You know that moment in the shower when something crosses your mind and you want it, but you have no idea how you would ever get there? Maybe it is a house, a baby, a retirement that looks a certain way, or a business you have been thinking about building. And before that thought even gets a chance to breathe, your brain shows up with a list of reasons it is not possible for you right now. You have debt. You do not make enough. That is not realistic for someone in your situation. And just like that, the desire disappears before you ever gave it a real moment to exist.
In this episode I want to talk about what I call your impossible money goal, the desire that feels whimsical or fleeting or maybe even a little embarrassing to say out loud because you do not have any proof yet that it is actually possible. And the first thing I want to offer you is this: you do not need proof that something is possible before you are allowed to want it. The person who is becoming debt-free and the person who is moving toward her dream are not two different people on two different timelines. They are the same person doing both at the same time.
This episode is a continuation of last week and it is about giving you practical tools to move from catching that desire to actually building space for it in your real life. I am walking you through a journaling exercise that helps you name the goal, identify what you would have to believe about yourself to actually pursue it, and take one concrete action this week that starts putting things in motion before you have the full plan figured out.
In this episode you’ll learn…
[00:04:30] What an impossible money goal is, why it tends to show up as a fleeting thought that gets shut down almost immediately, and why giving that desire permission to exist a little longer is the first and most important step toward actually achieving it
[00:09:15] Why you do not have to wait to be debt-free to start moving toward something you want, and what it actually looks like when paying off debt and pursuing a dream are happening at the same time instead of waiting in line behind each other
[00:14:40] The belief question that creates possibility when you feel frozen by the size of your debt or the timeline of your dream, and how answering it honestly starts moving you from avoidance into curiosity and then into action
[00:19:20] Why journaling is one of the most powerful tools for making an impossible money goal real, and how writing down a desire before you have any proof it is possible is exactly how you create the version of yourself who eventually accomplishes it
[00:23:45] The four part exercise to close the episode with, naming the desire, answering the belief question, visualizing the version of you who is already doing it, and identifying one action you can take this week to start building space for what you actually want
Tune in to this episode of Money Files to learn how to give your impossible money goal the space it needs to become real so you can stop shutting down your dreams before they ever get started and start building toward the life you actually want while you are still paying off debt.
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 episode on turning your impossible money goal into something real while you are still paying off debt, check out Episode 19 | How to Use Financial Visioning to Achieve Your Money Goals.
Transcript for “What to Do When You Have Debt and a Dream”
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. So today’s podcast is a continuation of last week’s podcast where I was just talking about the things that may come up for you as you are trying to pay down debt and you feel yourself having a dream at the same time. And I want to go back to just revisiting me buying a home. I would say that buying a home was probably one of the first moments I had as an adult, if you will, where I found myself having a desire. And it was like one of those things that I would call it almost like a shower thought. You’re like in the shower and you don’t quite know how you’re going to get there, but something crosses your mind and you want it.
Maybe it happens in the shower. Maybe you’re even watching a movie and you’re like, ooh, there’s like the lake house. I want that. Or it would be nice one day to have a house that was by the water. Or maybe you’re talking to a friend and you guys are maybe just talking about your dreams and you find yourself in a space where you catch your brain thinking about something that you desire, but you don’t have a clue of how you could get it. And for the purpose of this episode, I want to call that your impossible money goal. And this impossible money goal, you don’t have a plan for it yet. And it’s just an inkling of a thought.
And the thought might come in, feel a little whimsical and then it might disappear. Maybe it feels even a little embarrassing to say out loud because you don’t have any proof yet that it’s actually possible for you. For me, it was my home. And when I first caught that desire, I was nowhere near really being able to afford a home. I was making $50,000 in Washington, D.C. And when I first got here, I was looking at homes that were $200,000, $300,000, some close to $400,000. So the math didn’t work. Maybe I could have afforded some form of a house payment, but I wouldn’t have had any utilities, y’all. And I wouldn’t have had any furniture. But I never let go of the feeling that I caught in that moment.
So today I want to talk to you about how you can actually go from catching that feeling to actually getting the thing that you want, achieving the goal that you have when it comes to your finances. So before we go any further, I want to say this very plainly. You don’t need proof yet that something is possible for you before you’re allowed to want it. I want you to be like a child. I have nieces and nephews, and they want all the things. They have no concept of money. They don’t have limitations because they are children and they are whimsical. And that is what I want you to invite in the space. I don’t need you to bring your adult rules here.
So you might have a version of a home. What was my home? You might have a version of yourself. Maybe you too want a home. Maybe you’re thinking about a wedding, a baby. Maybe you’re thinking about your retirement looking a certain way. Maybe you’re even building a side hustle and you want to be able to earn more money. And you’ve never let yourself sit with the dream that you have because maybe your very first thought after you get this whimsical thought is like, but I have debt. And you start thinking about all the reasons that something can’t be true for you. I don’t make enough money. That’s not realistic for someone that’s in the situation that I’m in.
But I want you to notice like how fast you go to telling yourself why something can’t be true. So the desire shows up and it gets shut down before you ever get a chance to give that desire any type of life or breathing room. So I want you to have the opportunity to get to enjoy that moment, before your brain goes to shutting down that shower thought, that whimsical moment. So the next time you catch yourself in this moment where maybe you find something comes to your mind that sounds intriguing, sounds exciting. I want to offer you something different. What if the next time that thought shows up, you just like let it exist. You don’t have to act on it. You don’t have to solve for how it could be true right then, but just letting it sit with inside your being for a moment.
The way you would if a friend told you about their dream and you would get excited for your friend and you wouldn’t immediately start telling your friend all of the reasons that something wouldn’t work. In fact, you’d probably hype your friend up. I know like I hype my girlfriends up. I’m like, oh yeah girl. And it is from a very true place because I believe in them. So imagine if you could provide that for yourself. So that’s the first action that I want you to take. I don’t want you to think about a budget, even though I’m the budgeting girl. I don’t want you to think about a plan, but I just want to give you permission to let the desire be in the space with you a little bit longer than maybe it normally would be in the past. So once you let yourself catch that desire, here’s what I want you to understand.
You don’t have to wait to be debt-free to start moving towards something that you want. Last week I talked about imagining the version of you that makes the $800 credit card payment and thinking about who is she? What did she do the last 30 days? How did she think? What choices did she make? I want you to hold that same identity here. The person who’s becoming debt-free and the person who’s moving toward her dream, they’re not two different people on two different timelines. They’re the same person doing both at the same time. So that looks like budgeting. It looks like consistently saving.
It looks like paying off debt. It looks like earning more. It looks like investing. But it’s not necessarily that one is happening after another, but they’re all like running together. So there’s this beautiful web and beautiful system that is working together. Some months you’ll lean in harder into one than you lean into the others. And that’s fine. But none of them are like waiting in line behind the others. Now, if you listen to me, I do think that they have an order, but it doesn’t mean you want all five of those components to be working. And you want them to be working because they help support one another. And you may be saving more at one point in time or you might be focused on earning more at another point in time, but still you have the support of those other buckets, those other four buckets supporting you at the same time.
So one of the tools that I want to leave you with today is as you’re thinking about this impossible money goal, you’re thinking about this whimsical desire you have, but then there’s also some part of you that’s like, oh my goodness, girl, but I got debt. And maybe you feel frozen by your debt or you feel frozen by the size of your debt or the timeline for something. I want you to ask yourself this question. Imagine that this could be true. If I could actually have both, what actions would I take? If I knew I could pay down debt and have the house, what would I have to believe about myself today? If I knew I could pay down the debt and have the baby, what would I have to believe about myself today?
So I don’t need you to have the full plan. You just need to ask yourself this question and you need to have enough belief to answer it. I want you to be able to get into a space where you start creating possibility for yourself because when you have possibility, that means that you’re going to then dive into curiosity. And when you have curiosity, it means you’re going to start moving forward and taking actions towards what you actually want. It may not be linear. It may look like a little crazy, a little crazy web, like a dream catcher, but because you’ve allowed yourself to dream, because you’ve allowed yourself to go to these places and spaces, even though you didn’t know how it was going to be possible, your brain is going to do the work to figure it out.
So I want to tell you that I think, you’re going to be thinking like, Keina, this is a really nice idea. And I need you to know that this isn’t just an idea. And one of my favorite exercises to have people do is to journal. Like a journaling practice is something, I wouldn’t say I do this as consistently as I would love to believe, but I am an owner of many notebooks. And I will say one of the coolest things is to go back and be like, Oh my goodness. I remember writing that down and now it’s a thing. I have notebooks from when I started my business before I started my business. And I can tell that I didn’t really believe that I could work for myself.
I am clearly working for myself. So journaling I think is a phenomenal practice because there are versions of you that are going to need that 10 years from now, five years from now. So you’re journaling for that version of you, because in between the five-year version of you and the version of you now, she’s going to help you get what you desire. The reason I went to your journal is because I want to get a message from you a year from now and be like, girl, I paid this debt off. Or I’ve paid off half of my debt for five years from now telling me that you bought a home or I love it when clients message me and they’re like, Keina, you know, that thing I told you that I wrote down, we did this exercise. Like I’ve accomplished it. I started a business or I own real estate now. Those are the things that I want you to accomplish. And it starts with a journaling exercise.
So to close today, because I don’t want things to just live in your head, you can grab a pen and take a few minutes with each of these. So first just name the desire. What is the desire that you have? What’s the money goal that feels whimsical or maybe fleeting for you? The one that you catch in the shower in a movie or in someone else’s story. Have you ever stopped yourself from saying it out loud because it sounded impossible? What did you tell yourself?
Next is the belief question. If you knew, like if you really knew that you could pay down your debt and have the house, what would you believe about yourself today? If you knew you could pay down your debt and have the baby, what would you believe about yourself today? And if you’re like, Keina, I don’t want a house or a baby, you fill in the blank for the things that you want. So if you knew you could pay down your debt and what would you believe about yourself today and visualize, picture yourself a year from now as the person who is actively paying off the debt. What does she do differently today than the version of you that is living in this moment?
Picture yourself as the person who’s investing in her future. What’s she doing with her next paycheck that maybe you’re not doing? And then you’re going to bridge that into action. So if this is true, if the house, the baby, the retirement, the debt-free life were all actually possible for you, what’s one action you would take this week? Maybe you’re going to research or maybe you need to move some money around, but what is available for you to do right now? And don’t tell yourself, I don’t know. Make yourself figure out what are 10 things that are available to me right now. If you’re like, but Keina, I don’t know. Research how much a baby costs. How much is the first year of having a baby? So maybe you could research those numbers or if you’re looking at a house, you could research first time home programs.
Like there are so many things that you could do to put things in motion so that you can start making space for what it is that you actually desire. So you can achieve this impossible money goal. And finally, I want you to finish this sentence. A year from now, I want to tell Keina that, and fill in the blank. And five years from now, I want to tell Keina that, blank. So I want to celebrate with you. I want to encourage you. And I feel like these last two episodes are maybe not the type of episodes I do all the time, but I was really just thinking about the things that are holding people back. I’m getting people on consults right now that it’s clear to me that they have a dream, but they feel like their debt’s holding them back.
And I don’t want your debt to hold you back from the thing that you want to be able to accomplish. One, I don’t want you to get stuck in the belief that you can’t pay down your debt. But two, I don’t want you to think that you can’t pay down your debt and have your dream at the same time because that’s not what we do. And if you’re listening to this, you’re like, Keina, I want you to help me figure out what is my plan so that in a year from now, five years from now, I will have a debt-free lifestyle and I’ll be able to have the home or I can have the baby or I can have real estate. Apply to work with me in my five month coaching partnership. You can go to my show notes or you can go to wealthovernow.com and book a consult with me there. But until next week, have a great 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.
