Financial Feminist - 11. Practicing Financial Self-Care

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

In the final installment of this season’s Money Mondays, I’m taking on financial self-care –– what it is, what it isn’t, and how we can practice it to build a better relationship with our finances. In this episode, I’m taking you through my favorite financial self-care activity –– the Money Date. If you’ve tried to sit down and tackle your finances alone or with a partner and come out the other side exhausted and frustrated, this episode is for you. Pre-Order “Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy’s Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love”: https://bit.ly/3PpHvlC Our HYSA recommendation [affiliate]: http://sofi.com/herfirst100k INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/herfirst100k/ TIKTOK: www.tiktok.com/@herfirst100k FACEBOOK GROUP: www.facebook.com/groups/362601367623070/ Not sure where to start with your finances? Take the free Money Personality Quiz to get tailored resources for your financial journey: https://treasury.app/herfirst100k/money-journey-quiz Official Financial Feminist Merch: herfirst100k.com/hfk-merch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, I got a bone to pick. I got a bone to pick with self-care. So society has told us recently in the last couple years that self-care is bubble baths and face masks and a glass of wine, right? They've commodified what self-care is and it's very much the parks and recreation treat yourself, which there's nothing wrong with treat yourself, right? Treat yourself 2,000, right? There's nothing wrong with that. I just have a major issue with this new idea that actually taking care of ourselves is just like zoning out and sitting in the tub and crying with a huge pizza and wine. And maybe that's just my typical Friday night. But here's the thing. It is not self-care. It is a self-soothing activity, right? These face masks, bubble baths, glasses of wine, et cetera. There's nothing wrong with self-soothing activities, but self-soothing activities are the things we have to do in the moment to make ourselves feel

better. They're like a Band-Aid. It's like me buying a $70 pregnancy pillow at the beginning of quarantine, even though I'm not pregnant and don't plan on becoming pregnant just because I would like to feel something. That is what a self-soother is, right? Again, nothing wrong with self-soothers, but these are actions or things we buy in order to cope with our current life. Self-care, on the other hand, is the hardship. Self-care is the hardship. It's the thing that present you does begrudgingly often

in order for future us to feel better, right? You are taking care of future you even if it feels uncomfy. Self-care is the hardship. Things like going to therapy, eating a salad when you don't want to eat a motherfucking salad, having a hard conversation with a friend, working out when you just want to sit on the couch because you know it'll make you feel better, and yes, looking at your money. So to cap off this season, we've given you a lot of information. We've hopefully inspired you with a lot of great conversation. And what we're going to do is we're going to walk you through some financial self-care. How do you actually stay motivated to pay off debt when shit gets hard? How do you actually motivate yourself to invest money for future you, even

though you won't see this money for another 30 years? How do you actively continue to be slightly uncomfortable in the hopes that you will eventually be comfortable with money? And the practice I use in my own life and the practice that I use with clients is what I like to call a money date. So I go on a date with my money. My money and I sit down and we have a conversation just like any relationship. And I say, money, what can I be doing better in this relationship? And money asks me, Tori, how can I better our relationship? How can I please you better? And I'm like, all of these reasons, all of these ways. But the thing about this money date is that it is a financial self-care practice. If you have a partner that you are managing money with, I advise you to do this with them.

This financial self-care practice, this money date, I recommend doing it at least once a month. It is on your calendar. It is a non-negotiable period of time where you're going to sit down and look at your money. I don't care what happens. I don't care if a tornado comes through. I mean, obviously that's dramatic, but this is something that is absolutely a non-negotiable. I like to do my money dates on a Sunday night and I will get a glass bottle of wine and I will wrap myself in a down comforter cocoon and I will maybe order takeout from my favorite restaurant and I will sit and look at my money.

And if this thought of this money date makes you feel terrified, that's what we want to do. We want to make this as comfortable for you as possible. Make this something you can look forward to. This is the real self-care though. Like this is the real shit, right? These are the things that we do that might temporarily make us uncomfortable, but will pay off for us in the long haul. So we're going to do a couple things during this money date and feel free to write these down. One, you're going to look at your credit card

statements. You're going to look at your purchases over the past month. Were there subscriptions you forgot to cancel? Was there fraud on your account? Is there a charge that you don't recognize on there? Maybe there's a charge that you don't recognize on there that you actually made but completely don't remember making. Sometimes that happens to me. You're also looking for double charges. This happens pretty frequently with credit cards. Sometimes they will double charge you for something. So you're just looking at your overall credit card statement and kind of doing an audit of your purchases. Are the majority of your purchases things that you like? Things that you were like, yeah, that was a good purchase. I loved eating dinner at that restaurant. Or yeah, I bought that coat and I wear it all the time now.

Or is there things that you can switch up when it comes to spending? And just the more practical, is everything on your credit card statement making sense? Is it actually a purchase that you yourself made? And if there are things like subscriptions you forgot to cancel, cool. That's your first piece of homework is to go in and cancel those subscriptions. The second thing you're going to do is you're going to look at your account balances. Personal Capital is a lovely sponsor of this podcast. They are a free tool.

This is who I recommend because you can see all of your accounts in one place. So you're looking at how much debt did you pay off, right? How much do you have in your savings account? How much do you have in your investment account? You're just checking your general account balances to make sure everything makes sense and to also check in on your progress towards your goals. Our second practice in our money date is to set goals. If you haven't done this already, go ahead and set your money goals. This can be for the month. This can be for six months. This can be for a year. It can even be as far out as five years if that's not going to overwhelm you. That's the key. We want this to be actionable. We want this to be specific and we don't want this to be overwhelming. So if you're the kind of person

that works better with like really long-term goals, like, oh, in five years, I want to buy a house. Great. If you're not that person, totally okay. You are going to set very specific goals. It cannot be, I want to save money. That is not specific enough. There is no way that you can actually see if you've accomplished that goal. Saying something like, I want to save $5,000 by the end of the year, that's a great goal. It is very specific when it comes to time and the amount of money. Or I want to be credit card debt free in six months. That is very specific. You either are credit card debt free in six months or you aren't, right? So get really specific on setting your goals and please make sure they're realistic. I want all of y'all to have a bunch of money and to be rich and to be

all those things. But if you know that you're not going to be able to save a million dollars, don't say, I'm going to save a million dollars. Be realistic with yourself. And when it comes to goal setting, especially around an amount of money saved, it's actually really easy to break down. So let's say you're like, okay, I want to save $10,000 in a year. Then take $10,000 and divide it by 12, right? And that's the amount of money that you need to be saving. That's a very specific goal and you can see the path towards actually hitting it. Your goals can also, again, be around a certain event in life. I want to go to Japan next year. That trip to Japan will cost me $4,000. I have a year in order to save that money. So 4,000 divided by

12, right? That's the amount of money you need to be saving every month to be able to take your dope-ass trip to Tokyo. So once we've set our goals, once we have an idea of what we want to achieve, what we want to work towards, you're going to start checking in on your goal progress. You can do this through checking your account balances. Personal Capital is a great sponsor of this podcast. They've been a huge supporter of us over at Her First 100K. It's an entirely free tool where you can see all of your accounts in one place. And that's a great place to look to see, am I progressing towards my goals?

Actually, my 100K goal, that's where I looked, is I looked at Personal Capital. And I was checking in on my money date every month to see my progress. I was going, OK, I saved $2,000 more this month. You can do this through personal capital or a spreadsheet, but you want to check your progress towards your goals by reviewing your account balances. How much debt did you pay off? How much did you save? How did your investments do? The reason we do the money date is not only to set goals, to go out there and crush everything and accomplish shit. We also set money dates in order

to see progress. The ostrich effect is real. The ostrich effect is where you bury your head in the sand and you act like your problems don't exist, right? And you just expect everything to go away. The ostrich effect is very real when it comes to personal finance. We see this in pop culture all the time. Andy from Parks and Recreation keeps all of his bills in the freezer. Nick from New Girl keeps all of his bills in a box in the closet, right? We see this all the time. And the truth is, like I mentioned, with self-care,

you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I know it's hard. I know it's sticky. I know it's uncomfortable. This is the importance of that. I want you to get honest with yourself. I want you to get honest with your money, even if it seems scary. Because not only are we setting goals, right? We're setting goals. We're looking to progress towards those goals. We are also looking

at our money in order to see progress. Because if you never check your account balances, you have no idea if you're making progress. You can't cheer yourself on. You can't keep yourself motivated if you don't actually look. So we do the money date to recalibrate. We do the money date to make sure we're on track to hit our goals. We also do the money date to applaud ourselves and to say, well, I paid off $1,000 of debt last month, or my investments gained me $500. We can't continue to stay motivated unless we actually know what's going on. So we're checking our goal progress both to make sure that we're making good decisions,

that we're aligned with what we actually set out to do, but to also keep ourselves motivated. The fourth and final thing when it comes to this money date is just optimization. What things do we need to tweak in order to hit our goals? What things have we been putting off when it comes to personal finance that we just need to suck it up and do? Maybe that's opening up a high-yield savings account, right? Maybe that's taking the 20 minutes and finally opening up a high-yield savings account. Maybe it's taking another 20

minutes, another money date, and actually getting started investing. Maybe it's filing your taxes, yuck. You are giving yourself a specific amount of Maybe it's filing your taxes, yuck. You are giving yourself a specific amount of time to focus on your money, to do this financial self-care, and to also optimize your finances, right? Maybe there's another bank account that would be better suited to your needs, but you just haven't had time to make the switch. This is a perfect time to do that.

Now, remember I mentioned that if you are managing money with a partner to do this with them, have a conversation about money. This is your time to sit down and be really specific with each other to use money as a tool to build the life that you want together. We will talk about this more in season two, but this looks like, again, with the Japan example, hey, we both want to travel internationally next year. It's going to cost us this. How do we use money as a tool to get there? How do we use money as a tool to make sure that we can achieve our goals like traveling internationally or buying a house or having kids or retiring early?

I think life gets so crazy, whether you're single or partnered, that you don't have time to specifically look at your money, right? And especially if you are partnered and are trying to have these conversations and are trying to manage this big thing with somebody else, you don't have time, right? You're working or maybe you have kids and it just gets to be overwhelming. This is the specific time, the half hour, hour, once a month where you are setting goals with each other, or if you're solo dolo, setting goals on your own to figure out how you can use money to build the

life that you want. We are overcoming that ostrich effect. We are pulling our heads out of the sand. We're not shaming or judging ourselves for what has happened in the past. We're just moving forward. And if you want certain things out of life, right? If you want freedom, if you want to start a business, if you want to donate to causes you believe in, if you want to buy a house, if you want to travel, if you want to retire early, right? Money is the best tool to get you there. So this financial self-care practice, this money date is the way you stay on track towards your goals. This once a month commitment Kokana, Sophia Cohen, and Kristen Fields. Research by Arielle Johnson. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton and photography by Sarah Wolf. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K team and community for supporting the show.

For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests, and our sponsors, go to financialfeministpodcast.com.