In this Episode...

Kaci [00:00:02] Having financial professionals on your team is incredibly important. And one thing that I always want to let people know is that, you know, it’s also really, really important to have the education around how do you know who you can actually trust? There are very trustworthy individuals in the financial expert space, but then there are people who are basically salespeople.  

Linzy [00:00:30] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists Podcast, where we answer this question How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of the Course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So today’s guest is Kaci Schmitt. Kaci is a therapist who has the unusual interest of being really interested in investing, so much so that she is creating an offering and has an online community called the Invested Therapist, which is all about helping therapists with investing. Today, Kaci and I get into the importance of investing. We get into the ethical murkiness of investing and how it can be troubling for those of us concerned about capitalism and companies that are not doing great things in the world. How do you reconcile that with your need to have your money growing? We get into ETFs, so if you’ve heard about ETFs and you’re like, What are ETFs? Everybody keeps talking about them. Kaci I get into that today as well as both of our preferred method of investment, and we talk about managing feelings when investing. Just like all areas of life, investing your money comes with feelings, triggers, stories that may want you to take certain actions or make you have certain behaviors. And we dig into that today talking about the importance of managing your feelings when you have money invested in the stock market. This is a fun conversation with Kaci today. It’s always nice to talk to a therapist who’s also really like geeky and interested in money. And we covered a lot of ground. Here is my conversation with Kaci Schmitt. So, Kaci, welcome to the podcast. 

Kaci [00:02:34] Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Linzy. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:02:37] I am excited to have you on because you and I occupy a very small space together of therapists who are very interested and enthusiastic about money and finances. 

Kaci [00:02:50] Yes. Yes. 

Linzy [00:02:51] There are not a lot of us. 

Kaci [00:02:53] We absolutely. Excited to be able to connect with you. I know, it’s interesting, like what brings people interested in finances? I think it can be really different. But, you know, I’m just so happy to be here. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:03:08] So for you, then, let’s dig a little bit into what got you to where you are now. And we’re going to talk to you about about what you offer in a sec. But what got you to the place where you are now, where you’re really passionate and interested in helping therapists with finances and specifically investing in your case? 

Kaci [00:03:26] Yeah. Yeah. You know, my personal finance journey has been really interesting because it’s not something that I was ever interested in going to school for. It’s not something I really thought too much about, other than making sure that I could take care of my finances, not get into credit card debt. Like that was kind of my mentality- and save some. That was my mentality probably until about five or six years ago because I just kind of thought that wealth building didn’t really apply to me as a person. I initially decided professionally I wanted to become a teacher, and so I did. I went to school for that and then I went to school to become a school counselor and I kind of thought to myself, Oh, I will like maybe do a very little bit of private practice on the side. Or maybe when I retire because I’ve got this retirement account set up with a school district that I’m in, maybe then I’ll do private practice full time. But what I realized, and this is kind of what like led me to become really passionate and curious about personal finance, is that I had always been placing my sense of financial security on whether I would be able to be employed in this school district. And I know that the public education is different in different parts of the country. And here in Canada it might be different, but in the parts of the country that I have lived in and in the time period. So I graduated right after the Great Recession in December 2009 from my undergrad degree. So I’ve kind of always had this like financial scarcity, this feeling of it looming over me professionally because there was the recession going on and I couldn’t find a job as a teacher. And then in pretty much every district I’ve ever worked in, there’s always been this threat of budget cuts and that, you know, if you’re a teacher or a school counselor or just employed in any way in public education, if you’re not in it for, you know, five, six, seven years at the point that they start talking about budget cuts, you’re probably going to be one of the ones to go because they just know based on however long you’ve been employed. Right. So I, I remember right around the time I started getting really interested in personal finance, I was driving home one day from a meeting that I had had as a school counselor at the district that I was employed in at the time. And it was yet again another talk about budget cuts. And it just kind of clicked for me that my sense of financial security was always based on whether I would be employed or not by like something I couldn’t control. I started learning about personal finance and specifically investing outside of just what was being taken out of my paycheck through my public education job. And I realized that I actually could create a sense of financial empowerment and autonomy from really building my financial literacy. And of course, in tandem with all this, I eventually decided to become full time in my private practice. So now I’m completely not dependent on any other employer, totally self-employed. And when I realized kind of how these pieces were clicking into place for me of building that financial literacy and learning about saving and investing for retirement and other financial goals, I realized that, like what that frees up in my mind to know that I don’t ever have to go back to a school if I don’t want to, you know, I don’t. Nothing is- how I’ll be in retirement has nothing to do with whether someone’s going to fire me right now or not because I got up for myself, you know? 

Linzy [00:07:05] Yeah. I mean, I hear so much in that about autonomy and, like, claiming our financial power, you know, that’s something that I thought about a lot. I especially I found myself thinking about it a lot around the time of, you know, the George Floyd protests. And as therapists, we often have so much fear about having too much power. Right, because we have power over our clients. We’re so aware of power. And like power’s got a bad rap because we’re so aware of, like, oppression and systemic oppression. Systemic discrimination. And I think we’re very much- we can end up being afraid of power or feel guilty if we have privilege or power. But also what I’m hearing and what you’re saying and what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is all the positives of power and having your own financial power, it means control over your life, right? It means not being dependent on a system that doesn’t really care about you. Right. Where you’re going to get cut, even if you’re the best teacher in the school because you’ve only been there for two years. It really is kind of like claiming your autonomy. And I think private practice is such a powerful way that we do that as therapists where we’re like, This is mine, I’m going to build this. And I was just chatting with somebody the other day about the recession, the R-word that’s looming over us. That kind of, you know, remains to be seen what exactly it’s going to mean for all of us, how powerful it is to be self-employed in a recession. Right. Because we have the ability to create things and like pivot. And we have so much control and ability to make choices that you don’t have when you’re an employee and you’re working for somebody else. And really, it’s about their choices. You know, all these things are kind of coming up for me as you’re talking about your journey. So it’s kind of like you stepped into your own professional power working for yourself, no longer being dependent on employment from somebody else, but also stepped into your financial power, developing this skillset around like investing and personal finance. 

Kaci [00:08:46] I think you have said so much. There’s there’s so much rich content in there. And I absolutely agree that, you know, we can’t talk about money without being aware of all all types of systemic oppression, all types of inequity that have existed that continue to exist. Right. And it’s it’s a really interesting conversation because, you know, I really do. I look at it as we are a part of this system of capitalism, we are a part of there are certain structures in our lives. And, you know, I think there are some really amazing ways that we can affect systemic change, whether it’s voting, being very vocal with our beliefs. You know, there’s there’s so much that we can do. But also individually, we can’t say, I don’t want capitalism to exist if- I’m not saying necessarily right. But like, if said, I don’t want this thing to exist. We can’t just say, well, then it’s not going to happen for everybody. Right? Like we are still operating and and to know the rules of the game, I think can be- can allow for that personal empowerment. And when you have that personal empowerment, my intention, my hope with everything is that like just when people have access to information that- and opportunities that they’ve historically been denied, that they will then be able to make those choices in their individual lives that might free up, you know, now I have the energy to go and effect change in this other way. Right now I have the time, the resources, the money to be able to donate, if that’s something, you know, if you have a cause that you’re passionate about, like when we know how it works, we can affect change in a different way than if we just don’t have those financial literacy tools as kind of a nation. 

Linzy [00:10:41] Yeah, absolutely. It opens up this new kind of like realm of influence or ability to impact change both in like your own family’s life. Like I think about even in my own family, you know, family members who are like living basically in poverty, right. Who are very precarious. And it gives me the ability to functionally support them on a monthly basis and help them with certain things in their life. But also, as you say, like to support our community to make things happen that otherwise wouldn’t happen, like to empower causes. There’s so many ways because money is such a fluid thing and it can turn into so many different things. There’s so many ways that that power- we can use that power, right? That if we don’t have access to it, that we just don’t have the ability to to make any change or influence over without money. 

Kaci [00:11:27] Absolutely. Yeah. Whole-heartedly agree. And it’s just something that I think it’s still so new in a lot of ways for us to like even be able to have this type of conversation. You and I are having right now- not only because there’s like often taboos around talking about money really openly, but like here in the United States, it wasn’t even until the 1970s that women and I know I’m kind of talking about it from like a cis perspective like that women were able to get bank accounts and lines of credit on their own without a man as a cosigner. And to me, someone born in 1987, that blows my mind. That’s where we very recently have come from. 

Linzy [00:12:09] Yes. These are very new conversations and very new power that’s in the hands of more women and more just not white men than it has been before. Yeah, absolutely. So your area of passion and actually you and I kind of do adjacent work, but we don’t do the same work. So your area of passion is investment. So tell me about that world and why you’re so passionate specifically there when it comes to therapists and knowing how to invest and understanding the investing world. 

Kaci [00:12:40] Totally. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember it was probably maybe even ten years ago or so that I first heard about the fire movement. And if people are not familiar with that acronym, FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. And I was reading about it. So basically it’s these people, it’s this loose collective of people who just have decided that they’re going to take the traditional- traditional advice about investing for retirement is often to save sometimes 10 to 15% to a pretty low number, and for your gross income to be able to eventually support you in retirement. If you start at a young age, you need to increase if you get started at five compared to 20, right? But that’s kind of a very broad, you know, what financial advisors might tell people who are starting early and the fire movement, these are people who are investing more than that amount, and have to say, here’s how much I need to invest to be able to eventually become financially independent. And financially independent in this context means you have enough accumulated and assets to be able to support you. So that work is optional for you. Yeah. So that just kind of to like lay the groundwork of what all that is. When I first started reading about it, I was like, Wow, this is really interesting, but it doesn’t apply to me as someone who is like at the time I was making maybe $43,000 a year. Right? Doesn’t apply to me. 

Linzy [00:14:08] It’s hard. 

Kaci [00:14:08] Yeah, absolutely. So I just like it was in the back of my mind, but never something that I even really googled beyond. Just like hearing about it and kind of had a, you know, a non-linear path in terms of my career progression, trying different things, you know, I guess I became really interested in all of this when I first started learning about the process of buying a home. And I realized I have not a lot of information in my mind at all beyond like, I should save some money, I should stay away from credit card debt. And then when I started learning that actually starting- I, I think I was probably in my late twenties when I got really interested in this and I started playing around with some calculators online and I realized that if I got serious about it now, I could have a seven figure or more investment by the time I hit retirement age. And that to me was just never something I’d been told was possible for me. I never even knew. Like, What does it mean to be a millionaire? I just had no context for that. So once I realized what was possible, if I got really clear on how much I wanted to start investing, I started learning about, okay, I want to build this for myself, but I don’t know how to invest. I don’t know what this is. So I started consuming podcasts and books and just learning as much as I could, and I learned that actually investing is way simpler than we think it is, like the type of investing I teach therapists. Because you could make investing really, really complicated for people. 

Linzy [00:15:45] Yeah, you can make it your full time job if you want. 

Kaci [00:15:47] You could be full time job. And you know what’s fascinating, Linzy is like even people who – and this is I think it helped click something together for me – even people whose full time job is to be managing other people’s investment portfolios about 80 to 90% of the time. Those people who have way more access to information than I do, yeah, those people do not beat index funds, which are a passive type of investment that literally all you have to do is learn what an index fund is, purchase index funds on a regular basis. And if we have continued into the future, what we historically have seen with returns in the stock market, your index funds, it’s like set it and forget it. And so I was like this is so easy. But we think it’s so hard because it isn’t being talked about. 

Linzy [00:16:36] Totally. Yeah. I mean there’s that whole thing of like, you can’t really outsmart the market. As you say, people who try failed, you know, 80 to 90% of the time and the people who I’m sure do outsmart it more, you’re paying them a massive amount of money to, you know, have that that level of attention and expertize. And I think you’re you’re so right. I think I see this in terms of business finances and, you know, getting into kind of the foundational financial skills that I teach in terms of business finance skills, that the language can really throw us because it’s like learning new terms, it’s learning new concepts, and new kind of ways of thinking about something. But once you have those, you realize that it’s not as hard as you thought. Right? But there is like that bit of a learning curve to like learn what an ETF is. As you say, I’m also an ETF investor. That’s that’s what my spouse and I do as well. I feel like we had a similar journey to you. We read a lot of blogs, and I think one of the biggest things that I have learned with investing is like, don’t touch it, don’t freak out, like that’s one of the hardest parts is just like leaving it alone. And I’m just like, you know, trusting in time. Like, our investments have dropped significantly in the last couple of months, and that’s just how it goes, right? And so it’s like part of it is just being able to like put aside your anxiety and just ride it out. I had one one student say to me, she was told that the stock market is like a roller coaster. It’s just like a ride through the ups and downs and don’t jump off. That’s she’s going to stay on the ride. But I think that, you know, we- when we are outside of that world, it’s much easier. It’s easy to think that it’s way harder than that. 

Kaci [00:18:06] Oh, my gosh. I love everything that you said because you’re also really normalizing that like- so, you know that investing can be like a roller coaster ride, like we just don’t hop off yet, stay in. Yep. Stay in if you have decades to go. And you were not planning on taking that money out right now. There is no reason. In fact, it’s not advantageous whatsoever and statistically speaking, incredibly difficult to time the market both the right time to get out and to get back in. Yes, like the market does not announce. 

Linzy [00:18:38] It would be sheer luck if you did that. 

Kaci [00:18:39] You would be the luckiest person if you happened to time it just right. And you and I both, like when you said, you know, it emotionally brings up stuff for you watching your investments like have their like value on paper kind of drop this past year. Yeah, I feel that same way too. And so I think it’s just really important to normalize that. Like even, you know, if you know about this, even if you know that time is that key ingredient. Time and being able to like just, you know, don’t act on those impulses and we’re still human and we still have those emotional responses come up. And it’s working with those instead of, you know, trying to, like, pretend like we’re ever going to make that fear of loss go away. Right. It’s deep fear. It’s it’s valid. You have it for a reason. But based on the historical data that we have, based on what we know about the stock market, it’s working with our emotions, you know? 

Linzy [00:19:35] Yeah, it’s making sure that your emotion doesn’t drive you to an action that is not wise. Right. And I think this is where what you and I do occupies like a funny little corner. I’m making a little Venn diagram with my hands, which nobody can see because this is a podcast. But, you know, there’s kind of like those two circles. It’s like kind of like finance people who just, like, live and breathe finance. And then there’s like therapists who, like, live and breathe emotions and relationships. And you and I occupy this little slice in the middle where these two worlds overlap, which is a very small slice. As I say, there’s not a lot of folks who are really actively interested in both of these spaces. And something you and I have chatted about before is like, neither of us are trained financial professionals. Yeah, right. And there’s a big difference between what we do and what a trained financial professional does. So for folks who are listening right now, what do you see as as the value of of this space that you and I are occupying? And how does the work that we’re doing differ from a financial professional? 

Kaci [00:20:30] Yeah, that’s a really good question. You know, I definitely think having financial professionals on your team is incredibly important. And one thing that I always want to let people know is that, you know, it’s also really, really important to have the education around how do you know who you can actually trust? Because there are very trustworthy individuals in the financial expert space. But then there are people who are basically salespeople. Right. And actually they are the vast majority of financial advisors are essentially salespeople. So I think what you and I do, we provide education, we provide mentorship. And also this sense of, you know, really being able to determine each person for themselves, how do I want to make decisions about my money, about who I invite in to my financial team? And that’s something that can feel so either overwhelming or like you just have no information at all. And so you’re like, okay, well, I guess I should just trust this person because they’ve got this, like alphabet soup behind their name, which is what I did at first. Like, I just like, Oh, this person is in the break room at my school and I’m 23 years old at the time. This person is in the break room. They must be a financial professional I can trust. And knowing what I know now and what I teach therapists now, I think there’s this space where therapists and just people in general who work with us can cultivate that financial wellness and awareness for themselves. But part of that, too, is knowing how to determine who do you trust, you know. 

Linzy [00:22:03] Yeah, as you say, not everybody has your best interest at heart. And so just to spell that out a little bit more for people, how how can they discern kind of who’s a salesperson and who’s not, in the financial advisor world? 

Kaci [00:22:16] Yes. So what I always tell people is that you would think that every person, just like licensed therapists, you know, we go through we go through training. We have to get our licenses. We have codes of ethics. That we have to follow financial professionals. And I don’t know everything about what they have to do in order to have certain designations behind their name, because I’m not one. But for example, the term financial advisor, I could call myself a financial advisor because it’s not a protected term. But I’m very clear that that’s not the role that I occupy in a person education and mentorship. You know, that’s more the role that I occupy. But a person can call themselves a financial advisor, but unless they are fee only – so that means that they are not putting you in investments that they receive any type of a kickback from in any way – and a fiduciary. I always tell people, look for a fee only – not even fee based, because fee based means they can charge you a fee upfront, but they can also put you in products through insurance products and different investment products where they receive some type of a commission or some type of they have an agreement to be able to get some type of payment that way – and a fiduciary. So fiduciary means in this capacity that someone is legally obligated to work in your best interest. And I think that that’s something every financial professional should be, but they’re absolutely not. And they will tell you if they are one. So their websites all over their website should say fee only and fiduciary. Those are terms to look for. And if you don’t see those terms, you can always ask the person, are you a fee only fiduciary at all times to me. So 100% of the time, because oddly enough, they can switch from a fiduciary role and into a non fiduciary role even in the same business meeting, like in the same meeting with you. So that’s what I would tell people to look for. 

Linzy [00:24:14] Yeah, and it is good to be clear. Like I’ve certainly chatted with people before where it looks like they’re a fiduciary on their website and then I asked them the question directly and suddenly they can’t answer me directly that they don’t sell anything or receive any kickbacks. And this is my very biased perspective, but I think you will share it. And my perspective is that I don’t know if there’s really any financial products that are better than just ETFs, just investing directly in the market. So in that case, you know, the role of a financial adviser, again, unprotected term, is to help you understand your big picture and really set a financial strategy for how you’re going to be using your different investment vehicles that are available to you. Like, what do you keep tax protected? You know, how much do you set aside each month? What do you keep kind of like unprotected so that you can take it out for shorter term stuff? They help you do that big picture strategy. But at this point, I don’t know if there’s really anything better than just directly investing in ETFs, which we should define them for folks: exchange trade funds, which are pegged to a whole bunch of stocks. So it’s kind of like you’re buying a basket of stocks all in like for whatever the cost of that one ETF. As you say, you pay $35 and you have, if it’s the S&P 500, you have the top 500 stocks are in your little basket. So you’re really spreading out your risk. And that’s what ETFs are. And I think that things have really changed. That used to be mutual funds. I remember even probably maybe like 18, 20 years ago when I first started investing, mutual funds were more the way to go. But it’s really changed in the last five or ten years. 

Kaci [00:25:44] Yeah, absolutely. You know, index funds and ETFs, they operate fairly similarly. But like you’re saying, ETFs and index funds, which are you know, there’s an S&P 500 index fund is like these are very low fee, like super low. And the thing that I always like that really surprised me that I always want to mention to people when we’re talking about the importance of these low fee ETF and index funds, is that 0.5% or 1% doesn’t sound like a lot, but it actually- if you solely invested in these actively managed mutual funds that had, you know, a 0.5% to a 1% expense ratio, which means they would take that much off of your money. It would over time end up being hundreds of thousands. It could be even more than that, just from tiny little percent, right? Yeah. So low fee. I think there’s been a lot more dialog and conversation about these really passive strategies like you’re talking about where they they are, they’re like baskets of, you know, if you have the S&P 500, it’s the 500 of the largest companies that you have little slices of every single one. And then if you get total stock market index funds or ETFs, they are thousands of companies. Right? They’re super fortified. And as companies perform poorly, like when they no longer are in that top 500 in the S&P 500, for example, then they get kicked off. Automatic. And then another one that’s performing better, it’s added

Linzy [00:27:34] So in a way, they’re kind of automatically managed because there’s a certain criteria for that particular, you know, stock the representation of a stock to be in in your basket. I love that using little metaphors because it makes it easier to visualize, it automatically will be taken out of your basket. And something else – the company that is now doing better – will get in instead. So it’s like that’s that’s where it’s, you know, once you find your original or your once you commit to your strategy of how you want to distribute things. That’s where you just like, leave it alone. Once you’ve got it set in place. 

Kaci [00:28:07] And that’s the beautiful thing, too, is that you don’t have to spend hours learning about how to analyze a single stock. You also are not putting all of your money into a single stock, and then it’s not really you don’t even have to really watch the financial news at all because let’s say Tesla is in the S&P 500. If you solely have Tesla stock, you’re going to want to be watching the news like glued to the screens. Sure. That you’re like you’re doing well. 

Linzy [00:28:36] Every time Elon Musk blinks, you’re going to be watching. 

Kaci [00:28:38] Oh, my gosh. Or tweets. It’s true. But having this more passive strategy, if Tesla falls off and it’s not on the S&P 500 anymore or what, fill in the blank for company. You’re you’re benefiting from this really passive strategy and you get to live your life. And I think what just surprised me so much and made this such a key factor for me was learning that it is the easiest way to do it and it is by far the most successful way to start. So to answer your original question, I totally agree with you that like, is there anything better than an ETF or S&P 500 strategy- or sorry or index fund – like this? Yeah, statistically, the answer is no, it’s absolutely not. 

Linzy [00:29:19] Yeah, yeah. Especially for people like us, where we’re not going to be watching it full time. We don’t have the, you know, an extra 100 K a year to pay somebody to like really watch our stuff and be on top of everything. It is the, the accessible, easy, reliable way to have your money growing for you because that’s the other piece. Like if folks are listening right now – and I know I felt this way before we started investing and my partner, especially when we got together, he was like very kind of like ethically tied in knots about the world and how terrible things are and you name it, right? The evils of capitalism and companies that exploit people and all of that is real. I’m just thinking about- I feel like part of what I have noticed in myself, as I’ve had to start investing, is also kind of like accepting that there are little slices of this in your money. But if you don’t put your money into the stock market, there’s no way to actually keep up with inflation. I’m curious about your thoughts about that kind of ethical practical conundrum. 

Kaci [00:30:17] You are asking, I think, such – again – such a really rich question, because I really think about this, too, from an existential perspective like, oh, gosh, I mean, if we’re thinking about like if we could just be completely creative and just create a system that works for us, I mean, I don’t even I don’t even know what exactly I think that either should look like or but but I really want to speak to the fact that I feel that same sense of, you know, knowing that there are evils, there are things about capitalism that are not good that I – like from a personal, ethical perspective – I don’t support. And so it’s like that both/and that I think you often really want to work with our clients on. And I think I live my life from that perspective too of like, okay, I could decide I’m going to sit this out completely, but then, you know, what might that mean? If I do that, that might mean that I have to work with such a high number of clients that I then become burned out and I (indiscernible) options and I’ve built resentment, not necessarily towards my client specifically, but like toward the way that I’m working. And that wouldn’t make me a good therapist. It would give me fewer options to put money in places that I actually want that money to go to. Whether it – like you’re talking about – it’s on a very personal level with your family or creating generational wealth or it’s, you know, donating to causes that you really care about. I do think that we we operate within this system. And I look at it from this perspective of I might want to change the rules completely, but I as an individual person, I don’t have the power to do that. What do I have the power to do? Right. Yeah, I learned these, these practices that, you know, allow me to then make more decisions in my life, like as a cis-gendered woman, you know who that has not been something that we’ve been allowed to do historically. Thinking about like from a western perspective. Right. 

Linzy [00:32:21] It’s pretty brand new. Yeah. Yeah. 

Kaci [00:32:24] Yeah. It is. And I just want to really speak to the fact that like, I agree with you, it’s very much and. And I mean, in a quote unquote like normal year, inflation is typically like 2 to 3%. And we’re seeing that this year. I mean, we know it’s been in the 9%, right. And so it’s sort of like winning the lottery or having some type of windfall or like something else, you know, really having some lucky streak of something happening. I don’t see another way other than being able to understand the rules and be able to bend the rules. And that frees me up to try to give the way that I absolutely like. 

Linzy [00:33:04] I love what you said about how it’s, you know, controlling what you can. Because we can’t just rewrite the system. And and I think there’s a real parallel here that I see with therapists when we struggle with, like, fees and accessibility and we take on these huge things that are systemic issues, but we take them onto our individual shoulders and we like, you know, try to create accessibility off of our family’s income. And we’re basically like subsidizing 50 other people’s lives, you know, off of our one life. And the individual cost of that ends up being so great. And the cost to like our kids and our their future and like, you know, the ripple effects that comes up from there. And so, yeah, it is. I appreciate you kind of, you know, being up for naming the fact that it is ethically troubling, but also that it’s not it’s not an all or nothing. It’s a both/and, right. Like you can have your money in a system that you don’t really believe in, but and let’s be real that we’re all participating in by like buying clothes and going to the grocery store and getting in our cars, driving gas vehicles. Right. Like we’re all- it makes me think about an acquaintance of mine years ago had this this phrase of like we’re all ethically fucked. It’s just a matter of degrees. 

Kaci [00:34:08] I love that. 

Linzy [00:34:09] So it’s like, you know, there’s this fantasy that we could somehow be just, like, totally extricated from these systems, but that’s not actually possible. But it’s like, right, so what can you do? And what I’m hearing from you is, you know, it’s it’s about these individual choices that we make, the way that we use money to, like, impact our communities, to to lift up our family members. That is where we have control and power. We don’t have control over the way that our economy works or over the stock market and who’s in it and who’s not. 

Kaci [00:34:37] I completely agree with you. And I do. I feel like that’s the place that I – you know, I think it’s always worth continuing to explore. I mean, to operate intentionally within this system that we have, there’s a conundrum, right? We have problems with. And and also, like, you know, one thing that I heard a colleague say one time about education that I think can also maybe be applicable here is like it’s okay to be passionate about something, but also equally critical of it. Right. And can be passionate about financial independence, for example, or autonomy and choice and equitable access to opportunities for for people who are not just white men. Like we can be passionate about that, but also critique. Like, there’s a lot of squishiness here. There’s a lot of gray area here, right? 

Linzy [00:35:26] Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn’t have to be kind of like pure in order for us to engage with it. Right. And do kind of the best that we can for ourselves and our families and our communities. So I feel like, you know, we could talk for another 4 hours, but we should start wrapping up. So for folks who are listening, maybe this is like, you know, the first time they thought about investments in a little while and where can they find you? Tell us about your offer. Tell us more about what you’re doing. 

Kaci [00:35:55] Absolutely. So I would say first and foremost, because I know a lot of therapists are on Facebook, I have started a Facebook group and it’s called Financial Self-care for Therapists. If you just Google that, you’ll find it. And I would love for people to join the group. We talk a lot about debt, saving, and investing, money mindset stuff, living really intentionally with money, so that’s a free offer. I just would love people to join if they feel so inclined. And I am also launching right now, I have my founding members launch of this membership that I have created just for therapists and of course, people who are not therapists, you know, teachers and all the adjacent fields are welcome to join as well. There will just be more therapists in the group than not. I’m launching a membership that will start in November and we will talk about, you know, there will be lessons regarding all the areas I just covered: debt, saving, and investing, really specifically focused on financial independence like we talked about, and living really intentionally with money. There will be lessons, there will be money accountability dates where we can work on goals together, and also office hours to ask questions about saving and investing. That membership starts soon so they can hop over to investedtherapist.co/membership and learn about it. And by the time this goes live, they’re welcome to join. And I’d love to meet anybody who’s interested. Join us. 

Linzy [00:37:25] That’s November 2022. So if you’re listening and that date is in the past. You can go to see that website again, Kaci. 

Kaci [00:37:33] Yeah it’s investedtherapist.co/membership and they can also go to investedtherapist.co/calculator. I’ve created a free investing calculator that will show you just like those calculators I talked about earlier that really got me so interested in this. You can plug in your information and it will show you based on the percentage returns that you you plug into the calculator, what you can expect to have in retirement. So they’re welcome to check that out. Check out the membership. 

Linzy [00:38:04] Nice. I’m very excited for what you’re doing. And I hope folks check out your Facebook group and check out your membership site and something that I see that you offer that I resonate with because I think it’s so valuable and it’s the space that I also occupy is just emotionally intelligent conversations about money. I think that so often there’s like folks who are really good at money, often like lack the emotional intelligence or relational intelligence or the ability to talk about money in a way that makes sense to people who are not super into money and geeky about money all the time. And I love that you’re like occupying this this space in this emotionally intelligent kind of teaching kind of way, which is also how I like to be in this space. I’m just so excited for the therapists who are going to have access to you. 

Kaci [00:38:46] Thank you so much. I really appreciate you saying that Linzy and I just am so- I love that you are in this space as well because I know what you have to offer people is so incredibly valuable and just so appreciate your time here today and collaborating with you. 

Linzy [00:38:59] Yeah. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. 

Kaci [00:39:01] Absolutely. Thank you. 

Linzy [00:39:15] In my conversation with Kaci, something that stuck out to me was how she started out as a teacher, which is also where I started out my aspirations. When I went to university, my plan was to be a teacher and I was talked out of it. But I’ve often reflected about how I’ve kind of ended up being a teacher anyways via therapy. And you can really feel that Kaci has the heart of a teacher wanting to teach therapists and help them understand the world of investing. That can be difficult and daunting and hard to understand when you’re outside of it and don’t understand the language. So definitely check out Kaci’s offer or The Invested Therapist. We’ve got the links for her in the show notes. So if you’re at all interested, you can join her free Facebook group or join her membership site and start getting support if you feel like you’ve been stuck with investments, I think having somebody who actually understands feelings and knows how to talk about the world of investing with emotional intelligence and relational intelligence is so valuable. So check her out. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, you can follow me on Instagram. We’re posting free, practical and emotional money content on there all the time, and please head over to Apple Podcasts to leave me a review. It is the best way for folks to find out about the podcast, to listen to the podcast, and just your feedback also means so much to me. Thanks for listening today.