I recently was a guest on Sara Fisk’s podcast, The Ex-Good Girl, hosted by Sara Fisk. Sara is a female empowerment coach who helps women stop people-pleasing behavior and start living the life they want. With Sara’s permission, I am sharing our conversation in this episode of Money Files.
So, listen in as we dive deep into why women aren’t naturally confident with managing finances and recommendations you can use to shift into better money habits. Sara and I tackle topics like overspending to please others, what it means to live in restriction, and how to align spending habits with your life goals.
During this episode, I share reasons why paying off debt should not be your sole focus and what to do instead:
[04:44] Defining a “good girl”
[05:50] Debunking “I don’t know as much about money as my husband”
[08:00] Expansion vs. restriction
[12:30] Using money to buy positive emotions
[19:05] Spending to overcome restlessness
[25:15] Does what you want align with your spending?
[37:20] How to challenge yourself to think differently about your finances
Tune into this episode of Money Files to hear an important conversation about empowering women to regain control of their finances.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON GOOD GIRLS AND MONEY WITH SARA FISK, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW CHELSEA CHANGED HER MONEY MINDSET AND EMBRACED HER VALUE!
Transcript for “Good Girls And Money With Sara Fisk”
Intro: Hi and welcome to Money Files I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money File. So today I’m actually sharing a podcast with you that I recorded with my friend Sarah Fisk. Sarah Fisk is a phenomenal coach and she coaches women that want to be Ex-Good Girls. So we talk all about being a good girl and our relationship with money. So tune in and if you’re interested in learning more about Sarah, you can find information about her podcast and connect with her on Instagram in the show notes.
Sarah: I am so excited for this conversation. I have Keina Newell. She has pissed me off with her calling me out about my money online. She has inspired me, she’s educated me and we just wanted to have a conversation for both of our audiences. She is a money coach. I’m going to let her introduce herself and for her audience my name is Sarah Bibe Fisk. I am a master coach, an instructor, and I help women overcome, eliminate, get rid of people pleasing perfectionism and codependency so that they can just get on with what they’d rather be doing with their lives.
Keina: I love it. Thanks Sarah for introducing me and putting this conversation together. So my name’s Keina and I’m a financial money coach, whatever you prefer to call me. And by you I mean listeners. But I predominantly work with single women and solopreneurs and really helping them feel in control of their finances. People come to me and they’re generally in a place in their life where they feel like they’re making a lot of money but they don’t have anything to show for it. And I want to teach them that they can learn how to budget their way to wealth and they can experience what I think is that managing your finances can be fun and that budgeting can feel therapeutic, which budgeting and therapy don’t usually go in the same sentence. But that’s the world that I want my clients to be able to experience is that knowing your money and being in a relationship with your finances will create more calm and peace.
Sarah: Okay, well that’s the conversation that we need to have because I think when we talk about good girls we all get that heavy dose growing up of what a good girl is, what a good girl does, how a good girl thinks about money or spends money. And then you grow up and you kind of decide what you’re going to do with your life. And there are some women who choose for a more and when I say this I don’t think there’s anything bad or wrong with it, it’s what I chose, a more gender norm, like get married, woman stays home, has children and dedicates her time and energy to that. Husband or partner goes off and this is true for heterosexual couples or any kind of of makeup in terms of of gender. It’s not just heterosexual couples where there is one partner who stays home and one partner that goes off and works or you choose a career path.
And so I have found and I’m just really curious about what you think that it doesn’t really matter which path you choose those rules about being a good girl me show up no matter what, no matter which path you take. And so I was just kind of doing some brainstorming and one of the rules that I know that I had really kind of, it’s in there deep is that I don’t know as much about money as my husband does. He’s the one. Men are somehow more suited to understanding money or they just come into the world knowing it better that I should trust him, okay, you should see Keina’s face right now. She’s like.
Keina: They just come down the fallopian tube but they just know what to do with the finances.
Sarah: Yeah. That they’re better suited to making it.
Keina: Can I ask you a question before we have this?
Sarah: Of course.
Keina: Just because we’re going to share this recording on both of our podcasts, what’s your definition of a good girl?
Sarah: Someone who has been kind of inculcated with these ideas about how women should be nice and good and sweet. They should be self-sacrificing. They are there to be helpers and kind of nurturers and that above all there is this idea that they should control or suppress or make themselves smaller, that they should not disrupt other people with their opinions, don’t rock the boat.
Keina: Yes. Okay. I just like wanted a robust definition because I think anybody listening to this that identifies as a good girl could raise their hand. And I think all of those things that you just mentioned, even if it wasn’t your parents or whoever raised you explicitly saying that, it’s like those societal norms that nurture that.
Sarah: Do you find that good girl programming showing up for your clients?
Keina: Well, I mean even with you talking about the thing that you recognize. I don’t know about money. My husband is better suited. I definitely have worked with clients who, if they’ve been married, whether like divorced or separated, I think that definitely shows up when they come to work with me because their husband was the one that managed the finances and they defaulted to their husband being the manager of the finances. And I think even there are women that I’ve worked with that are like married as well and they’re like, hey, I had managed the finances but then I gave them back to my husband because he was better at it than I was. And so then it’s funny to hear them talk about what that actually looks like because they’re actually in the same situation that they were in when they were managing the finances.
And so I definitely, I can see that rule showing up in terms of thinking that males are better positioned in terms of managing money, which is funny to me because I think the only reason that that’s true is because of media. And if you look at headlines, like women are told to save and they’re told to restrict and men are told to expand and so you need to invest. You take business risk. And so it’s in the words, there’s a subtleness there that I don’t think anybody would really pay attention to. But it’s in the programming if you will. Even as I’m talking to you and my parents love me very much, but I think about when I was going to start my own business and my mom’s like, you need a job. I’m like, I do have a job, I’m going to work for myself. But it’s like this safety piece that she wanted for me and don’t take too much risk, make sure you can pay your bills and so it’s like teeter tottering on this line and I don’t know if her advice would’ve been the same if I were a boy.
Sarah: That’s so incredible, I mean even just those two words like expansion versus restriction. I feel like that describes so much of the good girl experience. You need to restrict so your body looks a certain way. You need to restrict so that your opinions are palatable. You need to restrict so that you have safety with your money. And it’s interesting because I think my mom would’ve said exactly the same thing and our moms, it wasn’t until like 1972 that they could get a credit card without getting their husband’s permission. That was a year before I was born. And so I just think that a lot of my mom’s ideas about scarcity and needing money to be safe, how much of that was just a product of the fact that she grew up when she didn’t have the same freedom and access to money through loans or credit that I even have today. What are some of the stories that the women who come to you have about money?
Keina: I feel like the main story that that I hear is like, I’m not good with money. I think people, they don’t trust themselves, like they’re not good with money. They like to also tell me they’re not good at math and we were talking about this and I think most of my audience knows this, I was a math teacher so I’m like, you can’t use that as an excuse. I am teach you math. I think that’s one story. I also think that they don’t associate themselves with being savers and so they think saving money is really hard and I feel like people don’t say it this way, but I think a lot of people believe that they’re inherently flawed when it comes to managing their finances. They just don’t see themselves as somebody who can do that because there’s all of these outside factors that are going to take over, like I’m going to get back into debt again. I’m going to have an emotional spend and so those pieces shift how they view themselves when it comes to their finances.
And it’s interesting because even thinking about this expanding and constricting that we were talking about, it’s like some of my clients definitely, I would say are like high income earners. But I see a lot of, like as a coach I see where people aren’t thinking about earning more money to solve for the life that they desire to create. And I kind of pause when I say that because I do think at some end they have earned more money but they’ve been doing it to like run away from the responsibility of looking at their numbers versus earning more money to be like, oh, like I’m doing this to build generational wealth or I’m doing this because I really value giving or I really value experiences. They’re taking the same action if you will in terms of wanting to make more money. But the reasons for wanting to do that can be different. I hope that made sense to whoever’s listening right now.
Sarah: Well here’s what I heard is that when you have the story, I am not good with money. You think that the problem is earning more and that just earning more and earning more will fix it because if I’ve got more then I won’t have to worry about it as much or I won’t. And what you’re saying is no, you can actually do better with what you are already making and get rid of or work with that story and eventually believe like, no, I am good with money. I know how to budget, I know how to save. And that is a different way of going about solving that problem, whereas so many women are just like, I need more, I need more, I need more.
Keina: Well I need more, I need more. But also I would add to that other story you can get more but after you actually know how to budget, you’re going to feel the more
Sarah: Yeah because if you don’t feel the more it’s because it’s going somewhere, right?
Keina: Exactly.
Sarah: Which is where a lot of the women I work with when I see them using money and financial resources kind of pair up with people-pleasing tendencies, what it looks like is they are spending money to try and buy people’s positive emotions toward them. They’re not able to say no, they are using money to get themselves out of their own negative emotions. They are not willing to sit down with their partner and have difficult conversations about money. They are looking for other people to approve of their spending. They’re not feeling like equals to either their partner who earns the money or male partner, whatever. And so I think there are a lot of reasons why women don’t feel like they have enough money. And some of it is because like you said, the math, the budgeting skills. And then if you’re looking at it from my point of view, it’s because this people pleasing, this codependency that is built in to being a good girl, it costs a lot of money.
Keina: I know we were talking about perfectionism showing up with your clients, but I’m curious, having coached the number of women you’ve coached, like what are some of the conversations you’ve seen around perfectionism and money?
Sarah: So perfectionism and money shows up as I need something to be perfect so that I can feel a certain way, whether it is the perfect birthday party, the perfect vacation, or I need to look a certain way or I need to have something outside of me that I can look at that makes me feel like I am good, I am valuable, I am worthy.
Keina: Oh, that costs a lot of money.
Sarah: It costs a lot of money when you’ve got, I mean I’m remembering a client that I had several years back and she would go into debt every Christmas because the family’s coming home, I want this beautiful dinner, I want beautiful decorations and I want everyone to have gifts. And so she was overbuying and doing that because she felt guilt about some of the ways that she had been previously as a mother. And she also just really needed this beautiful holiday so that she could feel like a good mom.
Keina: But now how do you walk? Because I think I see that in people’s transactions and I know how you and I probably coach around it are different, but I’m curious, how do you coach around that with your clients?
Sarah: So at the heart of this is a negative emotion that she does, but like the person does not want to feel, whether it’s I feel some guilt about the way I showed up or I feel some sadness. This is a big one too. Not even necessarily guilt but sadness that my kids are grown and gone and I don’t have or sadness that my relationship with my sister or my relationship with my parents or someone is not what I want it to be. And so I’m going to use a holiday to try and fix all of that or I’m going to use a purchase or some kind of gesture that costs money to try and fix that. And it doesn’t fix the negative emotion. So the way I coach it is you got to feel that emotion, you have to feel that discomfort first because what you’re trying to do is put an outside bandaid on an inside ouchie.
It just doesn’t work that way. You just have to keep doing it and doing it and doing it unless you do the inside work to just feel the sadness to come to terms with, that’s what happened in this relationship. This is how it played out, this is how I feel about it. Now that I have felt that sadness, the guilt, the obligation, the anxiousness, the fear, whatever it is, now that that emotion is not driving the money bus and driving the purchases, now what do you want to do?
Keina: Well that’s a very tough work. As you said the word discomfort, I felt like my, like where I feel discomfort in my body was like, oh, do I need to show up? I’m like, no, this is not about us No, that’s so interesting. I mean I don’t tackle it in the same way of course, but I want, like awareness is a big part of my work in terms of getting clients to like think about things before they act. And as you were talking about Christmas, like you were giving that as an example, I remember one of my clients I worked with early on, she was recently divorced and Christmas was coming up and I was like, okay, like a lot of emotions I know can come up around Christmas and your kids not being with you and like they’re going to be with their dad. And so I just remember we talked through how she wanted to spend money because I knew that the emotional side of money was going to show up. And so from the budgeting stance, it was like, let’s actually put some extra money in your Christmas line item.
So like, let’s prepare because I also don’t want you to feel guilty and shame yourself on the money side for being like, look, I blew through my budget that I set, like I didn’t honor my choices. But also just being able for her to know like, oh, I’m recognizing that I’m wanting to spend because I feel a certain way and how powerful that can be in the conversations that she wants to choose. And I think in my work I feel like there’s a lot of rules that we have, whether it’s like, what are you, just literally this week I was talking to a client and she has a lot of girlfriends that are getting married and she was saying like, oh, I read somewhere that I have a year to buy my friend a gift. I was like, what if you are just the gift because you went to the wedding? But like, she has to be willing to feel uncomfortable not buying her friend a gift for her wedding. But it’s like, are you willing to feel that way? And you’re buying a gift because it’s obligation for you and it’s a rule that like you’ve created for yourself or you’ve allowed other people around you to create. So that’s interesting.
Sarah: One of the negative emotions that comes up probably the most often for a lot of my clients is restlessness because they are doing so much people pleasing and showing up for everybody else and not showing up for themselves that they kind of live with this anxious restless kind of cocktail all the time. And one of the easiest things to do is to go buy something new because it’s novel. It gives you a little hit of dopamine or excitement because now you have a new something to wear, a new something to do or a new place to go. And so a lot of the sitting with discomfort is like understanding I love that you talk about the awareness, like why am I buying this thing and what is the feeling that’s motivating it? Does it work with the math? Does it work with the budget? And then could I just feel this feeling like if you’re the bridesmaid, what is it like to just feel uncomfortable rather than overspend, rather than extend beyond what the math tells me is a good decision for me and you’re right that is tough work.
Keina: Yeah. And from the money side, I think because I do get to see a lot of different people’s budgets, I’m like, listen girl, so many people are in the same boat you’re in. Like they don’t just have this flowing pot of money, they’re just choosing to go into debt or they’re choosing to like not care and turn a blind eye and so I always encourage my clients to be like just have more money conversations, especially with your friends because you could be out there doing something that if you brought up the thing in, maybe it’s not the bridesmaid’s gift, but it’s like we have to go to brunch every single weekend or twice a weekend. And it’s like, but what if you brought up the fact that this is actually getting really expensive, you know what, I added up the other day and it’s $800 a month for some food that’s subpar. And then all of a sudden now people are like, oh, do we want to spend $800 a month on food that’s subpar when really we want to be in a relationship with one another and so what else could we be doing? And I feel like I always am encouraging my clients to say, like, to be the person that’s interrupting the norm. Because I think there are so many things that we do just because we do it and we never question it.
Sarah: Which is where I think you run right back into the good girl rules. Because girls don’t talk about money. That’s gross. You’re supposed to have it but not talk about it. You’re supposed to work for it but not want it because wanting it is too ambitious. You’re not supposed to show that you need it or that you’re aware of it because that’s somehow.
Keina: It’s not idealistic I feel like.
Sarah: Yeah.
Keina: But it’s interesting because when you talk about talking about money, like in the example of the brunch situation, I’m like, yes, you’re talking about money, but no, you’re also not talking about money. I think people, it has nothing to do with how much money you make or if you have debt or how much money you have saved. I want us to be able to have different types of money conversations and I feel like I feel fairly comfortable definitely with my friends to be like, I don’t want to go out to eat with you for whatever reason it is or I will go out to eat with you, but I’ve also like, I’m not going next weekend. But it also doesn’t all have to be about the money. I want people also to step back and look at their other goals that they have in life because I also feel like a lot of my clients, they have goals about wanting to feel better in their body. And if you’ve been out drinking and you’ve been out eating a whole bunch of fried foods, you probably aren’t meeting this other goal.
And so I think sometimes people are so stuck on what will my friends think about me that I can’t afford it, but it’s what you were saying with not taking care of yourself, you’re not like putting yourself first because self-care if you look on social media is about going to get your nails done. But I think in talking to you as I’m thinking about this right now, self-care is taking care of yourself first and thinking about what you need.
Sarah: Yeah. It’s a loving act that is connected to your needs. I was so confused for so long about why I didn’t feel better after I got a manicure.
Keina: Or you felt good for a little bit, right?
Sarah: I like pretty nails just as much as everybody else, but I didn’t feel better. I didn’t feel like I had done something. And what I love about what you’re saying about even just the brunch situation is this is about us being together in a place where we can have conversations that deepen our friendship and connection to each other. And that doesn’t have to cost $800 over the course of several months worth of brunch. Like, how can we get what we want here and still make it work for the way that we want to be spending our money. I’ve seen that happen so many times, sometimes even with my own kids, my older kids are away working in college and affording things and when we kind of talk about it, well spending money on coffee, go and get coffee with friends and that’s like a $15, $20 expenditure by the time you get coffee and a sandwich or something for breakfast and they can’t really afford it. But some of the things I’ve heard them say are like, but how else, like that’s what everybody does.
Keina: So it’s so funny because I feel like I tell my people, go get the coffee, you’re not going to go broke. But I feel like as you talk about your kids, I’m thinking about different like where you sit generation-wise, like your twenties versus your thirties versus your forties. And so it just makes me want to encourage people to evaluate the things that you’re doing and do they serve you? Because for me, I will go and grab coffee with a girlfriend pretty much any day of the week because it’s a way for me to connect. But also I will say, I also know one of my other ways to build connection would be like, hey, let’s go take a walk at the national mall or let’s go on a hike or hey, just come over to my house. I have a couple of friends that are entrepreneurs come over to my house and work. So I’m like, yes, your kids, maybe they shouldn’t be spending $20, but more so because it’s relative because maybe they only have like $300 a month because of their job.
Sarah: That’s what we’re talking about.
Keina: So I feel like I needed to parse that out, but it’s like you want people to look at what you’re doing. What is it that you actually want? And I think asking yourself, is there another way for me to achieve what I think that this activity or this spending is going to create for me in my life?
Sarah: Yeah. First of all, I’m really glad that you parsed out, like it looks different in your twenties than it does in your forties, for sure. And when you’ve got 300 bucks to your name, kids listen up, maybe spending $20 on brunches isn’t the wisest. But what I love about what you said, I just want to summarize is that number one, being willing to look at what you are spending and asking, does it serve me? Is this getting me what I want? What am I trying to buy with this? Whether it’s air conditioning, if you live in Phoenix, Arizona or a beautiful holiday with my children, but that is not, and what I want to add to the conversation, that is not being fueled by trying to buy something on the outside, that is really trying to make up for difficult emotions that you’re trying to avoid feeling on the inside. And so between awareness and then some emotional work, where have you found that your clients are able to make progress pretty quickly when they have that awareness with you?
Keina: I mean, I think it happens, it can happen within like the first month of us working together because people, like one of the exercises I love to have people do is just track your spending for a week. Tell me what you bought, how did you pay for it? How are you feeling? And I don’t think that they’ve ever tracked their spending in that way. And so my only goal is literally for people to do a different type of exercise with their money because I think people would tell me, I track my money in the month, I don’t have enough or whatever it is, like that’s generally why they’re tracking. But I want people to track, to look for like, oh, what was planned? What was unplanned? But the emotional piece of it that I want them to look at in terms of how they’re feeling is, I remember one of my clients, she recognized that at lunch she was going out with a coworker and she would walk around and she was buying treats off of like, CBS or whatever and she’s I realized like I’m mindlessly doing it and I wasn’t even aware of it. And so say it’s $8 but it’s $8 five days of the week and now it’s $40 that I’ve spent. And it’s not even necessarily to say the $40 is good or bad, but questioning, do I want to spend $40 in this way?
Sarah: And I think that’s where you find the control.
Keina: Yes.
Sarah: Like awareness is that control.
Keina: I was saying you’ve been talking a lot about like, are you purchasing something or wanting to spend lavishly on Christmas or buying people gifts because maybe you’re trying to repair a relationship or you don’t want to be the person that shows up without. And so I think that’s a great perspective to give because I think people aren’t thinking about what am I making this mean if I’m not able to do this financially.
Sarah: Yeah.
Keina: And I think if you ask yourself that question, it takes the emotional piece down to like a different level. Like now I have to feel embarrassed or I have to feel like I don’t have enough. And so it’s like that discomfort that I think a lot of people have to wrestle with
Sarah: For sure.
Keina: I feel like I have some other thoughts in my head but they don’t sound succinct so I’m just going to be quiet.
Sarah: They’ll come, they’ll come. And I think that wrestling with the discomfort part has to happen because that’s the part that we’re often either just not aware of or my husband and I grew up from very dissimilar financial backgrounds. Both his parents worked, they always had plenty of money. They lived in a very nice home. They took regular vacations. My upbringing was very different. And I just remember when we got married I was used to scrimping and saving and cutting coupons and waiting until something went on sale. And it took me so much more time and energy to make a purchase than it did him because he would just say, I need a new pair of shoes. We would go to the mall, he would walk in, try on a couple pair, buy what he wanted and it floored me that you could like make a purchase with so much less worrying and thinking and waiting for it to go on sale and looking for coupons and shopping around and trying to get the best deal. And it’s been a shift because another cost is just all of the brain space that worrying about money takes up.
And we had the means to be able to do that but it’s took me a long time to let go of clipping coupons, always looking, like restricting myself, we’re back to that restriction. Like he could just go to the mall and buy his shoes and be done. And I was planning and waiting for sales for a long time. And so I think a lot of the awareness piece that you’re talking about just shows us like what is the real cost? Like yes, maybe the money cost is 70 bucks, but you’re spending hours and hours and hours in your head worrying about this and that’s another part of the cost here.
Keina: You talking about this takes me back to a conversation that we were having before we started recording when I actually wrote an email the other day that was like, I realized I had to, I can’t remember the title of it, but basically I realized I needed to be my own nest egg.
Sarah: Ooh. I love that.
Keina: And I didn’t grow up in, like my parents weren’t rich, like through my lens as a kid I don’t remember us doing without, but my mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was like in third grade and then she started working. But I have made more money than my parents for most of my adult life, not when I was a teacher at $30,000 a year, but after I moved to DC and stuff. And so I grew up in a very affluent area, but once again, I don’t ever feel like I was without, but now especially like as an adult, I’m like, oh, like my mom was really savvy. She used layaway, which some people listening maybe don’t know what that is, but it was basically an old school credit card with no interest. You don’t get your stuff until you pay for it or like she made chicken salad when we went on road trips.
And I actually remember her telling me recently that she was like, yeah, we went on a road trip. Like they went somewhere with a church and she said like, we stopped and I had prepared our lunch and your brother wanted french fries. And I was like, that’s not in the budget. But all of these things, like I’ve recognized, like, I remember I did teach for America, I remember seeing people that quit teaching and I was like, I don’t have the opportunity to quit because like my parents can’t pay my rent. Like, I am responsible for myself financially. And so in those subtle ways, I know that my parents, I can’t fall back on them. Like my mom and dad can pay my electric bill, but, they can’t pay my mortgage for multiple months for me. And so as you were just talking about your experience with money with your husband, it just makes me think about how our lived experiences really shape how as adults we spend money, how we make money, how we save money. Like all of those things that I don’t think people know are running in the background.
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I was mentioning a story to you before we hit record that I’ll just repeat where if it hadn’t been for Pell Grants I wouldn’t have been able to go to college. And my parents were very helpful in navigating the system of helping me sign up for those and get them and so they did have a lot of valuable knowledge about navigating the college financial system, which was really important for me. But in terms of giving me money, it wasn’t an option. I remember hearing a roommate of mine calling home and asking her dad for money and just thinking, oh my gosh, that’s not an option for me. And what that has translated for as a mom is wanting to give my kids money, wanting to and I’ve had to be really aware of like, oh I am wanting to give them money because there was a time in my life when I felt I knew I could always go home. It’s not like I was unsafe, but I did feel like financially exposed in like there was a very limited amount of money.
This is what you get, this is it. There is no more and like not wanting my kids to have that same feeling has motivated me to do a lot of giving to them. i a way that wasn’t motivated by is this in their best interest is what they really need. But me not wanting to feel the discomfort that I felt back then that is still like, with me. And so that’s why I think the piece that you talk about awareness, why are you spending what you’re spending is just such an important part of it. And then doing the work that I do of like just feel that emotion. Just feel it and it’ll be okay. And then after you’ve processed it, after that emotion isn’t driving the bus anymore, then what do you want to do?
Keina: It’s so important. And I think like people, even as you’re talking about your reflection with your kids and the fact that you give them money, I just want to say I think personally an easy entry point to this is have conversations about money with people that you trust because we all have different experiences and I think that there’s so much that you can gain from being able to talk to somebody else about their lived experience and even we were talking about earlier in terms of like the good girl, like you should be saving. But if you go and have a conversation, I don’t know if I want people to have conversation with white men because sometimes they can be very arrogant. But I think about when I’m in rooms with different people, like we were both in a mastermind together and being in a room where women are making money, the impact of that on my thoughts about money and my ability to make money shift.
And so thinking about maybe it’s not a conversation that you’re up for right now, but how do you put yourself in uncomfortable spaces where you can push yourself to think differently than how you currently think about your finances or to bring light and awareness to something that you’re doing. You’re like, oh, I’m giving my kids money because I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable. And so once again going back to this questioning what you do and why you do it, because I just think that there’s so much value, it doesn’t even require you making a budget. It’s just like literally sitting down and taking some time to have a conversation with yourself and then also bringing other people if you’re open to that, into that conversation so you can like shift your thoughts.
Sarah: Yeah. I really love that you said that. For me one of the things that shifted in a huge way was having conversations with women about money and seeing what the potential was for me to be able to make money, whether it’s as a coach or in any other profession, was a huge shift for me. And so to recap what you were just saying is like becoming aware, what are you spending? Why is it serving you? What are the emotions that are fueling that? And then intentionally having conversations with people who have a different perspective on money than you do.
Keina: Yeah and not the scarcity people.
Sarah: Exactly. Yeah. Because if you’re having conversations with people who helped create the scarcity to begin with, guess what? You’re just going to reinforce that. But looking for people who have different thoughts about their money and what else would you suggest that women could start doing to really expand either the concepts that they have about money to kill their old stories? What else would you suggest?
Keina: I mean, I’m always team make a budget. Like actually sit down and know your numbers and if budgets make you cringe, which I think a lot of people, that’s the association they have because they think that it’s saying that they can’t spend. I just want you to think about your budget as a list of decisions that you’re making in advance. And I think that there are a lot of things that we all want in life. And so when you think about your money, what are you wanting to create? If you want to save $20,000, if you want to be able to retire or you want to be able to travel, like you can put those decisions into your budget and write numbers beside them and just make a plan for how you want to spend your money month to month.
Sarah: That’s my favorite definition of budgeting that I’ve ever heard. It’s just a list of decisions you’re making beforehand because we do that all the time with how we’re going to spend our time, how we’re going to eat our food, what we’re going to do with different sources of energy and resources that we have. And so that makes a lot of sense. And I would add to that, just be aware of the feelings that you are having because feelings I think are kind of the unknown drivers or the unrecognized drivers of a lot of our decisions and understanding, oh, the only reason I want to spend this money is because I feel guilty about X or I feel some anxiousness. That can save you a lot of money as well because it’s a lot cheaper to just process some emotion than to have it come up over and over again where you just got to buy something so you feel better.
Keina: That definitely will cost you a lot less money.
Sarah: Keina, if people want to work with you, where can they find you?
Keina: You can go to my website, it’s Wealthovernow.com or follow me on Instagram at Wealth Over Now. And I also have a podcast that’s called Money Files.
Sarah: Definitely recommend, follow this woman on social media. Her posts, I mean, do it on a day when you feel pretty resilient because she gets to the heart of the matter quickly and there’s been many times when I’ve seen her post it’s been like, well damn, that’s where we’re going today.
Keina: Oh, well tell people that are listening to this where they can follow you because we’re sharing this.
Sarah: Yes. So Instagram, Sarah Fisk coaching. SarahFisk.Coach is my website. Yep dot coach is a thing. And that’s where we talk about how to get rid of all the people pleasing and codependency and perfectionism. Was there anything else before, like I didn’t ask you that you really wanted.
Keina: I want people to also know because we talked about this, like, do the work with Sarah, do the work with me wherever you are because it’s also like this work is stopping you from making more money. And I feel like I have a personal mission. Like yes, I want people to budget, but I really want you making the money you desire to make, to create the life that you love.
Sarah: Yes. One of the things that you said before when I was just kind of going through a couple of the ways that women end up making less money is you said they just don’t ask, they don’t ask for more money. They don’t. And that’s just so good. And so yes follow Keina, follow me. Let’s get the people pleasing and codependency and perfectionism to a manageable level so that you can tolerate the feeling of asking, you can tolerate the feeling of saying no, setting boundaries, setting budgets, making decisions ahead of time because that is where the wealth happens. Whether it’s in terms of actual money that you are saving and being able to build or in terms of just all of the worrying and ruminating that you’re not doing over your money that saves actual time and brain space as well.
Keina: I love that. Well, thank you.
Sarah: Thank you. This has been such a pleasure. Have a wonderful week everyone, and we’ll see you back next week.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
