Meet Robin Valadares

[00:00:00] Robin: Concepts that work for people, especially now in this day and age, is automation. Take yourself out of the equation. So if you get paid on every Friday, automatically set up some sort of debit from your account to your investment account or your savings account, where you are not the middle person. It’s gone without you touching it.

[00:00:21] Robin: So it’s out of sight, out of mind.

[00:00:30] Linzy: 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.

[00:00:51] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is Robin Valadares. Robin is a physiotherapist and a personal finance educator. He is the founder of Financially Fulfilled Physio, which he would like to note, do not be tricked by the name. He works with all kinds of therapists and health practitioners.

[00:01:10] Linzy: And today Robin and I dig more into the personal side of finances. We talk about some of the barriers that stop folks from working on their personal finances, much of which come from, surprise, our education that we receive. We talk about some of the behaviours that we can have as humans managing money that make no sense, but are common, and some interventions, behaviours, let’s say, to put in place, to start to break

[00:01:38] Linzy: habits of overspending, or oversaving. Yeah, what are some key things that you can put in place to stop yourself from doing things that you regret later? Robin and I get into that today, as well as how to set yourself up to do the things that you want to do. to do, that might be difficult to do.

[00:01:54] Linzy: And then we also talk about some of the systems to manage personal finances, ways to stay in touch with your personal finances, yeah, lots of great pieces here today about the personal side of money for health practitioners. Here is my conversation with Robin Valadares. 

[00:02:22] Linzy: So Robin, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:25] Robin: Hi, Linzy. Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:26] Linzy: I’m very excited to have you. We share some very specific identifiers in being health practitioners who have bridged off into finance and who also live in a very specific region of Ontario.

[00:02:39] Robin: That’s correct; odd how similar that is. 

[00:02:41] Linzy: It’s nice! So Robin, before we start to dig in today, can you tell folks a little bit about yourself and what you do?

[00:02:49] Robin: Absolutely, thank you, so traditionally I’m a physiotherapist, here in Southern Ontario. I’ve been practicing for the last 13 odd years in private practice. Going into practice, I realized that I had no knowledge on personal finance or money because it wasn’t really brought up in any former traditional education that I encountered.

[00:03:05] Robin: And despite doing it for a few years on my own, the pandemic gave me a great ability because the clinic was closed at the time to really focus on myself and the work pursue a passion that I’ve been mulling over, but didn’t necessarily have the time or the impetus to do so. So I developed the business called Financially Fulfilled Physio, at that time in 2020, geared towards healthcare practitioners, therapists, on their relationship with money and how to let money use for yourselves so you can improve your life and have a more meaningful or fulfilled life.

[00:03:32] Linzy: I think, COVID, despite the fact that it was awful and terrible, I did notice there was this window that opened, right? To like, do these other things, to pivot or explore something that maybe you wouldn’t have had time or permission to do otherwise. This was your COVID side hustle, that has grown.

[00:03:52] Robin: Correct. When in your adult life were you given the permission, whether out of your hands, to pursue something that you wanted to but couldn’t 

[00:03:58] Robin: do? Otherwise you make some sort of excuse saying I’m too busy, X, Y, and Z. 

[00:04:01] Robin: I was literally sitting at home watching YouTube videos for hours. Because I have things to do!

[00:04:06] Linzy: Might as well build this second business. So I am curious then in the work that you’ve done with healthcare professionals, what do you find are some of the biggest financial challenges that they face?

[00:04:17] Robin: I think as tactical as it is working with money, I think it’s the mindset piece that people really struggle with. It’s the concept where when you’re in healthcare, the majority of us, can’t speak for everybody, but we get into the job because it’s rewarding to help people improve their lives, whether it’s physically or mentally.

[00:04:31] Robin: So oftentimes we put their needs above our own because school has taught us to do so. But there’s a point in your career, whether it’s earlier or later, that you realize that it’s not sustainable to keep yourself second on the priority ladder. Where you realize, hey, I can’t do this forever, nor do I want to.

[00:04:46] Robin: I have to pursue other options or live maybe a more balanced or integral life, but that’s where money comes in because it’s the heart of all our decisions. But if we don’t have that relationship with money and think about it as a second nature, not the primary focus, then we realize that, hey, we can’t do this. We push it off saying it was going to work out in the end, and we start later in life and we know the benefits and the detriments of not compounding well, how that affects you later on.

[00:05:10] Robin: So I think mindset is probably the biggest challenge that we struggle with as healthcare practitioners and therapists.

[00:05:16] Linzy: Yeah, certainly. I mean, I think there is a commonality amongst most healthcare professions. It’s about taking care of your clients. It’s about, like, maximizing your schedule, getting as many folks in as possible, whatever that looks like.

[00:05:26] Linzy: I’m sure as a physio, you see way more folks in a day than I would ever see as a mental health therapist But it’s really just this, like, give, that we’re trained in, without getting that education. Folks who listen to the podcast have heard. You know, I talk about this many times because it’s so foundational, that it’s, not only do you often come into these fields because you care about other people and you want to help, so you’re already a helper type, but then the education that we get just reinforces, like just help people focus on being good at these things.

[00:05:53] Linzy: Don’t really worry about yourself. The money will follow. Or don’t even think about the money. It’s just not even spoken of. 

[00:05:59] Robin: Correct. 

[00:05:59] Robin: It’s like a noble pursuit, but then we realized that life doesn’t really reward everything as you’d want it. You have to take some sort of action on yourselves, whether you entrust your finances to a professional, you learn about yourself. I think the key focus is getting some sort of knowledge base and taking immediate action. Can’t push it off.

[00:06:14] Linzy: Yeah For folks then who are in this space of noting that they’re working, working, working, they haven’t been paying attention to these things and you focus in on personal finances, more than I do. I tend to say in the business space, you’re looking at personal finances.

[00:06:26] Linzy: So thinking about, you know, retirement and paying for schooling and paying down debt, those kinds of things. How do you suggest that folks start to address some of those barriers that are in the way of even starting to think about these things?

[00:06:39] Robin: Awesome question, because I get this often. I think there’s two points to look at it. One is a snapshot in time where you currently are, and then think about your future self as a secondary point. We’ve all gone through goal setting, whether it’s smart goals, but we often don’t do it for ourselves. We do it for our clients in terms of what we want to do.

[00:06:54] Robin: So I think, hey, where do I want to I see myself in X amount of years, whether it is on a beach, or working in a side job, or working in the practice you’re doing, maybe not many hours, and how do I work back from that goal to today, the present? And then you got to take a snapshot thing. Where are you financially?

[00:07:09] Robin: In terms of your house, how is it set up? Not a physical house, but your financial house in order. What are your expenses like? What are your incomes like? What are your debts like? And where can I attribute certain allocations of money based on my goals? And for me, it was a challenge because when you have to take a deep look into your own finances, you reveal to yourself a deeper part of yourself that exists, but you pay no attention to. What are my habits like? Show me where your habits are, I show you where your money’s going, right?

[00:07:33] Robin: So whether it’s Starbucks I might spend it on, Lululemon pants, takeout… Whatever it is, I’m putting those needs instead of my own and my future self so if you understand where you are starting from and then where you’re going, it really helps you in that trajectory or that journey to reach those goals.

[00:07:46] Linzy: Right. So really, yeah, connecting with that future self and what they need, so setting yourself up for them, but I’m also hearing, becoming much clearer on where’s your money actually going. Cause this is something that I hear often and I’m sure you too, is like, I’m working so hard.

[00:08:00] Linzy: I’m making the best money I’ve ever made. I have nothing to show for it. Right? Like the money disappears. But the money’s going somewhere and I am curious, yeah, like what are some of the trends that you see in those behaviors? Where is the money going for many people? You mentioned Starbucks, Lululemon, Takeout.

[00:08:15] Robin: I think it’s a clone of lifestyle creep and for those who aren’t familiar with that concept, it’s a concept that when you’re early in practice, you might earn a certain amount. So you spend in kind of your earnings for the most part; you might not go into debt. But as you earn more, you might inherently, consciously or subconsciously, feel more wealthy

[00:08:31] Robin: and with more wealth comes the concept of keeping up with the Joneses where you feel more pressure to do what your neighbor’s doing, whether it’s taking your kids to Montessori school, buying a Range Rover, living in a certain neighborhood, and then that spend meets up with your increased earnings.

[00:08:45] Robin: So your difference, or your delta, between the two doesn’t change. It’s not like you earn more and spend less and then you have more to take home. You spend more and you have about the same, nothing changes…

[00:08:56] Linzy: Yeah, and that lifestyle creep is so insidious. I live it all the time. I know. I’ve been reflecting on that. I was just saying to my partner the other day, I remember in my 20s, I remember one tax year particularly where I got my tax return, and I had made 11, 000 that year. That was my income for the whole year!

[00:09:14] Linzy: I didn’t feel like I was, like, terribly poor, and I’m sure I had parental support. I think they would buy me a winter coat every couple years. That helps. Rent was cheaper; life was cheaper at that time but even still, I wouldn’t say, if I look at the difference in my earnings now, that I am actually like 10 times happier or more fulfilled than I was then by earning 10 times more money because the money just goes other places. I find for myself a lot of my expenses are about property ownership and like doing the work on the house that we haven’t done for the last few years, and it’s like, okay now we got to do the furnace and now we got to do the water heater, and we went on an insulation spree over the winter holidays, just insulating everything.

[00:09:50] Linzy: Taking care of things that do need taking care of but every single time we go to the Home Depot, we drop $150 bucks which is money that I never had in my 20s, and I never even thought of spending. But now I have the money, so I just spend it. We just go. We see something, we’re like, oh, that’s, yeah, that would solve a tiny problem that we have.

[00:10:04] Linzy: We’ll just buy it. Yeah, the money just disappears.

[00:10:07] Robin: And it’s not typically a bad thing saying like you’re spending more frivolously, just like with your responsibilities later in life, whether it’s kids or in the home, they come with expenses. So you have to be smart, and judicious with your allocations, so you can actually

[00:10:19] Robin: achieve your goals rather than working hard and what I hear in my capacity maybe not the same with your capacity in your profession is that burnout’s a real thing less so in physical practice manually but a lot more in terms of the realm of mental health where you’re taking on the burden of working with an individual and then also living life on your schedule where you might have other issues you’re dealing with too.

[00:10:38] Linzy: Yes, absolutely. And so we want to make sure that money is actually taking care of you, and helping you build stability, so that you can be well while doing this really demanding work. So I’ve been doing a little bit of reading about economics that was my, like, geeky reading that I did over, the winter break

[00:10:53] Linzy: Robin and I are recording this shortly after the winter break, so I’m still getting my feet under me, missing my days on the couch. I read two books about economics over the break. One was _How Economics Explains the World_ by Andrew Lee, which was excellent,

[00:11:05] Linzy: in terms of a primer on just like this is economic theory. This is how economics explains these things that seem disparate and disconnected. They actually are all explained by the way that money works and the way that people work. But then the second book I picked up is on behavioral economics, which is a book called _Predictably Irrational_, which is a great

[00:11:23] Linzy: primer on behavioral economics. And it’s about the fact that like, yeah, sure, we have these theories of what should happen and what makes sense, but like, people are not rational. People are irrational, right? And we make decisions all the time that don’t actually make sense on paper, but that like, emotionally makes sense.

[00:11:40] Linzy: So I’m curious, for you, like, how do you suggest that folks start to work with this side of things, like these financial behaviors, these like psychologically based behaviors that that lead us to to overspend or over save and do things that don’t actually make sense for us.

[00:11:57] Robin: And it’s a tricky concept because it’s really your ability to take a step back and watch yourself in 3D from like a bird’s eye view of how you react to certain decisions, but it takes some introspection and some maturity to do so. And I think it’s if you know yourself well and say, look, I’m always an impulse buyer

[00:12:12] Robin: wherever I’m at the dollar store, that last aisle, I’m buying chips and candy. Don’t know why, because I’m waiting in line to check out, but if I didn’t have to wait, I wouldn’t buy it. 

[00:12:18] Linzy: hmm.

[00:12:18] Robin: A concept that works for people, especially now in this day and age, is automation. Take yourself out of the equation. So if you get paid on every Friday, automatically set up some sort of debit from your account to your investment account or your savings account, where you are not the middle person.

[00:12:32] Robin: It’s gone without you touching it so it’s out of sight, out of mind. Another skill set is having maybe a 24 hour rule, seven day, or a 30 day rule where I think I want to buy a set of these nice pants. I’m going to wait 24 hours before I purchase it. I’ll put it in my cart. And if I feel emotionally in that position where I want it versus where I need it, then maybe I’ll purchase. Then going out to seven days for something more expensive. Let’s say I’m going to buy a new couch and that’s going to be a hefty purchase. Do I actually want the blue color couch, or am I happy with this other type model? So it’s knowing yourself particularly well. And for me I work on delayed gratification, which I think is an absolute superpower. That’s the concept with the marshmallow test where you’re given something now but you can double it if you want to if you wait a little bit. And if you have that not only for material items, like you buy from Amazon, the delayed gratification is the pursuit of minimizing what you’re spending on right now with the goal of pulling that forward into the future, enjoying your life later on. The reverse is, hey, I’m going to pull from the future, like taking on debt, or buying things in the future but buy now, pay later, so I’m feeling gratified today. And I can assure you that’s not a good way to live because you’ll get to the point where hey, I’m 50 years old. I have nothing to my name. Now I have to work because I need to work versus I want to work and you don’t like the job as much.

[00:13:45] Linzy: Yeah yeah and that automation piece is really powerful and I remember Ramit Sethi, who has been a financial educator for, I don’t know, 15, 20 years now. He was kind of the first person that I really saw when I was starting to think about online business.

[00:13:58] Linzy: Cause he’s also in that space, but he talks about this, just like automate, automate, automate. Take yourself out of the middle. Because we know that we don’t make sense. Right? But we can sit and make a decision of like, okay, when I look at my year, this is how much my paychecks, I’m expecting them to be.

[00:14:12] Linzy: This is how much I want to save. I kind of joke with my students… Let the robots do your bidding. Because we know that if we get in the middle, we’re going to be like, ah, well, but this month, I actually could, really like, you know…there’s a sale at LLB and I’m talking about my own weak spots here.

[00:14:26] Linzy: For instance, this month in my own family, January is when we have to sign up for all the summer camps. As insane as that is, January is summer camp season so it’s like, I know there’s going to be like 1, 600 bucks of expenses coming out, which makes it really tempting to pull back and not contribute to those other goals, right?

[00:14:41] Linzy: But overall, if I still automate it and still contribute to those other goals, I will make it work, like, I will find a way to still pay off our cards at the end of the month. But yeah, if I put myself in the middle, I’m going to make it more complicated than it needs to be in a certain way. 

[00:14:55] Robin: And you know you make decisions differently if you’re tired, hungry, happier, like these emotions do affect our decision making skills. So take yourself out of it. 

[00:15:05] Linzy: Yeah, absolutely. It makes me think about the HALT, which I think is like, it’s actually for addiction, right? which is like hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Like, are you any of these things? Like, stop. 

[00:15:14] Robin: Then P.S. is pain and stress on top of that? 

[00:15:16] Linzy: Yeah, totally and so, you know, the delayed gratification piece, you’ve mentioned a couple like strategies here.

[00:15:22] Linzy: Let’s dig into those a little bit more, or brainstorm some ideas. Because in Money Skills for Therapists, I teach folks about budgeting, right? And budgeting in the business, is helpful to think about like, okay. How much in the year are you going to spend on professional development?

[00:15:33] Linzy: Because I find my folks who learn from me tend to be people who want to take every course that comes by. Every course… whether it’s clinical, whether it’s business, whether it’s on marketing, on Instagram, you know, is shiny and exciting and so for instance, setting a budget for the year to say, in the year I’m going to spend 3, 000 total on trainings allows them to have, a plan for that money,

[00:15:54] Linzy: But there is also that in the moment of: I want this now, this is in front of me now. And what I’m hearing you suggest here is more like what I would think about as maybe money rules. Where you have a certain rule of how you behave to stop yourself from doing the things that are going to hurt you.

[00:16:11] Linzy: So I’m hearing that delaying is a money rule, and you mentioned delaying like a shorter or longer period of time. So can you give an example maybe for folks who are listening to whom this might be a new concept? What would be some concrete examples of those money rules? Like you mentioned for dollar amounts, different periods of time.

[00:16:27] Robin: Correct, so like smaller purchases, and it’s all relative depending on how you look at it. So let’s say I’m looking for a new set of pants, and I have plenty of pants at home, but there’s a new one on sale, and I’m like, oh, this looks good and summer’s coming down the corner.I want to buy these; I don’t need to buy these.

[00:16:42] Robin: So I, I look at ’em like, okay, is that a good deal? I’ll put it in my cart. Let’s say it’s 7:00 PM that night. I just ate, and I’m emotionally quite happy. Then I’ll wake up the next morning, take a look at the cart. I’m like, “These pants, they’re nice, they’re not needs, because I have plenty of pants.” So I’ll push it back. Can I allocate that $100 somewhere else that would better serve me than the set of pants. I know in four weeks time I might want another pair of pants because I’m trying to fill some sort of hole I’m not getting elsewhere. So I think purchasing or buying is going to buy my 

[00:17:11] Robin: happiness, and it doesn’t. 

[00:17:12] Linzy: Right, yeah, well, and that’s such a great example, and also you know, an insight to that piece underneath. It makes me think about Gabor Mate, he’s a Canadian doctor. You know him. Yeah, he’s brilliant. And he has that book about addiction called _In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts_, which is about his work in Vancouver, working with folks with severe, severe addiction.

[00:17:32] Linzy: And the hungry ghost is a Buddhist concept, right? Of like this kind of hole at the center of us and, you know, what I’m hearing you refer to here is that what I think about as, you know, a hungry ghost kind of thing where, like, yeah, we’re trying to fill something that really isn’t about pants.

[00:17:45] Linzy: It’s not about the pants, and the pants are not going to make it better. There’s some other emotional need there and so stopping to identify that is something I’ve talked to my students about. The phrase that I use sometimes is like, what is the need under the want? 

[00:17:57] Linzy: I remember one of my students’ pants being the exact example during the pandemic she was like, just kept buying black stretchy pants and it’s like, how many pairs of pants can one woman really wear? You already have more pants than days of the week, but what is it about?

[00:18:09] Linzy: And it’s like the black stretchy pants are about comfort, right? And permission to relax. Something being softer or easier because the pandemic as a parent, especially, is really hard. Your kids are at home; things are uncertain. There’s a lot of stress. So it’s like, okay, it’s not really about pants.

[00:18:22] Linzy: Right? It’s about needing comfort and reassurance and permission to take care of yourself. So stopping to, to name that. And I’m curious for yourself, you know, in the work you’ve done with folks around personal finance, what do you see as, like, some of those holes that people are trying to fill by buying things?

[00:18:39] Robin: I think one of the components is societal pressure to look a certain way, act a certain way, because of your profession and whether that’s hey, I have to make sure that I have the latest phone, the latest computer to do my charting on. I have to look a certain way and be dressed out in a certain way because if I don’t I’m looked down upon based on my peers. It might not be as pertinent in our profession of being manual therapists for the most part but other fields, let’s say you’re a physician There’s definitely that sense of: hey I’m a certain status, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously and I have to act and behave like that status because society deems that people in this profession look a certain way. It’s getting over that concept. 

[00:19:19] Robin: And you’ve got to be like a contrarian to do so. You have to say, hey I don’t care what society deems. I know my worth. I know what I can provide. I can look presentable but I don’t have to look very expensive and presentable, and it’s going to take for my future self to look at a certain way right now.

[00:19:31] Linzy: Mm hmm. Right, yeah, because that’s where you’re really paying the cost is when you are doing something to fit in that you can’t actually afford, right? You’re stealing from your future to have that certain car or, and cars are something that I think about a lot because cars are something that really don’t matter to my partner and I.

[00:19:46] Linzy: I’ve been lucky to marry somebody who also is like, eh, why would we buy new cars? That’s crazy, but that’s a great example of something that costs just so much more than almost anything else you can purchase. It’s second only to homes in terms of the amount of money you spend, and yet folks will make quick snap decisions because it’s shiny, it’s pretty, it’s like your neighbor’s car down the street and then spend $50,000 of money that they don’t have. I mean, I don’t know anybody who buys a car in cash, so committing to a loan for 10 or 20 years.

[00:20:17] Linzy: And we have a young friend who recently bought an electric vehicle and when we did the math with him. He’s paying almost double for this vehicle, which is already not a cheap vehicle, but the money seems cheap, but you’re actually just costing your future self money, you end up paying twice as much for the car in the end.

[00:20:34] Robin: On an asset that depreciates. On money now that you could put to work and compound, that we know money today is a lot more valuable than money tomorrow because of inflation.

[00:20:41] Linzy: Yes. Absolutely, yes, yeah, and let’s talk about that concept for a bit because I’ve talked about that on the podcast in the past. But this compounding piece, because this is something that is much more relevant in personal finance than it is in business finance, because business finance, usually we’re not investing in terms of investing, you know, in stocks, right?

[00:20:56] Linzy: We’re investing in ourselves, we’re investing in our team, but the money works a little bit differently, but yeah, let’s talk about compounding and the value of taking action now. 

[00:21:06] Robin: Absolutely. Two things you’ll see with any sort of graph on or compound interest calculator is the key variable is to start early because time is your superpower. The time will outweigh certain additions to your investment accounts later on. For example, let’s say you started 20 years old and you’re only investing $1,000 a month, because what 20-year old has $10,000 to invest a month, right?

[00:21:25] Robin: But let’s say that same person, I’ll call him Jack, goes up against a lady named Jill, starting at age 30, or even age 40, with 5 to 10 times more initially than Jack did. Guess who, at the age of 65, is going to have more money? Not Jill, even though she has 5 or 10 times more than Jack’s starting amount, because he started 10 years or 20 years earlier.

[00:21:45] Robin: So time is a huge variable with compounding. We struggle with this as humans because we usually think linearly. Our brains don’t work very exponentially. So the first 10 years of investing, you’re not going to see a huge amount of growth. But I assure you, the last 10 years, if it’s 30 or 40 years, is huge growth, and whatever you do now will impact later. So that’s the first one, starting early. The second one is do not stop. Contribute often and it doesn’t mean that you have to contribute 100 every single month. Something as little as 10 a week, 20 a week, will compound. So you have to contribute often, don’t stop investing, and start early. Those are the two variables that really help your compound growth.

[00:22:23] Linzy: Right, yeah, and that starting early, can be tricky to hear if you’re 45 and you’re like, damn it. But basically, it starts today. It’s kind of like that saying about “the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago.” The second best time is today. Because it really is like that kind of visual right of what seems so small today over 10 years, it becomes huge, and just huger and huger all the time. So yeah, and I love that idea of “just start with something,” right? Like even if it’s 20 bucks a week, cause what I see is when we start with something like 20 bucks a week, is we also see ourself doing the thing, which in itself has really positive like mental health impacts of just seeing yourself taking action, even if it’s not the ideal action, even if ideally you should be setting aside

[00:23:04] Linzy: $1,000, $2,000 a month, and you’re only setting aside $100, you’re still building that machine, you’re building that pathway, and as more money becomes available, it’s going to be easier and easier to contribute to those investments. But as you say, too, time is your greatest factor, so putting aside 20 a week this year is going to serve you better than setting aside a few hundred bucks, 10 or 20 years from now.

[00:23:27] Robin: Exactly. You build that habit. And I heard a quote yesterday that might be quite pertinent today is, “if you focus on doing the hard things, the hard habits, life will be easier on you. If you focus on the easy habits, life will be hard on you.” And this is a good concept of that. You’ve got to do the hard things if you want a better life.

[00:23:41] Linzy: Right, yeah, and automate those things. So you don’t have to be manually making that decision, over and over again because that’s something, too, in the behavioral economics book that I’m reading that he talks about is like the pain of spending.

[00:23:51] Linzy: There’s a pain to spending money. So if you automate it, you don’t have to actually make that move right? Like it’s your past self who is thinking about the future has set it up so it automatically happens and you don’t have to actively make that decision, over and over again.

[00:24:06] Robin: Exactly. And this might speak to the conversation you had with Julie recently was how money that you earned is treated differently than money that is given to you. So how do you allocate that effectively? When you know you’ve earned this, you put the time and effort in, you know how much that costs in your personal life.

[00:24:19] Robin: Don’t mistrust it and be frivolous with it. Just like if you have credit cards, you’re like, I’m using my credit card, I’m not handing over cash, therefore it’s not real money because I can’t see it or touch it. I’m going to spend it differently. Being mindful of how you’re spending. 

[00:24:30] Linzy: Yeah and I think, you know, being in touch, as you say, with the energy that went into earning this money, like this money is, a distillation of your time and energy, right? Like you gave up X amount of your time and your emotional energy, if you’re a mental health therapist, that you didn’t have for yourself and your family, to earn this money. So respect that, right. and use it in a way that actually is going to make your life better. which maybe another pair of Lululemon pants is not going to do, maybe, I don’t know. Depends how many pants you wear in a day. Not too many.

[00:25:01] Linzy: So, I’m curious then, you know, thinking about this piece about our behaviors, what are some habits or routines that you’ve seen really working for folks to help them build wealth? Are there other things you would add to the list of: how do we really start to turn around the way that money is working for us?

[00:25:18] Robin: Lovely. And to go back to the analogy we learned earlier about starting now in terms of snapshot and think about personal finance as a journey. Think about you on an actual boat, and you’re sailing across the sea. What do you have to do to ensure you achieve that goal of reaching your destination? The main thing you have to do is check in often with yourself. You’re not going to check the compass once when you set sail and not check it again until you get there. Makes zero sense you’ll be off course, especially if you’re off course by a little bit.

[00:25:42] Robin: It will compound that result in terms of the aperture of that direction, so what I mean by that is what I do with myself, and I implore to my students or my clients is have these check ins with yourself and make it a frequent thing whether it’s once every two weeks, once a month. So, you know, hey, I’ve done this habit.

[00:25:58] Robin: Now, what’s the repercussions of it? Positive or negative? Have I developed a certain trajectory to my goal? Whether I can reconcile my accounts, I can make sure the allocation is there. Do I still want to invest in this? Do I still want to save in this? Do I still want this goal? But if you don’t check on it, you’re going to wait 12 months and you’re like, Ah, I should have gone back and checked it because I don’t want that right now, but I’ve wasted six months or 12 months of compounding where I haven’t checked in. For me. It’s every two weeks. Saturday morning cup of coffee. I’m there from eight to nine o’clock. I’m knocking this out because I know at the end of the year. I’ve achieved my goals based on what I’ve done during the year.

[00:26:29] Linzy: Right yeah and it’s that you’re not talking about looking at it every day or every hour. I’m hearing: every two weeks. This is what I would call money time or a money date. If you’re partnered, it’s also a good thing to do with a partner to look together at your money, but just like checking in on it.

[00:26:45] Linzy: I think setting and forgetting it in terms of automations is helpful to have good behaviors, but then also check to make sure that you’re actually getting what you want out of these things, is what I’m hearing. Like: is this still even making sense for where you are?

[00:26:57] Robin: Yeah, because our decisions change all the time. Remember if you decided last January 1st, and where you decided maybe June 1st, and December 1st. I think your decision might have changed over the course of the year because life has changed.

[00:27:06] Linzy: Yes. Right.

[00:27:07] Robin: You should update it accordingly. 

[00:27:09] Linzy: That makes sense. I am curious, too, Robin, with that, do you have any particular tools that you like or that you recommend to your students for personal finance? Like, are you a fan of budgeting software? Is it spreadsheets? Is it having things written down on paper?

[00:27:23] Linzy: Like, what does the actual data sorting through look like?

[00:27:26] Robin: I love the question. For me, I’m old school and what I generally do is when I write stuff down or type things down, I feel that pain a little more than when I get a spreadsheet of where it’s gone. What I mean by that is when I say, okay, I spent X amount of dollars, I’m typing into my budget on Saturday morning that I spent this, I have to actually actualize what I’m doing there. Realize that, hey, $175 going to this allocation. When I use a software, it takes the effort out of it. It’s more convenient, but you’ll see all their items. You’re like, oh yeah, I forgot that I spent X amount there. Oh, I forgot about that because it’s easy to forget about these things.

[00:27:58] Robin: But at the same time, it does take that time and or speed and convenience. So it’s up to you and how you really work. For me, I write it down. I make it a manual process, but that’s more time and effort. For an individual getting started, you might sync up to a certain platform where it already downloads based on the feeds you have and then you can have a little summary and that’s your first foray into knowing where you’re going and then you can decide whether that’s a strategy you want to do yourself, manually or automated.

[00:28:19] Linzy: Yeah. Yeah, because what I find with the manual, as you say, is like, it does give you that real processing. Like, it almost like it moves through you, the information, right? Like, you see it, comes through your brain, has to come through your arm and out your hand. So there’s a real processing of like, oh, I spent, woo, yeah, how does that feel for me?

[00:28:36] Linzy: So there’s a real kind of actual physicality to it. But the downside, you know, that I find, and as you’re mentioning, is, because it’s manual, sometimes folks fall behind. And then when they fall behind, that can be overwhelming and that can be a reason to avoid. So yeah, I think, yeah, it’s going to depend on what is going to be the bigger payoff for you.

[00:28:52] Linzy: Like, is it having it automated so that it’s there for you? Or is it going to be the value of you, like, really manually processing it? So, yeah, and that changes.

[00:29:01] Linzy: When I was in my 20s, I went away to university with a spreadsheet that I had made and I would manually put in all the stuff that I had spent and had these different little boxes. It’s like, this is my eating out money. This was my clothes and I would type it in. And yeah, I was definitely very in touch with my numbers, but it was manual and I was in my 20s and probably single at that time and just going to university, and didn’t have a kid, and I had time to do that. Now I wouldn’t necessarily see that for my life and my lifestyle now. That wouldn’t necessarily be feasible or a great use of my time. So I’ve got these automated systems, but I do totally feel what you’re saying, it does become a little bit easier to breeze by things when it’s automated.

[00:29:38] Robin: Super. Especially let’s say it goes three or six months. It’s down the line. Oh yeah, I forgot I spent that. Can you remember the purchase now from eight months ago on a random Tuesday? I couldn’t tell you. 

[00:29:48] Linzy: No. No. No. Sometimes we have things come into our You Need a Budget and I’m like, what is that? And it was from three days ago. You know, life can be busy. It’s easy to forget. So there are pros and cons of different kinds of systems. Robin, thank you so much, for coming onto the podcast today.

[00:30:02] Linzy: It’s been wonderful having you. Thank you for bringing these personal finance insights to us and for folks who want to hear more from you, who want to get further into your world, where can they find you and follow you?

[00:30:14] Robin: Absolutely. Thank you again, Linzy, for having me on. Anytime I get to speak about this stuff, as you probably learned, I love talking about it. I’m really passionate about it because I think it really can impact your life. So if you want to learn more about me, I have a platform called Financially Fulfilled Physio.

[00:30:26] Robin: Just type that into Google or your search platform, you’ll find me there. I write on a weekly basis, on Sundays, just my forays into personal finance and hopefully can provide some value to the audience and then there’s some spreadsheets that I use or some things that might help you throughout the process, which you can find on my website, but that’s the main way to get ahold of me.

[00:30:42] Robin: If you want to email me, I’m quite open to email. It’s info at financiallyfulfilledphysio.com. 

[00:30:47] Linzy: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today, Robin.

[00:30:50] Robin: Welcome. Thanks everyone.

[00:31:02] I really appreciated Robin’s perspective today, and I especially appreciate his mentioning of some of those behaviors that you can put in place that support budgeting or intentional spending. I believe I’ve heard referred to before as like money rules, where it’s just a set guideline on how you make financial decisions.

[00:31:22] And I think especially when we’re prone to impulse decisions, and overspending, having just some clear guidelines for yourself of when X, then Y, can start to slow you down and get you out of those automatic behaviors that you don’t like, that aren’t serving you. So as he mentioned the idea of, if it’s a small purchase, let’s say if it’s less than,between 50 and a hundred dollars, you give yourself 24 hours. Put it in the cart or make a note of it, but come back to it 24 hours later and see, do you still want this thing?

[00:31:54] Or was that about an emotional need at the moment that you thought about buying it, but is no longer there, that has now been fulfilled in some other way. Cause you got a good sleep, you had a good meal, you had a good talk with a friend and suddenly that extra pair of pants doesn’t seem so important.

[00:32:06] Or as he said, with larger purchases, giving yourself an even longer timeline, right? Of, “I’m going to give myself a week to think about this couch.” Or sometimes in my own budget, I think about, “I’m going to put this next month.” We will decide next month if this is something that we want to buy.

[00:32:20] It’s not in this month’s budget, but we’ll make a budget category for it and we’ll see if we still care about it next month because often things that are exciting in a moment, aren’t so exciting later and it becomes clear with a little bit of space. That’s not actually a great use of my money. As Robin says, there’s somewhere else that would be better to spend my money.

[00:32:35] I’d rather see this money going towards my investments. I’d rather send this hundred bucks to my investments and see it go there instead of going to Amazon or I’d rather, buy this great gift for my partner, and see them take great joy for a bit, rather than buy something else that I don’t actually really want or need.

[00:32:51] So, lots of opportunity to be more mindful with your money and to start to align your money with your values when you practice just slowing down, stopping yourself, and thinking about what those roles could be for you is a great way to start with building these kinds of skills in terms of managing your money.

[00:33:10] So, so appreciate Robin for bringing forward that idea today. If you are enjoying the podcast, you can both follow me on Instagram @moneynutsandbolts and you can tell a friend about the podcast. Tell your physio friends, for instance, or other kinds of health practitioners who might be in a different field than you about the podcast. I’m really proud of this podcast and the conversations that we’re having here. I think that they are speaking to things that we don’t get to talk about too often, and I know there’s lots of folks out there who would benefit from hearing these conversations and hearing great people like Robin.

[00:33:46] So, please tell your friends and colleagues about the podcast that goes a long way to helping other folks be part of these conversations. Thanks so much for listening today.