[00:00:00] Ellie: “I did give myself a little bit of a raise, but it was like I was wanting to keep fudging the numbers to make the raise bigger. I think it’s also part of this as a newer business owner because last year was my first full calendar year in business, and so it’s almost like let’s get to Q1 and see what that tax payment is looking like. So I really am getting a better picture of what this is looking like.”

[00:00:26] 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] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today we have a coaching episode with Ellie Tripp. Ellie is a graduate of Money Skills for Therapists. She graduated about a year and a half ago. She’s an early career psychologist in solo practice, and she shares that she started her solo practice out of necessity when the group practice that she joined after postdoc was potentially closing.

[00:01:12] And she put here in brackets “due to financial mismanagement; they needed you.” She says, “Money Skills for Therapists help me get to where my practice finances don’t feel like a total mystery to me.” So in our conversation today, Ellie and I talked about this piece that, for her, is more around personal finances.

[00:01:27] She mentions, and what we focus on today, is around swinging between, “I can’t afford it.” Then like, “Whatever, I’m just going to make it work.” Right? These two extremes when it comes to making a spending decision, and Ellie and I dig into and explore where those stories might have came from, what she wants to believe now, and we look at both the mindset pieces around how she wants to think about and prioritize these things. Connecting with her values to know what is worth spending on, and then also going back to systems and numbers and grounding herself in her actual numbers for her practice, and figuring out what her practice can do for her now at this stage, into the second year of her private practice.

[00:02:09] Here is my coaching episode with Ellie Tripp.

[00:02:27] Linzy: So Ellie, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:30] Ellie: Thank you. Glad to be here.

[00:02:32] Linzy: So you are a graduate of Money Skills for Therapists. And can you tell me,

[00:02:36] remind me, how long ago did you finish up the course now?

[00:02:41] Ellie: I think it’s probably been about a year and a half. 

[00:02:44] Linzy: It doesn’t feel like that long.

[00:02:46] Ellie: No, it doesn’t.

[00:02:47] Linzy: Okay. Okay. So about a year and a half ago that you finished up the course, and you were mentioning off mic that what you wanted to chat with me about today is something that you, you wanted to talk about when we had our time together in the course, but we ended up talking about other stuff instead.

[00:03:01] Ellie: Yeah, yeah. I feel like I got into some money stories there, but then, like, so much focus on systems and, like, navigating that. And so this is something I’ve noticed both personally and professionally. it is like this thing where I’ll look at something that I think I really wanna do, a coaching program or a vacation or concert tickets or whatever, and I’ll think, oh no, I really can’t afford that.

[00:03:26] And then not necessarily with anything to do with actual numbers, .

[00:03:30] Linzy: Yes. Okay. ‘

[00:03:31] Ellie: cause heaven forbid we look at the data. I will switch into this. Screw it. Let’s make it happen. I can totally do this. And I hadn’t quite teased apart like what in the world is happening here and like how could I maybe slow this whole process down?

[00:03:47] Or whatever.

[00:03:49] Linzy: I’m curious, like, how much time is there between these two reactions? 

[00:03:54] Ellie: That’s a great question. That’s interesting. I feel like sometimes it could be mere moments. maybe depending on the volume of the excitement to do the thing. Of like, ooh, I really can’t make that happen right now. Screw it. We’re in. But then other times I think it, there’s maybe a little bit more lag time, and maybe a little bit more like slowing down, potentially looking at some numbers, but almost like trying to fudge them to really make them work when maybe they can’t actually, and or maybe they actually totally can, but I, it’s like the emotion is getting in the way of like objectively really looking at what makes sense.

[00:04:40] Linzy: Yes. Yes. Because I’m hearing like both of these reactions aren’t necessarily grounded in any data. like if you, if you’re going for the, fuck it, do it anyways reaction, maybe you’re looking at data, but only to support the fact that you already decided you want to do it. Okay, so, let’s focus on the first story first, which is the like, I can’t afford it. Can you like tell me more about I can’t afford it?

[00:05:04] Ellie: My brain was just like, well, isn’t that just like the story we tell ourselves right out the gate? It’s just like, I can’t afford it. I don’t know how much that’s actually grounded in any truth, but that seems like, especially if something is of a larger price

[00:05:18] tag.

[00:05:18] Linzy: Mm hmm. Okay. Okay. So, yeah. For you it’s like such a default story.

[00:05:23] That you’re like, well obviously, it’s just the truth.

[00:05:26] Ellie: Mhm.

[00:05:27] Linzy: Okay.

[00:05:28] Ellie: Mhm. Mhm.

[00:05:29] Linzy: And like, I’m just curious, do you notice, is there a certain price tag that triggers this reaction? Or can it also happen for smaller things?

[00:05:36] Ellie: I think it can happen for smaller things. Like, like if I’m thinking of something in my personal life, like a concert ticket. Probably if it’s like over a hundred dollars, I’m like, ooh, I don’t know that I can afford that, can’t afford that, or make some choices that make that totally doable on a semi regular basis.

[00:05:57] If it’s something like, like a business coaching program,

[00:06:02] I think that has evolved. I think prior, you know, I’m only a few years out of grad school, so I think as I was kind of starting my business and all of that. Anything over like a thousand dollars. I was like, gird your loins. Um, But now that I have like explored more of like what’s available in business coaching and like doing money skills for therapists and things like that Now it’s you know, it’s more like if it’s over two thousand dollars then i’m really starting to… not that i’m not getting stressed potentially about things that are under that amount But probably anything over that is when i’m really like I’m, not so sure

[00:06:42] Linzy: Yes. Okay, okay. So, that number was 2, 000, you said?

[00:06:49] Linzy: Okay. Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s an interesting point that you make that it’s, that has shifted for you, you know, based on where you are in business. So that’s an interesting reflection, right? Like that the story has changed where it lands. Okay, so that’s with business.

[00:07:02] There’s kind of this dollar amount. Personal, I’m hearing like if it’s something like concert tickets, then like more than a hundred bucks makes you pause. What is more than a hundred bucks that you would easily spend though? You know, like what, where’s the rules difference? What is definitely always worth more than a hundred bucks?

[00:07:19] Ellie: Vacations.

[00:07:20] Linzy: Okay. Yeah.

[00:07:22] Ellie: For sure. But then, yeah. So I was thinking, like, okay, so personal and concert tickets, that’s one example, but like, a vacation or something like that, I don’t know, between, Or like flights, like anytime it gets over 300, even if it’s like you’re flying to Europe or Right? it’s like that’s going to be more than, that’s going to be more than 300,

[00:07:44] Linzy: probably. You kind of hope it is at that point, frankly. like,

[00:07:47] Ellie: I know, right, exactly, yeah, like we don’t want the plane to crash, so it’s kind of interesting to think what the difference would be there,

[00:07:58] Linzy: Yes.

[00:07:59] Ellie: I’m not totally sure, yeah,

[00:08:00] Linzy: What I’m noticing is, and this is generally something I’ve noticed in myself too, is the story of I can’t afford that seems like it’s a story about money. Right? Like it’s just a dollar amount. I can’t afford that. Like I just don’t have that money. Right? But generally speaking, there’s going to be something else that we would turn around and see at the same price tag that, that story wouldn’t come up.

[00:08:21] Ellie: Right.

[00:08:21] Linzy: If you go to the grocery store, and you spend 110 on groceries, does I can’t afford that come up when you see your grocery bill? Yeah. So what’s different about those things?

[00:08:33] Ellie: Oh, just spending for my own enjoyment and fulfillment. How dare I? Interesting. Yeah. There’s the juice.

[00:08:42] Linzy: There you go. Okay. So tell me about the, like, how dare I.

[00:08:47] Ellie: Yeah, that’s interesting. I mean it just. It feels like, yeah, like if there, oh gosh, it’s such like, like if, if there’s some sort of sense of personal enjoyment, then there has to be some sort of like martyrdom associated with it. Or I don’t know if martyrdom is the right word, but like

[00:09:06] there’s some sort of,

[00:09:10] I should be depriving myself or I, I don’t even, yeah, sacrifice… do I deserve this?

[00:09:19] Is this like, like, I feel like this. This sort of feels like it connects to, that’s like, this is maybe a different coaching session, but like, like the stories around like being able to raise your fees as a therapist, and like, no, we’re supposed to just give it all away for free, and you’re in a giving profession, and so, and so it feels like that’s like another side of that coin.

[00:09:39] Linzy: yeah, those connections to that area too, because, what it makes me curious about is, for, for this part of you, the like, how if you enjoy something, it has to be… it sounds like there’s, you’re not allowed to just enjoy something. There has to be something that comes with it, even, we haven’t quite articulated exactly what it is, but like, something in the realm of martyrdom or sacrifice, or maybe having earned it, you have to have earned it.

[00:10:06] Ellie: Yeah, that feels right.

[00:10:08] Linzy: Okay. So, this idea that you can only enjoy things if you’ve earned them. Do you know where that came from? 

[00:10:18] Ellie: Well, honestly, where my brain immediately goes to is like, you know, getting your homework done so that then you could like, watch your… I mean, we got like a half hour of TV probably or something when I was little, so, before iPads and screen time being what it is… So there was kind of that or like, like you needed to fulfill all of your obligations before you could do the fun thing.

[00:10:40] Linzy: Right, and in this case, like, what would be the obligations that you’d have to fulfill before you’re allowed to, like, have a concert ticket or go on a trip that’s more than 300 plane

[00:10:49] ticket?

[00:10:50] Ellie: Right. So it would be a “worth it” trip. yeah, it’s kind of, I don’t know, there’s like almost this kind of unrealistic expectation that what? I’m supposed to have all my bills paid for the next six months and have six months saved and have this huge gigantic cushion before I can do anything enjoyable. But even as I’m saying it, I’m like, well, that’s not a nice way to live or realistic…

[00:11:21] Linzy: Logically, there’s other parts of you. It makes me think about, like, the ant and the grasshopper. Do you remember that story? It’s, it’s, I mean, I’ve been refreshed because I’ve read it to my five year old recently, but it’s like this story about, it’s summer and the ant is like working hard to like save up for the winter and the grasshopper is just like having fun and enjoying the summer.

[00:11:42] And you know, like they have some exchanges where basically the, the grasshopper is like, why are you working so hard?

[00:11:46] Like relax. It’s summer. Enjoy. And the ant’s like, no, no, I have to save up for the future. Like I have to be responsible. And then of course winter comes, and the grasshopper has no food and the ant has got a bunch of food and I’m sure depending on the version of the story, I’m sure in some dark Russian version, the grasshopper dies a terrible death. In the like sanitized American, North American version, the grasshopper like gets a little food from the ant, learns his lesson, and then the next summer learns that he should be, there’s a time for work and a time for play, that he should be working hard throughout the summer, even though it’s beautiful so he doesn’t starve to

[00:12:19] death. This is kind of the vibe it brings up for me, what you’re saying.

[00:12:24] Ellie: Yeah. Well, and what’s sort of flashing? I grew up in a, you know… We were comfortable and like, you know, my parents helped pay for, you know, pay for college and things like that. So it’s like, it’s not like, there was this big deprivation, but I do sort of remember like, if there was a big celebration dinner or a trip or something like that, it would be like, yeah, let’s do it.

[00:12:50] But then, oh, we need to like, be watching, like there was then sort of a, on the flip side of it, we need to be watching what we’re spending. And so it was kind of this like, well, wait, but we can… we want to do this or even like, I feel like, you know, some of the ways that love is shown in my family is like, no, let us buy the dinner, or like being able to give in those ways or give to charity and things like that, but then like also hearing like, Ooh, but you know, things are tight.

[00:13:24] And so kind of having these confusing messages. And never actually talking about any of the, like, actual numbers. Like, we didn’t really talk about that.

[00:13:32] Linzy: Like, it sounds like enjoyment was always coupled with some sort of stress. Or there was like a hardship that had to come with it, or that would get coupled with it in the lead up to something that was enjoyable.

[00:13:43] Ellie: hmm. Yeah.

[00:13:45] Linzy: Or even it sounds like in the, potentially, in the wake of something, like a gift, there might then also be mention of financial stress.

[00:13:52] Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. Like, we’re happy to do this, or we’re really excited to do this, but also,

[00:13:57] ooh, like, biting our nails about it.

[00:13:59] Linzy: Yes.

[00:14:00] And this, this is your parents?

[00:14:01] Ellie: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:14:04] Linzy: Do you see this in other family members as well?

[00:14:07] Ellie: I’m trying to think. Part of me is thinking, I don’t think we’ve talked openly enough about money for me to really know.

[00:14:14] Linzy: Yeah. that’s true, eh?

[00:14:15] Ellie: Yeah.

[00:14:18] Linzy: Okay. So there’s this pairing that has happened in your family. Which you’ve

[00:14:21] experienced for decades, probably the whole time you’ve known them, where it’s like anytime there’s something enjoyable, there’s also going to be this stress or hardship that is paired with it.

[00:14:32] Okay, so thinking about that, Ellie, like zooming out

[00:14:38] with your adult brain, because this is something you absorbed all through childhood, I’m sure, and into your teen years and twenties. With your adult brain, what do you notice about that story, thinking about your family? Hmm?

[00:14:51] Ellie: I don’t know if this is necessarily what you’re asking for, but really what I’m thinking is I don’t want to keep doing

[00:14:57] Linzy: Mmm hmm. That’s not for you. 

[00:15:01] Ellie: Yeah, it feels like then it’s hard to be able to just enjoy things, and because we didn’t actually talk about the numbers, like, I don’t actually know, were we, were we really stressed then about paying for groceries?

[00:15:15] It didn’t feel like it, but I don’t know, I have no idea. And that’s also, like, thanks for protecting me from that, and also talking about it could be helpful. but I think, for myself, like, I’m thinking about doing this, this next level of clinical training. And turns out, because of Money Skills for Therapists, I actually set aside way too much money for taxes.

[00:15:40] Linzy: Nice.

[00:15:41] Ellie: Which is a great, great problem to have because then I’m like, and I’m just kind of leaving it there as like a,

[00:15:47] Let’s just kind of keep it there. Let’s get through the first quarter and make sure this story is true. I still am holding too much for taxes,

[00:15:55] Linzy: Okay.

[00:15:55] Ellie: but also it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like how I treat my tax return.

[00:15:59] I just pretend it’s never going to happen. So then it’s super bonus money when I get it. So I’m kind of treating it like that. But in my head, I’m like, Oh, but okay. This, this training is, I mean, it’s like 5, 000 plus stuff. Like it’s a big clinical training.

[00:16:13] Linzy: Significant, yeah.

[00:16:15] Ellie: But I’m like, Oh, but I actually kind of already have a couple thousand dollars just sitting there that I’ll be able to just shuffle into that.

[00:16:24] And like, there’s something about that. It just like, my whole body relaxes where I’m like, I really want to do that. I think it’ll be great for me clinically and like personally, just based on what I’ve heard from people and what they get out of it.

[00:16:38] It’s actually based on the data and the numbers. I’m not depriving myself and like, I can still pay all my business expenses.

[00:16:46] And so there’s something… so I think that story is like,

[00:16:51] yeah, I’m good with that. I don’t really want to live in that space anymore.

[00:16:57] Linzy: No, and what I’m hearing is you’ve now built skills and systems that mean that you also don’t have to live in that place, right? Because that place is very much about having a purely emotional relationship with money. That is, that there isn’t any sense of like, oh, actually there’s more than enough.

[00:17:12] Or like, oh, but we have like this extra paycheck coming next month. And, you know, we’ve already hit this goal. Like there’s, there’s no grounding there. Like it’s all the emotion around money. The feast or famine. around money with none of the actual data. But what I’m hearing is you actually have systems and skills that mean that you do have data, and you actually do have money set aside because you’ve over saved a bit for taxes, which is way better than super under saving.

[00:17:38] Ellie: Yes, best problem.

[00:17:40] Linzy: So there’s like a couple thousand that’s already there that you earmarked for taxes, and now that you’ve done your return, you see that it’s extra that could go right into this training. Mm hmm.

[00:17:50] Okay.

[00:17:51] Ellie: And I guess where my mind, my brain goes is like, I’ve done all this work on the business money side of things, but then at home, for me personally, like, I’ve been able to give myself a little bit of a raise, and still would like to be bringing home a little bit more. So maybe that’s also looking at that stack of extra tax money and going, okay, well, could we also split that between professional you and personal you.

[00:18:19] Linzy: Also, yeah, if, if you’ve over saved, there can be a rechecking of your percentages and your system that you’re using, right? And then you can see, yeah, is that money that stays in the business, or is that more paycheck for you on a monthly basis, based on now that you’ve seen how your taxes have actually shaken out? So there’s opportunity there to also give you just more month to month stability and comfort. 

[00:18:44] Ellie: Yeah, I think so.

[00:18:46] Linzy: With this story then, you know, that you inherited, that you know you don’t want, the like, kind of feast or famine story, the like, you know, we can’t do it, let’s do it, like this pairing that’s happened,

[00:18:57] what do you want to believe instead, Ellie, about making financial decisions?

[00:19:02] Ellie: I want to ground my money decisions in actual numbers and in alignment with my values in like a really mindful and intentional way.

[00:19:15] Linzy: Okay.

[00:19:16] Linzy: So, thinking about concert tickets and travel, which are two things that I also like, let’s talk about how those connect to your values. How are concert tickets relevant to your values as a person?

[00:19:31] Ellie: Yeah, I mean, I can be somebody that is maybe a little too like perfectionistic and works too hard sometimes, or just, or then also is just like whatever just going through life and I… Like concert tickets light me up. Like live music lights me up.

[00:19:51] Whether that is me just going to see somebody I really love and I go by myself and like It’s the best, or I get a group of people together and we like, dance like idiots and have a great time, and so it’s like, also a connection, community sort of thing.

[00:20:07] Linzy: Okay. So I’m hearing there’s connection and community if you go with someone else. What is the value associated with that first part you talked about where like you can tend to over, you know, work a little too hard. What is it that concerts then bring into your life?

[00:20:21] Ellie: Joy.

[00:20:22] Linzy: Okay.

[00:20:22] Okay. So I’m hearing values here of joy.

[00:20:25] Connection.

[00:20:27] Ellie: Mm hmm. Like Freedom.

[00:20:29] Linzy: Yeah. Okay. Joy, connection, freedom. And what about travel? What values does that connect to? 

[00:20:45] Ellie: Same thing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And like a sense, sense of like adventure,I don’t know, those are all things that make me feel more alive. 

[00:20:46] Linzy: Yeah. And that’s what I’m thinking of. It’s like, it’s living. Right? You’re giving yourself experiences of like deep aliveness. And that’s how I feel about live music as well. And I have a list of concerts that I regret not attending.

[00:21:01] Ellie: Yeah.

[00:21:01] Linzy: Because often bands don’t come around 50 times, you know, like it’s like, and especially like being in Canada, you know, I’m not in New York City where every band hits Toronto, right?

[00:21:12] Ellie: Right.

[00:21:13] Linzy: you know, sometimes it’s exciting if somebody even crosses the border, on their tour. So what I’m hearing here is almost to like seizing opportunity, like seize the day, seizing life, and actually giving yourself those experiences of joy and connection.

[00:21:28] Ellie: Mm hmm. And I think that there’s a piece of, like, so, in my personal YNAB right now, it’s like, I’m going to France in May to see a cousin, and Taylor Swift. And,

[00:21:40] Linzy: Nice!

[00:21:40] Nice!

[00:21:41] Ellie: so, get the package deal.

[00:21:43] Linzy: There you go. Mmhmm.

[00:21:48] Ellie: Traveling to Denver in June for a friend’s wedding, and like, so there, there are things on the budget that are, like, grounded at all of those things. And, feels a little bit like living outside my

[00:22:00] Linzy: Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Yeah.

[00:22:02] Ellie: And so, there’s like the joy/ adventure / doing the things that make me feel alive… and also then wanting to stay grounded in reality of like car payments, student loans, medical bills. Those are real.

[00:22:21] Linzy: They are real. They are real. And if you don’t pay them, it doesn’t go well. yes, yes. And yeah, like what I’m hearing here is this, Inside of you, and I’ve experienced you as a very, like, you can come across as very, like, focused, you take care of things, you’re like serious in terms of like, I’ve never once thought like, Ellie’s kind of reckless.

[00:22:42] She might want to rein it in a little. That’s never occurred to me in the time that we worked together when you were in the course, but what I’m hearing is like there, you know, there is that, that side of you that’s like very much, you want to make sure you’re taking care of things.

[00:22:54] Ellie: Mm hmm.

[00:22:54] Linzy: But then there’s this other side that’s about like joy and living and like being in, in the moment now. Right? Because I always think about that, too, is like we don’t know how long life is going to be. We don’t know what our life is going to look like as we get older. Right? So I also think about that now, like living while you’re young and healthy and all of those

[00:23:09] Ellie: hmm. Mm

[00:23:10] Linzy: And something that I’m curious about is you mentioned, you know, that you ended up saving more for taxes than you needed. There might be opportunity in the business. Like, can you revisit your business numbers and just reassess whether you could give yourself a raise at this moment?

[00:23:27] Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that’s helpful because I think… I did give myself a little bit of a raise, but it was like I was wanting to keep fudging the numbers to make the raise bigger. I think it’s also part of this as a newer business owner because last year was my first full calendar year in business, and so it’s almost like let’s get to Q1 and see what that tax payment is looking like. So I really am getting a better picture of what this is looking like now that it is more….  Because I do, I wonder if I do start to kind of stockpile money in the business out of fear.

[00:24:10] Ellie: And then at home, that then makes the concert tickets and the fun things feel like they go in the fuck it bucket, where I’m just like, Well, there’s the car payment and all this, but like, fuck it, we’re going make it happen.

[00:24:25] Linzy: you know, I am hearing that there is planning for trips, right? Like you are saving money, but it doesn’t sound to me like there’s necessarily like a concert ticket line in your budget at the moment.

[00:24:34] Ellie: No.

[00:24:35] Linzy: That’s part of it too, right? What I’m picturing for your budget is either a line that’s concert tickets or that’s just like straight up like joy.

[00:24:42] Here’s my like two hundred dollars a month of joy and maybe that’s a concert, and maybe it’s dinner with friends, and maybe it’s some other spontaneous thing, to make sure that that is actually getting space because otherwise it’s almost like you’re

[00:24:53] setting that up as like a devious part of yourself that’s not getting considered and then has to just be like, “Fuck all of you. I’m going to the concert!” Because it’s not being taken care of; there’s no space for it in the budget otherwise.

[00:25:06] Ellie: Yeah. And I think your point of even just like observing me as like a coach for six months or whatever, is like, I haven’t been a reckless person, and so, but I think because I’m not a reckless person, that then at some point I reach my limit, and then I’m like, screw it, we’re going to Mexico.

[00:25:26] Linzy: Yeah, and there is this extreme that happens, I

[00:25:28] think, yeah, when we don’t let all parts of ourselves get expressed in our life, right? And like in IFS parts work that, you know, those would be kind of exiles, right? Like parts that are owning like disowned feelings or desires. And that is what happens is we do end up like doing things in the extreme because, you know, that part of you is not getting fed, like it’s not getting space in your normal life, or specifically in your budget.

[00:25:52] It’s not getting its own budget line, right? And so there is no space for it other than to kind of like break through and impose itself. And just say fuck everything else because there’s no other option it sounds like at this moment.

[00:26:07] Ellie: Yeah. Well, well, and I do have… I have like the fun money line, but I think it’s gloriously too low.

[00:26:14] Linzy: I was going to say it’s insufficient. Can I ask how much money is in the fun money line?

[00:26:19] Ellie: And you know, I think I probably have it at like 50 or 80, and that does not include dining out.

[00:26:24] Linzy: Okay, dining is separate, but $50 or $80. Yes. Yeah, and considering probably a decent concert ticket is more than $100, it’s not meeting your needs. So, I am curious, like, if you check in with your concert loving, joy and connection seeking part of yourself, how much money a month would help to feed this part so that it gets regular space in your life?

[00:26:51] Ellie: Yeah. I would say like $150 to $200, and I would almost say like $200 to then start to kind of build up the buffer.

[00:26:58] Linzy: That’s true.

[00:26:58] Ellie: Because some months, nobody’s coming to town and I don’t care. And, you know,

[00:27:04] Linzy: So 200 a month. And it sounds to me, you’ll have to go back to your numbers, look at maybe your profit first calculator, take another big picture perspective. But it sounds to me like there’s probably at least $200 a month in your business that could be coming home to you instead.

[00:27:21] Ellie: Yeah, that would be a nicer raise than the, like, I don’t know, $60 raise or whatever…

[00:27:27] Linzy: Ellie!

[00:27:28] Ellie: to myself. I know, I know, I’m scared.

[00:27:32] Linzy: You’re scared. I was like, that doesn’t even count as a raise. Not, not like in the world that we live in. Maybe in like 1930 that would have been a good raise per month, but you know, a hundred years later, it’s not going to make a big difference for you. No, maybe not. Maybe not. It’s like you got to buy like one slightly nicer item at the grocery shop maybe is what that would get you.

[00:27:51] Maybe. Yes.

[00:27:52] Okay. Okay. So thinking about our conversation then, what do you see as your action

[00:27:57] plan? What are your next steps coming out of this conversation today?

[00:28:02] Ellie: Yeah, I mean I think it is, like, kind of in this first quarter, like actually going back and reevaluating the numbers and that that might be like, I feel like I am using the tax percentages that profit first says, and all of that. And it’s kind of like, and it feels like it’s actually, I’m, my buffer is a plenty.

[00:28:22] And so I think it’s actually reevaluating it on what are the actual numbers say? And what are the averages that I’m going to need to pay out so that then I can shuffle that around.

[00:28:31] Linzy: Well, and part of where you are with having been newer in practice is, chances are you’ve just earned less than you will earn in the future. So that’s also something to consider. And that’s like going back to module five in the course and just like looking at those tax lessons again and thinking about, okay, last year this is where I landed with my new cruising altitude and what’s normal now, or if I actually get to capacity this year,

[00:28:52] this is how much I’m projecting to make and this is the tax bracket I will land in, because something else with taxes, that an accountant pointed out to me once is when you’re on the lower end of the taxes, like if you’re paying, I don’t know, if you’re going to owe like $15,000 of taxes, Americans are entitled to about $10,000, kind of like the first $10,000 of the income you earn is not actually taxed, right?

[00:29:13] So there’s this certain amount that you’re just not going to pay and when you’re only paying, saving for a few thousand dollars of taxes, that’s a big difference, right? But as you get more established in your business and maybe you’re going to start owing like $40,000 of taxes, that exemption amount doesn’t make such a big difference anymore. Right, so that would be my suggestion is to ground in not just where you’ve been but where you’re going. What is going to be your tax percentage this year?

[00:29:38] And then I would say run it by your accountant to say like, “Hey, looking at what I’m planning to earn this year, I’m seeing I’m going to earn about, I don’t know, like 80, 000 take home. That puts me in this tax bracket. But can you tell me also what you know I’m going to be eligible for and what you would actually predict I’m going to owe for taxes?

[00:29:54] Because they’re going to know your tax picture the best. Because they know everything that you’re eligible for. They can put you in the context of all these other things. So that would be my suggestion. And then see what else that number, like, that money can do for you if you do get to lower that percentage.

[00:30:10] Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. That’s helpful. And I think that there’s a space of like, because, like I had surgery last year and then was taking less clients for part of the year. It’s like, okay, let’s actually base this on the last like six months.

[00:30:21] Linzy: Yes, exactly. What your new normal is.

[00:30:22] Ellie: Yes, versus the full last year.

[00:30:23] Linzy: Yes. And it makes sense to me too that you have been having a hard time kind of maybe like trusting the numbers or wanting to give yourself a raise because you did come into a new practice. You had a serious surgery that had a serious, you know, recovery time period.

[00:30:38] So it’s really, it sounds like, only maybe the last six months where life has been really normal and where you’re like this, this, where you’re kind of what I like to call cruising altitude. You’re at the spot where you’re like, yeah, this is kind of like, if we just go along tickety boo. This is where I would be.

[00:30:50] Ellie: Mhm. Yeah. That feels right.

[00:30:54] Linzy: Okay. you’re going to be going back, looking at your numbers, seeing where there’s opportunity to give yourself a raise, talk to your accountant so you get a really accurate picture,

[00:31:03] and I’m curious, Ellie, you have your action plan. What else are you taking away from our conversation today?

[00:31:11] Ellie: Increase my fun money category. Like, like, let that be one of the priorities.

[00:31:16] Linzy: Mm hmm.

[00:31:18] Ellie: Yes, we have to pay the car payment and the student loans and all of that and those are substantial, but really making sure that those things are prioritized.

[00:31:27] Linzy: Yeah, when I was a teenager, I was an overly serious teenager. You might be

[00:31:31] shocked to find out.

[00:31:33] Ellie: Really shocked.

[00:31:33] Linzy: I know, I know. I was like a punk goth, so on the outside I looked kind of scary, but I was also like a straight A student, very responsible. And I remember starting to like to use this phrase which I thought I made up but I probably didn’t, which is, life is for the living.

[00:31:48] Which is something I had to remind myself of like, you know, if I was slightly older, I probably would have gotten it tattooed on my arm to be like, I need to look at this every day. Life is for the living. Right. And I think when you’re really good at managing and being responsible and like not making mistakes, it’s easy to forget that life is for the living, right?

[00:32:05] Like life is about joy and connection. It’s not about like having everything totally lined up perfectly. and this is what I’m hearing with you is like, there needs to be more space for actually just planning for that, for just being alive.

[00:32:19] Ellie: hmm. Yeah. And not having it be a deprivation. And I think some of that, that’s probably another episode, is like graduating from grad school a little bit later in life and then therefore retirement planning and all those things are happening later. I think that that probably attaches to that. I’m like, no, we got to get ahead.

[00:32:37] Linzy: Yeah. It feeds that. And, you know, like something that I’m taking away from our conversation today is just the importance of taking care of all of those parts of you, right? Not letting that part that knows that you’re not where you want to be in terms of retirement, not letting that part take fun and joy away from the part of you that loves going to concerts.

[00:32:55] Ellie: yeah, exactly.

[00:32:56] Linzy: Those dollars can do multiple jobs for you.

[00:32:59] Ellie: That’s right. Yes.

[00:33:01] Linzy: Ellie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It was lovely. It’s lovely to talk to you again.

[00:33:07] Ellie: Yeah. This was great. Really appreciate it.

[00:33:09]

[00:33:24] Linzy: My conversation with Ellie, just really brings to mind for me, balance, just the importance of balance with our money. Balance in life, obviously, is also a good thing. But in terms of finances, I think what we see over and over again is if you put too much money towards one thing, right? Like if we don’t let our money take care of many parts of us, ideally all parts of us, right?

[00:33:47] If we’re not using our money to really take care of who we are as whole people, then we end up making plans that we can’t actually stick to, right? We can’t be in integrity with our plan or our budget if we are denying that part of us, like in Ellie’s case, that loves concerts and travel and connection and joy, right?

[00:34:05] And what I see people often do, where this often comes up, is people paying down debt too aggressively, right? Where the part of you that wants to pay down debt is like so urgent and just so stressed about the debt that you try to put so much money towards debt every month. But ultimately, of course, other things are going to come up in your life, right?

[00:34:23] There’s going to be fun things that come up, like in Ellie’s case, but there’s also going to be responsibilities that come up, and then you can’t stay to that plan. And you have to break the plan that you’ve made, and do something differently because you’ve set up a plan that isn’t really sustainable. And in Ellie’s case, she has set up a plan for her money that is not sustainable in terms of like, it doesn’t actually take care of this part of her that really enjoys life, right? She doesn’t actually have enough room in her budget to do the things that really feed her, like going to concerts, and traveling, and being with friends, right? 

[00:35:01] And so by actually building that into her budget, she’s now going to have the opportunity to approach those decisions from a balanced place with actual numbers because she’s not just denying that part of her and then having it have to rebel to get a, to get its needs met. So there’s so much, I mean, I relate heavily to Ellie in this conversation today. We chatted a little bit off mic afterwards about how I am planning a trip to London and Iceland for my 40th birthday that is coming up this year, and it’s definitely a stretch.

[00:35:23] And it hasn’t actually been in my budget, but I am going to make it work and I’m, you know, going to be strategically doing things, to help the money to be there because it’s really important to me. And that’s also another thing too, is we can’t always plan for the really fun and exciting opportunities that are going to come up.

[00:35:39] But if we commit to them, we can also make the money work, right, by making strategic decisions, and being in our own businesses, it’s a beautiful thing because you can actually make decisions that help, more money show up when you need it to, to feed you, and feed your life, and let money actually take care of us.

[00:35:54] So thank you so much to Ellie for coming on the podcast today. You can follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts and if you’re enjoying the podcast, you know, ’cause I ask you a lot, but it’s really helpful if you review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. It is the best way, for other folks to find us, for other therapists and health practitioners to be part of these conversations.

[00:36:19] So if you’re enjoying the podcast, if you could take three minutes to jump over to Apple Podcasts, and leave a review, maybe share about what you appreciate about the podcast, about your favorite episode, that would be deeply appreciated. Thank you for listening today.

[00:00:00] Jay: We start with the life stuff. And what ends up happening is if you don’t start with the life stuff, you can make a financial plan that works and completely miss the life. And clients have gotten used to this, and my two cents on this, and we’re doing some work on studying this… Clients sign up for the financial stuff; they stay for the life and behavioral stuff.

[00:00:24] 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.

[00:00:43] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is Dr. Jay Zigmont. Jay is the founder and CEO of Childfree Wealth, which is a life and financial planning firm that helps childfree and permanently childless people. Childfree Wealth is the first life and financial planning firm dedicated specifically to childfree people.

[00:01:06] And our conversation today gets into being childfree and the specifics of money that come from being childfree, but also very quickly deviates, probably because I myself am not childfree, into like the bigger questions of meaning and purpose and kind of those philosophical questions that can come up of what money is for and what it can do for us when we are not just focused on obligation, right?

[00:01:31] So something Jay and I talk about today is folks who are childfree don’t have that default project, right, of just like providing for their kids, and trying to give their kids the best in life, and trying to leave a legacy for their kids, and because they don’t have that project, they have the question to ask themselves, I think, much sooner than folks who have children can or do: what is my purpose?

[00:01:52] What can money do for me? What do I actually want in my life? What brings me joy? And so Jay and I today talk about some of the similarities in our approaches. He comes from an education background. I come from a social work, trauma therapy background, but different language to talk about some of the same things, the way that he supports their clients in taking care of the behavioral and personal, the life parts of money to allow them to learn.

[00:02:15] And yeah, these bigger questions that money brings up about life, kind of spiritual questions about meaning, and purpose, and what creates for a satisfying life. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Jay Zigmont.

[00:02:42] Linzy: So Jay, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:45] Jay: Thanks for having me.

[00:02:47] Linzy: I’m excited to have you. We were just chatting off mic, of course, before we got started, about, you know, we’re coming from different worlds and different language, but kind of helping people with the same, the same issues with different language, different scripts. So can you tell folks who are listening a little bit about your background and what you do?

[00:03:06] Jay: Yeah, so I’m one of those weird people that come to finance from not finance, you know, so I came out of actually healthcare and academia and my PhD is in adult learning. So I’m really on the learning side. And the way I say it is we are a learning organization that does financial planning. We help people learn how to do their finances, not necessarily do it for them.

[00:03:22] And that’s a little shift because a lot of the investment stuff is like, Oh, we’ll just take care of it all for you. And that doesn’t work. And I specialize in helping people who are childfree and, just from a definition standpoint, those are people who don’t have kids, aren’t planning on kids ever childfree tends to be by choice, childless not by choice, but you know the bottom line is kids are never part of the picture, and that’s about 20 to 25 percent of the population. And most people go, I have no clue that that is that larger percentage… or because of that population, it has unique concerns, unique issues, and really we do a lot of work on life planning as much as we do financial planning because they’re following a different life script.

[00:04:01] Linzy: Absolutely. And I mean, I love your emphasis on learning, first of all, to jump back to that point and what you said, because I feel similarly, like there are so many financial professionals that are like, “I’ll take care of that. You just give that to me,” right? And what I see with folks who I tend to support, who can be really avoidant of money, is that can be very enticing to be like, “Oh, they’re just going to take care of it for me.” right. But like that has a lot of long term consequences. And you mentioned that doesn’t tend to work. Can you tell me what you’ve seen doesn’t work about that approach?

[00:04:32] Jay: Yeah, so the approach we use is actually called “advice only.” We give them advice, and they do it. We’re going to start offering some investment management, but really we’re just trying to do some paperwork for people. But what we’re trying to argue is you have to learn about money at some point in your life.

[00:04:47] And I’m in the U. S., and in the U. S. we do a terrible job teaching people about money… I mean, the only thing I learned in high school was how to balance a checkbook, which is a giant waste of time. And we do a terrible job at this, and then we expect people to be able to do it. And I’ve worked with a lot of folks, and I’m more on the coaching side, looking forward, but I was working with somebody who’s a social worker, and I asked her, how do you split the work?

[00:05:11] You know, how much work can you do? And she said it this way. She said, “Look, if a client’s not willing to do at least 50 percent of the work, I can’t help them.” And she’s right, but I’m like, well, then why in the world, in the financial world, can we do 90 percent of the world? We can’t. Like the actual data on this says somewhere around 80 percent of your success with finances is behavioral.

[00:05:31] It’s your mental models, your ways of thinking. 20 percent is your numbers. But most financial planners, most investment managers, others, spend 90 percent of their time on the numbers. And might talk about one behavioral issue. Like the CFP, Certified Financial Planner, actually 10 percent of the content is around behaviors.

[00:05:49] And I’m like, No! This is missing it because, you know, I can help you work on a financial plan. We can do all the numbers. But if you don’t change your money mindset, you’re lost. And I don’t necessarily mean saving more money. We spend more time with our clients talking about spending money than saving money, which really seems weird, but you’ve got to learn all of it in order to feel comfortable and having more money is not going to make you more comfortable with money. You have to work on your mindset.

[00:06:17] Linzy: Absolutely. And, you know, I love you pointing that out because my partner and I worked with a financial coach. I’m Canadian. We worked with a Canadian money coach a few years ago when we were, you know… my business was still building and like we were having kids, we were thinking about having another kid, you know, which we’ll talk more about all of this in a minute. but what I noticed is I wanted someone who could help us… kind of do for us what I do for other people, which is help you dig in and be like, “Okay, well, what, what matters? And why are you doing what you do? And like, what are you looking for when you’re spending this kind of money?” And I got none of that. And I felt so dissatisfied. And then I felt disappointed with the service we got, even though she did kind of what she promised, which was make us a plan. But when we would look at numbers, she’s like, “Well, you have to make more or spend less.” I’m like, oh, really? Brilliant. Thank you so much. Mind blown. Because I think she just didn’t have the training. She didn’t have the training to actually help us dig into, okay, what’s happening here? And how do you work within your situation as it is right now, and how do you think about how your situation is going to change, and how do you align your money with your needs at the moment, and like, put things in perspective, like, all of these things are so important, and as you say, like this is that, like, important 80 percent that actually makes the numbers work, and yet so much of the financial world, it’s just all spreadsheets, all numbers, all the time, but that’s not what life is.

[00:07:38] Jay: Well, and part of that has to do with incentives. So mostly investment management folks are paid a percentage of assets or something along those lines. So their incentive is to sell products or bring assets in. That’s it. I come out of the coaching world and our model, we actually meet with clients on a monthly basis

[00:07:54] usually. You know, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. It is much closer to a therapy practice where it’s like, “Hey, we’re going to work on one to two issues at a time. We’re not going to overwhelm you. We’re going to work on what’s key to you and we’re going to build your plan over time as you get there,” rather than, “Hey, let me drop a plan on your desk and you know, here’s 150 pages and like, good luck.”

[00:08:13] And some of my colleagues, and it’s been interesting, they’re like, really? Clients want to talk to you that much? I’m like, they always have something to talk about. And now mind you, we have childfree folks and they tend to have a lot more flexibility in their life. And they change their goals every week, it seems.

[00:08:27] So it is part of the audience. But, what I find is people come to us and go, Well, I don’t, you know, first couple of meetings, I don’t know if I’m going to have enough to talk about. And then we’re two years later, and they’re like, Oh, so this came up, and this, you know, now I’m taking my parents, I’m letting them do it.

[00:08:41] I’m like, cool. There’s always something, and we’re able to do that. And one of the really interesting things where you are, is it’s like this discussion with couples, of like, hey, sometimes I can say things to a couple, you’ve been saying to each other forever that’s just not heard. And I can call things out.

[00:08:57] You know, I was having a discussion yesterday with somebody. We have a lot of couples that have large age gaps. So when you have somebody like, say, seven, ten years age gap, at some point, somebody’s going to be living ten years without the other person. And that impacts your finances, impacts your thoughts around it, estate planning, long term care.

[00:09:14] And people are like, well, I just don’t want to talk about it. I’m like, well, no, you have to. Like, this is not an option. You have to, especially with childfree folks who don’t have next of kin to make decisions for them. You have to figure that out and we can have those tough conversations. Well, the thing with the financial world is there’s not really an incentive to dive into those tough ones in the normal model.

[00:09:34] We charge an annual fee; we get paid for our time. We don’t get paid by products. So yes, our structure is there, but that is a rarity.

[00:09:42] Linzy: Yeah, it is a rarity, and I would say, my opinion is it’s essential. I personally do not share with my audience any financial planners who are actually just selling you products. Because as you say, like those important conversations that are actually going to impact the way that money works for you in your life,… the traditional financial planning model doesn’t actually pay people to do that work with you, nor does it actually train them to do that work, right? But it’s like, as you say, like, they’re being paid to sell you a certain product, they get a certain percentage of, you know, assets under management or whatever, but it’s just not what they do.

[00:10:15] That’s just not what they offer. And so, you know, I appreciate you and folks who are doing the kind of work that you’re doing where you are just being clear of like, this is what we are offering you, this is how much it costs, because then you can have those actual important conversations that make a change, that help people change the way that they’re relating and spending their money because like… I love spreadsheets. I love me a good spreadsheet, but it doesn’t actually solve Interpersonal or emotional or just those big existential issues like you’re talking about like one day You will probably live without your partner.

[00:10:47] What is that going to look like? Those are scary things to talk about, and a spreadsheet doesn’t actually do that for you.

[00:10:53] Jay: Absolutely. And this group will understand. I’m going to take you behind the scenes. I don’t usually talk about this. We’re training people to do this. We’ve got people we call childfree wealth specialists. And I’ve been working with my staff on building the next generation of people to do this and, you know, taking on more clients.

[00:11:08] And one of the things we’ve been talking about is we have about an hour with a client and how do we set an agenda? And how do you like to work this through? And we always say a client brings one or two things to talk about; we bring one or two. So we try to prepare for two or three things in case they don’t have anything that day.

[00:11:24] If you’ve worked in a therapy world, you know, sometimes clients walk in with things, you’re like, “Alright, that was not on the list, and we’re going there!” But what I’ve been trying to explain is how do we do this? And one of the frames we come up with is for our three things, the number one is a life or behavioral component.

[00:11:38] So what are they, what’s the big picture they’re working on? Number two is kind of like we, a little bit of the homework stuff. Like, oh, we have got to get these accounts done, the paperwork done. Like just, that’s the financial stuff. And number three is we have what we call, an annual calendar.

[00:11:53] We have like, Oh, in February we’re working on taxes… and you know, one, whatever it is. But we start with the life stuff. And what ends up happening is if you don’t start with the life stuff, you can make a financial plan that works and completely miss the life. And clients have gotten used to this, and my two cents on this, and we’re doing some work on the, on studying this.

[00:12:14] Clients sign up for the financial stuff, they stay for the life and behavioral stuff. And We have clients, you know, that’ll say, this felt like a therapy session and, you know, I’m like, okay. And, you know, we often have clients that end up in tears because money has so much baggage and other things with it.

[00:12:30] And they’re like, all right, we took care of the investments. Can we talk about… and it’s like, sure. That’s where the magic is. That’s where we truly change people’s lives, where we’re helping them, you know, have discussion. I have a podcast, one of our top download podcasts is I’ll Make You Quit Your Job.

[00:12:47] And it’s those people that are miserable at what they’re doing. And we’re like, cool, let’s figure out another plan. They’re like, well, but I can’t, I got to make the money. I’m like, no, you can change and be happy. And like, I have people that, you know, quit these high paying good jobs and then go be an author and pay nothing, but they’re happier.

[00:13:05] Like, that’s the type of stuff, that’s where the money is, like, that’s where the good stuff is. And people say, well, but you’re not just talking about investments. I’m like, nope. Investments are the easiest part of what I do.

[00:13:17] Linzy: Absolutely. I mean, you’re preaching to the choir here, 100%. You know, and, and as you said, like, we are coming at this, this from different silos, different language, but like, same thing, the way that I talk about this distinction is the, the emotional pieces and the practical pieces, and the practical pieces need to happen, right?

[00:13:32] Like, you do need to have your papers in order to pay your taxes, right? You do need to know when certain deadlines are; you do need to have a plan that actually is going to work. But those emotional pieces, what I found, Jay, is like, if you don’t address those pieces, those emotional pieces, which, with my therapy background, it’s like I see their, I see trauma, I see childhood stuff, I see larger societal messages about who is deserving and who is worthy and who is capable. But if you don’t address those things, then the practical stuff can’t happen. Like the emotional stuff is in the way. Like that is the actual lived experience of being a human. And if you’re not taking care of that, you can’t learn.

[00:14:10] Jay: Absolutely. So let’s pick an issue. And we actually have a program we call The 8 No Baby Steps for childfree folks. Step 7 is a plan for parents. And we end up with two boats. We have the parents that have nothing, that long term care and health care is going to be a big issue. And we have the parents that have a whole lot of money coming down.

[00:14:26] And by the way, there’s nowhere in between. Like, just the income disparities that just, like, I either see one or the other. And we start pulling this apart, and the first step we get into is, what’s your boundary around this? And people are like, wait, what? I’m like, no, seriously. Mom did not plan for her health care.

[00:14:44] You know my mom’s been disabled since I was 16. I can’t teach my mom anything. It’s just kind of the rule.s You can’t teach your mom or your spouse finances. Just can’t. But like you have to have a boundary around how much can you help because if you help too much, you’re going to sink yourself, and you have to set that boundary when they’re not sick Be like well, but but but you’re saying I I’m like, “Yes, I’m saying your mom’s going to be in Medicaid care because she can’t afford anything else, and you can’t afford to pay it.” And if I don’t address that boundary issue first, the finance is just destroyed.

[00:15:20] And I’ve seen people where, you know, they don’t want to dig into that because of all the guilt and other things, you know, expect expectations and it just becomes a nightmare. And on the flip side, I got the ones where, Oh, well, I’m, I’m inheriting 10 million. You know, I, it’s not my money. The baggage that comes with it and, you know, what should I do with it?

[00:15:40] And what’s my purpose in life now? And now I don’t have to work. And it’s all this stuff. And I’m like, the money management of this? So easy. It’s the, it’s the discussions. Like, the only parents we take on as clients right now are actually parents who are childfree folks. And we’ll sit in the room with the parent and, and our childfree client and say, okay, what’s your estate plan?

[00:16:00] What’s your financial plan? What’s your insurance? And it’s the first time that as an adult, they’ve had a conversation with their parents about money, and their parent is 80 years old. And we’re over here trying to figure out a plan. And I’m like, “We need to have this conversation,” and that’s so important.

[00:16:16] I have so many clients now, saying, “My mom loved you…” you know, blah, blah. It was great that we actually had the conversation. And I always tell my clients, they can blame me for everything. You know, say, Dr. Jay says, I’ve got to talk to you about this. Cool. Blame me for all of it. And starting that conversation and that is just so powerful.

[00:16:33] When you’re talking about this practical versus, you know, the behavioral, the emotional, I sometimes have to use the practical as the gateway to get into the emotional and sometimes the other way around. So it’s like, how do you find that balance between the two? Because if you have one lens too much, you almost can lose the client in the meantime.

[00:16:52] I had somebody who would not let me touch anything on the life or behavioral side until we had gone through a whole bunch of practical stuff. And I got to know him over time and I’m like, yeah, you took like three, four months before you let me dive in. And her answer was, yeah, I wanted to make sure you’re not an idiot first.

[00:17:08] And I was like, all right, well, you know, there’s a judgment call there, but now I’ve proven it on the numbers. Okay, now you can dig into the life stuff. And I’m like, wow, that’s really interesting. I’m going to think about that one for a long time, but that’s where you have to find the balance. And I think the challenge is whichever school you come from is where you see the problems first, but that’s not always where the client is.

[00:17:31] Linzy: Yeah, that’s such a good point. I mean, we have our own bias, obviously, of the zone that we like to focus on and like to be with. But yeah, I mean, what you’re describing every therapist, and every manual health practitioner, listening is going to hear as well as like, you need to meet the client where they are. Right? You might see this glaring issue that needs attention right away, but if they’re not able to be with it, then you’re wasting your, your air, right? And you might lose the client by moving them too fast or, or not focusing on what feels important or what they’re able to focus on at that time. So I think everybody listening right now is nodding like, yep, yep.

[00:18:03] That’s how we work with our own clients, right? And I love you drawing these parallels because I think with money, it’s easy for us to, as therapists, as people who didn’t get great financial education, or maybe who are coming to this late, right, like feeling behind, it’s easy to focus on all those numbers pieces and feel left behind, and expect somebody to just like slap down a bunch of numbers.

[00:18:25] But like, yeah, they need to be doing what we do with our own clients, which is like meeting us where, where we’re at. And that’s legitimate to be done. So Jay, I want to dig into the childfree side of things now because I know that’s such a big specific part of the work that you’re doing. With the clients that you work with, what do you see in terms of how being childfree impacts their finances and their life? What looks different for them?

[00:18:48] Jay: So the first thing you’ve got to think about is this standard life script that says you must go to school, you get married, you have kids, buy a house, pass on my next generation, retire, all that fun stuff. That life script, and we, you know, it’s part of what we call pronatalist bias, it’s just an assumption, you’re going to have kids, you’re going to go through this process, you’re going to do all that, is so strong in our culture, in our religion, in our families, that when childfree folks or childless, not by choice, take a hard right turn off that standard life script, you end up without a script, really.

[00:19:23] And that becomes a challenge, you know. The hard part of this is, we all do stuff that we don’t even realize why we do it. Let’s be honest with that. And, you know, we’re following decisions the 18 year old version of us made. You know, like a life path. And at some point, by the way, we realize the 18 year old version of us was dumb.

[00:19:40] Okay, like, let’s just be honest with that. Like, we need to rethink that. But we start following the standard script. So now, you deviate off that script. I have this kind of love and hate word with that deviation because now you become a deviant because you are doing a different life path.

[00:19:56] The first thing is people think we’re weird. Okay. And we are a little bit in the general population, but we’re talking about something like 20 to 25 percent of the U. S. for example. In Japan it is 33%. I don’t know Canada off the top of my head, but like there’s large percentages. And it’s growing, you know, younger generations are jumping on this. And I don’t…

[00:20:15] I don’t, at all, vote on how somebody else should have their kids. I don’t want them to vote on mine. You know, like, you get your own choices. But I think the hard part is, when you are on that childfree path, you can actually get to a point we call the childfree midlife crisis, which is you hit your personal, professional, and financial goals, and then you’re like, now what?

[00:20:35] Where childfree folks, you know, don’t really care about how much money we’re passing on to the next generation. You know, we don’t have next of kin for that. We don’t really care as much about retirement, I actually have a couple therapists that work with me, and they’ll cut back their practice, but they’ll probably do it for as long as they’re around, because they enjoy it.

[00:20:54] Where they can make different choices in life, and we say living a life of childfree wealth means you have time, money, and freedom to do what you enjoy. Now that doesn’t mean you’re rich, like there’s no magic checks that come from the sky and make you rich, but it’s almost an analysis paralysis, paradox of choice routine of like too many choices. What do you do when you can do anything?

[00:21:17] And I will tell you, that’s the hard part. And that’s why in our process, we always work on what life do you want to live first, then your finances. I have clients, they’ll come to me first and go, well, when can I retire? And I’ll ask them, well, do you want to? They go, no.

[00:21:32] Well, then why are you asking about retirement? Well, because that’s what the standard script says. The standard script says you buy a house, you retire, you pass away. How do you do that? And how do you do it when there’s really no great examples? Like, you don’t have a friend where you’re like, oh, you know, Jane did this! I’m just going to follow Jane.

[00:21:50] And when society is saying, hey, that’s not the right path in quotes.

[00:21:56] Linzy: Well, it’s something that occurs to me with this… I had a conversation with one of my students who’s a dietician who’s in Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, so she’s a group practice owner, she does have kids, but she lives in Kansas, so life is affordable. She owns her house, right?

[00:22:10] And we had a conversation once, a call where I had an accountant come in to share some American accountant expertise, and the student asked her, like, What do you do when you’ve hit all your goals? Like, if I’ve paid my mortgage and I don’t really need to work that much. And what I’m thinking about is she kind of hit that point that folks who are childless get to, or childfree, get to much faster, right?

[00:22:36] Like, when you have kids, it’s hard. Kids are expensive, right? Like, you’re saving for their education. There’s kind of all of these. obligations and necessities that are in your way that mean that you don’t hit the point that you’re talking about until kind of your kids are gone, right? Like, I see my parents hit that point of like, What does life mean?

[00:22:53] How do we make life rich like in their seventies, right? But like when you don’t have kids, you skip all of that. I love my child very much, but there is all this obligation. There’s this kind of burden of setting up their life and like the money goes towards that and you’re tired and there’s, there’s all these like, obligations on your time and your money and your energy. When you’re childfree,

[00:23:12] what I’m hearing is like you get to that kind of like what is the meaning? What is my purpose way earlier because you’re not participating in this very labor intensive, and I say that, you know, literally, process of raising a child. Does that seem fair or am I missing something there in the mix?

[00:23:29] Jay: Well, I mean, it’s not necessarily easier or harder, you know, like that’s a judgment that, you know, I’m not going to judge anyone’s life. I think what I’ve tended to find is when parents hit that earlier, so this is the classic midlife crisis, you buy the car or whatever, you know, but they tend to shift their goals to their kids.

[00:23:47] Now, little Johnny needs to go to Yale. I need to set them up for the future. I need to do this. And it’s a way to kick the can down the road. Now, when it comes to the elderly folks, you know, so we’re 70, 80s now… Everybody’s all, well, I want to set my grandkids up for… I want to leave a legacy. I want to… so we keep pushing it to someone else versus answering that question of like, what is my impact on the world, and what do I enjoy?

[00:24:14] We often talk about Marie Kondo in your life: getting more of the things that bring you joy, and getting rid of things that don’t. And people are like, But what brings me joy? I’m like, how do I know? But nobody’s ever asking that question. It’s, you go to work, you work hard, you retire, you pass on money.

[00:24:29] When those aren’t there, you’re required to answer those questions. And for the folks that are childless not by choice, it’s actually a grieving process of the life you thought you were going to live to picking a new life. To the point where I will say, if you’re still in the grieving process, you’re not ready for working on where’s your life going to go, you’re not ready for me, and I’m not saying anything.

[00:24:52] I’m not judging. I’m just saying you’re not in that spot in life. I was on another podcast, and the guy had kids and he said, listen, parents should really learn from the childfree folks to ask these questions earlier because it’s really about the big ones and we’re imprinting on our kids the same like hedonic treadmill, the same expectations. If we said hey enjoy your life, and that’s the priority Like we’d all be just a little bit happier, right?

[00:25:17] Well, we did a study on this. We asked childfree folks Are you happy? Just an open ended question. Little bit under 300 responses. 94 percent said yes.

[00:25:25] Linzy: [00:25:26] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:26] Jay: If you look at the general population, you are never going to hit that number.

[00:25:30] Linzy: Yeah. No, and I have a friend who is not planning to have kids. He’s in his late 20s and he, you know, quoted this data to me, and I’ve seen other places… yeah, people without children are happier, right? 

[00:25:41] That’s interesting. As somebody who wanted kids, I can’t imagine that life. But also I’ve changed my brain by having a kid so it’s like I biologically kind of messed with my brain when I went down this path, and that’s such an interesting point that you’re making about that deferring of your own happiness or deferring of your own purpose of like, yeah, my, my role is to work hard enough that my kid can go to private school.

[00:26:03] And then my role is to save for them to go to college. And then I want to have a down payment for them to make their life easier. Like we’re constantly focusing on the well being of others. And therapists, especially, folks who are listening, therapists and health practitioners. We already tend to be so much that way. Even without children in the picture, right, of always thinking about is everybody else okay. And are my clients okay? Can my clients afford my service? Like, is, you know, is my mom okay? Is my sister okay… who is really difficult to have a relationship with, but I should talk to her anyways because she needs to talk to me… If you want to talk about boundaries,

[00:26:34] right, like when you’re already in that kind of martyr, self sacrificing… And yeah, I love what you’re saying because I think too it gets down to this basically philosophical question of: what makes your life rich, and meaningful, and worth living?

[00:26:46] And yeah, I’m hearing that that’s a central question for the folks that you’re working with because, yeah, I hear what you’re saying earlier about what I said. Harder/ easier… who knows? Everybody’s life is different… But certainly you don’t have this one project happening that can be very distracting. that project is not in the way. you’re with your humanness, and your own life, and you don’t… I think it’s probably harder to hide in obligations to others when, when you don’t have a kid.

[00:27:15] Jay: It also allows you different choices. I’m not saying better or worse, just different. So if you look at the stats of childless folks in the U. S. over 55, 32.1 percent were never married versus 2.5 percent of parents. So you have a huge difference in the coupling structure. Now, they might be in a long term couple but not married, different things.

[00:27:35] Where just basic assumptions get changed. And the challenge is, for childfree folks, You often get pushed back to kind of the standard plan. Like everybody around me is like, of course, you’ve got to save for retirement. And you’re like, but I don’t care about retirement. Of course, you got to save money for the next area.

[00:27:52] No, I don’t care about that. My nephews get what’s left over, but like if they get 10,000 or a hundred thousand, that’s fine. If they get a million dollars, I made a mistake because I should have given that throughout their life when they could have used it. Not when I was 90 and dead.

[00:28:04] All these things are changing, like buying a house is a choice for childfree folks, not a requirement… Life insurance is not a big issue for childfree. It starts changing, and what happens is you find out as a society, we have put such a value on how much money you make. And it really doesn’t matter.

[00:28:22] Now, for the people that are struggling, that’s different. If you’re barely making rent and ramen, the amount of money you make absolutely matters. The data changes, but something like 85,000 a year, anything above that, doesn’t add much happiness. Sometimes I see 100,000, but, you know, whatever.

[00:28:35] Something along those lines. And now it’s like, but I went to school for this, and I’ve been going up the ladder, and I’ve done all this, and, my identity is my work. No, it’s not! Your work’s the least important thing about you, but we’re so stuck on that. And I think the hard part is finance pushes people towards those numbers.

[00:28:59] What’s your net worth? What are your numbers? And our childfree folks want to die with zero net worth, so we actually have to bring it down. Try changing somebody’s mindset to actually have to, like, bring their net worth down. It completely messes with it. And then everybody around is like, are you crazy?

[00:29:11] What are you doing? And like, no, I’m perfectly fine for my plans. It might not fit your plan. And that’s that hard part, and I think the challenge right now in the hyper political environment we’re in and some of the social media stuff is everybody’s judging each other way too much, good, bad, or ugly. And finances are just an easy way to judge, and you don’t know people’s lives.

[00:29:35] And for childfree folks, you know, they work with financial planners, and I always tell them, ask the financial planner: how’s my life different because I’m childfree? And if they say, well, it’s not different, well, they’re wrong. You know, if they say, well, you might change your mind.

[00:29:47] Well, that’s a judgment. That’s a different problem. You know, walk away. If they say, I don’t know. I am actually okay with that answer! Or we’ll figure it out. But automatically the answer is, oh, well, we’re just going to do the same plan everybody else is on. Well, no. From a financial standpoint, two parents’ financial plans are actually relatively similar.

[00:30:05] They’re probably 90 percent plus the same. The numbers change. The steps, the timing. But then the plan is very linear. For childfree folks, not so much. And that’s the piece that just messes with everybody’s brains. Because if you go out and you Google financial advice, almost all, I mean, 99 percent plus assumes you have kids.

[00:30:30] The software has assumptions built in there. The directions… Dave Ramsey here talks a lot. I’m in Tennessee. He’s here. He talks a lot about, you know, getting out of debt. And an interesting thing… He’s got a huge financial plan for everything, but he says, have kids whenever because, you know, that’s God’s will is his words.

[00:30:45] And like, it’s not part of the financial plan. I’m like, hold on, you know, it’s built into the plan! And like, these are all the assumptions you don’t realize to the point where one of my key questions for clients, they’ll get into this. And I say, whose voice is in your head saying you’ve got to do that?

[00:31:04] And usually the first answer is mine and I’m like, you sure? It’s never. It’s never theirs. It’s their parents, the culture, it’s the religion, it’s the other things saying you got to do this. And I’m like, is that what you want? No. Well, then why are we doing it? And that’s where it just starts falling apart for them, and they have to rebuild then.

[00:31:24] All right. What do I want to do? You know, I always jokingly ask, what do you want to be when you grow up, but that’s the question. Like, what do you want to be? And I’m not necessarily saying money. I’m just like, what do you want to do?

[00:31:36] Linzy: Yeah, absolutely. you made reference there to Marie Kondo and like what brings you joy. And, I had a week off a couple weeks ago. This is something that I try to do where like once a quarter, I have a week off just to be a human. That’s what I call it. It’s just my “be a human” week. I don’t go on vacation.

[00:31:50] I don’t try to make it even relaxing. I’m just like, What do I want to do when I’m not doing my job? Because I think that’s a really important question, as you said. It’s so easy to make our identity about our work. This is who I am. I am a therapist. I am a business coach. I am a financial planner. But it’s such a small part of who we are, and like, I said to one of my employees the other day who let me know that she’s pregnant and having a baby, she felt guilty because she’s going on mat leave and we’re Canadian and she’ll probably be gone for like 15 months. And I said to her, That’s great, because like my business isn’t going to be there with you on your deathbed.

[00:32:21] Like if you want to have another child, that’s way more important than work, right? But work, we can make it such a priority. And in this week off, what I did is I took a, I’m on a minimalism kick right now. So I read Minimalist Home by Joshua Becker. I’m doing Life of Focus, which is Cal Newport’s course.

[00:32:37] I’m on this big focus: what actually matters. It’s so interesting because as you said, you know, there, there is this metric. It used to be 50, 000, now it’s like 85, 000. Above that, you don’t get happier. And something that I realized is like, I’m at that point. I’m at the point where our material needs are met, right? Do we have things maybe as fast as we want to? No. But do we actually need those things faster? No, right? Like, do I want to make a $20,000 beautiful, ecological paradise in my backyard? Yes. Do I need it? No. So it’s like, I’m at that point where it’s optional. And then you do have to ask yourself like, yeah, what really matters to me? What actually makes life rich and meaningful? 

And we’re usually moving so fast that it’s a question that we skip and defer, sometimes forever, but money is such a tool to allow us to bring more of that into our life. But I do think it’s a question that a lot of us hide from, frankly, through all of these different distractions and excuses.

[00:33:32] Jay: Absolutely. I mean, I can pinpoint my point of this. I was in health care and unfortunately nobody here is going to be surprised. Um, health care is all about money. Let’s just be honest with that. I thought it was about serving patients, but turns out, not so much. You know, once you become a healthcare executive, you learn that and burned me out.

[00:33:49] And I was like, but I’d hit my personal, professional, and financial goals. And I’m like, now what? And I actually ended up. Like, running a maple syrup farm for a while, and selling stuff on Ebay, and stuff. Because I was just bored. You know, out on a tractor and I remember, I got a text. One of my friends from high school had actually died of cancer, and it was my first friend that I lost from high school.

[00:34:10] You know, I was in my early 40s and it’s kind of like that hit. And I’m going, what am I doing? Kind of like, what’s my impact? I’ve always been goal driven. I’m one of those people that went from no degree to a Ph. D. in five and a half years. I did my bachelor’s in nine months. Okay, like I’m a goal driven person.

[00:34:27] It’s kind of the dog that caught the car. You’re like, yeah, now what? And my realization was, I really don’t necessarily have new personal goals, but I can help other people reach their goals. And it’s one of those weird things is you start realizing that you need something to get you up in the morning.

[00:34:50] People retire and they don’t know what they’re retiring to. It’s always a problem. and I don’t care what that is. The thing is, it’s hard when, if you’re from a helping profession, we’re always giving for others. But how do you find that balance between you and helping others and where do you go and to what level?

[00:35:07] And Right now, my nightmare is who makes decisions for childfree folks when they can’t. You know, and in the U. S., there’s big issues around the next of kin and other things. It literally keeps me up at night. And I think I finally figured out a solution. We’re working on that now. But if everything goes right with my company, we’ll be able to serve less than 1 percent of the childfree population with this solution.

[00:35:28] That’s if everything is perfect.

[00:35:30] Linzy: Right.

[00:35:31] Jay: The other 99 percent I can’t serve and help, like, drive me crazy. Because you start seeing, okay, what do I want my impact to be? Where do I want to go? And yeah, I’m in the financial space… I’m going to make money doing it, but that’s not a driver anymore. It’s just a scorecard. And you know, my wife and I, you know, she’s an epidemiologist, and our rule in the house is you don’t do free work.

[00:35:54] You do work you enjoy, you get paid for it. Because otherwise people will take advantage of you. That’s kind of like, well, volunteer. That’s a different question, but that’s not work for free. And I think the hard part there is it’s so countercultural that it just starts challenging your core beliefs. You know, so I was listening to one of your podcasts and you were talking about pricing for therapists.

[00:36:19] And we had a little bit of a crisis with this, too, on our pricing. Like, whatever price you set is going to determine the clients you serve, and who do you want to serve? Well, we have this helping… we want to help everybody, so let’s make it accessible at a lower price. Yes, but you’re sacrificing yourself to do that.

[00:36:34] And then certain clients are offsetting other clients. And we actually have gone to like, here we have an academy and a group program that’s very accessible to everybody. It’s 50 bucks a month. And then we have our expensive program that’s one on one. But it’s one of those things you need to get through your soul of like, who do I want to serve?

[00:36:49] How do I want to serve them? What’s my impact going to be? Oh yeah, by the way, then my finances will fall behind it. And maybe it is that you need that week to yourself. We actually use a lot of work with sabbaticals taking six months to find yourself and people like, well, I’ve never done that. I’m like, that’s the point.

[00:37:08] And people go, you know, at the end of sabbatical, they always come with a completely different answer than they ever thought. That’s okay. And I think that’s the challenge. We don’t stop to go, so why are we doing this? And I don’t even care why. Like, you can pick any reason. As long as it’s yours.

[00:37:28] Linzy: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, the folks, like the therapist kind of community, tend to be so driven on, on mission and like making the world better. but as you say, like, I think it is helpful to put your life in perspective and be like, even if my practice reaches maximum people, even if I saw the maximum amount of clients, or even if I run groups or courses and I serve thousands of people a year, I would be serving this tiny portion of the folks that I want to reach, and I think there’s something depressing about that, but also really helpful in that it’s like okay so this is an important part of your life you do have this mission but you’re not actually going to change the whole world, so what else is also important, right?

[00:38:10] Because like what I find with the folks I serve, it’s like therapy is such meaningful work. It is meaningful. It is heavy. It is like you are in the dark like dank places with people that they’ve never invited anybody else in, and you’re helping to bring light into those places. And it’s so powerful, and it’s so profound, but also it’s like what else do you need in your life to be fulfilled, right?

[00:38:33] Because that’s not it. That’s not your only purpose. You’re not only there to serve others, right? And so I’m thinking about what makes a meaningful life, and how money can serve us. And I’m, I’m kind of picturing like a plate with a mix of stuff on it, right? And this is something that, in the Life of Focus course that I’m doing…

[00:38:50] So Cal Newport, talking about his thinking and his work, he talks about this with… Scott Young is his collaborator. They’re both guys who teach people how to learn and how to be effective, and they talk about this: if you’re spending all day doing intellectual work, don’t go home and read books all night. You need to go to the climbing gym, you need to go for a walk, you need to go dancing with your partner, like, This variety and richness, I think also we tend to underestimate just like we need to be fed in multiple ways to be satisfied as beings.

[00:39:18] We need to be fed, you know, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, in terms of community and connection. and don’t underestimate the importance of all these things in making life rich and meaningful. I’m curious, how does that land with you? That idea that there’s like multiple points we need to be hitting to have a satisfying life.

[00:39:36] Jay: Absolutely. And there’s lots of frameworks. The pie of life and all that. Pick whatever framework you like. And I’m one of those that I’m okay if your pie is a little slanted. Because, you know, I think people try… we get this concept of work life balance. Like, that’s like a scale and you have to… look, there’s going to be seasons where it shifts.

[00:39:58] And I’m much more on that seasons of life approach to it. I think personally, one of those reflections. So I grew up, and my parents… my father was a bus driver, my mother was a stay at home most of her life. Not a lot of money. Broke, broke, broke. But the one thing they taught was whatever you do, be the best at it,

[00:40:14] which is a really double edged sword. Okay. And, and as I get older, I’m learning the second edge to that more and more. Because like, oh, I can serve 1 percent and I’m like, That’s not enough. And I’m like, no, that is. And how do you be good with good? You know, we just did a book club for our podcast on the gap and the gain.

[00:40:37] And how do you look at the gain rather than the gap, and saying, yes, I’ve served these people. Don’t look at the ones you didn’t serve. Which, by the way, our nature is just like, I’m going to see the ones I didn’t serve or, you know, the clients I missed or whatever. And I think I personally am working on that.

[00:40:53] Work life balance. We have a concept we call FILE: Financial Independence Live Early rather than retire early.

[00:40:59] Linzy: I love that.

[00:41:00] Jay: And really we’re talking about the dimmer switch for work. How do I pick the right work at the right time, at the right level, at the right place? And have work that’s truly meaningful. And you know what? If that puts retirement off, that’s okay.

[00:41:15] And how do I find that balance? One of my staff members, Bree, she’s our chief experience officer. She’s 20 years younger than me. She’s Gen Z and she’s teaching me a lot about balance. I’m telling you they’ve got it a whole lot better than… I’m Gen X. I’m just saying they’ve got it a whole lot better than us as far as understanding it, and we’ve been working on how do you create a work environment in finance where life is balanced.

[00:41:41] And in finance, by the way, when you start in finance, you work 60 hours a week and you just… nose to the grindstone. And we’re not doing that. And she always is pushing back on me, like, Alright, so what are you doing this weekend? What are you chilling? You know, like, and I’m like, oh, I have got to get this done.

[00:41:56] And I know that’s a problem here. And I help my clients with it. It’s kind of like the therapists that come to me and I talk about setting boundaries and they’re like, I talk to my clients and I’m like, yeah, you need to do that too. I’m not saying I’m perfect. The way I believe to make money accessible is humor, humility, and vulnerability.

[00:42:13] If you can’t admit your own mess ups…

[00:42:16] Jay: My mess up is that balance. And it’s really that double edged sword of always be the best at it. So if I’m going to pick up a hobby, I’m going to be the best at it. That’s the baggage I have to unpack. That’s also the stuff from the financial standpoint.

[00:42:29] Well, I’ve got to be the best at it. I have got to have this right. I’ve got to have this. Right. We’re, me and my wife now have been working more on like, just, what do we enjoy?

[00:42:35] Linzy: Yeah, exactly.

[00:42:37] Jay: She’s like, well, I wanna go to XY dinner. She’s like, well, it’s expensive. I’m like, cool, let’s do it. Like, who cares? Like really, it doesn’t make a difference.

[00:42:45] And what’ll happen is if you go so far down this… We get the Super Savers. They actually, you know, they have millions of dollars, they’ve got more money to do it, but they’re buying the frozen blueberries because they’re a dollar cheaper than the fresh blueberries. I’m like, buy the good blueberries and enjoy life.

[00:43:01] And it’s just so hard. And I don’t know if it’s our culture, our upbringing, our structure, our, for me it’s that double edged sword. I don’t know what. I’m hoping 20 years from now to have a better answer. But, you know, I was talking about Bree, who’s our Chief Experience Officer, and, you know, she’s like, look, work is something I do.

[00:43:21] It’s not who I am. And I’m like, yes! But how the heck do you know that at 26? And I’m over here at 46 going, I don’t know. Like, and those are the things you’re trying to learn that we’ve got to help our clients with.

[00:43:37] Linzy: We do. Yeah. In our company, one of our values is work to live, not live to work. And I feel like I’m one of the few bosses that I know who tells my team to work less on a regular basis. We do an apocalypse list every day where my team posts, okay, these are the main three things I’m working on today. And with one of my team members who’s like a perfectionist, so talented, works so hard. We just had a conversation this morning. I was like, this is an ambitious list, laughy face emoji, uh, if you had to actually prioritize some of these things. And I helped her cut back because it’s like, I don’t want you burning out under my watch.

[00:44:10] That’s not worth it. I want you to enjoy your life. I want you to have a great weekend. I want you to be able to connect with your partner. I actually don’t want my company to be responsible for people having a shitty life. That’s actually really important to me because it’s just not worth it.

[00:44:22] It’s just not worth it for anybody. It doesn’t actually help us in the end, and like, I don’t want somebody burning out to make me more money. That is so against my values, but yeah, there really is this… as you said, there’s lots of questions as to what drives us. And I think I will say, I think Americans, you might have it a little bit more than Canadians, although I, I haven’t done any research on that to prove that. but yeah, really stopping and looking at what matters. Cause this is what I noticed, too, Jay, as I’m going through my like minimalist life of focus kick that I’m on right now, I’ve been throwing out so much stuff. I’ve been throwing out so much stuff. And like, I already considered myself… an aspiring minimalist, is what I would have called myself before.

[00:45:00] So it’s not like I’ve ever been a shopper, all those things. But I threw out half of my clothes in half an hour. Because when I really focus on how much I have and the abundance and like, feel gratitude for that, I’m like, How could I want more? Holy shit, I have so much! It’s so interesting to me that the more that I am slowing down and being with what I have, the less that I strive. Because I’m like, how could I possibly ask for life to be richer than what I have right now? I don’t think it gets better than this. Right? So it’s like, how can you be with that?

[00:45:31] Jay: Yeah. And let’s be real. So. So, I’m on this podcast, we’re talking about finance. We haven’t talked about numbers and, you know, goals and, you know, because it’s not what’s important. Now, it’s a measure, and people need a measure, and what I find with the super goal driven people is I have to give them a different goal.

[00:45:48] So, for example, instead of, you know, the financial goal, it’s number of lives touched, or, you know, some other measure, or you’re going to, I don’t care, read the most amount of books. I can’t reprogram them from being goal driven, like I, I’ve given up on that. But you know, can I shift it to something that matters to them?

[00:46:04] You know, so I, did you pick up the minimalist challenge, the one a day, two a day… Did you see this one?

[00:46:09] Linzy: No, no.

[00:46:10] Jay: Okay. So I love this with clients and it’s funny you mentioned it. So the minimalist challenge is, and we’re recording this end of February, so whenever this airs, beginning of the next month. First day you get rid of one thing, second day two things, three, four.

[00:46:22] So by the last of the month, you’re getting rid of 30 things. And everybody goes, I can’t really. No, you can. Okay, and I donate to Goodwill or whatever I can if I can, rather than just trashing. Let’s go through it. And every time people get to the end, they’re like, Why do I have all this stuff? And then I’ll pull back their budget and I’ll go, Listen, you spent 20, 000 last year on that stuff.

[00:46:46] Would you rather go to Paris on that trip you’ve always wanted to do? Or do you want that stuff? My personal problem is Amazon. Okay, Amazon and me, you know, we have got to, we… Sometimes packages show up at the door, I don’t know what’s in them. Like, that’s a problem. But, we all have it, but how do we find that balance and make sure our money, our life, is going towards the things that matter.

[00:47:09] And what I do is I’ll have this conversation with people like, listen, do you wanna get DoorDash if that’s a problem area? Or, Do you want that once in a lifetime trip or giving or whatever you’re doing… that? You’re like, well I’d love to quit my job and do this starting a side business. Well, if you didn’t buy stuff, you could do that.

[00:47:29] Linzy: Mm hmm. Yes.

[00:47:30] Jay: People are like well, but I need the stuff. We get to retail therapy, you get sad. What do I do? Add to the cart things you don’t like. But I’m like, hey, is it truly bringing you joy?

[00:47:39] Linzy: Mm hmm. No.

[00:47:41] Jay: And I had somebody the other day… we actually set up that for every item that comes in, two have to go out.

[00:47:45] Linzy: Yes.

[00:47:46] Jay: Just, that’s it. And it makes you make a choice.

[00:47:50] Linzy: It does. Yeah, and I think it makes you slow down because like, you know, the folks that I tend to support sometimes can be very scared of things like budgeting, the idea of restriction and being denied. What I have noticed is when you do slow down so you’re actually with what you have, you realize: I actually already have more than what I need, and I actually have more than I can even enjoy or be present with, right?

[00:48:11] Like in Minimalist Home, he talks about how the average American family has 300, 000 items in their home. Like can you even conceptualize that? Like visualize what’s in your home, right? And like the minimalist process is going through and being with each thing that you have one at a time. And what I’ve noticed is like, when I do that, I don’t long for more, right? I realize like, wow, we have so much, and I’m even like, yeah, like trying to pass these like skills on to my child and like really model like what actually makes our life rich and meaningful? Because it’s not how many toys you have and it’s not how many books you own even. It’s reading those books, it’s the space to be with the books, right?

[00:48:51] It’s like the time to go out with a friend who you haven’t seen in years, or it’s having the money to treat a friend for dinner… I’m turning 40 this year. So all my high school friends are turning 40. So two of my friends just turned 40 in January. And my closest, my oldest friend, I should say, who has been my friend since I was 12… Because I have built, you know, myself to the financial place that I am, I sent him $150 to have a great dinner with his partner, right? And that’s like a really beautiful gift to be able to give somebody. Then he’s like thinking about me. It’s like I’m able to treat him even though he lives eight hours away, right? I’m able to give him an experience where he just gets to relax and it was his first time out with his partner in a long time. Like that’s a beautiful gift to give, and that is so much more meaningful than any object I could have bought him. I gave him a beautiful experience, and I got the honor of kind of being part of that experience by being able to treat him to that. And that to me is so much more powerful than any pair of jeans that I could buy.

[00:49:48] Jay: You’re on the right path. Now I’m going to give you your next step. Now we’ve gone through the minimalist. The next step is, I want you to read the book, Die with Zero by Bill Perkins.

[00:49:55] Linzy: Okay. Yep.

[00:49:56] Jay: And we use it a lot with the childfree folks, but he originally wrote it for parents. And his point is, there’s a relationship between time, money, and health.

[00:50:05] Linzy: yeah.

[00:50:06] Jay: At the end of life, you have time and money, but no health. And right now, you know, in early life, you have less money, but you have less time, but you have better health. And his point was, there are experiences that you can have, you can give, you can do throughout life, that can completely change somebody’s life, that are a whole lot better than passing on money to the next generation, you know, at the end.

[00:50:30] And he comes to that from actually an engineering background, but I love the concept. The challenge is people go, well, but what if I run out of money? I’m like, listen, we can protect you from running out of money. We figure out a plan for long term care. There’s ways to do it. But the concept of what can my money do for experiences to people and help people?

[00:50:52] You know, if you have kids, what can you do for them throughout their life rather than when you die? You know, if you don’t have kids, all right, what impact can I make in my life and others? You know, if you want to see actually a group that understands childfree folks, it’s actually the philanthropic arms because they know who we give more money.

[00:51:07] That’s just kind of the reality check, money, it gets where it goes. But maybe you can give to that favorite charity, be part of their board, be part of their organization earlier in your life; you can make that impact. And when I have these discussions with people, they start realizing I’d get more out of that than the stuff I’m buying.

[00:51:25] You know, like I will have people that have trouble spending money and they love travel. But they won’t spend it on themselves like, okay, cool. So let’s do this: we’re going to set a budget for 20, 000 for travel for the year, and a matching budget for giving And now we’re going to do a test. At the end of the year, I want you to tell me what you get more out of… the travel or the giving?

[00:51:44] You know what the answer is. It’s not the travel. I’m just telling you, it isn’t.And where you can do that type of impact throughout life… And once you realize just collecting more stuff Doesn’t help you, it starts making sense. But the reality check is, it’s from where we came from. I inherited three sets of china.

[00:52:03] Why? Cause, I did. And, I’m like, what the heck do I do with this stuff? And, you know, it came from grandparents and all this… it’s nothing really fancy. At the end I was like, I’m just going to donate this.

[00:52:15] Linzy: Yep.

[00:52:16] Jay: I can’t use it. It’s not dishwasher safe. I can’t put it in the microwave. People in the family are like, what? You got rid of the china? And I’m like, Yes. Seriously, but that’s where we’re coming from.

[00:52:27] Linzy: I got rid of my china two weeks ago. Whole china collection. Full set. Full set. I had the same conversation with my partner. We were like, could we use this as our everyday dishes? And we were like, yeah, can’t go in the dishwasher. Can’t go in the microwave. God forbid we put in the microwave by accident and blow up our house. And I just let it go. Right? Because like, what does it mean? It’s china that came down through my family… I have lots of beautiful… I still even have things in my life that remind me of the people that I love who aren’t here anymore. And I have memories of those people. And I have things that are much more, uh, representative of them than probably the China that they also inherited, that then they kept out of obligation for years and then passed down to, you know, my mom, and passed down to me. So yeah, same page, same page.

[00:53:27] Jay: And then they start realizing, well, do I really want to buy this stuff? And what are we going to do with it? And who’s going to… Our childfree folks are not passing it on to the next generation. So, I got a lot of people doing the van life, other things. You know, my wife and I, we’re going to get in a boat and travel the world. We’re on that minimalist path already. 

[00:53:48] Linzy: Exactly. Yes. Yes. So Jay, for folks who are listening, who want to get further into your world, where can they find you and follow you?

[00:54:17] Jay: ChildFreeWealth. com, ChildFreeWealth Podcast, and ChildFreeWealth on Instagram.

[00:54:24] Linzy: That’s so clear. So check out Jay, Childfree Wealth, who works with folks who are childfree and childless, but as you mentioned, if folks are going through the grieving process, which I know can be a big part of that journey for some folks, give it a beat before you dig into all the potential that comes with your life situation. Thank you so much Jay for joining me today.

[00:54:45] Jay: Thanks for having me on.

[00:55:01] Linzy: My conversation with Jay has got me thinking a little bit about this kind of ecosystem of ideas. You know, like we ended up talking about minimalism quite a bit. Not what I was planning to talk about, but not surprisingly, because the people in my life know that I’m talking about it all the time right now.

[00:55:14] Thank you, people in my life, for your patience. But there’s kind of this ecosystem of different ideas that can complement each other about money and and understanding the purpose of your money, being connected with what really matters to you, what gives you joy, minimalism, and getting away from just kind of buying stuff with money or seeking status, because as so many people who know who’ve kind of reached their status goal, it doesn’t actually give you the life satisfaction that you’re looking for.

[00:55:40] And, it was nice to kind of dig into all these different ideas. I’m definitely going to be checking out the book that he recommended to me, Die With Nothing, I believe it’s called. I will be reading that very soon. And just excited myself to keep digging into these ideas of, Yeah, how do you make life rich and meaningful, especially once you’ve got that primary project that so many of us spend so much time working on creating financial stability, creating a business that takes care of you.

[00:56:06] That’s a project that I personally have not completed, but it’s going well. So these other questions are becoming more and more pressing, I know, for me personally, and I hope that folks listening today took a lot away from our conversation as well. I so appreciated this interview with Jay. You can follow me on Instagram at money, nuts and bolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, as always, please leave me a review. I just got a message yesterday from one of my Money Skills for Group Practice Owners students who has WhatsApp, uh, back pocket access to me, voice access. She sent me some messages in our ongoing conversation, talking about some of the recent podcast episodes that she’s enjoyed, and like what she’s taking away from the podcast.

[00:56:46] And I said to her, and I will say to you, if you haven’t already, please leave a review for the podcast. If you’re finding yourself enjoying it, it’s a really, really helpful way for Apple Podcasts to know people are enjoying the podcast, they’re paying attention and that helps other people to find the podcast.

[00:57:01] Thanks for listening today.

Kasey: The first thing I would do would be just to really get in there and take a look at your schedule. Like, what does your day look like? How long are you working? What times are you working? You know, what are you doing? And then just put some parameters around that. 

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.

Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is Kasey Compton. Kasey is a speaker, a therapist. She’s a self-love advocate, and she’s an accomplished entrepreneur who’s led for thriving businesses, including a group practice that is an in multi-million dollar territory. She shares that her journey took over a decade to uncover the transformative missing piece in her life, and that is what Kasey and I get into today. Today’s conversation is about balancing ambition and financial goals with fulfillment and joy and love and meaning, and taking care of yourself. Kasey and I talk about that self love piece being a common missing piece in our relationship to money, the traps that achievers can fall into around business and success and working hard, and she shares her own story about how getting in touch with herself has really shifted her way of relating to herself and also to her business. Lots here today for those of us who tend to identify as achievers or perfectionists and tend to move really fast, here’s my conversation with Kasey Compton. 

So Kasey, welcome to the podcast.

Kasey: Thank you for having me.

Linzy: I am excited to have you. We were just chatting a little bit off mic about the work that we did as therapists before we were into this space now. And I think similar to me, you’ve, it sounds like you’ve kind of pivoted quite a bit in your career to get to where you are now.

Kasey: Yeah, certainly. I started out being the therapist for everyone kind of deal.

Linzy: Oh sure.

Kasey: I worked in like in-home type stuff and when I went into private practice for myself, I just started focusing on anxiety and panic disorders and that became my area of expertise until I grew my private practice into a group and then retired from actually providing therapy.

Linzy: I call myself a retired social worker and I’m at the point right now where my college is like, are you re-registering or not? Like you’re about to get in trouble. So I have to like really decide whether or not I’m going to officially take the retired title. But I always find it kind of fun to say retired, like, in our like mid thirties or forties, wherever, well before retirement age. So yeah. So you retired out of therapy and now you focus on self love is a big part of the coaching work that you’re doing now. 

Kasey: Uh, well, back in 2017 I started doing a lot of coaching with owners of all types, private practice, group practice, all of that. And, I realized that systems and processes were kind of my thing. Like that’s just what came naturally to me. And so I focused my work on that for a long time, and after I launched my first book, I started writing the second book, which is the one that’s coming out next. And, it was supposed to be a book about systems, but as I was kind of balancing a lot of life issues with entrepreneurship and all of those great things, I realized that that actually wasn’t the book I was supposed to write and I realized also as a, um, overachieving, practice owner that I was kind of out of balance, you know, like in a lot of ways. And so I still focus a lot on systems, but I do it with more intention based around balance and self love and joy and having, we can have both, you know, we can have successful businesses while having that joy and fulfillment in our lives.

Linzy: I mean that’s a question that I have for you because I’ve certainly experienced this tension myself, you know, kind of like being ambitious and being entrepreneurial and building something which is, is a big project, takes a lot of energy, takes a lot of focus. And then also having friends doing the same thing. Like I see, you know, different choices that friends have made in terms of how we try to balance. And like, I am curious about that. Like, how do people balance, you know, being ambitious, like wanting to be financially successful, wanting to create financial stability with still having like joy and purpose and like all those funner parts of life.

Kasey: Yeah, that’s, that’s really the secret sauce. I think if we can figure that out, then we’re doing really well. What I’ve realized by working with so many people and just going through it myself was if you would have asked me in the peak of my financial life, like the most money that I ever made, the most success I’ve ever had financially. If you would have asked me, do you feel balanced? I would have said, Yeah, a hundred percent. I didn’t even have the awareness around it to be honest. And so a lot of times I think people don’t because they are so hyper focused on outcomes and on the goal that they’re working toward that they actually don’t even feel anything inside of their body anymore. Like they push it out.

Linzy: Yeah. Right. Like, they don’t even have that groundedness or mindfulness, self awareness, to realize, mm, yeah, there’s something missing here.

Kasey: Uh huh. Yeah, so that that was me and I noticed that a lot in the therapists that I work with. They just they really don’t. So I think being able to really really get in touch with your body, how are you feeling?

Linzy: Mm hmm.

Kasey: You know, are you tired a lot? Are you, all of those things are indicators that you’re actually not balanced. And, and so if you don’t have that awareness, then obviously you can’t change anything. But when you do have the awareness, then you can start to understand yourself a little bit better. And sometimes like, where is that drive for that financial success coming from? Like, what are you actually trying to do? What are you wanting to do with money? Do you have something that you’re trying to do with it? Or are you just guns blazing, you know, just going,

Linzy: Yeah, because I think that achiever part of us, right? Can really drive the ship and it’s just like we’re looking for that A-plus in life, but now it’s, it’s a certain amount of dollars. Um, but that is such a great question. Like, and that’s. It’s also the kind of work that I tend to do with folks is like slow down, like what are you, what are you looking for? Like what is this money going to do for you? Because it really is, can start to feel like an end in itself, right? It’s kind of this trap that we fall into of, you know, like, well, when I make this much money or when this thing happens or I need, we just start to hit goals. And I think achievers are very motivated by goals and we’re very good at figuring out how to get to goals, but it can be all consuming and, and like for what, what’s the point?

Kasey: Yes, definitely. And, you know, I’ve noticed that there’s some things. Simple things that people can do to kind of help balance, which would be, putting limits around their schedule. It works for me. Like, once I go home, I don’t work. I give myself time limits for things and that’s really helpful instead of saying, well, I’ll get this done tomorrow. It’s more of like, well, I’m going to get this done in the morning, you know, very specific

Linzy: Mhmm.

Kasey: Otherwise it just will drag on. And then I’ll be at home, you know, working on something that I should have already had done it. So I think just having boundaries for yourself around. Your time and the things that are important to you, like your kids or your family or, or whatever it is, that you need to do actually helps you become more financially successful

Linzy: Mhmm.

Kasey: you become more intentional with your time.

Linzy: Yes. Yeah, like something that I experience in myself sometimes, and I’m curious if you’ve had a similar experience is, I call it being velocitized. So when I took driving lessons back when I was a teenager, they explained that, you know, when you’re driving on the highway, you get so used to going fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, that you get off the highway, and now you’re on a residential road, and you’re still going fast, like, you don’t realize how fast you’re going. And I noticed that myself sometimes checking with my body of like, I’m in this mode of like, going fast, gotta go, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. But it’s such a, a disembodied experience, like it’s so not grounded. And like you said, like at that point I’m not able to be like, Hey, I’m kind of tired or I’m hungry or I think I need to go for a walk. Like all those cues are kind of gone because I’m just in this, you know, kind of, adrenalinized state. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, like they, they live in that space all the time. It’s really hard to get out of that space when that’s how you’re doing your work.

Kasey: Right. Well, and I have heard- and as I was writing my book, I interviewed a lot of people and I heard a lot of stories about people who are in that adrenaline, focus, hypervigilant mentality toward achievement and the stories that I heard were so comparable in that, they were going so full-on that when they actually stopped or slowed down, or maybe I shouldn’t say slow down. Maybe I should just say stop. So like if they had a major life disruption, like a divorce, um, a major health issue, like something that just caused them to hit a wall,

Linzy: Mm hmm.

Kasey: When they didn’t have that adrenaline running through their bodies every single day, all day long, like they had been used to. So many of them tell me that it was almost like everything came caving in on them. Like they started getting sick, they started having like all these health problems, and so many of them told me, you know, I think my, it was like self preservation, you know, my body felt this, but it just wasn’t- the adrenaline was not going to let me feel the thing, my body that I needed to feel to go get checked out or, you know what I’m saying?

Linzy: If your body thinks you’re running from a tiger, it’s not going to tell you like, Hey, there’s this thing happening. We should slow down.

Kasey: Right. Yeah. And that totally happened to me too. And I thought, you know, I remember when I hit my wall, I was just like, Oh my gosh, like maybe I should get back in that like hypervigilant mode and start working again, because I just, I felt, I was tired. And there was a point where I, I mean, I slept for almost three months, like,

Linzy: Yeah,

Kasey: Just just hit the wall, and I was just like, oh, I’m out. Like, I can’t, I can’t solve a problem. I couldn’t do it for anything. 

Linzy: I find like that mode, and this is what I’ve experienced myself, and this is what I observe in some folks around me, like, there’s something very compelling about being in that mode, like, it feels very powerful, and it can feel very, like, in control, and like, I’m doing the things, I’m doing the things, and I think, too, we live in a culture of busy, where if you’re busy and productive, you’re successful, right, and like, so it’s really hard, I think, too, to stop and claim, No, I actually want to slow down and maybe I will make a little bit less money for a while or maybe some of these things like won’t look as successful on paper at first. Because as you say, I think like when we slow down, we can become more strategic and then make more strategic decisions. But that can be a really hard thing to put on the brakes because there is something kind of addictive and yeah, just compelling about going really fast. We get rewarded for that in society.

Kasey: Well, and it’s that instant gratification. You know what I mean? It’s definitely rewarding us for that. I don’t want to call it bad behavior, but for unhealthy type behavior, it’s a very fine line.

Linzy: So, you know, your focus, I know part of what you teach about is self love, right? And I also help folks with like money and business, but I’m kind of in the like financial skills systems groundedness. So like. I’m curious for you, when you’re working with folks who are struggling with financial stress or financial setbacks, how do you teach them to bring self love into overcoming these challenges? 

Kasey: Yeah, oftentimes I’m really challenging them to go back and think about what those money messages are, that they keep coming up for them. you know, cause I’ve been there myself. I’ve had several instances throughout my life, adult life, professional life, where I’ve had some financial setbacks and it’s been really scary. 

In the way that I grew up, we weren’t in poverty. I mean, we weren’t poor. And if you would have asked my mom or my dad, like what, what were we? They would both say, we weren’t poor. Now, like as an adult, looking back, if looking back at my family, I mean, we were poor. and so I carry a lot of those messages from childhood into my adulthood. And there’s a lot of fear associated with lack of finances because we lived paycheck to paycheck and there’s a lot of fear around that. And so I think I have to be mindful and help bring some of that into awareness for people because some of those messages may not even be accurate anymore. And they may be something that we can easily shift out of. So that’s, that’s really the first thing. And then also, you know, just reminding people too that, well, and this is what I had to tell myself. Like I built my business from nothing and when I went through a major life change, when I went through a divorce, I mean, he was not a business partner of mine. He didn’t help me start the business. None, none of it, but he was entitled to half. Um, So, like, giving half of your money away that you have worked, over-functioned for, you know, 18 hours a day, all, like, basically giving up your whole existence for, it was very, like, really, really hard, but it was also a good lesson because if, if you can do it once, you can do it again,

Linzy: Yes.

Kasey: I think sometimes it’s helping people just to remember. And to spark that confidence again, like you’ve done this before, and do this again,

Linzy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, usually the second time is easier. It kind of reminds me of, this is a little different, but I don’t know if you ever had the experience of, of being a student and you, like, write an essay and then you would, like, lose the document sometimes. This, this happened a lot, like, in the early 2000s when I was in school, where, like, your computer would not save.

You’d have to save actively and you forget to save and then your computer would shut down and you would, like, lose it and you’d have to do it all over again. And it’s, like, so painful and so devastating. But the second time is always easier because you’ve already like laid the groundwork in your mind, like, you know where you’re going, right? And you probably write it even better than you did the first time and certainly much faster. And so, yeah, it’s like that foundation that you’ve built, that pathway. Doesn’t go away. but what I notice sometimes is like certainly the folks that that I support and I’m sure many folks who listen to this podcast like tend to be achievers, right? They tend to be perfectionists, and they are so busy focusing on what they don’t know yet, or their fear of what’s coming, like all of the, the scary unknown or where they think they’re failing that they don’t recognize exactly what you’re talking about, which is like how much they’ve learned and how much they’ve built. And again, like that doesn’t just go away, right? If something happens to you in your life.

Kasey: Right, right for me, it was easier the second time, it was harder in different ways. It was harder in just swallowing the pride of like, here we go again, you know, like, I’m gonna have to.

Linzy: Right.

Kasey: But yeah, the foundation is the same. And so at some point, when you’re looking at finances, it’s I tell people like, it’s just math. And so you’ve already built the thing. And so there’s only a couple ways to become more financially stable you’re either gonna add more therapists and more clients or you’re gonna lower your your overhead or both. So it’s it’s actually pretty simple,

Linzy: Yeah. There are those two levers. That’s how I describe it. Like I have two levers, you know, you’re either going to make more or you’re going to spend less. And like, those are our two levers. And then you figure out the right configuration for you. Kasey, tell me more then about self love principles too, because that’s something that I know you teach and talk about that is, is not my wheelhouse. Tell me about self love principles and how those apply to these financial struggles that therapists can have.

Kasey: Well, I think one of the things that people need to ask themselves, because I never asked myself this question and it wasn’t until it was asked in a therapy session that I realized, Oh crap, like I don’t even know what that is. I don’t know what self love is. Cause you know, for achievement minded outcome driven people, if you would have told me five years ago, Oh, like you just need to love yourself. I would be like, You’re crazy. I just need to make more money. Like, you know, most people think that that is not something tangible. That is not something that they can control. That is not something that’s going to make them money. And so they don’t even want to fool with it, but I think you have to ask yourself, how much do you love yourself right now? Even like put a number to it on a scale from one to ten. How much do you love yourself? And when that question was asked of me, I did not have an answer. I think I landed on the number two. because I couldn’t even conceptualize what that was. Like. Yeah, it was just really hard and especially because I had at that point started to make some connections that my perception of my value was contingent on my contribution to things financially,

Linzy: Yes.

Kasey: Obviously I, I wasn’t loving myself if I believe that, you know, if I believe that, I mean, I remember talking to my ex husband, like, after I started the business, maybe they’ll want us to come back to church now that we actually can, like, tithe, you know, maybe they’ll ask you to be in the band again because now give and like that’s really messed up.

But I just noticed that I was lacking that love of myself, which also entails confidence, grace and, and business owners are so- therapists especially- are so hard on themselves and that is not love.

When you’re talking to yourself, when you’re putting pressure on yourself to achieve and grow your business and grow your practice and all of those things, think about, would you talk to your own children that way? Because if you wouldn’t, then I don’t know why we talk to ourselves that way and we put a such unrealistic and such high stakes expectations on ourselves. And so I would say that’s how self love connects just one way, there’s a lot, but…

Linzy: Yeah. And I mean, there’s a lot to the story you just said. I feel like there’s a whole backstory there, obviously. It sounds like around like the church and, and community, but something that sticks out to me from that too is like thinking about, what are we actually looking for in life? Right? Like, what do we actually want? What are our values? And like, what I’m hearing there, you know, with the hopes that you had, where you’re like, well, we’re successful now. And like, I’m hearing like connection, belonging, like maybe we can connect, maybe we can belong, maybe we’ll be accepted. Right. And that’s, I think, so powerful to, to name and notice, right? That’s what it’s about. Like, that’s what you’re really looking for. Cause I think sometimes we try to go the long way to what we really want. And, we’re actually, this is, this episode is going to be on YouTube. So folks who are watching YouTube can see what I’m doing. Listeners cannot, but, it’s kind of like what we want is right in front of us. We go this like long circuitous route way off to the side to try to get there rather than going directly for that thing. but it sounds like in your case, like there’s all these stories around success. Like this, it doesn’t sound like it was just internal messages that were making you think that you had to be financially successful to belong.

Kasey: Now, you nailed it. I mean, that’s a hundred percent, that’s it. Like, that is the message of my whole book. That is the message of everything that I’m, that I’m teaching. And so, yes, I had money mindset issues from the beginning because of that. It was just this ultimate need to feel loved and belong to something and, you know, this is just natural, you know, if people don’t feel loved or included or like they belong, they’re going to feel like they have to seek it out, like they have to seek out solutions. Like well maybe it’s because I don’t have this, maybe it’s because I don’t have that, maybe it’s because I’m not pretty enough, maybe it’s because I, you know, whatever.

And so all of those little things that go off in our head, we start chasing after them. Really, we just need to go back inside ourselves and look at the things that we already bring to the table that are more than worthy and you know, it’s not like one day you wake up and you’re like, yeah, I love myself. You know, like this was like a three year journey for me. But I noticed that the longer that I had started doing more intentional type of work on understanding myself, understanding all of these things, I was loving myself and I cared less about the external validation of people and places and organizations and then it also became a lot easier to run my business. Because I wasn’t like all these little red flags weren’t going off all the time about you know, when someone sends in a resignation and then you get triggered by abandonment and like it was all these things that happens to us. It just became a lot easier to make decisions like, okay, this person’s like, all right, I guess I need to hire another one. You know, it just things so much easier.

Linzy: And I mean, that’s such powerful work that I think it’s tempting to skip. It’s tempting for – even as therapists, even though we know obviously that there’s so much inside and we have a whole universe inside that needs to be attended to. What I do see is like when we get into the business track and especially what you’re talking about with group practice, where it’s like scaled income, you know, like you can make a lot of money. You’ve got a lot of responsibility, a lot of balls up in the air. It’s really, I think, tempting to try to skip that, that work that is really about vulnerability, right? Like connecting with your own vulnerability. Who are you, what actually feeds you, attending to the things that are feeding those triggers. But what I see, Kasey, and I’m curious about your perspective on this is when people don’t do that work, especially when they’re bosses to other people, we become really terrible bosses too, like when we’re getting triggered and like taking our stuff out on other people and not even owning it right? Like it’s there’s a lot of repercussions when you’re in a position of power when you are not taking care of yourself.

Kasey: A hundred percent. Yes. I see that so much. So, so, so much. And you know, people are hard enough to manage and lead even when you’re in perfectly healthy mode. And so then you add in all of the other things and it’s, it’s really hard and we’re human and we make mistakes and I’ve made plenty, but being able to build awareness around yourself and your ability to love yourself and give yourself grace and all of those things. Just 100% it makes you a better leader, a better person, a better mother, a better friend, a better partner, a better everything. We tell ourselves, well, we don’t have time, you know, I don’t have time to do that cause I’m so doing all the things over here, but those things are never going to be at their greatest level of possibility without out you doing the work for yourself first.

Linzy: So for folks who are listening and maybe recognizing too that maybe they’ve been a little overly focused on thinking that numbers are gonna, you know, give them fulfillment. I’m curious like what would be your suggestion or advice for how did they start to shift their their mindset or what are some first steps that folks can take towards focusing more on like their well being and and joy and the things that really matter?

Kasey: the first thing I would do would be just to really get in there and take a look at your schedule. Like, what does your day look like? How long are you working? What times are you working? You know, what are you doing? And then just put some parameters around that. I know that sounds really elementary and just simple, but it’s a huge first step, especially for people with control. And, you know, they, they like to be in control and they like to be busy and they like to over achieve, right. There is simple, but it’s impactful in so many ways. So I think I would start there. And then the very next thing would be to put down some intentional time for yourself.

And I’m not talking about like getting a manicure or getting a facial, although those things are great. That’s great self care. I’m talking about doing things for you. Like maybe, maybe seeing a therapist yourself, maybe spending time, like, I used to do this every morning, at 10 a. m. I, for an hour, I would journal, something that’s really going to bring about some introspection for your, for yourself.

Linzy: Yeah, and I think, you know, what you mentioned too about scheduling, people who are driven and are achievers, like, we have the ability to make things happen, so what I’m hearing too is like, use those skills to actually make space to be with yourself. And take care of yourself. I love that idea of journaling. When you said journaling and for an hour every day, my internal response was oof, which means probably I should be journaling for an hour every day. Maybe there’s something there. But like I could see how powerful that would be to set aside that time on a daily basis to be with yourself. Like you would make a lot of discoveries and shifts. In that hour a day, without a doubt. 

Kasey: something that happens when it’s scheduled and when it’s at the same time every day. I’m sure there’s some kind of brain science behind that. It definitely puts it in the forefront. I got to where I could just feel that it was 10 o’clock. You know, like, okay. You know, my body is signaling me and then, one last thing I’ll say about that. I just thought of it. So as I was going through some different writing programs and working with different writing coaches, Laura Stone. She is an author and she helped a lot, but she used to say, because in the beginning, whenever I would try to write at 10 o’clock for an hour, I was like, I don’t know what to write about. I can’t, like, I can’t even, I don’t even know. And she said, okay, if you don’t know, rather than just sit there, just write about what you would like to write about. So just write down what you would like to journal about. And it’s a trick,

Linzy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s a great trick, because you’re just taking that one step back. You’re, you’re taking yourself, like, out of the pressure. And, like, giving yourself that little bit of perspective. Yeah. And that’s, that’s so powerful. Like, I, I’ve been doing an online course. called Life of Focus, from Cal Newport. He wrote the book Deep Work, which I read last year and like blew my mind and, just about making space for what matters. And something that he talks about actually with writing specifically is like, he said that, Amateurs expect inspiration, they wait for inspiration to come, and that’s when they try to create. But like professionals, like people who really do these things, they do it exactly the way you’re talking about. They do it every day, they sit down, inspired or not, they get going. And like, it’s interesting to me as you’re saying that, because it’s like, yeah, that can be applied to self care too. It’s like, okay, maybe you don’t feel like doing yoga. Make yourself do it. And like 10 minutes in, you’re like, Oh yeah, this is good. I should be doing this. Right. But I think sometimes we think that we need to feel inspired to take care of ourself or inspired to look inside. and often that doesn’t happen in the busy lives that we live.

Kasey: No, that’s wonderful. Yeah. It should be the opposite. We, we should dictate that time and that inspiration always comes.

Linzy: absolutely. Kasey, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. for folks who are listening, who want to get further into your world, can you tell them where to find you, where to follow you, if you get any freebies for them?

Kasey: Yeah. Check us out. We’re on all social channels and freebies are all on the website. So it’s KaseyCompton.com. All kinds of freebies, all kinds of things to get involved in book clubs, free swag, all kinds of cool stuff.

Linzy: Great. Awesome. And we’ll put all of your links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Kasey, for joining me today.

Kasey: Thank you. 

Linzy: I really appreciated Kasey’s perspective on the importance of prioritizing yourself and your wellbeing in your business, and using your system and your schedule and your skills to actually get that into your system. As I said, her idea of journaling every day at 10, I’m like, oh. That sounds really intense. Which for me probably means, you know, it’s something I should be doing. Uh, there’s some sort of charge there and it’s just so wise to use our skills of, our frontal cortex, basically, right? Like our ability to create schedules and order and actually apply those superpowers to ourselves and actually get those things into our own schedule. So I encourage you to think about what that might be for you. Is it journaling? Is it getting yoga into your schedule? Is it going for a walk every day at the same time? And as she mentions, like doing something every day is so powerful, we actually condition ourselves to expect that thing. So really, you know, fake it till you make it. Don’t wait until you’re inspired to take care of yourself, but actually schedule in taking care of yourself. I think that is excellent advice. I appreciate the conversation with Kasey today. If you’re enjoying the podcast, you can also follow me on Instagram at @moneynutsandbolts And if you are curious about working on your own relationship with money, some of your own stories that you’re carrying, you can check out my free mini training, The Secret to Getting Unstuck In Your Finances, if you find you have a lot of anxiety around money, so you just avoid it if you feel like you’re just getting by with money and you know you should be saving for your future, but you’re just not. If you feel like you always have just enough money, and no matter how many more clients you see, you still feel like you’re getting by, this mini training is for you. The mini training is a series of short, easy to digest videos that prompt you to reflect, look inside, and start to get in touch with your own stories about money. Because when we are struggling with money in these ways, it’s not just about skills and it’s not about systems. It’s that your relationship. With money needs to change and this mini training is a free first step to do exactly that, so you can get the link in the show notes for the secret to getting unstuck in your finances mini training. Thank you so much for listening today.