Ep #17: How to Improve Your Relationship with Money

You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy episode 17 and this week we're
going to talk all about money. Let's dive in.
Hey there, you are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy. This is a podcast
for overthinkers, overachievers, perfectionists, type A, stressed out,
anxious people who just want to calm down and feel better. I'm your host,
certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis.
Hey there. Today, I wanted to talk about a subject that has been coming up a lot
lately, money. Money is a big theme for everybody. Money makes the world go round.
Money is what creates our ability to buy food and shelter and commerce and all the
things. So it's not a new subject. It's a well -worn subject. It's a subject that I
don't love talking about, but it is a subject that I tackled in my previous podcast
about 18 months ago when I was talking about the buckets of life and one of them
was money and people's relationship with money. But since recording that episode, I've
done a lot more research on the role money plays in our lives. And over the last
year, I have had several clients who have confessed to having very deep seated
"problems with money." Everything from gambling to overspending to simply ignoring
where their money goes. This is what prompted me to do a deeper dive on the
subject of money and talk about this common thread. It turns out, Everyone has a
money story. They just may not realize it. So I'll give you a couple of examples
of recent client stories. I had one client who proudly professed that making money
was easy for him. And I was really inspired by his statement and his belief because
I don't think I've ever felt that way. In spite of the fact that I've always
steadily earned money since I was 15 years old, I don't think I ever thought it
was easy to make money. I thought that if you worked really, really hard and you
showed up every day and you showed up with integrity, you could make money. I
wasn't confused about that. But I think the idea of actually making money, having
money, that was hard. Anyway, the flip side of his statement was that he was never
able to save money. Now, it turns out that he had a gambling addiction or did
before I met him. And at one point he was in debt about $90 ,000. So he has since
dealt with his addiction through therapy and other modalities, but he still doesn't
have any savings. He's almost completely paid off his debts and he loves working and
He makes money. He says he just can't seem to hold onto it. That was his words.
Somehow he always feels compelled to spend it. So as we started to explore the why
of this, he realized that it was his parents never had any money. So somewhere in
the deep recesses of his brain, he thought he would be embarrassing them to maybe
make or have more money than they did. He was kind of ashamed of it. And
additionally, he felt compelled to always buy things for other people because he's a
people pleaser and he wanted to make other people happy. He was always giving away
his self -worth and he was buying an insurance plan that people would always like
him. Of course, this was all totally unconscious. So we talked through this and I
recommended that he start keeping a money journal just like I recommend for my
weight loss clients who write down everything they eat but in this case he was to
write down everything he spent money on with no judgment or shame just to get in
the habit of tracking it create an awareness a relationship with spending well by
the end of the month He had money left over for the first time that he could even
remember. And he went on to make a goal of saving $2 ,000 a month. He achieved
this with very little change in his life. Now that gambling was no longer in the
equation, most of it was just being less reliant on eating out and having food
delivered, which really racked up the bills. And again, kind of unconscious. Another
client confessed that she was, quote, "bad with money" as if there were people who
are inherently good with money. The implication from her was that people who live
within their means or avoid debt or save are, quote, "good with money." But we
aren't born being good or bad with money. We learn about money from others.
Oftentimes our parents, sometimes our grandparents. But it's not a formal education.
I mean, if you get a formal education from a parent or grandparent, it's fantastic.
But most of the times, it's just their feelings or statements that are repeated over
and over again. Statements like, "That's too expensive. We can't afford that." Money
doesn't grow on trees. Money is scarce. People with a lot of money are shallow.
People with a lot of money are bad. Money is the root of all evil. Mo money mo
problems. It's these catchphrases that start writing our money story,
before we ever even earn our first dollar. So my client realized that her
inclination to spend money was a way of acting out. Her father was quite
conservative, again her mother was a bit of a spend thrift. So spending money even
as an adult somehow made her feel like a rebellious teenager again. And she liked
it. I mean, she was very responsible. I had a really professional job and all the
things. But somehow this bad girl element made her feel kind of naughty in a
somewhat controlled way. So I asked her to do the same task as my other client.
Start tracking your spending. So, once she started tracking her spending, she was
sort of shocked to discover how emotionally tied her overspending habits were. She
spent money out of guilt, buying lavish gifts or throwing big parties. She wanted to
be seen as generous. She admitted that she threw money at problems. It was a way
of not having to deal with emotional issues or not planning ahead. So,
I had another client who felt uncomfortable having money, earning money,
charging money to her clients. When she did have money, she wanted to give it away.
She wanted to keep taking classes or donate it to charity. Nothing wrong with either
of those things, but almost to the point where she wasn't even earning her money.
So she kept taking classes to better her career, but at the complete expense of
ever earning any money or reinvesting in her company other than taking more classes.
She wasn't comfortable spending money on herself and she wasn't comfortable having
money just sit in the bank. The root of her money story was her parents too.
Her father thought money was dirty and the cause of most people's problems and it
turns out her mother loved to spend money. So money was a terrible source of stress
between her parents, and subsequently she developed an uncomfortable relationship with
money, too. I didn't realize I had a money story until I went into business for
myself as a coach. When I was working for corporations, I was always paid a pre
-negotiated salary. Executive contracts were typically one to three years long, and
there was not a ton of negotiating because the HR departments had a salary range
and generally didn't budge much. While I made a great living, I was typically
underpaid in comparison to my male counterparts, but my inner critic told me to be
grateful. So I tolerated being underpaid relative to others in my field because I
was a woman, because I was a mother, and because I didn't wanna rock the boat and
jeopardize my career. So when I went into business for myself as a coach, I had to
learn to be comfortable setting my own prices and asking individuals to pay for my
services rather than companies. Unlike in my television career, I didn't have my
entertainment attorney brother to negotiate my contracts. I had to set my price based
on the market and what I thought my value was worth. It was the most uncomfortable
part of my new career. My money story was that I had already made a good living
and I had everything I quote needed and asking for more would be selfish or greedy.
I wanted to sell myself short and adhere to my money story. I don't need to keep
earning a lot of money. I already have everything I could want. But I had to
change that money story because if I was going to have a successful second career,
making money is part of that success. And, well, what drove me to this line of
work was a genuine interest in helping people become more successful personally and
professionally. How could I turn around and undersell my value while telling my
clients to charge their worth? So I had to let go of my old money story,
that there's a certain amount of money that once you have it, you shouldn't need or
ask for more. The answer is, if you have everything you need, you can give your
money to charity. You can invest in other people's companies. You can put your money
to work. Money is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it can be used certainly as
a weapon for many people. It can be used to control people, and it can be used as
a power source. But money is whatever you choose to do with it.
And there's so much power in charging what you are worth,
what your time is worth, what your expertise is worth, but developing a healthy
relationship with money is a really key component to developing a healthy relationship
with yourself. And this episode that I recorded a year and a half ago speaks to
the heart of all of that. So if you've heard it before, I invite you to listen
again, and if you haven't heard it yet, I invite you to listen to it for the
first time. And at the end, ask yourself, what's your money story?
All right, enjoy listening. Hey, it's me. (laughs) Who else would it be?
Today's bucket is money. And I'm gonna be honest with you, this is the hardest one
of the buckets for me to talk about. And there's a reason it's the hardest one. I
was raised in a generation, but also in a family where talking about money was
tacky. In fact, it was forbidden. You never talked about money. You didn't talk
about how much you made. You didn't talk about how much you saved. You didn't
really even talk about how much your house cost. You were discreet, you were
private, you were humble, whether you had a lot or whether you had a little, you
just didn't discuss it. So it's very strange for me to now be in the coaching
business where money is one of the buckets I discuss with my clients.
It's an important bucket. Money Like the other buckets that we are going to discuss
on this podcast and like the other two we've already discussed, career and
relationships, money is about mindset. What you think about money very much dictates
how you earn it, how you save it, and what you think you deserve regarding money.
So So I'm gonna unpack that a little more. That seems rather glib and kind of like
an overstatement, but I will tell you, I have done a lot of work around the idea
of money. When I started as a life coach, I was certified first by one school and
then I started my business and I make a habit of talking to a lot of other
coaches who are coached by other schools and who specialize, have different niches
and things like that. And one of these coaches introduced me to a marketing coach,
a one that who was a life coach, used to have one -on -one clients and then decided
to build a multi -platform business model in which she sells coaching packages online
Two coaches about how to make money and you know what her secret is?
She does it ultimately through working on other coaches mindsets,
so we're back to that word mindset. Anyway, her name is Stacy Bayman and Stacy has
this wonderful story that I love sharing with my clients. Once, Stacy was in sales.
And she used to drive around in her own car to Walmart and big box stores and
sell and demonstrate mops and slicers and different kitchen appliances or household
cleaning appliances. And she became the number one salesperson in her company in the
country in a very, very short time.
And in spite of being the number one salesperson, she was poor and,
you know, basically barely making a living. And then her life kind of went to hell
in a handbag. She broke off a relationship and she hated her job and she hated
commuting from state to state and she hated being poor and yet being really, really,
really good at sales. And she's like, I got to to do something else. And she found
life coaching. She first wanted life coaching, and then she realized she wanted to
coach herself. She went into debt to become a life coach. And in five years,
she has created a $5 million empire,
$5 million in five years. She did it by working really, really hard, by being an
awesome salesperson, by creating an awesome product, which is these online programs
that she sells to coaches, but also she has these mastermind seminars, live and in
person. And she built the business one step at a time and obviously paid back her
loans and obviously now coaches people on making money for themselves. Her principles
apply to virtually everything. So her principles, again, are working on your mind and
working on your relationship to money. And so that's what I try to do with most of
my clients. So when my clients come to me, whether they are rich or poor, working
or not working, have savings or don't, have debt or don't.
We try and unpack the issues about where did that mindset come from?
Where did the scarcity come from?
So I think it's probably important for all of us to evaluate where did our idea of
scarcity, where did our individual idea of scarcity come from? Because until we sort
of discover what the root is, it's really hard to address it going forward.
In my generation, a lot of our parents or grandparents were refugees of war,
or they came from a depression era mentality. So that can have a big impact in
terms of what you see and what you're taught growing up if you come from a family
who either had nothing or who lost everything because of circumstances beyond their
control. And even in recording this podcast, I was thinking, well, where did my
mentality of scarcity come from? And it probably came from my grandmother,
who was both a refugee of war and also very much a woman with a depression era
mentality. And when I graduated college, and then when I got my first job in the
entertainment business, she would say to me, I mean, she was proud of me,
but there was this sense that she would say, you're so lucky, you're so lucky that
you had the opportunity to go to a university, you're so lucky to have a job right
out of college, you're so lucky to be able to have landed a job in the
entertainment industry. And so there was this sense of like, just be grateful and
not question anything and tolerate whatever comes because there might not be anything
else after this. And that very much carried with me in every job I ever had.
And so even when I felt like I was being taken advantage of or underpaid or
exploited, It was always, "You can't quit because you're so lucky to have this job."
The entertainment business sort of fed upon that mentality of scarcity.
If you survive the entertainment business, you're generously rewarded oftentimes. But
there was always someone who was willing to take your chair. And I used to
reference it, I used to call it musical chairs because you would see people come
and go lightning fast. And I think that that probably compounded this feeling of
having to tolerate. I went into a business where I always felt insecure.
Even when I was being promoted or rewarded, it was always a feeling like feeling
like the rug could get pulled out from under you at any time. And that probably
exacerbated a scarcity mentality that if I quit or didn't tolerate whatever
circumstances I was given that there wouldn't be another opportunity.
Then on top of it, as women, we were historically underpaid compared to our male
counterparts. And I think, again, it was this feeling like you can't rock the boat.
You can't bring up the fact that there's paid disparity. You can't complain about
the long hours that you weren't being treated well by your bosses. You're so lucky
to have this job. You know, we were told to be grateful for what we had. We were
told to be grateful for having jobs or getting a promotion or having our own
office. We sold ourselves and we accepted whatever was given to us and we do it in
our own businesses too. You know, it took somebody like Stacy Bayman to teach me to
recognize my own value and it's hard. People always ask me, "What's the hardest part
about being a coach?" The hardest part is actually marketing yourself and pricing
yourself. It's based on what you think your value is, what you have to offer.
I have several clients who have come to me after being laid off or quitting a job
and they went on to find a much better job or multiple revenue streams and they're
like, "Oh, you helped me do that. You gave me the confidence to go out and ask
for more or get more or find something else. And I find that very interesting that,
you know, so often what we need is permission to believe in ourselves.
I know I use that word a lot, permission. And listen, we don't hire coaches to
find permission. We hire coaches to teach ourselves to give ourselves permission.
So one of the things that we do in coaching a lot is when we have a circumstance
that we're uncomfortable with, for example, money, the first thing we do is we ask
the client, what do you think about it? And the answers are usually revealed in our
thoughts. So money? Or what do I charge?
The first thought for many people is, "I don't want to be greedy. I'm afraid to
lose the client. I don't want to offend anyone. I don't know if I'm worth it." And
these are the kind of thoughts that lead to a lack of result,
a lack of result that you want, whether it's getting the client, whether it's
getting what you deserve to be paid, whatever it is. But the point is, by changing
that thought, by finding a more neutral thought, rather than I don't think they can
afford it or it's too much money for most people, what if you thought, "I am
giving them great value.
I am worth it." So whether you're an employee of a corporation or whether you're
selling a product or a service, think about that thought.
I am worth it. I bring value. I add value.
I more than pay for myself with this product, with my service.
Interesting. totally different mindset. So then the money doesn't become about feeling
bad or worrying, it becomes about believing that you have added value.
So I think that there are many facets to the relationship to money.
And again, as a coach, I sometimes spend many, many, many sessions on just this
subject with people. And it's amazing what happens when you are free to talk about
it. And it's amazing what happens when you challenge those thoughts that you've lived
with for a long time. So much of what happens is money becomes this kind of
elusive monster. It's Emotion rather than than something that's practical or tangible
in order to sort of wrestle to the ground your relationship with money Is to
examine it from a practical standpoint and and really look at what do you earn?
What do you need? What do you want and then it's breaking down? What are you
willing to give up and what are you willing to do to get it and? and challenge
it. I mean, is that money in the bank account enough? And for how long?
Or if there's no money in the bank account, what could you go out and do to earn
money? But rather than sitting in the river of misery,
of scarcity, challenge yourself, do the math, do the paperwork.
how long will your savings last you? Or moreover, what else could you do to earn
the money? Really valuable questions and empowering. So rather than coming from a
fear of like this monster in the closet of I won't have enough, I don't have
enough, what about examining or challenging those thoughts and seeing maybe there's
other ways to earn. Maybe there's other ways to save. You can choose to let go of
the old tapes or the old inherited beliefs that no longer serve you about money.
You can change the belief that you are capable of earning more money,
saving more money, living differently, and creating more of a lifestyle that feels
like you're coming from abundance rather than scarcity. So that's the end of the
money bucket. And I want to acknowledge that this was pre -recorded prior to the
COVID crisis, and I know that many of you listening to this podcast may have had a
reduction in your salary or a furlough or a job loss, I've realized that that puts
an unusual wrinkle in the whole money bucket. But I invite you to examine your
relationship with money during this time. Take a hard look at your savings, figure
out where you can trim, figure out what kind of work you might want to do when we
all come out of this crisis and we will come out of this crisis. And then take a
look at your lifestyle. There is opportunity here. There is opportunity even in a
massively challenging financial time to personally examine your relationship with money.
And who knows, maybe something really great comes out of it. If you want to learn
more tips about managing your stress and how to manage your overthinking brain, just
go to my website and sign up for my weekly newsletter at jackiedecrinis.com. That's
J -A -C -K -I -E -D -E -C -R -I -N -I -S dot com.
You can also follow me on Instagram at jackiedecrinis. Bye for now. Thank you for
listening to this episode of Overthinker's Guide to Joy. If you like what was
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