Adulting: Achieving Financial Security For Yourself & Your Family



Welcome to the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell and if you're ready to now just know better but do better with your money, you've come to the right place. I'm getting ready today to film Chapter 7 which is call the "grown up stuff". When I was picking out chapter names everybody said, "you can't name it that". I actually wish that I would have used a word that my daughter uses. She's 21 and she uses the word "adulting", and I wish I would have just named the chapter adulting. Let me tell you a little secret if you're like under the age of 40, the truth is you learn this when you get to be 50 and then 60, I think that we all think that when we grow up, somehow it's going to be easier to go see a financial planner or easier to make decisions about insurance or easier to do estate planning. Maybe I just don't hang out with the right people but let me tell you, it doesn't get easier. And almost everybody that I know when they do one of those kinds of tasks that we all kind of dread and don't really want to get done, we all feel this like wow good job Stacey you got that done! And I don't care who it is that I've worked with, whether it's been somebody struggling on a $40k salary or one of my multimillionaire clients, they've all still felt the same way, the uncertainty, the dealing with professionals and you know not really feeling like ah man I don't know as much as this person and I have to trust this person, am I trusting the right person and just the general drudgery and then the complication you know. I'm a finance person but sometimes some of these conversations about insurance is complicated and somebody who's an insurance agent knows a ton more than me even though I know a lot! So I like the word adulting and in my next series I'm going to be talking about the stuff of adulting. My take away for today is, I don't care about how old you are it's alright to smile at yourself it's alright to laugh at yourself a little bit. Just roll up your sleeves and get it done be a little easy with yourself and you can give yourself a little prize at the end in whatever adulting thing you're putting off doing. As always, if you want some support come over to our Facebook and join our team Do Better Group, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.TheFinaneGym.com and subscribe to our Youtube series below. Have a great day!

#Debtfree2014

I have long believed that the reason so many of us feel stuck financially is because we don’t talk about money. I write about it all the time. I think the single most important thing you can do to change your financial position is to find someone to have a constructive conversation about it with.

So imagine my surprise this month when I (for the third time) was making a concerted effort to engage in Twitter (I feel so old) and found people on Twitter talking about their money. I knew there were people like me, financial experts, using Twitter as a platform for their business. But I wasn't expecting everyday people telling their friends about how they've paid off another credit card, made their final car payment or sharing the actual amount of debt they've paid off.

One particularly courageous soul (@famdebtjourney) links to her blog where she’s declared 2014 the year to put it all out there and share her family’s story about their journey to get out of debt. Beginning with a blog in January, My Family's Debt Journey itemized their debt:

• Credit Card Debt:           $27,102

• Auto Debt:                     $16,173

• Mortgage:                     $133,968

Can you imagine posting everywhere your truth? That’s laying the gauntlet down! Making that kind of public declaration will no debt propel them, and hopefully provide inspiration when the going gets rough. Just like a diet, becoming debt free is a journey with peaks and valleys for sure.

Who would you be willing to share your numbers with? Do you think it would propel your financial health?

-Stacey Powell


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

Reach your financial goals. Get motivated. Get support. Get results. Are you ready?

We Don't Know What We Don't Know

I’m stubborn and I can say with 100% certainty that I never would have joined one of our finance boot camps if I didn't work here. But I do, I'm in a boot camp and it's phenomenal!

A summary of how I got here:

• I’ve managed my money just fine all of these years by myself.
• I freely discuss money with my husband, friends, family and sometimes even with strangers.
• All things considered, my finances are good. But I know they can always be better.
• I participated in one of our free sample boot camp calls as part of my interviewing process, because the best way to understand, is to experience it. I realized that this is cool and got a peek into how this helps people.
• I read, think and talk about personal finance all day, every day now. And that should be enough, except it's so easy to just focus on the things that I want to focus on.
• I joined a boot camp and my blinders came off. Every session opened my eyes more and more.
• Last week was my hot seat, which means we talked all about me and my money for an hour and a half. Honestly, I was dreading this for a variety of reasons. Turns out that it’s amazing! Inspirational even. And I now see the light. Oh yeah!

I wrote an entire blog about the details, but this isn’t about the details. This is about not knowing what you don’t know and doing something out of your comfort zone because it may be the one thing that changes your life for the better. 

No matter how you're doing financially, right now, you could be doing better.

-Leah Schonlank

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


Are you ready to reach your financial goals? Get motivated. Get support. Get results!