like I do the whole matrix thing in my head. It's like that funny meme where it's like all things float around your brain. You're like, I can make this work. But I've honestly wanted to get out of that habit. And I have thought about going to all my credit card companies and asking for new credit cards, saying that my current ones are like missing or stolen and then taking the envelopes and never opening them.
00:22:25
Speaker
So keeping the accounts open, but removing the cards. So then none of the cards that are saved in my computer will work kind of forcing myself to live within the budget and just be like, Nope, we can't afford that right now. We're going to work towards it for next month or whatever. Yeah. And I feel like
00:22:40
Speaker
I might be at the point where I just need to do that in my life because I think I get more stressed out when I have to be that master of coin. Because then sometimes a couple weeks later when that invoice comes in, I forget about this thing that I'm supposed to pay off. And I'm like, I just got all this money. What am I going to do with all this money?
00:22:58
Speaker
So in 2020, when everyone was doing their anti-racist mental work, right? It's like noticing the thoughts. It's the same thing around money. You have to notice the thought, see where it's coming from, and then stop it and redirect it. Absolutely. I think we were talking about that in another episode as well. When you get into these spirals,
00:23:16
Speaker
you have to stay grounded. So you're not swept up by the tornado and be like, this is what's actually happening. This thought is not helpful. Here's what I can do about it. Or here's what I can't control. Here's what I can't control. And I think that has really helped me, especially with like the midnight spirals that happen when you wake up and your brain's like, let me tell you the worst things you're thinking right now.
00:23:37
Speaker
Do you feel like you have any tools in your tool belt to do things like that? The first thing is just being extremely honest with yourself. Don't be afraid to look at your finances. Do not be afraid to look at where you're spending money. Like I think that is the biggest thing is you can get so afraid in this loss of control because you just don't freaking know.
00:24:00
Speaker
What anything is going to what you're doing what you're spending money all that stuff. So that's the first thing I think the other thing is to ask for help and then for me, I Actually think my mom's mindset has helped me. She always said like we're just gonna make it work Like that was her her thing. That was always what she said like we'll just make it work and to me that is such a mindset rooted in optimism freedom
00:24:24
Speaker
optimism and freedom. I think the biggest things are be honest with yourself and then figure out ways to make it work if you want something. If you want more money, figure out how to make that happen. There's so many people that I think would just be like, well, I can't, I can't get a higher paying job. I can't, I can't, I can't. There's so much scarcity. There's so much limiting beliefs about yourself. Like I cannot, you can. There are ways to make shit happen for you.
00:24:53
Speaker
Make it happen. I think one of the favorite quotes I have, and I don't know who it is by, but it says, move boldly and mighty forces will come to your aid.
Advice for Financially Stuck Individuals
00:25:04
Speaker
In some respects, I think, am I privileged for saying this? There's obviously aspects of us talking about money that are privileged.
00:25:13
Speaker
Well, I think here's the thing, though, is I have the exact same thoughts as you. And I think that that's part of our personality type. I think that's one million percent how we think because we're just like, why would you not fucking do it? Figure you're between a rock and a hard place. Great. Figure out how to get a little slippery and make a move. That's just the way that we're built. And I think that there are people who are who are just so.
00:25:33
Speaker
In that freeze of you know fight flight freeze and they're just paralyzed by what's happening and I don't know what that is like because like I've always been a person that feels like I can pivot and I have friends who are I have two friends who are in some very desperate situations when it comes to their lives right now and I'm not going to go into any details because they're very private stories, but
00:25:55
Speaker
they're both a little paralyzed in what to do next. And for me, when I have conversations with them, I'm like, it is literally on the marquee. Like there's a big fucking arrow pointing you in the direction that you should be going. And for them, they don't see it. They're just so, they're so stuck and they're, it just doesn't feel like they can make that choice.
00:26:15
Speaker
And so I think when it comes to privilege, I think it's, it's not necessarily because we are middle-class white women. I think it's also privileged because of the way our minds work. Cause not everyone has that mentality and it can be really hard to identify with that. I know that when I'm having these conversations so many times I want to like, uh, shake them and be like, no, this is what you should be doing. But we can't do that for other people. So I think if you're, if you are a person who's listening to this and you were in that frozen place, I would encourage you to take a very big deep breath.
00:26:47
Speaker
Maybe a few. And just think, what is the next? What is an option? Maybe not the best option. Maybe not what someone's telling you to do, but what is an option? Just one. You have an option to stay exactly where you are?
00:27:03
Speaker
That's probably not where you want to be. So if you changed one thing, what would that look like? Okay, cool. Great. Now, what about the next thing? Then just take it so, so slow. I just think that people get overwhelmed. They think too far down the road. They think way too big, way too fast. They try to boil the ocean. And that's not what we're doing here is we're just trying to get one baby step in front of the other. So when it comes to your finances, to kind of loop it back and summarize, what is one small thing you can do to change?
00:27:34
Speaker
whether that is turning off a subscription, whether that's looking at your subscriptions and knowing where your money is going, whether that is reducing one night a month that you don't eat out and you decide to cook in, you know, whatever that can be, that small thing will make a difference and that will be the catalyst to a new future for yourself. Absolutely.
00:27:54
Speaker
You think that's great. Alrighty guys. Well, I think that kind of comes to the conclusion of our episode today. So hopefully you were able to decipher and learn from our interesting childhood stories, how we moved into where we are now. And maybe, you know what? Join us on the conversation over on Instagram. We'll be posting some fun stuff about money, giving you some good resources. I know I have a few books that I would love to recommend to all you guys. So I'll make sure those are in the show notes and I'll post them on Instagram. Oh, our Instagram is roll dot followers.
00:28:25
Speaker
All right, you guys join us on over there and make sure if you haven't done it yet, hit subscribe, give us a five star review, tell us that you love us. And if you don't walk away, no one's keeping you here. All right, you guys, we will see you next time on the rule followers podcast. Until then, enjoy your lives. Bye. Bye. Bye. Akatar read chapter 48. Thank you later. Bye.