122 - How Financial Trauma Shapes Your Money Habits (And How to Heal Them)

Money problems aren’t just about math—they’re about mindset. In this episode, we explore the hidden side of personal finance: financial trauma, money scripts, and the emotional patterns that quietly sabotage your wealth.

We cover:

• How financial trauma shows up in your body and relationships.
• Why scarcity budgeting creates “whiplash” overspending.
• The cultural money myths keeping Americans broke.
• Practical rewiring tools: automation, emotional triggers, spending rituals, and account structures.
• The two levers that truly shift wealth psychology: decoupling money from status and rewiring habits around emotion, not logic.

If you’ve ever felt like your money habits make no sense—or that strategies never “stick”—this episode will change how you see wealth.

Money Scripts to help with identifying Financial Traumas

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**DISCLAIMER**
Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Transcript

Welcome to roaming returns a podcast about generating a passive income with dividend stocks so you can secure your finances and liberate your life.

This week we’re stepping off the spreadsheets and into the brain. We’re talking about financial trauma, money habits, and why no amount of strategy works if you don’t deal with the emotions driving your decisions. Most Americans carry unspoken money wounds—shame, fear, compulsive spending, or scarcity cycles—and they show up in your body, your relationships, and your bank account. In this episode, we’ll dig into how to spot those patterns, how to rewire them, and why financial freedom isn’t just about numbers—it’s about healing. 

What's up, all? We'll be back. Last week and the week before was the stuff that everyone likes, the data that shows the different strategies between the conservative portfolio and the not-so-conservative portfolio. You mean the actual payouts, why it's worthy? Yes, yes.
Because, like I mentioned previously, we started the podcast to chronicle the journey of how we were saving up money and getting enough money per month to actually move into the van, and that time is almost here, like a couple more weeks, so we're kind of like pivoting to like probably going to be half of it's going to be like it has been, and the other half is going to be like the psychology and the traumas and money is too. That's what it's always been. It has, but like I like to mention it so that they're not caught off guard.
Or just refresh them that we're going back to the psych side. Yeah, because like for the past couple of years I've taken you to my mind, my process to make money from dividends, and I like, I love doing it, so I'll probably continue doing it, and I'll probably still chronicle it, but I also really, really love the psychology side of money and the financial trauma side of money because we all, everybody has a trauma when it comes to finances, so that's what this episode is going to be about, so about financial trauma. There's a lot.
What I'm doing currently, like if you're into the MP, MTBI, like somebody else. MBTI. MBTI, the personality stuff.
I'm actually creating a Word document that chronicles each individual personality types like financial traumas. It's pretty sick. I'm hoping that's out at some point, like I'm only halfway through it.
We will do an episode on that at some point. Yeah. For sure, because it's super helpful.
But so like the reason we're going here is because we as Americans have a pretty piss poor relationship with money. For whatever reasons, Americans have a complex about money, oftentimes stressful relationship with money, which is more often than not characterized by financial anxiety, financial anxiety. Can you speak at all today? English is my first language.
Nobody would guess. The younger generations are actually more stressed out with the anxiety than the older generations, which that kind of makes sense. The older generations are like established.
Well, then everybody's conditioned to not talk about money. So it's really like you're setting up the worst possible situation to create the worst possible outcome in two ways, two ways that you can really tell like people's they have a piss poor relationship with money is how their spending habits are aligned with their with their desires. And if they're open about it, like most Americans keep money private, like you say how much you make, they're like, I make enough for how much are your bills? I make enough to cover the bills, like don't really go into detail about money and finances.
They're very vague, like even when you ask people how much they spent on a wedding and all this and that, because you're just curious, they definitely like hide numbers. It's like, okay, that's like, and that's something that's pretty much instilled into us from the older generations. Because if you remember my grandparents generation, they never discussed money.
My parents didn't really discuss money. It was just like, it's a newer thing where we are more open with our finances, because everybody lives online now, as opposed to before you kind of just live in communities and whatnot. You mean some more people are more transparent about it? More people are.
So that's how they have the anonymity. Yeah. So like, so what you're starting to see is more and more people actually like will break down.
This is my budget for the month. And this is how much I made for the month. And this is how much in the hole I am, or this is how much I saved and invested.
So that's good to see. Because when you keep money private, you're actually more susceptible to financial anxiety. So it's good to have it out there.
Because for one, it like, creates accountability. Like if you're talking, like when I talk to Carm, like, here's how much I have in my checking account. If I blew like $2,000 in September on dumb shit, and she's like, well, why is your checking account $2,000 less? Like it's keeps you accountable.
So like if you have goals and missions in mind, accountability actually helps. The second reason I think is because it's a reminder. Like if you are actually out there putting your finances on it, whether it's YouTube or TikTok, whatever, you're actually looking at them.
So you're actually, you're aware of what you're spending. So that's, it's better to have it out. I think the awareness thing, because again, it's one of those things where you get that small creep.
Like we were talking about the condo and all the expenses and stuff. And like, I stopped keeping track once I didn't need the insurance money to basically get paid out what I spent to get everything pulled up from the bank that wouldn't release it. And then up to this point, it's like, I bet you we spent way more than we realized we did, because I haven't been keeping track.
Like a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there. And then it's like, you don't know if you're really actually in profit or if you're just break even. And I have a sneaky suspicion that this literally break even.
Hopefully. Very depressing subject matter, BTW. We will cover that in a different episode.
We will. It's when we get done here, we're probably going to do a podcast about just this cesspool of, it crushes your spirit, crushes your mind, kicks you in the balls every day. It's really great.
Back to what this is. Many Americans feel stressed about their financial future. A vast majority of people are worried about issues like retirement, inflation and debt.
Obviously, the retirement is the people my age and older, they're worried about having enough money to go do what they want to do. But a lot of people who worry and don't have a plan, the anxiety just gets worse because they don't have a plan. Yeah.
So we'll get to the plan. But despite all the issues about the finances and the traumas about it, there is a growing desire. And I think it is the younger generation, Gen Z and younger, they desire to take control and they're actually setting financial goals and they're aligning their financial behaviors with their core values, which is really good to see.
The problem with my generation is we have no idea what our core values are when it comes to financial behavior. Just being honest, we're lucky. We'll just go to work for 40 hours a week and hope we can make it for the most part.
Yeah. Hope is not a strategy. Just like in investing, holding and hoping is not a strategy.
Okay. So there's a financial service company called Empower out there. I have no clue who they are, but I was reading into this and they did a survey with Americans.
It was 2,100 and some Americans. They found that Americans on average spend four hours a day thinking about money and finances, which is insane because that literally is a part-time job. If you think about it, like four hours a day, you could literally be working a side hustle and not be worried about your money and finances.
So the fact that there's that many people that it actually swayed it. You have to think 2,000 people were surveyed and they came out with an average of four hours a day. So obviously if you remember the bell curve thing, the four hours is in the middle there.
So there's people over here that are thinking like 24 hours a day. And there's probably some people like me over here, like 20 minutes a day is all they think about it. So four hours a day is crazy.
And what they also found is that 17% of Americans check their bank accounts multiple times a day, which again is insane. Yeah. It's crazy.
I forget to check mine like there's been times where like it's hacked, like Wells Fargo is actually prompting me, Hey, you haven't been here in so long. We're going to, we're going to reset your password. If you don't sign in, it's like, Oh shit, I better check.
Are you serious? That's hilarious. These numbers to me anyways, show Americans dealing with severe anxiety about finances. The fact that the average is four hours a day thinking about it.
And that there's almost a fifth of Americans check their bank accounts multiple times a day. That's insanity. And that anxiety stems from high inflation and tariffs that, but the product, what they're seeing, what they're actually seeing is before, like you were able to bottle it up and it would just basically affect your mental health, but they're actually starting to see it bleed over into your physical health, your sleep health, your relationship health, your productivity at work, younger generations, like millennials and Gen Z are, they're particularly affected with the physical and then your relationships suffer.
That's like one of the biggest leading causes of a divorce is finance issues. This isn't just my opinion. If you let, if you just type in financial trauma out there, you'll come up with survey after survey, after survey showing high numbers of respondents feeling just overwhelmed by anxiety.
One of the latest ones was a study by Northwestern university. They showed, they found that 69% of Americans feel anxiety because of financial uncertainty. I put more credo into that one because Northwestern as a college, that's like a pretty decent college when it comes to things that probably know how to run like samples and surveys and stuff like that.
Another survey by CNN, whatever that's worth, because they're kind of asked, found that 76% of households live paycheck to paycheck. Currently, this is literally, this was in May of this year, 76. That's a lot.
Although honestly, I expected that to be higher because like, look what's happening right now. Like you just, we were just talking about how the fed just agreed to lower rates or whatever, but you know, inflation, all sorts of things. So that's crazy.
Then the APA, which is the American Psychological Association, they have surveys and they indicate that as many as eight out of 10 Americans are stressed because of money concerns. And they found that 50% are stressed about their ability to provide for their family's basic needs. 56% are concerned about job stability and workload.
60% are angry and irritable like all the time. 53% feel fatigued because of the anxiety is causing them to like just be tired. Yeah.
It really puts a number on your psyche for sure. 53% say that they lie awake at night with worry about their finances. 47% report having headaches.
35% report an upset stomach. 34% report increased muscle tension. So what this data is actually highlighting is what I was just talking about.
The financial worry is actually wearing out your body. So it wears out your emotions first, then it bleeds over into your physical body and your body's like literally shutting down. You're basically killing yourself.
We've provided solutions for the anxiety for a couple of years now and some of the ones we'll just like kind of highlight them. I'll create a budget and track spending. That is you gain control by understanding where your money goes.
I would just say doing a money audit because I don't like the word budgeting and I think a lot of people don't like that word budgeting, but it's an intentional spending plan. But it is really, you do need to get a pulse on where your money's going because those slow death by a thousand cuts, man. Like if you're spending knickknacks here and there, like you're bleeding.
Whenever you track your spending, what you're basically doing is you're putting security and control back into your hands because you're like, oh, I spent 1200 last month on extraneous shit. So this month I'm not going to spend any. So like whenever you have a whatever, tracking your spending, a budget plan, whenever you want to call it, whenever you have that, it actually makes it easier for you to identify, I went overboard last month.
So I need to reel it in a little bit. The second thing, probably number one is to build an emergency fund. Yeah, that's a big one.
We've discussed it ad nauseum through the episodes. Basically you're setting aside money to cover unexpected expenses and that provides a peace of mind. So you won't have the anxiety because you know that you have like $10,000 set aside.
It's like to say your job, shit goes crazy and you're laid off or you're fired. You basically have enough to cover two, three, five, six months of your bills. So you don't have to like take the first job that says to hire you even if it doesn't align with what you want to be doing.
That's really, really big because a lot of people work jobs that they hate. And then again, it crushes their psyche from the other side of the fence. So you're struggling with money.
You have the psychology or the stress with the money and then you have the stress from actually working at a place that's just like crushing your soul. I did that for 11 years. It is not a fun place to be.
I did it for eight, crushed my soul. Was it worth it? No. The next one is to set achievable financial goals.
Basically how I like to do this is you start with small manageable goals like saving a small amount each week of 10, 15, $20. What that does is it gives you the momentum for larger changes because you're building confidence with little wins. It's the same way like when we discussed about like the high yield savings stocks.
Like if you basically are in a yield max and you're getting like $30 or $40 a week, like those little wins are going to make you feel more confident and which will then lead to a greater peace of mind because you like $40 that should cover like some of your discretionary spending. Everybody likes to see progress. We're going to go into this one now.
Manage debt strategically. It's to develop a plan to pay down debt which is a major source of financial stress. Like if it's not the biggest source of financial stress, I don't know.
But if you actually have a strategic plan to pay your debt down, it actually gives you, again, you gain control of your finances which should in theory soothe your mind so you don't have the anxiety. One of the strategic ways that we've come across recently is credit cards and we're actually going to dive into that next week with a big credit card episode that is like when we talk about it, it's fucking crazy. Because there is such a debate about whether credit cards are good or bad and they can be a tool used in the right circumstances.
They literally are just another financial tool if you have the responsibility and the self-discipline. And then you want to practice mindfulness and self-care. You want to incorporate activities like meditation if you're into that, exercise if you like to do that or journaling to calm your mind, reduce stress and improve clarity.
So if you have anxiety and you start meditating on it, in theory, the meditation should calm your nerves and give you a peace of mind and clarity in mind so you're like, okay, how am I going to tackle this financial problem? One of the biggest ones that people don't do and if you've been here long enough, you've listened long enough, you've actually are like five steps ahead of most Americans is educate yourself on personal finance. You got to learn the financial basics which basically empowers you to make informed decisions and can build your confidence in managing your money. Yeah, because the key really is informed decisions, intentional decisions.
We've tried our best to like educate you through the episodes about personal finance and if you've listened this long, even if you didn't implement things, you have the knowledge which is better than probably 75% of America. The next one would be the challenge, negative financial belief. Basically, this is saying that become aware of irrational or negative beliefs about money and work to replace them with more rational and positive thoughts.
Like money is evil. Money is evil. If you do the religious thing where money is evil, it's like it's the root of all evil.
That's not a very good mindset to have so you're not going to want to save because you're saving the devil's currency. Another big one which is one we've done a couple episodes on this one is focus on what you can control. You want to take proactive steps in areas you can influence like saving or reducing expenses to reduce feelings of helplessness.
Like basically, yes, the stoic framework. Focus on what you can control. You're clawing the shit out of my leg, dude.
But it's in even like the 10 steps for the AA and all sorts of stuff like that. It's like a commandment. It is.
Control what you can control. Control what you can control. Like some things you can't control.
Like you can't control the credit card, say the interest rate, but you can control how much money you have paying that carries over each month at that interest rate. You can't control what your mortgage rate is, but you can, like I wouldn't recommend it, but you can refinance to bring the rate down or you can actually make extra payments to bring the interest down up front so that like the back half of your loan is literally all principal and you reduce your period of the duration of your payments. So there are things that you can control even if they seem like there is no control in them.
Limit exposure to financial stressors. Now this is a big one that we probably will do an episode once we're on the road in the van. Everybody has stressors, financial stressors, whether it's debt, whether it's a checking account balance.
Whether it's having enough money to, I know I geek out if I'm like below three grand, but it's because I have such high amounts coming on credit cards because I'm quoting all this stuff and like holding costs and blah, blah, blah. So if it's credit card limits, if it's how much money the school taxes are, whatever the stressors are, you have to limit exposures to those. I will tell you, I get stressed out about paying interest in like fines or fees on like credit cards or banks and stuff like that really pisses me off, stresses me out.
And one way to actually do that is to schedule regular check-ins with your accounts rather than just impulsively going in there like once every three or four months and be like, oh shit, I only have like a thousand dollars left. Yeah, that's actually, I need to get better at having a standardized. If you check in like every week and that should like limit your exposure to that financial stressor of I don't have enough money in my checking account.
Another one is social media is huge. So like basically you have to limit your consumption of comparative analysis. Like such and such, my friend from high school is like living in a huge house with like a $600,000 job.
Like don't do that comparison because that like- Makes you feel like shit. It literally makes you feel like shit when you're comparing yourself to other people. And a lot of times you're not seeing the full picture.
So that person could literally be in debt up to their eyeballs. So like they might look like they have it all together, but it's a house of cards. I don't know if you've ever seen that social post with the apple that has like the bite out of the back, but you can only see it because the mirror is reflecting in the back.
Yeah. So like people usually put up the best front, but they don't actually show like the hidden rot. Now I saw that list is pretty not, it's not obviously all-encompassing, but it seems pretty extensive and daunting.
So like there are two areas which I would like most people to work on out of the gate, which I think are the easiest to actually- Focus on? Correct. Correct. Make impact.
And that is status and habits. But what I mean by status is whenever people think money as status. Yeah.
If you rewire that belief specifically- A key cultural driver in America is that the belief that wealth and consumption are essential to median status. Most Americans admire people with expensive possessions, cars, houses, watches, shoes, whatever. And that admiration is highest among the younger generations and those with consumer debt.
So people that have like a bunch of money on their credit cards are like, oh, I need to get like the new car or whatever like that. It's like if you can actually correct to change your mind or change your perspective that money isn't status, it's not anything other than the tool, that'll help you immensely. Well, several of the money books I was listening to, and the one about like what true millionaires look like, most people who actually have money don't look like they have money.
The people who look like they have money actually are broke. So the people that you might be admiring, if you're mimicking what they're doing, you're essentially going to get where they're getting, which is in debt and broke. You know, one area of money as status that is really prevalent in our society is wealth insecurity.
That's basically an aspiration that's tied to deep-sea insecurity about wealth. That basically means that most Americans have the idea that you can move upward in the system. I grew up dirt poor.
If you grew up dirt poor, you actually can move up in the system and become wealthy. Well, what happens is because that's never guaranteed, it forces people into a cycle of striving to protect and accumulate more. So rather than me living the life that's best for me because I grew up dirt poor, once I get money, I start doing dumb shit with it.
And then I want to have more and more and more and more. And that's not a healthy place to be when it comes to money. Oh, so there's another one too.
I think it was in the psychology of money where people tend to stay in the class that they grew up in because it's their comfort zone. So if you grew up poor, you'll make decisions that essentially keep you in that status because that's all you're comfortable with being on like a subconscious level. It's a very interesting thing.
And then again, you do have the people that go the complete opposite because it was such a pain, whether it was being made fun of. Yes, because I had hand-me-downs and velcro shoes from Walmart and shit like that. And kids made fun of me.
Velcro shoes. If I was unhealthy, I literally would have nice cars, nice shoes. You'd be like, look at me now, all you little shits that made fun of me.
That cycle's very bad. Because it doesn't do anything except hurt you if it's not built on. It doesn't do anything for you.
Yeah, if it's not built on actually having that stuff owned. We're not saying, hey, if you want to have nice shoes, I'm not saying to deprive yourself of not having nice shoes. But not at the expense of your security.
You have to identify why you want nice shoes. My shoes are pretty expensive because I have fucked up feet. And I have a super huge arc.
So I have to get shoes that take care of that. And it's anywhere between $60 and $160 for a pair of shoes, which is crazy. But when he doesn't wear those shoes, he actually gets knee pain and ankle pain.
And then he gets hip pain because he's actually not in an alignment. So it creates a compound health issue to not buy that thing that he actually does need. But I don't have the shoes as a status symbol.
I have the shoes as a health component. And I actually budget them into my finances that I need, like two pairs of shoes a year because I fucking destroy shoes. Well, and not only that, like you have hand-me-down places where people buy stuff they don't like it.
Like Poshmark. We get the shoes for a fraction of the price on Poshmark. That's where I get them from.
Poshmark, I can get them for like $20 to $30. And if they were new, they'd be like $180. So I'm good with, I don't care if people wore them before.
I just spray them out with some vinegar and I'm good to go. It's good to go. Another area would be symbolic value for many people.
Money is not just a tool for stability. It provides the resource and confidence to create a life that actually feels good. This desire is reflected in surveys showing that many Americans would choose money over love and relationships.
So basically what that's saying is people have a desire to live in a comfy lifestyle. Wow. That's really interesting that they would choose money over love and relationships.
Now the first area, like if you fall into any of those categories or if you've ever been in any of those categories, the first area to actually to redefine this in your brain that money is a status is to you basically have to redefine success to include aspects beyond wealth. Cultivate like internal awareness through practices like meditation. Again, I'm big on meditation.
Now focus on the abundance of other forms of wealth and avoid seeking external validation to material possessions. It involves you to actually do work inside yourself to align your self-worth with your intrinsic value, not your net worth. Net worth doesn't mean shit.
It's your self-worth. Well, because again, so putting that in layman's terms, because most people don't think intrinsic value them. But if you die, nobody's ever going to talk about how much shit you had.
They're going to talk about how good of a person you were or whose lives you've impacted, yada, yada, yada. So unless you're doing something like that, like your money you can't take to the grave. There's a book that I haven't read yet that I want to read.
It's Die With Zero. It's like you basically spend all your money and die with nothing because like you can't take it with you. And true wealth, I think the paradigm of wealth is actually starting to change where wealth isn't about money anymore.
It's about quality of life. And living is actually the true currency, which kind of equates to time. Money can't really buy you more time.
I mean, it can in certain circumstances, but like it really can't buy you. Yeah, we did share that with you. Like whenever we want to buy things, we're like, well, I have to work six hours for that.
Or I have to work two days for that. Is it really worth it? Is it worth working two days for it? And that is the big realization with the condo. It's like you could have actually worked for more money than this headache, slogs, pain, yada, yada.
And it's like it's really coming out in the wash where it's like, oh my God, all this time I could have been doing other stuff and had something structured externally. Oh, it's such a psychological like bad realization. It's good for education purposes because when we actually do a podcast about the condo. Yep, we will show. It's going to be.
The added cost that people don't talk about. Brutally honest, like it's not going to be like, oh, we bought it for this much and we sold it for that much. That literally doesn't mean shit because it's like we spent.
Quarter of my life. Years on this. Free time that we could have been doing other stuff we could have focused on.
For now, like I literally keep having mini breakdowns, like I literally was crying in a bush last night because I was like so devastated. We went downstairs to put new hinges on the door, then the door was swollen, wouldn't shut. So I had to go get my saw that I took out of here because I thought we didn't need it.
And then we noticed that the main freaking sewer pipe started leaking and it's in a very not easily accessible place. And I just literally it was like three things that stack. I like lost my shit.
So I'm again noticing the signs of burnout yet again because we're trying to get this done to get the hell out of here. So it's messy. OK, so what I mean by can you say the word? Intrinsic.
What I mean by that is that you have to recognize that your self-worth is not tied to your net worth. Success can include personal growth, which I've went through oodles of that recently. Meaningful relationships, which our relationship is better because I did personal growth.
Health, my health is fantastic. And experiences and experiences I'm hoping will come whenever we get into the van. So it's not just financial achievement.
So like it really is the experiences that stick with you. It really is. But you need like the health to do the experiences.
And we're not saying money is like not. You need money to do a lot of things. You do need money to do experiences.
So I'm not saying but like. But if you spend your money on the things that are like higher quality and value to you specifically, like real deep value, not surface level value of that aesthetic crap that people are like compensating for things like real true deep value. That's when you actually have a happier life.
I think one of the areas where people get confused is they think high earnings or net worth actually equals financial success. And you have to like basically abolish that paradigm in your head because that's not true. That is not true.
They've actually shown that no matter how much money you make, most of those people still are living paycheck to paycheck because you have that lifestyle creep. Yeah, we did do an episode on the lifestyle creep. If you didn't listen to that, you should listen to that.
But what that is, is like if you have a $40,000 a year job and then you get a raise up to like say $60,000 a year. So that in theory you should have you are living on $40,000. So in theory, you should be able to take that extra 20 and invest it or to grow your emergency fund or something like that.
But what people do is once they go from $40,000 to $60,000... They're like, oh, I've been depriving myself of all these things. Their life actually becomes a $60,000 a year life at that point. They start doing dumb shit with their money.
Buy a new car, buy a new house, rent their house. Before they know it, they don't remember the life of $40,000 because their life has been turned around to a $60,000 a year life now. And that just keeps happening.
That's why it's called the life. That's why it's called the creep because it just creeps up on you before you know it. And you're like, what the fuck? I just like 10 years ago, I was living $30,000.
Now, the $30,000 doesn't pay but two months of my bills. We'll talk about cultivating internal awareness. Now, this is very important because you can have the external, like us externally saying to me, you might want to consider doing this.
But until you actually have the internal wherewithal and desire to do it, it doesn't matter. Like it's not going to change anything. It's not going to change anything.
Thinking about stuff doesn't change things. So one of the ways, I'm, again, all about meditation, deep breathing now because that basically helps you harness your emotions and have them in check so that you can actually use your brain then about things like money and spending and budgets and all that. So you'll be at a pretty good G-spot where you can like, oh, okay, I can do that.
I'm pretty sure that whenever you do the transcript, they'll say G-spot right there. G-spot. G-spot.
G-spot. Nice. Understand your money script.
If you don't remember or you weren't here. Scripts should be plural. We actually did a podcast about money.
It was a two-parter actually on money script. But what that basically is, everybody has personal beliefs and habits as they relate to money. And then you have to identify which ones you suffer from.
And then each of these has like different ways they influence your financial decisions. Some can be good. Some can be bad.
You just have to figure out like the, they become a problem when they're unconsciously running and putting you on autopilot when things in your current life have changed. So you're like operating under this old script when the new thing needs to actually be. And if you're actually, if you really want to change your financial trauma and your financial behavior, like mindset, a good thing to actually Google and to read or type it in your AI or whatever would be money scripts.
And then you can identify which ones you suffer from. I will link it again because I actually did a whole list. I think it was like 22 or so common money scripts.
I'll actually reattach it to this one. But it is in those two other podcast episodes we did. It was, when I typed that up, it was an eye opener.
I was like, holy shit, I have like eight of these. And I thought I was really good with finances and money. And it's like, oh man, I got some work to do.
Being like overly frugal is actually a not good money script either because you're actually limiting your desires, which is creating leakage in other places. Yeah, you're basically depriving yourself. That's why like there's a lot of like financial people we don't agree with that actually lead like the fire thing and like deprive yourself for now.
So that when you're like 10 years from now, you'll be better. And that does that to me. That creates whiplash.
That's not feasible because like if you freaking want to say you want to go boating, you're going to go and you like deprive yourself of that. You're going to start eating food and it's just going to make up the same amount of money. It's going to be food or it's going to be booze or it's going to be anger or it's going to come out in some way that's not healthy if you deprive yourself.
So depriving yourself is not the solution. It's basically creating a lifestyle where you don't have to deprive yourself. And that's that once versus needs thing.
And it's not going to harm your financial well-being. Desires really are important to your psychological health. One of the best ways I've encountered in the last couple of years, like anytime I want to buy something, I do like I don't buy it right away.
I do take like a day or two. And that pause before spending is actually pretty cool because it like you have like, you know, the emotional high, the dopamine high, like, oh, look at those pair of shoes. But once you actually sit and think about it for like a day or two or 10 hours, whatever, whatever time frame you come up with and you're asking yourself, why do I want to buy this? Is it a need or is it just something that I want? Or is it an attempt to soothe like some other aspect of my life? It's super helpful because most of the time you'll determine it's literally a want that I don't really want.
I was just going to impulse buy. I've noticed that a lot of mine are actually like, I'm being susceptible to the marketing tactics and they're playing on some kind of desire that's unmet that their quote unquote thing is going to solve, but it's not going to solve it because I know what's where it's deprived over here. If you just sit and you pay attention long enough.
So those are two huge areas where you can actually flip your internal compass, like becoming aware of your money scripts. Like what you're like, what your pain spots are with money and then pause before spending. That'll help you immensely.
The third area, whenever you're doing the internal thing would be to shift your focus to abundance. What I mean by that is you're starting to appreciate wealth in different ways. Like you're going to recognize and focus on other forms of abundance in your life, such as time or health or skills, social connections or exercise communities, whatever, whatever.
Where you're rich at that doesn't require money. Where you feel wealthy, not in necessarily financial realm, but it's other areas of your life. If you have a good relationship, if you have a good family life, if you have a good work, good job, good passion projects, something else like that's actually what most of the people who keep striving for the money are trying to fail, like levels of fulfillment that they're not paying attention to and they just focus on.
What you may find is what I found recently is I want to do everything, like everything, everything, anything. If anybody has any ideas of shit I should do, just put it in comments. I want to do everything.
I want to experience as much as I can in the time that I'm here. That is what... That's why I got in an argument with you initially when you're like, oh, we can be super frugal and live off just of this. I was like, but I want more than that.
Like I want to be able to... I want to not have to say no to opportunities. That's what the van's all about though. To me, the van is the means.
Basically, I'm taking the apartment on wheels. And we literally just discussed this yesterday or the day before. My problem with living in the city is you vastly constrict what you can do.
Living where we are, we have maybe 12 things that would be cool to do around here. We probably have like 20 or 30 if we're willing to drive a few hours. But in the van, literally we can just drive to a fucking orchard and be like, hey, I'm here to pick apples.
Or we can just drive to a blacksmith and be like, hey, can we just beat on some black metal for a day and learn how to do this? But you can find clusters of things and then you just expand your options through that. It's like that's a lifestyle choice that we chose based on our high priorities and values. That's obviously not everybody's cup of tea because some people don't care about traveling as much as they do with close quality relationships.
And obviously, one of the biggest thing with a lot of van lifers and people that travel in RVs, you lose that social connection because you're not near your friends and family. So it is a trade-off. And people have different levels of what they value.
But nowadays, you have Zoom. You can be like, hey, what's up? It doesn't work for everybody. I'm just saying.
But you have to align your life with what actually is a high priority for you. And then once you start doing these things, you'll actually start to see a slow lever starting to go in your brain where you're not really focused on the external adulation of people for what is success or what is financial or what is wealthy or whatever. You're going to actually start to do it internally where you consciously shift away from seeking approval and you're starting to say, well, I'm actually wealthy in my bingo club or my basket weaving club or I have super health in my family.
We have family dinners every Sunday. So you'll start to see a slow pendulum swing to what wealth actually means to you internally, which is huge. I do think reframing what wealth is and not in monetary terms is a really, really good one to keep you from thinking that you're actually deficient in something.
Now, one of the ways that you can see if that that pendulum has started to turn is if you actually start questioning every expense before you make a purchase, you're asking yourself, is it necessary or is it a default that I could be cut out? Like if you're at the grocery store and you're just shopping and like rather than getting like the essentials, you start getting like some comfort food or you start getting like the shit they have on the end caps and stuff that you don't need. If you start questioning that, that means that the lever in your brain has actually started to trickle over to like you're internally saying this isn't necessary. Well, and you still may buy that thing intentionally, which is fine, but the fact that you're pausing to consider is the key.
Yes. It's that pause and intentionality. That's the key.
Intentional spending is a huge indicator that you've actually made the switch from external. Other times you'll be like, no, it's not worth buying this $15 bag of, I don't know, coconut rolls or something because I want to go on this trip this weekend and that would like not enable me to do that. Next one is whenever you start creating financial goals that are beyond just money.
So you're setting clear achievable objectives that align with your redefined area idea of success as opposed to like I have $6,000 in my checking account, I'm pretty good. That starts to flip to like I've spent like six weekends with my grandkids. So when that shift starts coming, that's when you're actually creating financial goals that have nothing to do with money, but it's about like what's aligned in you, spending time with your grandkids is one of your big alignments and you're starting to do that more and that actually comes across to you as a success or wealthy or you've achieved a goal, then that is really good.
Because that's actually what people envy in the other person is that fulfillment. It's not actually the status symbols. It actually is the fulfillment.
Once you actually start being that embodied, fulfilled person, even if you're not making a lot of money, because even us, we don't make a ton of money, but leaving the government, everybody's like, oh, you're making $96,000 a year, $100,000 a year. They're like, you should have a nice car. You should have a nice this.
You should have a nice that. But now that things have shifted and I'm still have the same assets that I had before, but they see that we get to go on all these trips. We get to see all these places that most people haven't seen.
Like when we took that five month van trip and it was, I mean, that was only five months, posted all that stuff on Facebook. And everybody was like, I have people come out of left field as saying that we're inspiring them to want to do more with their lives. And they're living vicariously through us and like all of these other things.
Like I get more compliments and comments about that than I ever would. Or I hear anybody else about like their car, their house, their whatever. Like they're deeper too.
And that's actually the thing I think that like makes people feel better or like hits deeper. It's like it's coming from like a general desire and not that like superficial component. And another area would be focusing on acquiring assets that generate value.
So basically you want your money to be working for it for you. Like what I think it was Warren Buffett who said, like if your money is not making money for you while you're asleep, you're going to work until you die. Yeah.
If you don't find a way to make money work for you while you're sleeping or you're going to work. So rather than accumulating possessions and cars and shit like that, if you're like, I wouldn't do it. They're not assets.
I wouldn't do it myself. But like rental properties or dividend paying stocks or like if you're getting something that like is making you money while you don't have to pay attention to it, that's ideal because everything that we literally just discussed becomes more accessible because you're actually making money with your money as opposed to spending your money and having to make more. I like the whole decoupling time from money thing.
If you can figure out that passive income component, which dividends is a really easy thing to do without a lot of upkeep compared to like side gig hustle, setting up the online passive income streams. Like you still have to manage a lot of that stuff. And then even rentals, unless you're hiring it out, but then you're like taking a cut of the thing, which can work if you have things paid off, but there is that added cost and the added headache.
And then the added fact that houses break down and repair work and crappy tenants. Yeah, we don't, we don't like renting. We didn't mention this that you've like multiple times today and through the, through the episodes, be intentional.
Like intentional spending is actually a way that you choose your actions and habits rather than letting the defaults dictate your life. Whether than rather than letting your money scripts or your personal traumas actually dictate your financial life. If you're intentional, you've taken control of that.
And you're, you're creating the actions. You're creating the habits and you're creating the scripts that you're following as opposed to letting the default. And you do really need to take time to sit down and do this because what happens, like the brain is trying to become an efficient thing.
And if you in the past have come up with a solution based on a like preset inputs, it's going to automatically do that thing in your subconscious, which is how these scripts get implemented, which is how these habits and behaviors get implemented. If you slow down, you will actually recognize the craving, the cue, the craving, and then like the seeking reward thing. You'll notice all of that.
And then you can be like, okay, well, does that actual thing line up with my goals of who I am now? Or is that an old habit or an old or a belief thing that's etched in that I like is harm. And then you can make actually like slow steps to start shifting things. But yeah, it is you have to really pay attention to the subconscious component because the brain is an amazing tool, but left unchecked indefinitely.
It literally will like run you into the ground. You have to actually be intentional with it and stop and have it actually expose its process and then reassess if that process is currently serving. For you extroverts out there, you want to surround yourself with supportive people.
Like you actually want to evaluate your social circle. And this is imperative. If you're becoming like more intentional and you've redefined wealth, but your circle of people is still prioritizing wealth as stuff, you're going to have pressure to do the same because you have the peer pressure and the herd type stuff going on.
So you have to evaluate your social circle once you've made that internal switch. Like are these people good people to be around? And sometimes they're not going to be. And you're just... Well, and one of the easiest way to shift a lot of this stuff is to find somebody who has what you want and literally be around them because you start to absorb what they're doing naturally because of this.
Like we are built to mimic. It's just part of being human. Like a lot of people are built to mimic and mimic intensely.
So that's why they say if you want to be better than you are, hang out with people that are better than you are. But if you hang around people that are like not where you really want to be, but they're old friends and stuff, like that's why people get stuck and they don't progress forward. It's because you're literally hanging around people who have exactly where you're at.
And then the opposite side of that coin is if you find that your social circle is not really conducive to your new intentionality of finances, you want to find a community that is. They're out there. Yep.
So that is this first area, which was what I figured already. I forgot what the fuck I was talking about. Uh, because money is status.
Okay. So that's the first area of the status portion. Like if you can get over that, uh, the second area is the one that I think is might take a little bit more work, but I think it actually is easier and you'll see results faster.
That is the habit area because once you see habits, I'm sorry, once you see results in the habit area, it becomes kind of addictive. You're basically breaking the whole money and finances have over you. And then it becomes addictive.
Like, Oh, okay, well, cool, cool, cool. I'm not, I'm not held back by like status or money status anymore. And now I'm breaking that habit to start though.
You need to identify your behavior and habits. That's the shitty part. You actually going to have to do some, you have to take a look in the mirror, introspection and be like, okay, what am I, where could I have improvement in this? So to break bad money habits, you must first identify your triggers, then apply strategic behavior and budgeting techniques to those triggers.
If you can't do it on your own, it's not like, it's not a weakness or it's not that you're dude. Seriously. Habits are a bitch.
Like they really are. If you need to, you can get a financial therapist or coach. You literally can just Google it.
They're out there everywhere. That'll actually help you address the deep seat and emotional issues. Because this is the emotional, like most, most of your habits are emotional issues that are basically leading to the financial self-sabotage.
The first one, the first habit area, it would be financial habits are deeply tied to your emotional well-being and past experiences. The past basically dictates your present and your future is basically what that's saying. By understanding your own money story, you can uncover the psychological drivers of your behavior.
Like I was saying, I grew up third poor, like we never had money for shit and the house got foreclosed on. We had to move, then we couldn't make the rent. So we got evicted.
Then we bought another house. That house got foreclosed on. My parents were always borrowing money from family members, never paying them back.
I grew up in a very, very bad area for finances as a young kid, as I was growing up. These past negative events can lead to chronic anxiety and fear-based financial decisions. Like I'm never going to be better than I was.
I'm always going to be like poor. And like, so it can, that financial trauma can be, if you don't get it under control, it can be a mindfuck. I think one of mine, because the way my dad operates is like, no amount of money is ever enough, which like causes you to essentially squirrel money away, which is what I've done, but it's like, I didn't know where to invest it.
So again, there was like an ignorance component there, but constantly squirreling money away to the point where I was not taking experiences because I was under that deprivation standpoint, which then it was creating these backlashes and a lot of very unhappy, very unhappy lives. So luckily I was able to like overcome that through like a lot of the techniques that we've discussed and I was able to like not have to worry about like the fear, the fear driving my financial decisions that I'm always going to be poor. I'm never going to be able to afford anything.
Financial trauma is a bitch. Yeah, it is. And that's the one you have to look at yourself in the mirror and be like, okay, so what is my money story? Well, if you don't want to look at you, look at your parents.
That's a good idea. Look at your parents. Because, or your friends, your closest friends.
Or your siblings. Because a lot of times the people you spend with, you tend to absorb those, or like that's where you get hand-me-down generational trauma, whatever the heck you want to call it, financial trauma. If you have trouble looking at you, you can look at external, or if it's easier for you to look to external, look to external.
And then you can figure it out. The second one I'm super guilty of, or I was super guilty of up until we decided we're doing the van stuff. Like it was emotional spending where people use spending as a way to cope with emotions like sadness, boredom, or stress.
They basically are seeking the short-term dopamine mood boost, which can lead to regret and overspending. And like, so the dopamine was causing me to always have like less than a paycheck in my bank account because I was just pissing money away left and right. Like I wasn't spending on anything that did anything.
That really gave you any fulfillment. And all it basically did is literally was like a 10-minute. Numbing band-aid.
10-minute dopamine hit. Yeah. And that can get very, very insidious if you actually put food in the in-between, because then you can justify food as a necessity expense.
And then you can, you know, binge eat. Like that was one we both, like seriously, when we had like $900 a month, we were spending eating out and shit. Yeah, we spent a lot eating out, but it was bad.
So we were soothing ourselves because of the albatross that's still part of our lives. And then like on the flip side there is like you have the emotional spending, then you have the exact opposite which is the scarcity mindset, but basically it's where you're constantly focused on what you lack, so you develop a self-limiting belief that leads to self-sabotaging financial behaviors. A mindset of abundance that contrasts these possibilities instead of roadblocks, but the scarcity is like okay, The scarcity is huge and if you look at like Dave Ramsey, that's a scarcity mindset.
A lot of these people that were talking about the fire movement, scarcity mindset, the frugality components, scarcity mindset, like they really do actually create scarcity trauma, frugality fatigue, because you're withholding, withholding, withholding, withholding. The key to actual financial wealth and stability without the emotional whiplash is really that balancing act between desires and needs and being very intentional about the balance for you. What I found for me and myself personally, when I practiced the scarcity, like I need money and I don't want anything, what that led to was the one we just went over, emotional spending, because I was depriving myself.
You literally create a whiplash effect. I was depriving myself of stuff that I should have bought, and because I didn't do that, I was like, oh, look at me, I'm being financially responsible, then I was just doing emotional spending, whether it was gambling, whether it was smoking cigarettes, whether it was eating a bunch of dumb shit, like dumb food that I shouldn't have been eating. It was leaking out in other places.
But I still felt good in my head because I didn't buy like the PlayStation, but then I spent more emotionally soothing myself because I didn't get the PlayStation. And that's where that pendulum swing happens, where you're like scarcity, and then you're like, oh my God, overspending, and scarcity, overspending. Yeah, you will vacillate between those two.
Well, that just means you're not in balance. That just means you literally need to realign your spending and your desires and be very intentional. Because again, once you're actually spending money on the right stuff, you don't feel like you don't have enough money.
It seems like a paradox, and I guess it technically is. It's very interesting. But a few quick strategies to break bad habits would be to, again, like we said, the cooling off period.
So rather like you don't buy stuff right away, basically 24, 48 hours, whatever, to make sure that after a day or two of like actually having the dopamine, because you still have the dopamine high when you're thinking about buying it. Yep, you actually have a more high when you're thinking about it than when actually buying it. So like you get out of the situation, the stressing situation, and you let the dopamine levels reset, you start using your brain, and you're like, do I really need that? So that's, I know it sounds corny, but it really works.
Well, you know, there's something with our brains where if we fantasize about it, you do actually create the same hormone thing. So like a lot of people who were pulled with the impulse spending and then the regret, guilt spiral that happened afterwards, they actually got more dopamine hit going to the place, but not actually when they went to buy. That's just part of that habit thing.
So if you actually stop, you can get the dopamine hit without the negative guilt spiraling if you slow it down enough. Although dopamine's kind of addictive because it's like hit low, hit low, hit low, hit low. You don't wanna like be in that vicious cycle of dopamine hitting, but that 24-hour rule really does.
But I would almost like fantasize about it and then fantasize about giving said thing away and feeling good and actually create a double dopamine or a double deeper hit. That would actually be an interesting experiment. I just thought of that.
We could try it. We should try that. Because I've noticed like I do a lot of like fantasy projecting on the positive and the negative, but it's actually what helps me like figure out what I wanna do.
The second way to actually help with mindless spending would be to use cash or debit. I always use debit, so I don't understand this, but like apparently people use credit cards like they're candy. I use credit cards for everything, but.
Like they're candy. So if you actually pay with cash or debit card, you can curb your spending because it makes the financial impact of a purchase feel more immediate because it's coming right out of your checking account or out of your wallet. If you struggle with that, that's a good way tactic to do it.
I personally don't need to worry about that because I don't overspend with credit cards. I spend as much as I would normally spend just for the cash back points. Not everybody's like that.
Another area would be, I'm guilty of this, but I don't have a problem with spending anymore is that one of the ways to control your triggers is to remove your saved credit card information from online shopping sites and unsubscribe from reels or emails and social media accounts that tempt you. Good luck with the freaking social media accounts. It's like all for you.
So you have your card and say Amazon or Temu and anytime you see stuff, you're just like buy now. There's no repercussions because it's literally just buy now. That's funny.
I actually don't save any of my stuff to Google. I don't save any of my stuff to anything. I manually type everything in if I'm gonna do anything.
It sounds like a lot of people do. I'm guilty of that. I mean, yeah, because of password.
Yeah, I know you do. I was like, why is this thing saved here, Tim? And you're like, huh, huh, huh. But that's one way.
You're actually taking the control away from your subconscious for the most part. Yeah, you're putting it on autopilot. Again, there's that one click buy.
You're not going through that intermediate process where you see the price. You actually have to put the credit card in. Those extra pain points or pauses give you that more intentional, do I really want this? Do I really need this? That's my two cents.
And then again, the financial awareness, you're gonna wanna build the financial awareness is with, again, the tracking, the budgeting. For a period of a few weeks, use a spreadsheet or a budgeting app to track every expense and then seeing where your money actually goes is a powerful first step to making change because again, like we've discussed it ad nauseum, if you know where it goes. And this is the key.
Ongoing budgeting is definitely very strenuous and cumbersome and can not make you wanna do it. But if you have never actually tracked your expenses, doing that for a few days at the minimum to a few weeks, it really will give you a snapshot of your behaviors and stuff. Because most people can fake it good for a couple days, but then reality snaps back in.
So I would definitely recommend more than just a few days because then it's like you're seeing, oh shit, I'm spending $5 here, $5 here, $5 here. And it's like, wow, that really added up to over like $30 in a day that I really didn't need to spend or I didn't realize I was spending. The second one is I never thought of it in my context of people, but people always will schedule check-ins with people they haven't seen for a while, like mom, dad, brother, sister, friends or whatever, but they don't do a check-in with their budget.
Or even their account. So we understand the concept of doing check-ins, but we don't apply it to stuff that actually matters. People matter.
Which is your budget and your progress. It's like, to me, that's paramount, but I might be one of the minorities. I think that is a good thing, because you should check-in because your stuff changes over time.
Like how many times have you gone back and been like, oh, I do not like this anymore, this thing's no longer a thing. Like you change over time, like you adapt, you shift, you whatever. So you can't realistically expect to still want to spend on the same stuff.
And then a big thing that I learned, and that's why it's here, is if you focus on the why, why you're doing things for your financial goals and the budgeting and the investing and everything, whether it's buying a home, saving for a home, or saving for a wedding or for your retirement, or in my case, financial independence, the long-term vision actually provides motivation to avoid short-term temptations. So when I'm thinking, well, I would like to do this bike ride that costs $400, but the $400, we could jump into the van and make the van perfectly livable. So when I focus on the why, it makes things easier.
Now, not every time, because there's some times I'm like, ah, I can wait, I'll just buy this. I'll buy this pair of shoes or whatever. But again, I'm not suggesting you deprive yourself completely, but if you know what your end goal is.
If you feel deprived, you haven't figured out the underlying thing that's trying to actually get met. That means you actually should be spending money on something or putting energy into something, just not necessarily that thing that you're about to impulse spend or whatever. It might be something deeper that you're missing from over here.
I just recently realized I've been eating my intimacy needs, which sounds so screwed up, but I think this is actually a common problem where if you deprive yourself from intimacy component, you actually, there's something about breastfeeding and crap where that becomes an intimacy connection with food. And then if your whole family does the thing where they basically feed you to show their love, that kind of gets etched in deeper that it becomes like food associated with love and intimacy and companionship and yada, yada. So then it's like when you're alone and you're stressed out and you're seeking intimacy, but you're not aware that you're seeking intimacy.
I would literally just binge out on food because it was such a depravity, but it was never getting satiated because it was just not from a people intimacy component. That was a big realization in the last couple of weeks. And I was like, I'll be damned.
That is so screwed up and distorted and whatever. But it's like that realization is huge. Like I was spending at least five to $10 a day on like stress eating, aka intimacy need problems.
And I recently realized that like, I just need to be touched. Like talk about stupid. For years I would try and she'd be like, don't touch me.
Yeah, it was like a complete unawareness thing. So strange. We're creating structural changes like in your setup.
First is automating your savings. You set up automatic transfer to high yield savings accounts or investment accounts on payday. You're paying yourself first, which ensures your financial goals are prioritized over like the comfort.
Yeah, you need to make sure that your savings and your bigger goals come before like impulse craft. And so what I mean by structural changes is like little simple things that you can do that actually will make a vast difference whenever it's like structural, like your bank accounts. Yeah, setting it up to auto freaking disperse your money to like your investment account, turning your drip on in your shares, having your bills automatically paid so you don't have to actually deal with fee problems and things like that.
Or even with budgeting apps, a lot of them will like link to your stuff and make it automatic. Or even getting notifications on your phone that like stuff went through or got approved or yada yada to like verify that it's like letting you know. Another area that Carm has mentioned previously would be using separate accounts.
Like so basically you have three bank accounts. One is for your spending, like you're basically your bills, your essentials. So what I was gonna do- One is your savings account.
Yeah, what I was gonna do is you set one up as your savings account, you set one up as your, whatever your auto payments are coming out, and then you have your discretionary one. So anything that like this helps for people who actually have credit cards. Because if you put a purchase on a credit card, you have 30 days until that thing comes out of your account, which can create, it's happened to me a lot of times where I'll be like, holy shit, why is my account so low? And it's from last month's like massive auto parts like purchase I completely forgot to like factor into the month delay.
So if you have that separate account where everything's coming out of and you just like auto transfer over to this account that everything else auto pays and it's always has the amount for your recurring stuff and then plus any actual like credit card expenses, you can move things over so that you don't have to worry about that. Like, whoa, where'd that come from? And then automatically moving stuff to savings or your investment account and then whatever's left in your like discretionary, because most people will spend whatever's left. They do that goldfish thing.
There you can do it with no guilt. If you set up an actual system that allows you to do that, like you have no guilt. Because that money was earmarked for discretionary and when you're out, you're out.
Yeah. So that's like, so like what it does, it actually creates a natural barrier to prevent you from accidentally dipping into funds meant for savings or meant for bills. Like so whenever you have the different bank accounts, you're actually creating barriers.
And I feel a lot of long-term goals for like savings perspective. I have, I was actually very intrigued by, I think it's Capital One and Discovers. I think Capital One's the one that's better where it allows you to open multiple savings accounts where you can earmark them for like, I don't know, trip to France, bike race, whatever.
Like whatever, you can do multiple ones so they're not commingled so you can actually see progress in every one. It's pretty interesting. Pretty cool tool.
The third, which I think is probably one of the easiest to do right away is to adjust your spending environment by this. I mean, you're taking control of your daily spending by limiting takeout meals, coffee runs, unsubscribing from unused services, or eating, like this is a huge one for me anyways, eating a meal before you go grocery shopping. I notice when I go to the grocery store hungry, I buy everything in the store.
If I go to the grocery store full, I buy what I went there for. Well, and I actually would find myself sometimes like guilt spending where if I was around a bunch of people that were gonna go out to eat, like if you're going to a place that's like above what you would normally spend, like you'd feel kind of obligated to like eat while you're there. So it's like, I don't know, if you avoid situations that are not gonna make you feel obligatory spending, I feel like that happens a lot with like birthdays and gifts and families.
I basically just decided that I don't buy gifts, so if you wanna buy me gifts, expect to probably not get something back. True story. Yeah.
And then we have the professional help. You obviously can't hurt to call in an expert. There are three ones I can think of, which is the financial therapist.
If you basically have deep-seated emotions, past trauma or anxiety is driving your financial behaviors, financial therapist actually can help you address those underlying issues because again, they're basically, they're prying out the emotional component of why you spend the way you do. There's a financial coach. A financial coach is the ones that can help you set realistic goals and provide accountability to improve your financial literacy and confidence, and they're basically the, for lack of better words, like your friend saying, hey, you should, yay, you saved up this week, or you actually learned this or whatever.
So financial coach is completely different than financial therapist. Again, that's emotional coach. I feel like you could, if you didn't wanna spend money on this, since these probably cost money and money's usually a problem for people seeking this stuff, you could just join an actual group for people trying to achieve the same goal and having an accountability circle.
And then the third one I could think of was a credit counselor. They actually help you create a debt repayment plan if your financial habits have resulted in high credit card limits. You mean debt counselor? Debt counselor or credit counselor, yeah.
Credit cards can get very insidious very, very quick. Very quickly, like that 30-some percent interest is no joke. Mm-hmm, and it's like above 30 at this point.
Our friend's credit card triangle thing, he had gone on like 30, he was literally incurring like $700 in interest a month, plus fees, plus all sorts of crap. It was like, holy shit. They're 30-plus percent interest.
I think 36 on a lot of them. That's crazy, it's crazy how much they actually can get away with. I know, I don't know how the hell the government hasn't capped what credit cards can charge.
It's insane. Okay, so the way out of poor financial habits and the redefinition of money as a tool instead of a status symbol, that's the key component. You want money to be a tool for your better life, not a status symbol or something that you need.
On the surface, it appears hard, and it may not be worth the trip to a lot, but a money as a tool mindset views money as a resource to achieve goals and values rather than the end itself, which encourages intentional financial decisions, which gives you greater control of your life, and it gives you better personal alignment with personal aspirations for a more fulfilling life. Yeah, really, that one shift. If you can shift your perspective from scarcity or stress to abundance and empowerment, you're basically designing a life consistent with your objectives, and finding your objectives and your alignment, that's a whole other podcast that we'll probably get into down the road, but if you can actually flip that pendulum in your mind from status to money as a tool, oh, it'll open up so many doors.
I like the resource idea, because when you consider something a resource, you're like, how can I allocate this resource? Naturally have that thought process. How can I allocate this resource? Not, ugh, or whatever happens. I think those are the two easiest ones that most people can deal with, though, is money as a status and your financial habits.
And so, again, we will reiterate, this is not an all-encompassing episode. This is just hyper-focusing on the big leverage points, and I will link the list of the whole bunch of money scripts, money beliefs that hijack people, for you to potentially get examples and figure out what's up with you. Next week will be credit cards, and all that fun stuff, and then down the road, I don't know when I'll finish it, but we will actually do a personality-based financial trauma at some point.
It'll be very interesting. If you know your personality type, you can literally just go, okay, here's my traumas. Oh, that's right.
That's right, because I did mine. I was like, that's right. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, I've done that. Did you do mine yet? Yeah. Are they on? It's pretty accurate, too.
So I've been syncing it up with, we have a personality GPT that Carm created, so I've been syncing up my Google searches with the AI and coming up with, it's pretty fucking sick. It's gonna be really sick whenever I actually get done with it. But again, next week.
It'll be helpful. Like, that's the point, and very tailored and subjective to the individual, and that's the key, because it's like when people are like, oh, everybody has this problem. It's like, no, I'm the opposite of that, and then you're like, then you kind of tune out, or you only give half an ear to whatever they're saying, and you wonder why some gurus resonate and other ones don't.
It's because they're not the same personality type as you, and it just doesn't resonate. Down the road, we're actually gonna try to sell these GPTs to people if they're really interested in them. I'm gonna build up some hubs.
Again, big things are coming once this condo's gone. It is a couple of weeks at this point. I know we've been saying this forever, but projects do not go according to plan, especially when they are wearing down on your soul and your psyche.
You're not crazy. We haven't been saying a couple weeks now for two months. For a long time.
No, but we've been saying, oh, it'll be done in October. Oh, it'll be done in March. Oh, we'll be done with this for years.
It's been years. It's bad. It's bad.
We're almost done. We have a buyer lined up, and the one right across the street literally just sold in two days. Yeah, we should mention that.
The one across the street literally went up for sale, and it sold two, three days. I think it was three days. I think they put the Asking price.
For sale price, or for sale sign up on Friday, and it sold. I saw on Sunday that it had already sold. That's crazy how quickly the real estate's going.
So this'll go quick, and then we're going to have a- And with rate cuts, I imagine the freaking crazy buyers are going to come out- We're going to have a live stream, but what we do with the money, it's going to be interesting when we get that, but that's, again, we don't know the exact date of that, but once we do, we'll actually say, hey, the exact date of said crap is X. Yeah, we're trying to keep things to a minimum right now, because we have to move everything out, but as soon as we basically get this thing listed or whatever's going to happen with this cash buyer, then a whole huge thing of bandwidth's going to open up. We've nicknamed it Albie. Yep, Albatross, because if you look up the definition of Albatross- Albie.
We should read this definition for people, because it's so bad. A significant, persistent burden or obstacle that prevents success or happiness. That is literally the definition of the condo.
To the T, so it's Albie. It's Albie. We named it Albie.
We should have done this sooner. So anyway, on that note- We'll see you guys next week with credit card talk. Everyone has credit cards, so it should be helpful.