In today’s episode, my client, Krissy, joins the podcast. Our conversation recaps Krissy’s journey working with me. Krissy shares why she decided to book a consultation with me and how working with a financial coach has changed the way she thinks about and manages her finances.
She also shares the unique challenges of managing finances as a mom and how her new identity as a saver has shifted her spending. We cover everything from personal allowances to aligning your budget with priorities.
If you are on the fence about working with a financial coach, this episode is for you! Learn about what it is really like to work with me and get inspired by the positive changes Krissy has made with managing her finances.
Listen to Krissy’s journey and learnings from working with me as her financial coach:
- [01:12] Why Krissy decided to work with Keina
- [10:33] Identifying as a saver
- [14:28] Managing finances as a mom
- [28:20] Importance of revisiting priorities
- [32:34] Recalibrating spending
- [36:53] Krissy’s monthly allowance
- [44:00] Was coaching worth it?
Tune into this episode of Money Files to hear how money coaching with Keina changed the way a career-driven mom manages and thinks about her 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 about How Saving Money Helped Krissy Spend On Things That Mattered, check out my episode, How to Get On the Same Financial Page with Your Partner: Client Conversation with Dana Johnson.
Transcript for “How Saving Money Helped Krissy Spend On Things That Mattered”
Intro: Hi and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday 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 Files. These are my favorite podcast episodes where I get to interview clients and share real stories because I know you as a listener are like, I don’t really know this lady, but I think I kind of want to work with her so I get to bring on people to tell you what it’s like actually working with me if I make you stop using your credit card or if I yell at you or whatever it may be. But today I am joined by my client, Krissy. So, hi Krissy.
Krissy: Hi Keina. How are you doing?
Keina: I’m good. Do you want to introduce yourself?
Krissy: Sure. My name’s Krissy. I’m a mid-forties single mom who had a really great experience working with Keina. I’m excited to share my perspective on the coaching and kind of where I started, where I’m going, where I am today, all that kind of good stuff.
Keina: Can you actually, because I know you professed this to me and there are a lot of people out here that identify you’re a Keina lurker
Krissy: Terrible lurker. I’m pretty sure I discovered you in 2020, 2021 and did not reach out for even the initial consult until like late in the fall of 2023. So, yeah, I’ve spent many years thinking I could do it by myself and couldn’t. So I reached out and finally was able to.
Keina: Tell us what was happening in 2021 and what you needed to fix that was still popping up in 2023.
Krissy: Sure. So in 2021, I have a personal finance background, so I’ve always been interested in getting the retirement planning and saving money and things like that. But I was fresh off of a divorce. I had two kids in that elementary school phase of life and was just trying to figure out how to make sure, I felt financially secure, I could pay all my bills, but we were in the middle of covid, the whole world was upside down. So it was just trying to get a grounding of how can I get a handle on the future. And fast forward to 2023, the economy had gone through some bumps and dips and with inflation and a lot of other things going on. And even late in 2023, I think it was that summer, I ended up taking my car in and it was like $2,000 later for routine stuff, getting new tires, getting routine maintenance.
And I had the money, but I was like, oh my God, how am I going to save this? So I felt like money had gotten just tight enough and I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have any confidence in how I could absorb and pay for those things, even though I arguably have enough income through my job to be able to do those things. So it was more like I felt like I was kind of leaking money. Oh, that was the other thing you and I talked about, the childcare. I knew I was coming out of an era of, we were leaving that before and after school timeframe, which in the Washington DC area is not insignificant. It was going to be, I think $1,500 a month. And I was just really worried that it was just going to evaporate on me that it was just going to come in and go. And I wouldn’t be thoughtful about that money. So I reached out to you because that was the last sort of dip in that childcare. And I was tired of it, I’m using air quotes “just disappearing” into bills and credit card payments and life expenses in ways that I didn’t feel like I had control over. And I wanted that control back. So that’s why I reached out to you.
Keina: I feel like on our consult, like as you described, like I felt secure. We talked a lot about, like you were paying off your credit card every single month. You’re like the model student of personal finances. You were paying off your credit card. I want to say you had maybe like 30,000 saved if not more.
Krissy: Yep. I was near maxing out my retirement. I think I had like 8 to 10% going to retirement. I felt like I was doing fine. But any recovering perfectionist will tell you that there’s always room to do more but I also saw space to do more because I just wasn’t sure that would ever be enough or if I touched that savings, like that was my big leap of faith was that paying you to coach. And that was one of my first goals. I was like, I want to recover all the money that I spent on this coaching because I was so uncertain and had no confidence that I could actually save and then spend it and then save it again. Does that make sense? Like, that’s why we’re supposed to save, is I have a thing in mind, I’m going to pay for it and then I’ll save in case I need to do it again, whether it’s tires or kids college or vacation. And I just didn’t think that would be possible. I didn’t know how to do it.
Keina: I was going to say, and I think if I remember correctly, some of your savings was from your divorce.
Krissy: Yes, it was.
Keina: And so I think for people listening, I have clients like yourself, Krissy, who it’s like, yeah, I have money in the bank, but I don’t feel like I saved it. Like you did the physical action of saying I’m going to put $20,000 over here or $30,000 over here, but that’s my nest egg and if I dip into it, I’m not sure about how to rebuild it.
Krissy: Yeah, exactly.
Keina: Yeah. Let’s just go back to, Hey, I’m going to pay a financial coach. I’m unsure if I can save the money. This is going to take money from my savings account, like what were some of the things that went through your head and then what ultimately made you invest in coaching?
Krissy: Well, as we’ve established as a long time lurker, I had resonated with a lot of things you had said over the years. And I felt like I was going to get exactly what I wanted from you, which was more insight and more hands-on attention. But I also knew like any good investment you have to kind of put the money down and let it pay for itself over time. And I knew that if I put in the time and the effort and worked with you, it might take me a year to get the money back from the coaching, but then I would also be building habits that would mean I wouldn’t need it again in the future. Like I could set up a new foundation. And even in that early consult, we talked a lot about just changing the way that I think about money.
And that’s something I had come to realize. Like I couldn’t do that on my own because I couldn’t think outside of the box of my visibility, which is true of most, too many experience. Sometimes you just need the outside voices to be like, Hey, so have you thought about this? You’re like never even knew that was a possibility. And so there was a lot of potential. And I think that was really appealing to me because I also knew somewhere in the back of my head, I was like, I know I’m capable of doing this, but I can get there so much faster if I do it with a coach, which is why I was willing to make that investment and put in the time, like it wasn’t just meeting with you, but it was really going through, looking through my numbers, feeling a lot of feelings about those numbers, good, bad and indifferent and pushing through all of that. And I knew it was time. I knew it was mentally ready to put in the work too. I think if we had talked and you were like, Hey, this is what it’s going to cost to do coaching. I think if I knew that I wasn’t ready to show up for it, I probably would’ve waited again because it does take time and effort to change. That’s what I wanted a coach to do to help me change. And change isn’t easy.
Keina: I was also looking at the time of year we started, which I think sometimes people are like, that’s my most expensive time of year, which is like Thanksgiving, Christmas, there’s a lot of money moving around, which I mean for me as a coach, I’m like, don’t try to manage those things on your own, start when it’s messy. Because I think that you actually learn a lot more in the messy pieces and I always connect everything back to like nutrition and stuff. I think like we’re always waiting for after summer or after, like you’re waiting for these settling points. Then if you’re really honest with yourself, there aren’t those settling points. It’s just a thing called life and that’s the heading of it.
Krissy: Yeah. I knew if I waited until January, nothing would change and I would be in the exact same boat. And my job, my pay increases show up in January. We’re on a calendar year cycle. And I was like, so in my mind I was like, I’ll have wasted six months where that non-daycare money, like I’m not spending that money anymore, but I won’t have any idea where it is and the opportunity cost was, well I could just see that $6,000 evaporate into my banking account somewhere or I could be thoughtful about it and put money down and say, help me figure this out. And I’m using save generically, but like rescue that money from the abyss of my checkbook. Come back, you know, be a part of the team.
Keina: How would you say, because I think savings is like the biggest thing that kind of comes up for me when I think about as a client. And more so, I wanted you to confidently be able to spend money in your savings. I think that was my goal. One of my goals for you when I heard, like was on the consult with you but how has your identity changed as a saver since working together?
Krissy: I think I’ve realized that saving also means spending. Like I would argue I was a saver before I met you. But then it was like, but by save I meant don’t ever touch it. And that’s not true of all savings. That’s true for my emergency fund. Like, I have an account where I’ll know it’s a rainy, a real bad, rainy, cloudy, stormy day if I go to that fund because you’re like, ah, this was supposed to be, don’t touch this money, it should just sit here for days like today, but just sit here. But I’ve gotten much more comfortable putting money into savings and then taking it out and spending it on things. I had to go in and I needed new breaks this summer and you and I had set up this auto fund in a vehicle account and I had the majority of the money there to just go pay for it. And it was sitting in a savings account. So when that hit my credit card, I just went and I moved it and I didn’t panic about it. Like I didn’t feel that, oh God, I just spent all this money like you do. Cars are expensive. That’s annoying.
Keina: You’re right. You roll your eyes always.
Krissy: Oh, always. But another great example is we set up, like traveling for me with my kids is important. I want to have good experiences outside of their travel sports experiences or school experiences or like Christmas time. We are always together with family, things like that. It was important to me that the three of us have an opportunity to do things on our own as a family unit. And so I have been putting aside money every month to be able to go to Disney, which is triple eye roll expenses but I did it.
Keina: Did you guys go to Disney already?
Krissy: It’s late September, but I have to pay that bill. You put the reservation on hold and that reservation is kind of coming due and I think it’ll be, I don’t know, $3,500, $4,000, something like that. And I just have no anxiety about it. It’s like, oh, I just got to reach out, have them send me the bill. I’ll go in and pay it because it’s in an account. And it’s always a little sad and I’m like, oh, now that account number is lower. But now I know like, yeah, but there’s this money that I have set up. I know it’ll just go back and I don’t know what next year’s vacation will be, but I already have a system in place to put money there to then take it out in the future. So I think my identity as a saver has been those savings allow me to spend on the things that matter and working with you helped me really tease out the big rocks that matter and be really much more conscious about saving for those.
Keina: I feel like we talked back and forth a lot about like priorities, especially as it related to you as a woman and then you as a mom. Like what are the things that I want to be able to do for myself? And then like, what do I want to be able to do because I have two little boys and I want to make sure like they get experiences, but also thinking about okay, what happens as they go from middle school to high school and like these transitional points. I feel like we kind of nailed down what are some of the things you want to prioritize right now and how that would lead to even you being able to have the confidence to shift that in a year from now. I mean your reflection is probably better than mine on prioritization but what were some of the things just like actually having a budget and being able to make some of, I think some of the harder decisions when you think about being a mom or like raising your kids?
Krissy: Yeah. I think that’s interesting, because I think I knew what I prioritized, but I didn’t have a plan to fund those priorities. So I knew that, like I talked about, having those travel experiences was important, but I didn’t necessarily have a way to set aside money for that. So that was one of those, well I have savings and I can just go dip into it and pay for that vacation. But now that the plan gives me confidence that I’m already back building that savings for future. And I didn’t have that before coaching. I think when you talk about the trade offs, it’s interesting because I feel like my budget, my spend plan, I probably iterate it every like four to six weeks, where something pops up. Great example, there was a show I wanted to watch when the Olympics were coming up so I got YouTube TV which was 73 bucks a month. Like, nah, that’s not a huge amount of money or a deal breaker. But I went through and I was like, no, I need to account for this.
I mean, you had to kind of like make some little adjustments and think about those trades because I feel like now I have a better sense of I don’t make my dollars work extra hard. I always like that idea, that like, there’ll be a pay raise in the future or I might get a bonus and in my mind it’s like, oh, that’ll go to “pay for Disney.” I’m using their quotes again. But then it would come in and I didn’t actually put it aside for Disney, so it just went to Amazon or it went to Target, or it went to my electric bill or it went to my new tires or I don’t know, whatever was on the credit card that month because I paid them off every month because I’m a perfect student. I’m giving myself an eye roll. But now I feel like I have a better way of, okay, I know my kids like to play travel sports. There are fees associated with that. And I have a plan to just set that aside. But I also have the flexibility.
It’s sort of like a, well everything in here is kind of mutable, like whether I spent the money at Costco or went out to eat or I spent it on groceries. How much money did I spend on food this month? And like that gives me the flexibility that I’m not like bound up by numbers. I spent three extra dollars at Costco, I broke my budget. It’s like, oh my God, I didn’t, that’s fine.
Keina: You should have put those strawberries back.
Krissy: Yeah or something. Who knows? There’s probably nothing in Cosco under $20. You probably have to put a bunch of stuff back. But to me the budget really helps me. It’s got a foundation of all the big stuff, all my priorities, numbers on them that I know I will be really disappointed for myself and where we’re going as a family unit if I can’t get those things done and then everything else just kind of falls in around it. So sometimes we can go out to eat more because there’s more money in that line. And other times we’ve gone out to eat too much. It’s like, nope, we’re going to eat at home for three weeks. And those are more conscious trades now than I think they were in the past. And it helps me to see those numbers and it’s like a constant good gut check.
So instead of looking at my credit card and thinking, well this credit card is always supposed to be $1,200 and now it’s $1500, so maybe I should spend less money next month. But I had no idea what to spend less money on next month. And now I do, I’m like, oh, we ate a lot that month. And maybe it’s summer and maybe that means that we always go out to eat more in the summer. Like I’m kind of excited to just sort of see the year on year flow over time. I think this is what we spend on Christmas, but even last year we went through it and I kind of looked down, I’m like, oh, I did go over a little bit so when I can adjust it or I can just decide I’m just not spending more money on Christmas.
But now I have a tool that helps me really wrap my hands around it in a way that’s not green shade glasses, like trying to, you know that guy with the meme where he is like pointing at all the stuff on the board and he looks crazy. I don’t feel like that anymore with my money. I like just go in and I have my spreadsheet and I’m like, oh here’s, here’s, here’s, and I understand where it went and where I went over and do I need to adjust that? Like am I okay that I went over in that category or do I need to make some habit changes? And I feel like my budget gives me the tools to make those decisions.
Keina: Yeah. And you use the word conscious which I think comes up a lot when you’re talking about managing money in this way. Even when you were talking about Christmas, I remember talking through, I was like, is this enough? Like I remember with one of your boys, you’re like, Nope, Marcus, like I’m buying him a bat which is also going to be the bat that he’s using for all of the football season. Even that sounds so minor.
Krissy: Yeah.
Keina: I think thinking about, because I am working with more clients especially that have like kids in sports and it’s like, okay, sometimes these things you are already saving for equipment. Your child doesn’t know that their baseball bat was also, like that is a trade off. And just being able to not just, I think a lot of the times, especially when I’m working with parents, it’s like we are living off of emotion instead of just creating and building a plan that you feel really good about. Like what do you actually want to give your kids? Like what is the experience instead of, I think that when you don’t actually have a plan, it allows you to be more emotionally driven, instead of when you have a plan you can be more conscious and I would think that it’s almost like more fulfilling when you are able to do something consciously.
Krissy: It is. And my kids are 13 and 11. There’s a way to bake that into conversations you have with them like my oldest, we have sat there and kind of talked about another round of baseball lessons, which I had saved up for and we’ve kind of been taking off on that all summer. And I said you’ve got a couple things coming up this fall, we could do lessons or if we don’t think this is the right time, why don’t I save a little more money and we can do this like November, December, January. And making it clear to him there are trade-offs. I am not a money tree and going into life it’s not like they’re going to be handed a silver spoon and here’s your trust fund. I’m like, no, they’re going to have to go out and get a job and save and and make all of these financial decisions.
And so it gives an opportunity to have those conversations too. It’s like, okay, you want this thing for your room, whatever, do you want to spend your allowance on that? I thought you were thinking about saving for this. And just starting to, even just to talk about money with kids I think is so important because it can be such a taboo subject and it’s not taboo if you just make it normal and you just talk about it. And you try to take away the good and the bad and it’s not, I’m not a bad mom because I have to save for baseball lessons. It’s just we don’t have money every day to go out and buy baseball lessons. So we’re going to save for it and then we can go and do that if that’s what we want to do. But let’s think about the timing
Like why spend that money now if we might not even use them until later and we don’t even know if we want to stay at that particular clinic. Okay, then that’s teaching kids, like just put a pause, just leave money in a savings account and come back to it when you’re ready to make a decision about it. I think there’s so much impulsivity between social media and everything else. There’s always a new gadget to go by and you can just let it sit in your cart for like 48 hours and teach your kids. Just let it sit there and then we can come back to it. And if we still want it or need it or whatever, then we have a plan because we’ve budgeted to go get that thing as opposed to my allowance came in and I’m going to the store and I’m going to blow it at everything.
Keina: I love that reflection. I’ve actually been talking to another client. She has girls, girls versus boys in this case. We’ve been talking a lot about opportunities to give her girls choices and they’re similar age to your boys. But we were even just talking about like birthday and she’s used to taking her girls like shopping for their birthday or getting services done for them. I was like, well what if you just give them a number? Like if you’re like, Hey you have $200 for your birthday so if you want to get your nails done, your hair done, whatever. Like all of those things can be on the table, but check the price of it and like now what do you want to do knowing you have $200 to spend? Because I love the fact that you were saying that you don’t have to feel guilty as a mom. And I think that like I would echo those sentiments. It’s like how do you set your kids up for success because they do have to make choices?
And being able to have a healthy money conversation because I think on the other side of this is like the fear that my kids are going to think that we don’t have money or they’re going to develop the sense that we don’t have money and yeah, there isn’t some like pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Although we probably all wish there is. And also teaching I think your kids to value the investments that they do want to make, like you can’t have everything and you may not even really want everything. It’s potentially just an urge. And so how do I help you have like and develop healthy spending habits while I’m also working on that myself?
Krissy: Oh yeah, definitely.
Keina: I want to roll it back just a little bit because I remember you were talking about paying off your credit card, which a lot of people listening to this are like, but she’s a good student. I have different thoughts about people that pay their credit cards off each month. And I’m like, that doesn’t mean you’re good at money either.
Krissy: Yeah it doesn’t. I learned that.
Keina: I’m going to call in a deflating call when you’re like, when I was like, okay Christie, yeah you’re paying off your credit card each month, however you’re paying off last month’s expenses. Like we are not in the current month and thinking about your expenses and I think for you as someone who felt financially secure, you had the money in the bank to pay off the credit cards. But what’s like your experience? You can even talk about that call that I’m calling the deflating call. But yeah, what’s been the shift even in thinking about paying off your credit card each month and what does that mean?
Krissy: Yeah, I think for me it’s probably still a work in progress because one of the things that we learn and that I continue to do with you is that idea of a money date. So now it’s every three to seven days I go in, look at my credit cards, pay them off and kind of like what did I spend money on? And there is, every now and then I catch myself and I know I’m playing numbers with the spreadsheet. I’m like, well if I don’t do this until Sunday, I get paid on Saturday and then all the numbers will look good. And it’s like, that’s because you spent too much money this week. So in that sense it is an area that I’m still actively trying to improve is to continue to be more thoughtful about spending and evolve the way that the budget looks.
Because there are a lot of things you can put in your budget and it’s like, oh I’m going to save for this, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do this. And it gets back to those trades and it’s like, well just because I have it in there doesn’t mean that’s where my money should be going every month. Because sometimes your dollars do the talking for you, they tell you where you’re spending every month. And it can be a good insight into am I actually being realistic about myself and my spending habits and where I do or don’t prioritize things. But yeah, I remember that call because I was like, I pay it off every month, it’s great. And it was like, yeah, but if we want to get you back to zero balance, you still owe all this. And I was like, but I don’t owe those things.
And it’s like, yeah you do. You’ve already bought them, you put them on your charge card, you owe them. So in that sense it’s like I said, I still think it’s a continual shift in habit for me because it’d be really easy just to be like, oh, I’ll just wait until the bills are due. But the benefit to me, like we were talking about this earlier is that by doing those check-ins and looking at all my accounts and paying off those balances every, like I said, every three to seven days, I also get that gut check of like, am I staying within my priorities? Have my priorities shifted? Like to me that’s an ongoing week to week conversation about where things go and how that money is going. And it really like, it illuminates my habits. Like I have come to notice that if I don’t have the kids here during a longer weekend, I’m way more likely to go out to eat.
It’s like in my head I’m like, I don’t have to feed anybody. I’m not even going to feed myself. And I have a lot of mixed feelings about that because it’s like I actually don’t know that’s what I want to do. It’s like this knee jerk reaction and it shows up every Tuesday in those credit card statements and I continue to have, it’s like just a conversation in my head because some people are like, well you deserve the break. And I’m like, yeah, but what if I want that money for something else? Then it’s not a break then it’s not actually relaxing. I think there’s, well I got a whole lot of thoughts about self-care and how we think about that as a society but we’ll leave that to another place. But to the extent that it’s like you should go treat yourself.
I don’t always buy into that, but I clearly do with some of my spending habits that I’ve noticed over the last like three months. So then it’s a good chance to kind of take a step back and think where am I going to be at? But I do pay my credit cards off now, like on a weekly basis. So I feel like that habit alone has gotten me to a place that I am at a zero balance and looking to that next batch of payment. But that was a big mental shift for me that came out of coaching.
Keina: Well and it’s like you actually know where you are. I think so many people wait until, you kind of alluded to this earlier, like, oh my credit card balance should be about $1200 but it’s $1500. But like all of those little things are the reason that people can’t save consistently or they’re having to dip into their savings to pay off their credit card because of the fact that you actually don’t have a pulse on what you are spending on. And I think that there’s a point in the amount of money you earn where you think like, okay, I can pay my bills. And sometimes we don’t pay attention to the other things like our other priorities. And unless you name them out loud, put a number to them and like actually have a plan behind them, they can be hard to reach. Not because you can’t do it, it’s like because you haven’t illuminated it for yourself. And like named, okay, here’s how I’m going to get to where I desire to be.
Krissy: Yeah. I completely agree because there’s a bucket of bills that I pay every month that’s stable. It’s stable enough between electric power, your mortgage, your car payment, whatever those things are. Those things don’t fluctuate. But for me, everything else does. And depending on how much those flux, that’s where that childcare payment would go into the abyss of my checkbook and just be gone because it’s like, oh I’ve got, oh, okay, we could go to eat one extra time here. We could do this or we could do this. And in today’s day and age with prices the way that they are and things like that, that all just evaporates a lot faster. But now, for me, I think the biggest place, is why I keep coming back to it is probably eating out groceries. Like two young boys and all the stereotypes about grocery bills from that and then just eating out in general in restaurants. And so anytime I see that it’s like, oh we went out to eat three times this week and I’m using eating out generically, this could just be running to McDonald’s, which now costs like $30 or $35.
Keina: I’m going to say you guys are a McDonald’s family at times, pizza.
Krissy: Yeah, exactly. Pizza 50 bucks. Like all that kind of stuff. And next thing you know, it’s like $200 is gone easy in like two, three nights and it wasn’t thoughtful and it wasn’t really a family experience and it’s not the way I wanted to spend my money. And so by checking in every 3, 6, 7 days, it’s like, oh, I know why I did what I did, but that’s not my priority. And now I’m going to recalibrate for the next week to get myself back on track. And every time I recalibrate it gets closer and closer to being a habit and less and less like a lesson. Like it just becomes a thing. Now I’m just more conscious that, oh we went out to eat on Tuesday, we’re going to skip it this week or we’re going to wait until Saturday because we’re going out to eat with friends.
And that’s really important. And that’s where I want to be spending that kind of money on eating out. Not, oh let’s just go get sandwiches on Thursday night because I don’t feel like cooking. That’s why there’s chicken nuggets from Costco. That’s a, I don’t feel like cooking meal that also fits all my priorities. It lets me get a mental break as a mom. But it also allows me to save the money for the experiences with my kids, that is a priority. And to try new restaurants, which is the thing I like to do. And so I get to check all those boxes and not feel bad or like I’m missing out on anything because I still got to do everything that was important to me. I just have to wait until Saturday to go up to eat instead of today. Right now as like an immediate.
Keina: I love that you point out the mindlessness of something and it not actually being in alignment with how you like to spend. I don’t think that people consciously, and I think you have to do it with some level of frequency too, is like also thinking about your ROI on purchases. Whether it’s the experiences out of your home, like where you’re going to a live concert or like you’re saying, oh I’m just going to stop here real quick and like pick up a quick bite to eat. And I can even say sometimes with my own spending, I’m like, I spend how much eating out. And like going to Jersey Mike’s isn’t “eating out.” It is because it wasn’t, I always say when I’m working with clients I’m like just call it food out of home because you get it outside your house.
Krissy: Exactly.
Keina: But like the difference of like, wow, I went to a really nice dinner with great company and we had like a wine pairing and like all of this like five course meal versus I spent the same amount of money in a Chick-fil-A Chipotle jersey Mike’s manner were not meaningful. I don’t need to villanize it, but to your point, like is there something that I can keep that’s accessible that it’s like I’m really tired today and I don’t want to think about putting a meal together. How do I have like an emergency backup kit for myself that’s in the house that I can nourish my body with and then have money for the experiences that really do matter.
Krissy: Yeah. Well and it’s everything, like I think a year ago and I understand the emotional crut it could serve. I remember at least two instances where I would wake up the next morning, like I had just been scrolling that night on Instagram and probably saw some influencer for some makeup or some dress or some shoes or something. Put it in my Amazon cart, hit buy and woke up the next morning and saw the Amazon like hey you made this purchase. And I was like, what did I buy?
Keina: It’s like an out-of-body experience.
Krissy: It’s just like, oh my god, did I black out shop? Like what is this? And it was, I don’t know, 20, 25 bucks. That was the kind of money that it was so small but I was like this. But this is like real change of life money if you find it every week. I think I read somewhere that if you just spend like 25 or 30 bucks a week extra on stuff, it’s like $10,000 a year or something like that, whatever the math is, don’t make me do math on a podcast. That’s a terrible idea. But it matters. And if you told me that sum of money was available to me, I’d be like oh I got to do something about that. And what I have found is it is all of those sort of mindless things.
Now I also in my budget plan, I think I gave myself like a $200 a month allowance to do exactly that because sometimes I do just want to go buy a book or I don’t whatever, look at that mascara target and throw it in my car and not think about it. So I found a way to do things without thinking about it. But then by having that plan in place I can kind of gut check, did I not think too much this week? Like did I get too sort of out of touch with where I want it to be? Because I do still want to have that money to put into savings for Christmas and put here and put here. And this allows me to, like I said, whether I eat out or I spend at Cosco or groceries, to me the money is sort of irrelevant.
But if I start to like run out of “food money,” I’m using air quotes there, is then I know it’s like, oh we ate out too much this month. I went too far or I didn’t really think far enough ahead to realize like this was going to be one of those weeks where everything went crazy and we were going to have to go achieve for whatever reason, which is fine because then you just kind of get back on track in the next week. But it is trying to organize and align all those pieces so that it feels like I’m moving forward. And I do, I feel like I am moving towards all those different goals and saving for the things that really matter and probably still eating too much McDonald’s sometimes.
Keina: I think I was posting something about having like a clear plan to be able to pay off your debt and you responded to me saying like I’ve paid off my car loan and I have a plan to rebuild that savings and make sure I have $10,000 available for when my oldest turned 16 easy and stress free. And I still get to go to Disney this year.
Krissy: Yeah. So I think my car loan was about $7,500 left and it was going to, that loan would mature around the time that he turned 16 and it was a low interest rate. I bought it in 2020 when things were still reasonable, the interest rate was like 3% or something like that. So I think conventional wisdom would’ve told me, don’t pay off that loan, it’s low interest. Like let that be. But I also like my high yield savings accounts are getting like 4.4%, 4.2%, something like that right now. So I just ran the math. I was like, okay, well I know I’m putting this much aside every month in the savings account where I’m going to pull that money from. If I do that, it might earn about this much money over time. And if I also take my car payment and save it over time, it has the potential to be of like 10 or $11,000.
And so I pulled the trigger, I took $7,500 out of my savings to pay off the car. And I never would’ve done that before coaching. Like that amount of money would’ve been panic inducing to just go pay off a loan. Like where am I going to get that money? But I looked at the man and I was like, okay, if I put this much aside and it earned, I was like, oh, I’ll have rebuilt that amount in the account. It’ll take me about 14, 15 months. So I’ll be back to where I started in a little over a year. But I’ll also have built all the, I’ll have started this wealth that will now feed on itself with interest rates and everything else over time. So then now I don’t even have to worry about will I have a car payment when he gets older?
And that’s a huge luxury because you know what, maybe something terrible happens and I have to use that money for something else. I don’t have to go get him a car. Like that’s a very first world privileged place to be. They’re like, I’m just going to go get my kid a car when I turn 16. But I have put myself in a position that I feel I have not overly dipped into my savings in a way that I’m nervous. Like if I need a new roof or a new furnace or both or something. Like I have the money there to get through the big stuff and now I have a plan and I never would’ve had faith in the plan that I could rebuild that savings and build this other one and let them kind of go in a way that makes me feel very wealthy.
I don’t know that I would pass that bar by anybody standards. But yeah, being able to kind of sit down and run those numbers and knowing like I had proven to myself that I could keep putting that money into the account to rebuild, to basically rebuild what I took out. That was when I was like, oh I did it. I’m like, I took a big step forward. This is a huge life improvement. So yeah. I have almost a thousand dollars in his car account now since I did that. I continue to pay back. I think I’ve added just a shy of 1500 back to the other account and it’s like, this is great, like it’s moving in the way that it’s supposed to. So I felt really good. I felt proud of myself I guess in that moment.
Keina: I love it and I would also say like, you said you feel wealthy. One of the things, and I’ve even had to do this for myself, I have my own money blocks and I was like, I’m not wealthy. One of the exercises I did last summer was like in what ways am I wealthy? Like I’m not Oprah Winfrey and that’s probably who my brain is telling me I’m not. But an exercise that I did with myself was like to look at all the things that I have done financially that for someone else, like I’m their 10, like if they could be me, I’m their 10. And so I think it’s fine to call yourself wealthy because it’s like you are someone else’s 10 and you can still have goals like your own financial goals as well and how you want to continue to build your wealth. Did you make your money back from coaching?
Krissy: I think so. Well it’s hard to tell because I took all that other money out to go do this other thing. But no, I look at all my accounts across the board and I feel like I’m in a good spot and it was definitely worth the investment because even this, it’s like that coaching set me up to save that money for the car to be able to go to Disney with no thought about it this fall. I’m maxing out my retirement now. I’ve set myself up to get one or two mortgage payments ahead or if nothing else, just buy down the escrow so the mortgage payment doesn’t change over time. And if it doesn’t change, like if it stays the same, like it will start to eat on itself quicker.
I feel like all those are ways that like do I have the full value of coaching back in my checking account? Probably not quite, but it is paying benefits like across the board in places that I didn’t envision even going when I started coaching. So for anybody who’s lurking, you should stop and just go sign up for coaching because it was worth every penny I spent on it. The stuff with the kids, like talking to my oldest about how he spends his money, seeing him being thoughtful about it, I mean it was an investment and that means there’s a return on it and I think that’s probably immeasurable.
Keina: Has your oldest, has he started to take the cash that he’s monetizing from his school hustle?
Krissy: That slowed down because he’s at the season.
Keina: Oh yeah, it’s summertime.
Krissy: We’ll see if he picks up his candy hustle in the fall.
Keina: I fully expect him to be back in business in the fall. And for those of you listening.
Krissy: Yeah, he probably will be.
Keina: It’s like old school. He was like selling candy out of his backpack. And I was like, can we get him to put this in a bank account please? So he knows his like profit from the Dollar Tree candy that he’s marking up. His entrepreneurial spirit, which I love. Well is there anything Krissy, I didn’t ask you that you wanted to share? Any other things that come to mind that we didn’t talk about?
Krissy: I don’t think so. To me the coaching was more about dollars and cents on an excel file than I thought it was going to be. Money’s personal and it’s emotional. I felt like the coaching gave me a way to look at things, like you said, between mothering, everything else that can be so emotionally charged would help me have clear data that I could make decisions about. And maybe I’m still being emotional in those decisions, but at least I’m better informed going into them. And I think that will pay for itself long after the coaching has finished because it puts me in a position that I can feel wealth, that I can be so grateful for the opportunities that I have and can figure out ways to pay that forward, whether it’s with friends or with kids or anything else like that. Just to be where I want to be in life and not have to worry about the money necessarily.
Keina: Well, I appreciate you for sharing your story and I’m sure listeners appreciate you. And if you are like, yes, I’m Krissy. Krissy is me, you can go to the link in my show notes and you can apply to work with me for five months. If you’ve been lurking since 2020 or since 2023, or maybe you weren’t lurking, you just found me today. I would love to talk to you on a consult and tell you exactly how I can help you. And thank you again, Krissy, so much for coming on my podcast. I appreciate it.
Krissy: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Keina: And to all the listeners, I will talk to you guys 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.
