Finance Gym Weekly Workout - Questions to Ask When Hiring a Financial Advisor

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 not just know better but do better with your money, then you've come to the right place.
This little series that I'm doing right now is on Chapter 7 in the book, the grown-up stuff. I call it the grown up stuff because when you're done doing the stuff in this chapter, you're going to feel like an adult. If you want to hear more about that go listen to the first video in this little series. Today the adulating that we're going to talk about is hiring a financial planner. I get asked this question all the time and frankly this was one of the hardest parts of the book for me to write. I wanted to concisely explain to people how to make the decision of what kind of financial advisor to hire. If you've paid any attention then you know that the field is this wide. It's crazy, there's everything from somebody that works for your local bank to somebody who works at a big huge brokerage and really is just an investment advisor to brand new people who are just starting out and are calling themselves financial advisors and they're certified but they don't really have any experience yet to people who have put the time and effort in to become a certified financial planner or an equal certification. 
When people ask me, when my friends ask me who to hire, one of the first things that I always say is you want to hire somebody who is a certified financial planner. There are some other certifications that are equal but that's kind of my favorite go to. If someone has put the time and effort in to go to that level of knowledge, then they're somebody who's really committed to giving you the best financial advice possible. And i'm not saying that somebody just as a simple license or two sell you you financial products don't care I'm sure lots of them do care but if you're really kind of looking at  what is being offered out there you want somebody who has been through life cycles with their clients, emergencies and how that played out. Somebody who's walked through retirement, who have seen what financial decisions on this side of your life, how they impact that side of your life, and so you don't necessarily want somebody new out of the gate. The truth is some of you watching this video can't necessarily afford somebody who has ten years of experience. So then you're just gonna have to go with a little but of intuition. If you look int the book I have a list of eleven questions that I recommend you ask whenever you're interviewing a financial advisor. One of the base pieces of advise I give to people is interview three before you make a decision so that you kind of get a good feel for what's out there. I think my last piece of advise is you want to hire somebody who you feel like is going to be a teacher for you. You don't necessarily want to hire the person who was you know the math wiz and has a degree in business. Frankly, my go to advisor, the one that I sent my mother too and my closest friends - she was a i think anthropology major and museum studies like minor something like that. She's smart, she wasn't necessarily a numbers person, but what she really is is a teacher. She has learned everything she had to learn to become an excellent financial planner but more than anything she is patient and takes the time to teach people that i send to her what they need to learn. And so I hope for you when you go out looking to see who it is you want to hire that you find somebody like that.
So, this stuff isn't easy to do, if you want a partner in all of this, please come over to Facebook and join our private group called Team Do Better also sign up for our weekly newsletter at www.TheFinanceGym.com or subscribe to this video series. Thanks!

Today's First BIG Announcement!

I'm excited to announce what so many of you have been asking for --- today A Better Life with Money officially launched on Amazon! If you loved the book, let your friends know, or get a second copy!

Laugh with me a little and go watch the Better Life with Money commercial below.

Purchase The Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money on Amazon by clicking on the image below.

Video Transcription:
Do you ever feel like you aren't on top of your money like you should be? Like you just don't know what to do next? Do you ever get sick and tired of living paycheck to paycheck and all the struggles that come along with it? If any of that rings true for you, then The Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life With Money is the book for you.  My name is Stacey Powell and I'm going to tell you a little bit about why I wrote this book for you. Be assured, if any of those statements ring true, you are not the only one, there are millions of other people just like you who struggle with their money walking around every day with this nagging little voice "hey! you can be better with your money" or that really not so nice voice saying "are you ever going to get your money shit together?" For me, those voices came like the peaks and valleys of a roller coaster and they would never ever stop. If you're ready for your little voice to whisper "hey, you're good with your money" and "hey you handled that like a champ!" then I want you to start working on this book. You can make that happen, I did! In this book I walk you through every step that I took.  Why should you learn from me? Other people have degrees and credentials too, so what makes me different from other experts? I've been where you are. I've struggled to stop living paycheck to paycheck. I know what it feels like to have debt payments that you can't make. I've sworn off credit cards only to have a huge car repair bill that I didn't have any way to pay for! I let year after year go by saying "next year I'm going to start a savings account or a 401k" but next year never came.  The cycle became routine for me until the day that I got sick and tired of living the way I was living. On that day I chose to stop relying on my financial know how and start using a holistic approach to tackling my money issues and you know what happened? I began to breathe easier and I stopped feeling broke even though sometimes I still was. I started to feel like I was making good money decisions. My money got stronger and working on my money started to actually become fun.  To this book, I bring my life experiences of changing something that felt like it was completely unchangeable. I also bring the lessons of countless people that I've financially coached through highs and lows. For many people, money carries this huge emotional punch, it impacts our lives our hopes and our dreams. If you're ready to find yourself at peace in feeling strong about your money then take this journey with me. Get your copy of the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life With Money. Start here, start now. Don't just know better but do better. 

The Cold Hard Facts of Budgeting Your Money

Welcome to the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money video series. My name's Stacey Powell and if you're ready to not just know better about your money, but also do better then you've come to the right place.

And today we're going to be talking about the cold hard facts of budgeting.

If you've been following along in the series, hopefully, you first listened to a little bit more of the fun videos around budgeting; ways to kinda get around it a little easier, ways to be more inspired about it.

And today we're talking about rolling up your sleeves and just doing it. And if you've really never embraced budgeting before, I'm not going to lie to you, it's a little bit of work. But I promise you I've made as simple as possible, and I also promise you, you can do it.

So here's the thing, if you go to page 36 in the book, that's where you're going to find the action plan. And there some very obvious things in there like electricity, car insurance, all the obvious stuff. But what you're going to find around all that is almost 100 spending areas. And I worked really hard to make it as few as possible, but the reality is when you look at all of the things most of us spend money on in a given month, in a given year or over a given 5 year period, easily it's around 80 to 100. And so you really need to take a look at all of them.

There's a multitude of areas that we spend money in. And we all know the obvious ones right, like duh, we all have electricity and all that. But then there's the ones that we don't. Kinda the quiet areas that are a surprise, like root canals and car repairs and summer camps. You know, but the truth is if you have teeth you're eventually probably going to have a root canal or some kind of expensive dental expense. If you have a car, you're going to have a car repair. Sometimes it's $200; you can squeeze that in a month no problem. But sometimes it's $2000, that's a lot harder to squeeze. And if you have kids ... Well don't even get me started on the summer camps and everything else that comes along with having kids that we don't need to spend in a given month, but oh my gosh, stuff comes up. Am I right?

So here's the importance of budgeting ... If you don't set your financial flow up to be able to handle that $1000 root canal or that $2000 car expense then you're going to be stealing from your future. You can pull a credit card out when it happens, sure, but you're going to be spending money on interest. You're stealing from your future every time you do that.

You can also just kinda shove it into the month you know; that's what I did a lot. Well, I just won't go out to eat this month. I won't have any fun this month. I'll spend less money at the grocery store.

That's no big deal to do that in a given month. But if you do that to yourself over and over and over. It's a different kind of stealing from yourself. It's kinda stealing from your happiness. It's stealing from where it is that the flow of energy of money that really keeps us happy.

The other thing that I think we often do is, we don't put money in our savings, and that is really stealing from our future.

When we are trying to shove "emergency expenses" that we probably should have had set aside ready to roll. We are not doing the things that create for us a peaceful financial life ... having enough in reserves, having enough in retirement.

The end result, in my experience, in my own personal experience and in lots of people I've worked with is; disappointment, fatigue and just even the loss of faith in ourselves that we can have a peaceful financial life.

So I'd like you to attack this budgeting with a bit of fervor. I want you to set aside a couple of hours. Sit down with a glass of wine or a nice cup of coffee and really embrace doing this. I think in the end you're going to find out that this work is really worth it.

And as always I don't want you to do this alone. Join us over on our Facebook Group, Team Do Better. It's closed and private. I'd really like to see you there.  You can also sign up to our newsletter at TheFinanceGym.com. Or subscribe to our YouTube video series. Good luck out there and thank's for watching.

Budgeting Should Start With Dreams and Goals

Welcome to the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money Video Series. My name's Stacey Powell, and if you're ready to not just know better but do better with your money, you've come to the right place.

Today we're going to talk about budgeting, but probably not the kind of budgeting you've ever heard about before. We're going to talk about starting your budgeting with dreams and goals.

I love budgeting. As an accountant, I've done budgeting forever. With other people's money, with other business owners money, lots and lots with my own. It's kinda second nature for me. And it's fun and something I'm really good at.

But back when I was really, really, really struggling with my money and asking other people for help. I was told to do something with my budgeting that seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. I was told to put together an ideal budget. Which I thought was the most ridiculous idea in the whole world. I was just struggling to pay my electricity bill every month, haveing enough money for the absolute necessities. And they wanted me to put together an ideal budget? Like what good was that gonna do?

But if there's one thing I am, it's compliant, and when I'm being coached in an area, I will do what I'm told even if I think I'm smarter than the person coaching me.

So that's what I did. Sat down and put together an ideal budget. Which meant I was budgeting for stuff that I had never budgeted before ... vacations, reserves. I specifically remember getting into an argument about concerts. It's not that I don't like music, I do. But it seemed to me at the time really irresponsible for me to be setting aside money to go to concerts when I wasn't keeping up with my obligations that I already had.

But their point to me was, just do it. Put your ideal life down. Put down what it is you want to be living with. And so I did, you know, and they were right. I like going to concerts.

And there was a lot of other things that I wanted in there. Disneyland went in there. I hadn't taken my daughter to Disneyland for years. And you know, not that you can raise a kid, and it's going to be the end of the world if they don't get to go to Disneyland. But I live in California, it's kind of important, right? And why wouldn't I be, why wouldn't that be a part of my spending plan.

You know what I learned about that ideal plan. The epiphany that I had was that when we create these budgets around our actual expenses, our actual obligations, it's all about constriction and fitting in what we have to do and nothing about our future, our dreams, our goals. When I had this ideal budget sitting there, that was way out of what I was able to do at the time, a couple of different things happened to me...

1. It made me realize I was not living the life I wanted to live. And there was no amount of tightening my budget anymore. My problem was income. And so it really helped me focus on the fact that I didn't need to be looking at those expenses. What I needed to be looking at was growing my income, and so I started working on that.

The other thing it made me realize is that you're going to spend a lot more time focusing on your money if the things you're focusing on are things you're excited about. I was excited about vacations. I was excited about Disneyland. I was even excited about reserves. Not that so much, you get excited about reserves but, I was excited about the idea that next time something serious happened with my car, I was going to have money to pay for it without using a credit card or making a call to the bank of Mom and Dad or where ever I would call.

So that's the thing that happened for me, that was my big epiphany, and I promise you if you sit down and roll your sleeves up and do this ideal budget you're going to have an epiphany about your financial life as well. It'll be different than mine, I don't know what it will be, but I promise you if you do it before you do your actual budget you're going to learn something, and I think it will be something of value.

Now at the end of all of these videos I remind you to please not do it alone. This is kind of a big chunk of work. And so if you have somebody who is all about your future and your dreams, ask that person to sit down with you and do this ideal budget.

If you'd like to join the community where there's other people working on this right along side you there's a few places you can go.

1. Is over at Facebook. We've got Team Do Better Group. It's completely private the only people in there are people who are also working on their money.

You can also sign up for our newsletter at thefinancegym.com.

Or you can subscribe to the YouTube channel.

Thanks for watching.

Budget for the Life You Want

Budgets have a bad rap. They aren’t all about denying oneself or cutting back on everything. Budgets are there to ensure that you have money set aside to do the things you love.

My budget is based on my “if I had a million dollars in savings” life. I’ve found that this is the best way to determine what I really want, because it removes my perceived restrictions due to limited funds. So, if I were financially secure/wealthy, I would travel often, go to the spa at least once a week, and eat the finest foods. There’s more to it, but those are biggies right now.

So, our household budget allows us to spend more on food than most families, even though we are only two people. We save like crazy for travel, to ensure that we can afford a trip to the other side of the world at the drop of a hat and weekend trips to Tahoe. We get a massage and chiropractic adjustment every week for our personal well-being.

Since we don’t have a million dollars sitting around, we make huge adjustments to make these things fit into our current budget.

Food budget: We don’t eat out much and when we do, we make it count. Whether it’s a food truck or a four-star restaurant, we go intentionally and within our budget. If we want caviar, we buy it at the store and enjoy it at home, rather than at a fancy restaurant. And we do our best to buy organic, but not always because it’s expensive. We shop at Costco and Trader Joe’s instead of Whole Foods or specialty shops.

Travel budget: We travel no-stars cheap. We travel by local bus, sleep in the cheapest of the cheap, and eat from street stalls. That being said, I love it because the experiences are rich and everything is an adventure. I chose longer no-frills travel often, over traveling less often, for shorter periods of time, but in-style.

Personal well-being budget: We get a weekly Chinese foot massage for $16 per hour and a weekly chiropractic adjustment at The Joint for $12.25 (with their four per month package). That’s only $28.25 a week in full body care per person. Is it a day at a four-star spa? No, but it’s better than nothing. It’s also better than one four-star massage every two months.

That being said, cutting back in other parts of our lives is also necessary to afford the things that we truly want. But we cut back or completely cut the things that don’t contribute to our long-term happiness (that’s a whole other blog). 

When we don’t have a budget, we end up spending more on the things we need, that don’t bring us joy, then we feel deprived, so we spend more on instant gratification purchases that are fleeting at best, and then we feel depressed when we have to go into debt to pay for the things that we truly want to do. 

Ignoring your money won’t make more appear, it won’t make you think about it less, it’ll just make you spend more and feel worse. When you know exactly where your money is going, you can consciously spend less on things that you don’t want to spend money on and spend more on the things that bring you happiness.  

Want more tips to get what you want? Check out my other blog “Getting the Life You Want.”

-Leah Schonlank

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.