Date Night With Your Finances

Date night with your finances? What’s that supposed to mean?

Just what it says. The phrase “Date Night” evokes thoughts of fun, special, coveted. For many, the phrase “Bill Paying” conjures ugh, drudgery, lack. What would it look like if we felt differently about our finances?

Most of us have it backwards. Its no wonder we think of our finances as drudgery. This is how the majority of us “do our money.”

• We squeeze the chore between the laundry and washing the dog.


• We collect our bills; we log in to get our bank balance (and hope that everything has cleared the bank); we pay our bills.


• We look to see how much is left, and hope there is some.


• Then, when we’re tired, over it, a little grumpy, and the dog still smells, we make the important decisions. This goes to savings, that goes to debt, and this gets set aside for car repairs.


• But the dog smells, and company is coming for dinner, so I’ll make those decisions next month.

Would you like to do it differently? Would it be all right if life got easier?

That’s a phrase I learned from Maria Nemeth, a pioneer and visionary in the field of our psychological and emotional attitudes about money. She published “The Energy of Money” in 1997, when few were addressing the important issue of how financial decisions are made.

When it came time for “Telling the Truth” and dealing with my own financial problems, one action I took was Date Night with my finances at my favorite café. Me, my portable financial binder, and my dreams. I coveted those luxurious Saturday nights, not squeezed between laundry and dog-washing (okay, I don’t really have a dog.) I used the time to dream, to look at the truth and to plan. Bill paying happened elsewhere. Each consecutive month, I got a little more clarity, planning became a little easier, and my dreams felt more attainable.

Our money and our financial decisions should not be a chore. Bill paying is a chore. Financial decisions impact our future, our dreams, our peace of mind. They intertwine with who we want to be and who we are. We should have a little fun. We should make it a date night!

-Stacey Powell

Finance Gym offers personal finance coaching in professionally facilitated peer-advisory groups. 

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Creative Brain vs. Business Brain

I love working with creatives: artists, actors, healing professionals, writers, photographers, all of them. Our society has created a “right brain vs. left brain” mentality. If you’re creative, you aren’t a strong business person. If you’re a strong business person, you aren’t creative. But we know black and white statements aren’t true. Creatives can make great business people, especially when they provide themselves with structure. Creatives have the ideas, the willingness and the passion to throw themselves full force into their work. And that is what it takes to be successful in business.

One of my inspiring clients decided, as a strategic business decision, that 2010 was going to be her year of “living as an artist." She had long worked hard on her business; she had tethered herself to do the work, bring in the clients and earn a living. She had been successful enough, but by the time she got to me she wasn’t enjoying it much. Something needed to change.

"Creatives have the ideas, the willingness and the passion to throw themselves full force into their work. And that is what it takes to be successful in business."

So 2010 was her year of living as an artist. Her mission was to fully embrace her creativity and joy of being an artist. Her goals, strategies and actions all supported that mission. There was still some structure: billable work, marketing, financial coaching and professional development. But the focus was on enjoying her creative talents, not on meeting her monthly revenue goals.

And what were the results? November and December were two of the most profitable months she’s ever had. And, she’s happy. It was a year of transformation and expansion for her. She’s well positioned to focus on revenue growth in 2011. Most important of all, she was well cared for, and she is, after all, the most valuable asset in her business.

Why would I, an accountant, support that kind of strategy? Because I’ve seen its effectiveness and profitability, over and over and over. If it’s done with intention and structure, it can be a very effective business decision for both creatives and for any other kind of business owner.

What’s your mission for 2011? Does it include creativity? Art? Health? If not, weave it in, and then write down what kind of return on investment you expect from giving yourself that gift.

Telling The Truth

Many experiences in my career explain my evolution to becoming a “Money Wise Woman." My tenure at Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC), my time at the financial helm of CARES, an agency that I helped grow from $500,000 to $3 million in three years, and the past 13 years I’ve advised, coached and counseled hundreds on their business and personal finances at Creating Answers.

But those experiences aren’t why I’m a Money Wise Woman. There was a point in my life that I awoke to the fact that I had placed myself in serious financial trouble, and that’s when I started telling the truth about it.

Even with all I knew, and no matter how hard I tried to get myself out of it, for whatever reason, I couldn’t. That’s when I started seeking more answers. And not just from fellow financial professionals, but from coaches, mentors and counselors. And that’s when I had my big “ah ha” moment, when I realized what keeps so many people stuck in their financial lives.

We don’t tell the truth. We don’t talk about money, so we have no opportunity to tell the truth about it. There are few places to go when you feel stuck with your money and don’t know what to do. When you’re a financial professional, it's even scarier. I was stuck in denial, fear, shame and blame. Having the courage to start telling the truth made all the difference in the world.

For years, I had many clients who didn’t want to take the time to talk to me about their money. I was their accountant, and it just wasn’t a priority for them. Now it’s a cornerstone of my practice that every client talks to us about their finances every month. It makes a marked difference in their financial clarity, and their financial peace.

My advice to those of you who feel stuck in some area of your financial life: Talk to someone consistently and productively. Your bookkeeper, your accountant, a coach, a trusted mentor, a trusted colleague. Draw a circle of support around you, tell the truth, and create some accountability in your financial life. It will make all the difference.

-Stacey Powell

click here for Stacey's blogs on Forbes.com

Finance Gym offers personal finance coaching in professionally facilitated peer-advisory groups.
We teach. We inspire. We support. We help people change their lives by improving their finances.

2011: Is your plan in place?

Winter is a time of reflection, both personally and for our businesses. How did this past year go? Did I meet my goals? Um, did I have goals? What do I want next year to look like? What do I have to do to get there?

At Creating Answers, it is the time of year we are busy working with all of our clients on 2011 goals and budgets. It is one of my favorite times of the year because you get to do two really fun things: analyze how last year went, and draw the financial road map to follow next year. It's financial art at its most fun.

If you think of this work as a chore, I invite you to reframe your beliefs about planning and numbers. I invite you to think of it as a game, or a puzzle. Make it a date with yourself. Go to your favorite coffee house, or pour yourself a bottle of fine wine. And then...start asking yourself questions.

What percentage of your total income goal did you reach this year? 120%? Great! 85%? Not so great. What do you need to do differently in 2011? What amount of marketing dollars would have closed that 15% gap? Do you need to increase your networking time? Upsell existing clients? Raise your prices?

“If you think of this work as a chore, I invite you to reframe your beliefs about planning and numbers.”

Take a look at your discretionary areas of spending? How much did you spend on marketing and advertising? What were the financial results? Professional development? Results? Equipment? Results?

How much did you spend on staffing and/or outside consultants? Did they work at capacity? Did you generate revenue from your staff? How much? A great rule of thumb to start with is three times their cost.

While it is difficult to assign numbers to each of those questions, the exercise of trying will create answers. What if you spent nothing in each of those areas? What if you spent three times as much?

Most importantly, don’t overdo the process. It’s more effective to do a really thorough look at your 15 most critical spending areas consistently than it is to look at all 60 of the expense accounts you have in Quickbooks. (And if you have 60 expense accounts in Quickbooks, you should give us a call!)

Find out more about what we do at http://CreatingAnswers.com.

Here's to a prosperous new year full of financial clarity!

Holiday Financial Clarity

Want financial clarity for the holidays?

Entertaining, stocking stuffers, extra travel expenses, cookies for the neighbors, decorations, office holiday party gifts, holiday grocery shopping and of course, presents… these are just a smattering of expenses that are about to edge their way into your spending plan over the next several weeks.

Whether you’ve been saving all year, plan to squeeze it into your regular monthly spending, plan to not partake in any of it, or have a credit card you use for the holidays, now is a good time to make a plan. Even if you don’t stick to your plan completely, just spending the time to fill out this handy holiday plan will provide you a road map for the trip you are about to take.

What are your priorities? What are your limits? What are your expectations?  How do you feel about the money you’ve spent during past holidays?  What could you do differently? And a favorite question from our Financial Boot Camps, what would your hero do?

 Print the “Manage Your Holiday Spending” guide from the AFSA Education Foundation. Take a walk, think it over, journal the above questions if you’d like, then get a pencil and a calculator and make your plan!

And… enjoy the season.

An Extraordinary Connection with Your Business’ Finances

I love financial tools! Excel, Quickbooks and Microsoft Money are just fun. Today’s software lets me fly creatively when I’m trying to help a client understand how their business is doing, what’s working, and what’s not.

But as with most things there is a flip side to the amazing software we have at our fingertips. Quickbooks, meant to bring simplicity to accounting, easily becomes a behemoth, spitting out 3 page reports that no one could understand or connect with. And that is the point, the goal, of accounting: to connect with your finances. It’s not all about filing your tax return at the end of the year. It’s about understanding your business and the financial impact of your decisions and activities. Your numbers should tell you a story, a story that you feel connected to.

My first experience with accounting was at 19, bookkeeping for my family’s business, the The Buz Buszek Fly Shop. I used ledger paper. I don’t feel old enough to be saying that, but I guess I am. Today, one of my tenets for those who are having a difficult time connecting with their finances  is to pull out the old ledger paper.

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I’m not suggesting you literally do your accounting on ledger paper. What I do mean, though, is to get a pencil out, and a calculator, and a piece of paper. Write down, every single month, the 8 to 12 numbers that are really important to you. Not the 50 or 100 numbers that Quickbooks is telling you. Just the 8 to 12 numbers that help you feel connected to your business.

If you’d like to learn more about having an extraordinary connections with your finances, I’m being interviewed by Marcia Brixey on July 6^th at 11:30am as a part of her Money Wise Women Get Smart Teleseminar Series. You can participate by signing up at:

www.moneywisewomengetsmart.com/upcoming.html

You’ll also find a lot of great past teleseminars you can listen to. A personal favorite of mine is Mikelann Valterra’s interview  “Earn at Your Potential: Embracing the Seven Challenges.”

Happy learning!

Late charge, latte charge, at least you’ll know.

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Microsoft Money has this cool new tagline: “Late charge, latte charge, at least you’ll know.” I love it.

When you’re an accountant, people talk to you about their money. Not just your clients, but your friends, relatives, acquaintances, and even people you stand next to waiting in line. It’s kind of fun, because its this secret little window into peoples’ worlds that most don’t ever get to see.

So why do I like Microsoft’s tagline? Because the overwhelming first step to tackling one’s money issues is know how much money is coming in, how much is going out, and where it’s going. Most people have no idea. Even those that use software like Quicken or Money often still have very little idea. They can look it up, but they don’t know. I must admit that there was a point in my life that I realized I was tracking all the data, but not often enough to really use the information in a constructive way. More on that later.

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There is an axiom that goes: “What we measure, we accomplish.”

If you have financial discomfort in your life, start measuring. If you’re measuring and still have discomfort, take a step back and look at how you’re doing it. Shake it up; try it a different way. If it’s still not working, check out our Financial Boot Camps. You’ll make movement there; we guarantee it.

Our collective moment of financial clarity

Some people think of April 15^th as an icky day. I see it as our collective moment of financial clarity. Tax day is the one day that we all know exactly how much our businesses earned, or didn’t earn, last year. Want even more clarity? Take a quiet moment and do this exercise:

Want monthly clarity? Subscribe to our blog and we'll send you a packet of 12 Monthly Clarity Cards. Want even more clarity? Contact us for a 30 minute complimentary session, and we'll walk through the results of your Annual Clarity Card with you.

Some people think of April 15^th as an icky day. I see it as our collective moment of financial clarity. Tax day is the one day that we all know exactly how much our businesses earned, or didn’t earn, last year. Would you like even more clarity? Take a quiet moment and do this exercise:

On the Honesty Muscle and Financial Boot Camp

Lisa Nichols, in No Matter What, refers to the honesty muscle as a critical component of moving forward in our lives. To get to where we really want to be, we have to know where we are; we have to be honest with ourselves. When it comes to our finances, this can be extremely challenging on many levels. To know where we truly are means that we have to discuss money, a very private, personal, and sometimes painful subject. Where exactly do we do that?

A success of Financial Boot Camp is that it gives people a forum where they get to - and have to - talk about their own money. In the first few sessions, it’s a challenge to convince the group that its not only ok to talk about their own money, but also to ask each other direct questions. We’re raised in a society that frowns on open discussions about money, yet we’re expected to know how to manage it. In the Boot Camp group we’re working with now, honesty has appeared in a number of ways:
 

• Some have been honest with themselves and the group that they really don’t like how they are earning money;
   
• Some have been honest with themselves and the group that how they have invested money makes them unhappy and discontent; and
   
• Some have been honest about their lack of clarity with their monthly spending.

Some of the group, if they had listened to their own little voices, knew these things before Boot Camp. With some, you could see the light bulb of honesty and realization come on right before our very eyes. To get to where we really want to be, we have to know where we are; we have to be honest with ourselves, and sometimes others. Each one of the Boot Camp group has used that honesty to make movement in their lives, movement toward where they really want to be.

-Stacey Powell

Date night with your finances?

Have you ever noticed that most people follow the statement “I have to pay bills tonight” with the word “ugh” or “yuck” or, something that rhymes with “yuck”? Those are often the same people that will sheepishly tell you they haven’t reconciled their checkbook any time in the past decade. And those same people probably couldn’t tell you how much they spend on groceries every month, or eating out, or healthcare.

When you look at the order in which our personal or business finances are done, it’s really no surprise most people consider it drudgery or despise it all. First, hunt and peck and gather everything we need to pay our bills. Second, pay the bills (i.e. give some or most of our money to others). Third, well, there is no third, because by then, we are physically and/or emotionally done with the monthly finances. Many aspire to continue on to: third, update their account balances, fourth, reconcile, and fifth, look at the totals of spending categories. But there’s no time or energy left to do the third, fourth or fifth steps.

My advice: try, just try, to make it fun.

Make it a date night; schedule time every month to just focus on your spending plan and financial goals. Light a candle, open a special bottle of wine, or go to your favorite café. Divorce the bill paying monotony from the important work: providing yourself clarity about your finances by keeping your numbers, looking at your numbers, and planning for the next month. It doesn’t have to be drudgery! Numbers can be fun, when you allow your mind to open to the possibility.

Finance meetings every month?? What would we talk about??

I was having a frank conversation with a prospect the other day. He loved our business model, especially the concept of having someone take more than an accountant or bookkeeper’s interest in his business. He loved that there would be another person looking at his financials, his marketing activities, and his human resource management. He loved that he would have someone available so that he could just pick up the phone and ask a financial question.

His biggest concern, though, was that we require monthly meetings. “What on earth would we talk about every month?” I hope I didn’t offend him when I laughed.

What was so funny? He just filed bankruptcy on his last rather large business. And not to be outdone, it was a rather spectacular bankruptcy. Of course, it’s not funny that he had to file bankruptcy. I'm certain that for most, bankruptcy is a devastating financial and emotional experience. But it is funny that he didn’t see the correlation between that business’ downward spiral and how it might have looked different if he had hired us four years ago.

Businesses are closing down for a lot of reasons right now. The economy is certainly one of them, but it's the rare business that can say 100% of the reason lies with the economy. If you have had a financial person watching your back, they’ve steered you to put aside reserves, to lay off employees, to trim the fat, to raise your prices, to market more, not less, and most importantly, to not leverage your business to the point of no return.

If you’re talking to your accountant once a year, or once a quarter, that’s not enough. They are seeing what is happening to your business, but they probably aren’t helping you make better decisions. Ask them what it would look like if they talked to you more frequently.

Bankruptcy is expensive; monthly financial meetings, priceless.