Financial Feminist - 68. Managing Money in Your 30s with The Dow Janes

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Just like your skincare regimen changes with age, so should how you manage your finances. In this episode, Tori is joined by Britt and Laurie-Anne of The Dow Janes to chat about managing finances over 30 and how it’s different from how you might manage them in your 20s. They also get into where they see certain financial “to-do’s” differently and why it’s important to know yourself and what works for you the best when it comes to creating your financial plan. To learn more about our guests, access transcripts and bonus content and resources, head to our show notes page: www.financialfeministpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back, financial feminists. And just like that, somehow January coming to an end, and we're already one month down. I literally, I had to go to the dentist. I don't want to tell you how long it's been since I've been to the dentist. And I had to fill out my form, and I wrote the date, and it was the 18th of January. And I wrote, I asked her, I was like, is it the 13th? She's like, nope, it's the 18th. And then I wrote that it was 2022. So I don't know what year it is. And I definitely don't know what day it is. I hope the new year has been treating you well. We have an exciting start to kicking off this year, which is my book tour. We just ran through Seattle. We're going to LA and San Francisco. We're heading to Atlanta and New York after that. We'll have all of these dates and information for

you soon. But if you want to sign up, you can go to herfirst100k.com slash events to see what we got going on and to get your ticket. We have a great episode today with some friends of mine from the personal finance community. We are joined by Lori Ann King and Britt Williams Baker of Dow Janes. Dow Janes is a financial education company focused on leveling the financial playing field for women plus through online programs, community coaching, and accountability. At Dow Janes, they believe good things happen when women plus have money. They have a vision for an equitable world, one where women hold half the wealth, power, and influence and use it to nurture themselves, their families, their communities, and the planet. Sounds like my mission.

I love how aligned we are. And we talk more about this in the episode. We want to talk to Lorianne and Britt specifically because they work with women who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. And like everything in life, different ages bring along some different stages and challenges around how to manage money as you get older. We talk about the main differences we see between like millennials slash Gen Z and then older generations and how they manage their finances. The roadmap that Dow Janes have developed and how we even see certain pieces of financial

advice differently. This is a great episode for anyone who is thinking, is it too late for me? Which is a question we get all the time or is looking for more information on finances as they age. Let's go ahead and get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors. one is one of you still in Idaho were you no I'm in northern California just north of San Francisco last time I talked to you you were in Idaho right I think we were probably both yeah I think we were both in Idaho because we had a whole discussion about how my mom is also from Idaho from Yes, she was spent like summers in Sun Valley. Yeah, exactly. And Laurieann's just outside Portland. Okay, cool. Okay, so you guys are

pretty close. So we're just we're just West Coast in it today. It was like, yeah, yeah. The whole line down the coast. I love it. We do this with every personal finance expert we have on the podcast. And so I would love to kick off by asking, can you both share your first money memories? The first time you remember thinking about money? Yeah. Mine popped into my head right away. I can remember being, I don't know, probably six. My aunt had given me a wallet for Christmas. It was my first wallet and it had $20 in it, which was an enormous amount of money. So much money.

And she was taking all of the kids to McDonald's to like get happy meals and, you know, whatever. And we were using like the money from our wallets to do it. I don't know what happened but I ended up losing my wallet on that trip and it was like I felt so much shame and I was like I felt that loss of losing it and you know it stuck with me it's definitely a formative memory of money for me. Mine's from around the same age. I was also six. And I remember going to sleep in, I think like the bottom bed of the bunk bed. And my dad came in to tuck me goodnight. And I had this deep fear that we were running out of money, that for some reason there was not enough money to pay the bills. And so what I said to my dad at six was, you can have all the money in my piggy bank if it would help. Like thinking about it now, it just feels like so sad. And just to track that, the scarcity

and the fear that, you know, I was six. There wasn't a lot of reason for that, that was likely ingrained and comes from, you know, generations back. But just that, the fear that I carried with me, and it just reminds me of the work we do with women of the healing piece that you have to start with healing because money is so deep and so emotional for so many people. The first chapter of my book is like, let's just talk about the emotions of money because you can't make a budget. You can't start paying off debt. Can't do any of that until you start digging into why. So Britt, was that actual? Was your family actually struggling or was that more of a scarcity? You were just afraid. Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. It was just a scarcity. I don't know what I overheard that I made that story up, but yeah. Did you find that that memory colored your experience with money as you grew up? I think so. I think, you know, Lorianne and I talk openly about our own healing, money healing story, and mine was absolutely one of scarcity, one of learning that there is enough, it's going to be okay, like learning to feel comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. We found in our work that the first couple money memories that you remember have a very big impact on how you end up viewing money in the long term. Because yeah, it's cemented by age seven, as you guys probably know. And like it starts really

early. I would love to hear from each of you how you got into the financial education world. Britt, we can start with you. You casually went to Harvard Business School and have a background in personal finance. So talk to us. Tell us a bit about your journey. She just went on a whim. I know, just casual, just casually went. It's like, what? Like it's hard? Yeah. Yeah. So my money, my financial education started at a pretty young age. My parents, we had an allowance. We had what my dad called the daddy bank where we earned compound interest if we calculated it ourselves.

And so money was, it was taught to us at a pretty young age. My grandfather taught me to invest in the stock market. So I did that when I was in college. And then when I moved back to the Bay Area after Harvard Business School, friends just kept asking me how to invest. They thought there was something that I learned at business school. They're like, teach me to invest. I think I should be doing this. I'm in my 30s working. I should be investing. And so I started this club in my living room, called it Dow James after the name of my mom's investment club she was in when I was a little girl. And it just kind of took off. People heard about Dow Janes.

They'd see me out and say, when's the next Dow Janes meeting? Everyone wanted to be in it. And it was this kind of like book club for money where we talked openly about, how much did you spend on groceries last month? What should I be spending? What do we need to have saved for retirement? Just conversations that otherwise weren't happening. And Lorianne, what was your experience? Well, I kind of enter the story around that moment, but I'm going to back up a little bit further before Britt and I come together. Well, because you're an energy healer, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I started off in a little bit of a more woo-woo way with money where gosh my personal story you know I didn't grow up with a lot of money or family of five

living on a nurse's salary so we we had enough but we had like just enough and both my parents got really sick when I was in the eighth grade my mom had a brain hemorrhage. My dad had a heart attack in the same year. And they were both like really scary experiences and impacted their ability to work. And so, you know, we had kind of just been getting by and then we were not getting by. And I grew up in Canada and this happened in Canada. And I'm really grateful for the system there because I think if we had been living in the US and it happened here, I'm not sure my family would have been able to recover financially from it. And so that was a pretty formative experience for me. And I was like, I don't want to be unsafe when I grow up. And so I did all the right things, worked hard, grow up. And so I did all the right things, like worked hard, got the good job, was making decent money. But I did not have any financial education growing up and I didn't know how to manage the

money I was making. And so a few years after working, selling my sole corporate job, probably kind of similar to your experience story, I was like, okay, what do I actually have to show for this? Well, I have debt and it didn't feel very good. So I started to take my finances really seriously when I got engaged. My husband is a registered investment advisor and he comes from a money family. His dad was a financial planner. His grandfather was a financial planner. Both his brothers work in finance. It's like money is just talked about all the time, which at first was super uncomfortable for me. But then I started learning and getting to realizing, oh, it's okay. It's not this taboo thing. You can actually talk and learn about this. And so when we combined our finances and I had debt, my husband's like,

what is this? What are you doing with this credit card debt? This is not okay. This does not work. And I didn't even know what the big deal was. It was normal to me. So it created a lot of stress in my marriage. And it was something we had to really actively work on to learn how we manage finances together. And so we went through a pretty painful experience of learning how to budget. And it totally changed our life, but it was very hard to do. And around this time is when Britt had been running the Dow James meetings in person in California. And she had found that all these women were coming who were super excited to learn how to invest and a lot of them didn't actually have any money saved to start investing with

and so she realized oh I gotta back up a little bit and teach some personal finance basics and that's when she asked me to come teach like a workshop on budgeting and I taught one around values-based budgeting and thinking about how you're spending your money in alignment with your values and as an amplifier of your voice out in the world. And because the way I learned budgeting had been so painful and restrictive and it was like, this is not the way people should learn how to do this skill. This is actually an amazing skill to have. It is life-changing to know how to be intentional and in control of your money. But most of the way it's taught is as this like super restrictive, limiting experience. So that's when Britt and I kind of

started doing this together. And I guess I skipped the energy killing part in there. Sorry. No, but tell me about that. Because I actually started working with an energy coach two years ago. I am not a woo woo person. I was like very skeptical, but I was in a really hard place in my life. And I had a good friend of mine was in a really hard place in my life. And I had a good friend of mine just be like, work with an energy coach. Like, what do you have to lose? And then I started working with her and I was like, oh, interesting. Okay. This is very helpful. So tell me a bit about that experience, especially like, how do you jump from that to money? And actually, they actually really moved in tandem together for me. So when I left my corporate career, I actually started off in relationship coaching. I was like, I don't know what I want to do, but I know I want to help people and I love love. And as I just shared, my marriage had been hard in the very beginning, a lot to do with money. And it's like, I learned a lot in figuring out how to navigate that conflict in this process. And so I started off relationship coaching. And the more I did that, the more other things bubbled

up, including talking to women around sexuality and talking to women about money. And I actually saw there was this link to those two elements. And from an energetic perspective, our first two chakras, energy centers in our body our root chakra is all about our right to exist and our resources which in the modern world the number one resource is money and then our next chakra our sacral chakra is where our sexuality lives and so these are like two foundational elements to ourself and i just started finding as I was working with women actually around their sexuality, their money situation would start to shift. Or as I worked around their money, their relationship situation would start to shift. So there was just always

this connection in the way that I was doing the work. And my first really successful online business, I was teaching a course called orgasmic manifesting. And it was all about the energetics of sexuality and attracting what you want into your life. And it focused a lot actually on attracting money. And it was amazing. I mean, it is amazing. It's like the course is still available. I don't really work on it at all, but it's a really amazing connection. And then I found I was helping women create more income, like they were drawing more money into their life, but they were in the same situation that I had been in in my corporate career where they didn't have the skills to actually manage the money and

it wasn't improving their quality of life at all. That's one of the things I'm so worried about specifically with the dawn of the social media creator popularity. I'm the person on TikTok that people are sliding into my DMs being like, a huge brand offered me $500. I have 3 million followers. Should I take it? And I'm like, no. No, you shouldn't take it. And my biggest fear is that they're going to get a bunch of money. These 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, even older than that, but they just don't know how to manage it. And I'm like, I am so worried that that's going to end up happening. And we already have seen it, right? We have a bunch of, especially women, like women creators, women influencers who are making really good money.

And I don't know if they have the tools to be able to manage it well. And it terrifies me. Yeah. I mean, your fears are likely very founded. Most people don't. Most people are not taught how to do a skill that we are asked to do multiple times every single day, which is make decisions with money. And then we feel guilty that we don't know how. But I don't feel guilty that I don't know how to figure skate, but I weirdly feel guilty. If you don't know how. But like, I don't feel guilty that I don't know how to figure skate, but I weirdly feel guilty, right? If you don't know how to money, you feel weirdly guilty, like you should have learned this at some point. Yeah. Laurie, can we talk about budgeting really

quick? Because what you said is in total alignment with what I believe, which is like, budgeting is like a permission slip to be able to spend money on things that you love, as opposed to you feeling guilty or depriving yourself. So talk to me a bit about your mental switch from deprivation, scarcity, and maybe Brett, you can chime in as well, to abundance in addition to value-based spending. I can actually spend money on basically whatever I want as long as I have some guardrails. So can you talk to me about that? Yeah, for sure. For sure. So when I first learned budgeting, it was coming from, well, I've overspent. So I have debt. Now I need to learn how to spend within my means and live within my means. And so that's the way I approached it initially.

And that's the way it's kind of taught. If you look up a YouTube video on how to budget, they're going to say like, all right, write down your category, set how much you can spend in each category. And then fingers crossed at the end of the month, you're under it, which almost no one ever is because there's actually like six additional skills you need to successfully budget, which involve reviewing your budget along the way. And that's the way it started. And then as I was doing it, I realized this is actually about And as I was doing it, I realized this is actually about designing my life. Like the things that I want to have in my life, so many of them I can create through money or I can create faster through money or I could get help to have it happen if it's

not something that's directly related to money, but it's something that having money would either help me have the time to put towards it or actually buy it and have it in my life. And when I realized that, that doing my budget was actually designing the life I wanted to live, it became very easy because I just know I want to have a great life. As far as I can tell, we get one shot at this thing. And I'm like, well, why would I aim for anything lower than what I truly want? And part of what I want is to feel safe. If you remember when I said, you know, I didn't feel that way growing up. And so that involves taking care of future me. And my perspective has always been, if I'm here right now making decisions about money,

If I'm here right now making decisions about money, I know that I'm okay in this moment. And I don't know what the future holds. It might be harder in the future. So I want to do what I can right now to protect future me and make it likely that it's going to stay easy for her because I have put money aside that she can draw on if things get difficult. And then once I've done that, the rest is mine to spend. And I'm going to spend it in ways that enhance my life and enhance the life of people that I love because that brings me joy. Yeah. So you said, which is so important this idea of safety brit i think all of our work is very similar right we work with women you i think you both work with women who are slightly older than our typical demographic but i think one of the things that we talk about so much on this podcast

is that when women have money it's not just the ability to buy nice things, right? It's actual safety. It's the ability to make choices, to leave bad situations, to take a job that might pay less money but is better for their mental health, to leave an abusive relationship. Can you speak to how you've seen that play out with women that you coach? Yeah, we have a phrase that we say at Dow Janes, which is women with money have more choices and louder voices. And so it's both. Please tell me you've trademarked that. Trademark the hell out of that. That's lovely. Yeah, we talk about more choices, but I love louder voices. That's so great. I love it. Yeah.

And it's it really I mean, I wish it weren't the case in our modern day that money does carry so much power, but it just does. And so when you have money, you can vote with your dollar. You can spend it on things that you care about or choose to not spend it on things that you don't support. And so it really becomes your your voting power, your way of speaking up. And then as well with choice, just giving you more options to leave the job, to leave the relationship, to go do that thing that you're passionate about. And we've seen this. My favorite story from our program is this woman named Sylvia, who she's living in New York, barely getting by paycheck to paycheck,

like just kind of struggling when it comes to money. And she's been a dancer, loves dance, and just doesn't have time for a dance in her life anymore, or can't even afford the classes to go to dance class. And in our work, she got clear on why she was budgeting, what her reason for doing it was. And she set up this, her single goal was to go on a staycation. And so she saved up enough money to be able to actually enjoy New York for a weekend. I think it might've even been a whole week and a whole week. And so she saved up money to go to the dance classes, to, I think, even go to a show, to

have cocktails out on the town like had designed this entire week for herself and the best part about her sharing of this story is that she's like every drink I had every class I went to was guilt free I felt so proud of myself for having saved enough to be able to do this that it was just part of the budget and i could enjoy it on an on a level so much deeper than when you're just doing it like crossing your fingers it's going to work out at the end of the month yeah or taking the vacation and realizing like you're putting it all on a credit card yeah right she she did this while she paid off debt like she

got out of credit card debt during this same the same And she's like, I didn't think I could afford to do this even before I was paying off the debt. And now I'm doing both because she got so much clearer on how she wanted to spend her money. Right. And that piña colada tastes a little bitter when you realize that you're putting it on a credit card, right? It's like there's no full way to enjoy your vacation or enjoy your week if you're realizing that all of it is going to come back to bite you at some point. Yeah. And I love that she planned ahead. And I think we talked with Rumi Sethi on a previous episode about he calls it like, what is your rich life? What is the version of your life that you want to live not that somebody else is telling you to live not the society wants you to live but like what makes sense for you

and i love that she was very specific and it was what she you know it wasn't this you know she didn't take a month off she didn't like even have to travel anywhere it was just like no i want to do this thing and you know lori and you were talking about budgeting, right? This idea that budgeting is the permission slip, right? You do it guilt-free because you've planned ahead rather than depriving yourself of the things you really want or the things you really love. Yeah. Yeah. We have this other incredible woman in our program named Mary, who is in her fifties, has five kids, grown kids, and she and her husband have had debt for their entire lives. They've just always had a line of debt that they've been carrying with them. And her husband has been managing the finances. And she joined our program, Million Dollar Year.

She's in it for a year, goes through a lot of hard things, but stays focused, stays committed to it, and decides to take over running the family finances from her husband. So she takes it over and she starts building a budget for the household. And for the first time in their entire life, she paid off over $20,000 of credit card debt. I think it was like 80. I mean, I might be wrong, but my memories, I'm pretty sure she paid off $80,000 of debt. And they were debt free for the first time in their marriage. And just the confidence that came from her taking over and being able to do that for them. Yeah, it's phenomenal. Well, and so you mentioned Mary, right, in her 50s.

We very much talk to like a millennial and then sometimes Gen Z audience. We have women who are, especially if you're listening, hello, in late 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. But I think for you guys, you do work with women that are slightly older than the demographic I tend to hit. What do you think are some of the differences in the way of thinking about money for those women versus, you know, maybe somebody in their 20s or early 30s? Yeah, it's well, I'm going to say one thing before I answer your question, if that's OK. When Brit and I first started, we really set out to help people in their 30s. We thought we were going to be helping a lot of people like the original Dow Janes, people who came to our in-person meetings, who were really Brit's friends.

who came to our in-person meetings were who were really Brit's friends. And as we started marketing our program, we were really surprised at how broad the range of women who were attracted and wanting the help were. We were like not expecting to be helping women in their forties, fifties, sixties. And I mean, we also have,

have some millennial clients as well, but really we were really most surprised by the older demographic and realized, okay, these are people who are being completely ignored in the current financial industry. And if you don't already have money to invest, you go to a financial advisor, they want nothing to do with you because they don't make any money off of you. a financial advisor, they want nothing to do with you because they don't make any money off of you. And so this demographic of women who are getting closer to the end of their working life and are not yet prepared for retirement is a population that really needs help and really wants help and has had no idea who can help them because everyone in the industry is somehow

motivated to make money off of them in not such a transparent way. It's not like they charge you for a conversation. They charge you inside of the investments that you make, or they charge you inside of the life insurance plan that they sell you that you may or may not actually need. And so we've created something where we charge people for our help, but it's really upfront and it's really transparent. You're paying for that and you're getting what you're paying for. And so I would say the main mindset differences that we've seen is the level of fear that's associated with their situation. The older you are, the less time you have to course correct the situation. And so it starts to feel scarier and scarier and more and more painful. And sometimes that creates a bigger cycle of avoidance. It's like, okay, it feels bad. So I don't want to look at it or deal with it. But the more I don't look at it or deal with it, the worse it gets and the scarier it feels. Would you say any other differences, Britt? worse it gets and the scarier it feels. Would you say any other differences, Britt?

Fear is exactly what I was going to say. The other piece is urgency. Just as there's people who get into their 40s and 50s and think, I should have figured this out. All of a sudden, this isn't a luxury to know how to manage your money. It's essential because you're either in debt or on your own post-divorce or looming retirement. And so it becomes this thing that you really just have to take care of. And so I've noticed the willingness to take action and do the hard thing and really stick with it when it feels overwhelming. I think there's also this realization that it's not going to work out on its own. I think when you're younger, you can bury your head in the sand a little bit and like, oh, that's a problem for later. That's a problem for future me. Okay, well, we're talking to the future me's. And they're

realizing no one else is coming to do this for them. There's no like white knight that's going to scoop them up and pay off their debt in a magical... There's no staples that was easy button for money. I say that multiple times in my book. I wish there was just a button that you could press that was just like, debt-free button, boom. That doesn't exist. Yeah. So there's a realization that they need to face the reality because no one else is going to do it yeah but also like kudos there's so much courage we see so much courage of the women in our program that they are willing to do it and when they get into a group that's supportive that where they can see other people in their situation who have done it who have made that switch and course

corrected their their, it starts to feel so much more accessible. And they do it. We get to witness people have miraculous shifts in their finances, and they do it themselves, and they own that, and they're empowered in the process. Yeah. Do you find that it's a lot of women in heteronormative relationships who their male partner was handling the money, and either that partner passed away, they divorced, something shifted. Is that the vast majority of people that you work with? It's not the majority, but it is about 25%. Yeah. Which is pretty significant. Yeah. Well, and the realization too that, yeah, I mean, even in 2022, I think even with,

if you're in your early twenties and you're in a relationship with a man like that, I think is unfortunately still like women are handling budgeting maybe and like saving and coupon clipping, but men are handling the wealth building. They're handling the investing. They're handling, you know, the, the big truly money-changing decisions. And yeah, it's what we're all trying to change or at least become more equitable. But it's so interesting that I can see the mistakes of potentially... I shouldn't even call them mistakes because it's conditioned, right? It's taught of women who are older. And yet we still have women now in their 20s who are getting into relationships. And it's still inequitable in terms

of the management of money. Yeah, you really have to advocate for yourself. You really do. And I experienced it in my own marriage. And my husband, he's pretty woke. He works at our company. He coaches some of our members. He truly wants women to be financially empowered. And even in our relationship, there have been moments or ways where he has either had an approach to an investing decision or actually made an investing decision and not included me. And it's like, whoa, hey, what's going on? Hold the phone. Let's talk about this. Oh, interesting. And I'm thinking of a time early in our relationship. I think we were either engaged or very newly married, but we had totally combined our finances. And he made a really significant investment in a friend's investment fund. And he invested all money that he brought to the relationship. So like, you know, I didn't actually

have any claim to that money or anything. It was totally his money, but he invested it without talking to me about it. And I thought it was really interesting that I didn't even occur like someone whose opinion might be helpful in making that decision. Right. It was like, oh, maybe even just like, let me, you know, ask for what I think about it. Right. You should be counseled. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, you know, your money, your decision for sure. But I would really love to get to talk about it with you. And so that was, I'm so grateful that that actually did happen early on in our relationship and that I felt confident enough to

get pissed about it so we could talk about it and have those conversations and change the way we do it. But it's, it just really truly is ingrained in our culture that men make the investment decisions and like women are frivolous spenders and need to be controlled when it comes to money yeah but like oh she's going to the mall again I'm like it's not a good joke anymore guys like it's not well sorry I'm like a little embarrassed to say I was watching some Bachelor in Paradise last night oh it's fine and i watched fuck boy island have you guys seen fuck boy island no oh god it sounds like i'm gonna watch i do not i hate reality dating shows i like refuse to watch them i hate them and then my boyfriend was like you have to watch the show and it's he's like i'm addicted to it

and i started watching it's by nick it's hosted by nicki glazer which i think is the best the best like it's the reason i was in but yeah you basically you date good guys or nice guys versus fuck boys and if you choose a fuck boy at the end the fuck boy gets to pick whether he takes the 100k or he splits it evenly 50 50 oh i'm watching i'm sold i'm solid but you know who the fuck boys are so you have all of these women choosing fuck boys like you have all of them at the end choosing fuck boys and i'm like yeah because every time wait wait the contestants know what the hoes are they know about like four episodes before they're supposed to choose who the fuck boys are and who the nice guys are and yet they still choose the fuckboys because all the fuckboys obviously know how to play this game

right and they're like you know what you've really changed me like i really feel a connection with you and sometimes the fuckboys do split the money to their credit and sometimes they do not and so oh my god it's such a fun show it's ridiculous it's they're all you know they're all like drinking and they're making out with each other there's three women and then like 25 men it's insane anyway bachelor paradise oh i can't wait to watch that okay on bachelor paradise last night yeah not sponsored just fantastic there was a a scene where one of the women they were like all sharing their scars and one of the women didn't have a pinky finger. She was talking about how she lost her pinky. First of all, she was owning it. It was so badass. I just loved this scene. Then she says, when I go

to get my nails done, I get 10% off. Everybody laughs because she's missing a finger. The guy that she was most interested in dating goes she's a saver i just loved it he noticed that mindset i hate the bachelor that's so sweet he's like a single dad one of the you know forlorn stories where the wife passed away and he's now there to like find love again. That's so hysterical about Bachelor in Paradise. That's so ridiculous. She's a saver. Let's talk about, speaking of like dating, can we talk specifically about the importance of

finances both in marriage and partnership and in divorce? Because many women get married and they don't go through the prenup process and they don't protect themselves when it comes to their independent finances. So what are some ways that women can protect themselves financially before getting married or before partnering with somebody? Yeah. Yeah. So we mostly work with people on the other side. We are not at all giving recommendations as people are going into marriage. It's not our expertise place. So I don't know a ton on this topic, but I've listened to a little bit about prenuptials

and the importance of basically there's this, there's this idea when people get married, they think they're, you know, they have all the fantasy of how it's going to work out and they don't, it's just not fun to think all the fantasy of how it's going to work out. And they don't, it's just not fun to think about the potential of it not going well. And so it's a place where people don't actually want to dig in. But they don't realize is that they're essentially signing a prenup with whatever state they're getting married in. And a lot of people don't look into what the rules are. And so it's either like you take this boilerplate prenuptial that the state of California or the state of Illinois or the state of Texas is giving you, or you write your own. And the, it's an act doing a prenuptial, I would put it this way, instead of it being like

expecting the worst case, it's a first act for the woman to take, take some, like take a place. What am I trying to say? Like take a stand of confidence and ownership of their future of, hey, I'm gonna have a say in our financial decisions starting right now. And here are my expectations. And I mean, people can get creative and say like, if you cheat on me, you give me all your money.

There's like things you can write in that really, you know, set yourself up for the future you want to have. Yeah. No. And I, I so appreciate you bringing that up. I think it was Aaron Lowry, who's broke millennials, who says like, if you don't make a prenup, the state makes one for you. Right. Like, like if you don't, if you don't decide what you want, the, the state laws have already decided for you. So I think there is all of this weird shame and like, yeah, there's like, I don't want this relationship to fail. And me signing a prenup means that I think it's destined to fail. And I'm like, I wouldn't enter a business decision with somebody without a contract.

And that isn't because I think that eventually we're going to hate each other and need to separate assets or whatever. But I wouldn't enter any sort of business deal without a contract. And yes, marriage, you hope, is full of love, but it's also a legally binding agreement. And so if I'm going to enter this legally binding agreement with somebody, especially the person who I love and respect, I want to make sure that both of us are taken care of. And that both of us have a very distinct plan of what's going to happen as opposed to letting the state government or the state laws decide what that looks like for us. Yeah. And I mean, with a 50% chance of divorce, it's just the smartest thing to do. Just protect yourself. chance of divorce, it's just the smartest thing to do. Just protect yourself. Right. And it's even too, I think, the opening conversations about money in general. And one thing I very much talk about, personal finance is personal. But one thing I refuse to counsel

women on, a lot of people are like, I'm going to fully combine my finances. And I 100% disagree with that. You need some of your own separate money. Like even if it's just a small emergency fund and you have joint accounts. I think the ideal for me is that you have separate accounts and then a joint account for your shared expenses. But I've seen so many women get done really dirty because they don't have any sort of money to their name. And so you need some sort of money on the side. Yeah, it's tough. It's a tricky thing to navigate. It really is. And I think before even getting to the level of marriage, if you're just dating someone and you're starting to think about shared finances and combined finances, I think the best thing you can do to protect yourself

in the beginning is try and get transparency. Understand what the other person's financial situation is. Know who you're dating from a financial perspective. And that doesn't mean you have to make any decisions about the relationship based on that person's financial reality, but you should know what it is. because if you're considering having a future with this person, you're also considering having a future with their finances. And then when it comes to actually combining finances, Britt and I, we put together a workshop in our program to help people navigate this because it is so tricky. And there's a lot of different aspects to finances. There's how much you earn. There's how much of what you earn goes towards shared expenses, goes towards individual expenses. There's who's actually

responsible for keeping a budget or managing the money, who's responsible for making spending decisions, who's responsible for paying bills, like the actual work that is involved on managing your finances. And then there's also decision rights and who gets to make those choices. And are they consensus decisions? Are they unilateralilateral decisions is there a certain dollar amount that if you're going to spend more than this now you need to have a conversation like how you do it there's a lot of nuance to it and in in our work with women we really there are times where we will be prescriptive and say this is how we suggest doing it. And then there's other times, I would say actually majority of the times where we really try to

empower and inform people to make their own decisions and say, yeah, here's the lay of the land. Here's what I personally do. Here's what Brit personally does. And you choose for yourself. And here are some of the pros and cons to, you know, of the different, different options. And when it comes to managing money in partnership, Britt and I do it totally differently. Like my husband and I, we have a hundred percent combined finances. Was that like really well thought out? No. I mean, what happened is I moved from Canada to the U S and I didn't have any bank accounts or anything in the US. And I met with, I can still remember the moment where I'm in the kitchen with my husband and his father-in-law, who's a financial advisor, who's looked at a lot of people's money situations for a long time. He's in a very good,

stable marriage. And he says, combine your finances. Every marriage I've ever looked at where they didn't have combined finances, it wasn't a good marriage. That was his perspective on it. And so my husband just added me to all of his accounts. And I didn't bring a lot of money to the table. So for the person who that was risky for, it was riskier for him than it was for me. But it also wasn't a very good way to navigate building credit and things like that in the US, which I didn't know I needed to do. And then Brit's on the other end of the spectrum where her and her husband are mostly separate finances and they share expenses and it works really well for them. And what I'm doing works really well for me, but I also know I'm more at risk based on the situation that I'm in. And I have so much empathy and compassion for anybody, regardless of situation. I want to be clear on that. For me, I've just, what I've seen is like, there are so many people who are entering

marriages and they believe, oh, if I have my separate money, that means I don't trust my partner. And that's not it at all. Like that's not it at all. And that's the narrative I think that has been pushed. I think of Dave Ramsey all the time. And he's like, you need fully combined finances. And if you're separating your money, it's because you don't trust and you don't have a good relationship. And I'm like, no, I don't think that's it at all. And the same way that I think a lot of people are successful fully combining their finances. To your point, you take on more risk. You take on more risk more risk and unfortunately the risk in a heteronormative relationship tends to fall on on the woman like that's i think yeah what ends up totally it's not lost on me that that

advice that i've heard both from my father-in-law and from dave ramsey is like coming from older white men, right? Patriarchal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. So can we break down by either like decade or by your progression through your financial life, what sort of goals that women should have? If someone's like in listening right now and they feel behind because they haven't started investing yet, they have debt. Like what can you share with them? For that person, you're doing the right thing. Don't invest until you've cleared your debt. So we have a really specific roadmap for people to follow that you have to move up the roadmap. And when it comes to personal finance, it's really important to do things in the right order. Because if you do things out of order, you're just shooting yourself in the

foot. You're basically spending money to try to make money, but it's not going to work out. So the way to do it is you start at the bottom of our pyramid with spending less than you make each month. So that means that you're taking home more than you're spending. And most people actually don't even know that number. They don't know if they are saving money each month. So that's the first thing is to get really clear on knowing, are you able to save money each month?

If you're able to save money, then you can move up the roadmap to the next step, which is paying off high interest rate debt. And high interest rate debt is anything with an interest rate over 7%. So most credit cards, some personal loans, some car loans. That's the most important piece because that is actually costing you more than anything else with a 20% interest rate, 30% interest rate. Sometimes

you're not going to make that up by investing. So that is actually the most expensive piece in your financial life. And you have to pay that off first. Then you want to save up an emergency fund. And for that, it's usually three to six months of expenses. If you're if you have like a great backup plan, you can save less if you're on your own and don't really have a backup plan, you maybe want to save more. And the reason that we have you save an emergency plan before you start investing is so you can invest for the long term, five plus years being long term. And when people this is the mistake that most people make is they start investing when they don't have an emergency fund. And so then when the market goes down, and they

have, they get in a car accident, and they have to pull their money out of their investments. And that's when you lose money from investing. So we really emphasize having your emergency fund before you start investing, it's okay to wait, you know, you're not ready to invest, that's okay. That's a good thing. It means you're doing things in the right order. Save your emergency fund first. Then you're ready to invest and start thinking about long-term retirement, future planning. And you can invest at that point pretty safely and securely. A lot of people have this fear that investing is scary, but when you do it in this order, it doesn't have to be scary at all. Yeah. So this is the interesting part about personal do it in this order, it doesn't have to be scary at all. Yeah. So this is the interesting part about personal finance is like, Brit,

I am very much like you need an emergency fund first before you start paying off debt. Like I have a whole what I call the financial game plan is very similar to your guys's I think pyramid is like we have that in episode five. And it's like, I am like, you do not start paying off debt, you do not start investing, Nothing happens until you have that emergency fund. And how much, what would you say? Three months of living expenses. Before paying off debt. Yeah.

Yeah. I, if people are like, they have a ton of debt and it's really giving them a lot of anxiety, I'll be okay with like one month of living expenses. But like, I truly, especially after pandemic, I'm just like, I think you need an emergency fund that's going to sustain you for a little bit of time before you start paying off debt. Just because, yeah, we're in the wild, wild west at this point in the last two years. Absolutely unprecedented. And then I think a lot of people who didn't have any sort of savings. And I want to be clear, $1,000 one month, whatever you have is better than nothing in

savings. But yeah, I'm very much of like, I don't want you going into more debt trying to pay for an emergency. And then I find that my clients, they sleep better at night knowing that they have something in the bank should something happen. But yeah, this is personal finance. It's so interesting. Well, and I think we could debate this. And it's interesting because we there's places where we agree with you. Actually, it's like we left out the step of have at least $1,000 that you're saving on the side because you don't want to go further into

debt. And the way I've thought about it is this debt is costing you so much that if you have three months of emergencies yeah sitting in your savings you could right and once you free up that debt in theory you have more money to contribute to a savings account yeah exactly or you could you know the ideal is we're keeping people from going back into debt and so if they have this the worst case is they are paying off their debt and they have to start using their credit cards again. And the reason that actually, let me back up for a second. One of the reasons that we have it this way is because of the mindset piece of becoming debt free. So if you can take what you have sitting in your three months emergency fund and actually pay

off that last credit card and become debt free with, you know, a $7,000 payment, and then you're starting from zero, you can see yourself as someone who is debt free. And going forward, you're going to make different decisions. And so really getting people into that place of believing, you know, I can be debt free, I can start saving. That's another reason we have it that way. Well, it might feel potentially more of a win to become debt free than it does to save a three month emergency fund. Right? Yeah, I feel like a success. Right? Yeah. I mean, ultimately, the best plan is the plan you actually follow, right? It's like, if anyone is listening, and they're like, Oh, I you know, I definitely want to pay off my debt first or no, I want my emergency fund savings first. If you have a strong feeling like that, trust it and do it in that order.

We've just seen a lot of our clients come to us with $20,000 in credit card debt and $50,000 in savings. And we're like, hey, this doesn't make any sense. We actually want to use that money to pay off the debt because that is preventing you from investing successfully. And it can feel really scary to let go of that money in savings. There's like a lot of feelings of safety attached to it. And I think for me and our audience, $50,000 in savings is a crazy amount of money. Like that's not a thing, right? So like they're just excited to get a couple thousand in savings

or maybe 10,000 in savings. So like, it's also right, like a different potentially demographic or financial situation. It's a lot easier if somebody has a lot in savings to be like, you should be paying off the debt that you have, and then you still have $20,000 left over. For I think the majority of people in my audience, that's just not the reality. The reality is, is they're just trying to save up to that $1,000 or three months of living expenses. So yeah yeah this is the interesting part about personal finance i'm also just as everybody knows i'm just so anti-dave rancy and i think like his focus on just like getting out of debt at all costs just like exhausts me and of course i know that you guys are you know like value-based spending sustainable like debt payoff all of those things But I think everybody just has this like default state of like, this debt has to be gone no matter what. And I'm like,

I think you need a little bit in savings to build yourself up and give yourself that financial foundation and then work to pay off your debt. Yeah, we teach a lot about debt in our program, actually, because there is good debt and bad debt, right? Like not all debt is created equal. there is good debt and bad debt, right? Like not all debt is created equal. Well, talk to me about that. Okay. So bad debt is debt that you have incurred and the benefit that you realized from the debt is already gone. Like it's already used up and yet you are still paying for the debt. Yeah. So it's like consumer purchases. So you bought a new TV and now you've got the new TV, but it's gone down in value since you bought it and you are still paying for it now. That's bad debt. And if it has an interest rate,

which we kind of demark the interest rate into high and low interest when it's over 7% because that's an average return you're going to get, right? So any interest that's up over that amount means it doesn't make any financial sense for you to invest for your future if you are carrying that debt. It is more expensive. You'll be losing money by investing. And so good debt, it can be debt that you have used strategically, which is why in the business world, they refer to debt as leverage. What's leverage? It's like a lever. You can do a little bit and you can get an outsized

result from it. So something like debt, we can use strategically to buy assets like real estate, for example, and you can buy a lot more than you could if you didn't have access to the debt financing. And so we teach about good debt and bad debt because when debt is used properly it can really help you build wealth when debt is used improperly and then it works against you and it can really prevent you from building wealth and that mindset you were talking about tori of people like come and have this kind of panicked reaction about their debt and feel like i have to get out of it as fast as possible and i'm like my life is not okay until i'm out of this debt. We differentiate between what we call sprint debt and marathon debt. And some debt is sprint debt. It is harming your ability to build wealth and

protect future you by continuing to carry that debt. So if you're tolerating that debt, it would be better to take a little sprint and make it a focused effort and and clear it and then there's debt that we call marathon debt which let's say student loan debt for example we can consider that marathon debt depending on your interest rates because that's an investment that you made to get an education that hopefully increased your earning potential for the rest of your life. And so if you are actually working the career that you use the debt for to finance that education, that's benefiting you over the long term of your life. And it's okay to pay that debt down over the long term of your life. All of that being said, like I said earlier, the best plan is the plan you will actually follow.

And people have different relationships to debt. For some people, it just feels like handcuffs. They're not interested in having debt. And other people, they can see debt as an instrument or as a tool that they can use. And this is another place where Britt and I have really different relationships to debt. Britt bought her house in cash. I just refinanced before interest rates went up because I was like, I'm going to get that money at 2%. I'm going to invest it at 7%. Hot damn, I just made 5%. And it doesn't phase me at all.

I'm very comfortable with it when it's used strategically. And so that's just for people to decide and explore. But that immediate reaction that debt is bad, certain types of debt are bad for your financial health and certain types of debt can be used positively for your financial health. Totally. So we were talking about the mindset of money and the emotions and the psychology. You guys call it facts versus feelings. Can you explain what you mean? Yeah. So one of the things we say is that you can't sort through money financially until you've seen it emotionally. And there's a lot of feelings that are holding people back from actually taking action. So this is a big one that

comes up with debt, with the identity around having debt. So a feeling is, you know, I am, I am unworthy because I have credit card debt, or I'm a bad person, or I'm dumb because I have credit card debt. And so really dropping into the shame space of really making it about you and who you are. So that's a money feeling. A money fact is I have $20,000 of credit card debt. I also wasn't given a financial education in high school. I also never learned how to use a credit card when I was given one on my college campus. Those are facts. It doesn't mean anything about you. And now you can take action to changing that situation if you want. And so it's really stepping out of any feelings of shame or making it about you to just being the situation on the table, kind of seeing it as something separate from yourself. There's this debt that I have and now I'm going to clear it.

Yeah. There are so many similarities to how we teach money because for us over here, again, when we were writing the book, when I was writing the book, it was all about what are the narratives that you're believing about money? So almost every chapter we spend debunking the narrative. So yeah, if I have debt, I'm a bad person. Oh, people who have money are bad people. Money can't buy you happiness. Investing is complicated. Investing is intimidating. Investing is risky.

All of the narratives you were told about money versus what is the actual reality of that. Yeah, totally. And the money feelings also come up in some of the specifics of dealing with your money. So we might have a money feeling like I'm drowning in debt. And you'll know that you're using a feeling if it's like if you're not actually saying real numbers and you're talking about a physical sensation like this debt is weighing me down or holding me back or I'm drowning in it. Okay, we're using language that creates strong emotions. Just think about those words, drowning, being held down. Those are real survival, scary situations versus I have $6,000 of debt or my monthly minimum is $600 and I only have $400. Those are facts. Those are things we can work with. It's really hard to work with feelings that are related to death or being restricted, imprisoned. So just notice that language and see, okay,

how can I translate this into an actual just fact-based statement that isn't as scary to start working with? Well, and your energy coach like flag must pop up too, where you're like having very physical sensations, right? Like weighing me down, drowning, like holding me back, right? These are all very like physical manifestations in your body of what it feels like to be in debt. And that, as we all know, has severe impacts on your physical health, your mental health, the way you carry yourself in the world, like literally physically, if you feel these like, yeah, physical manifestations of money. Yeah, the language we use matters, right? Like words have an emotional and an energetic weight to them.

And a lot of the words that we use around money in the negative, especially often have to do with the physical body, but are just like very intense. Even if you think about someone saying, oh, it cost me an arm and a leg. Imagine that losing an arm and a leg to get whatever it was you bought. It's like really, really warped ways of talking about dollars and cents. Yeah. Yep. You're so right. So one of my last questions for you all what do you hope dow janes grows into in the coming years what is the goal for you both i'm so excited to listen to brett's answer for this question she's like let me take notes about the future of our company. So Dow Janes is a three-year-old business. And yet we have grown really quickly in those three years and have really seen what a need

there is for education, for community, for affordable coaching when it comes to money. And we have built our business. We've been really lean. You know, it's basically been Lorianne the helm for, Lorian and me, it's been me and Lorian at the helm doing most of it for three years. And, you know, we have independent contractors here and there. We have a lot of agencies helping us. And the next phase of Dow Janes is really is building out our company.

So whether that's a new app that we're developing, whether it is expanding our product line to really build financial freedom and create more choice for women, potentially an ethical investing line of helping people create values aligned investments. There's a lot of different directions we could go. We've been really focused on the million dollar year

and it is incredible for getting results. And so that will continue to remain our main foundational program for getting people from either debt or minimal savings to being ready to invest. And then basically from there, what happens after the million dollar year is what we'll be building out next.

Yeah, we're also pretty excited to be a business that's doing business differently. So treating our employees really well, doing profit sharing, having, you know, compensation that feels lets people live a really good life. You know, that's what we're I think, either. No, someone else I was listening to. But yeah, kind of like an anti capitalist. We're anti capitalist capitalists, you know, wanting to, we're in business, we love business, we're making money, we're helping other people make money and yet wanting to create a better world with that. Totally. Amazing. Lorianne, anything to add? Yeah, I think, I think on the notion of doing business differently, it's been really amazing to get to build this company with

my best friend. You know, Britt and I have been best friends for a decade. And there's just so much that's been available to us through sisterhood and doing this together and our love for one another and wanting this to be not only a great company that's out there having a great impact in the world, but something that's really great for each of us in our lives and getting to add that into the filtering decision. And we thought early on in starting the company, do we wanna go raise capital? Do we wanna get VC money so we can like go lightning fast?

And we don't, we wanna go as fast as we can while still loving our lives. And in building the company, we've always said, we want to build something that we could sell if we want to, but we want to run it in a way that we're never going to want to sell it. And, you know, getting to do that and, um, and really practice that and live at a super high level of integrity as people who are doing well by doing good in the world. It's just like, it's a really fun challenge to take on. And, you know, Brit went to Harvard Business School. I studied business in our undergrad. And so we have the imprint of how business has always been done and now getting to take it into our own hands and really intentionally create

our culture and our systems and our decisions. And we're learning what is the decision-making criteria if it's not profit at all costs? What are those ways that we decide? So it's a really fun challenge to take on in terms of a company level and goals. What do we want to be? We want to be big. We want to help as many people as we can. And we don't know what that number is yet. We know we haven't hit it.

We feel like we're just getting started and we're really excited to keep going. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you? Dowjanes.com is where you can start. And then all of our links are from there. We have a pretty great Instagram influence at Dow.Janes. And then our YouTube channel is really helpful.

Just free educational videos that we drop each week. So find us on YouTube. We're also on Pinterest, TikTok. Amazing. Thank you again to Britt and Lorianne for joining us. We love working with other women and women-focused companies in the personal finance space. So make sure to check them out and support them.

We've linked all of their socials and their offerings and their advice in our show notes. You can go to financialfeministpodcast.com. If you're loving these episodes, you know what to do. Review, tag us on social, share with friends and family. This podcast is 100% free resource to you, and we appreciate your support. It allows us to be able to give you this advice and guidance. And we just appreciate you being here. Thanks for joining us at Financial Feminist yet again, and we'll catch you later. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast.

Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Sharice Wade, Alina Helzer, Paulina Isaac, Sophia Cohen, Valerie Oresko, Jack Koning, Khalil Dumas, Elizabeth McCumber, Beth Bowen, and Amanda LeFue. Research by Ariel Johnson. Audio engineering by Austin Fields. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton.

Photography by Sarah Wolf. And theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. 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 episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com or follow us on Instagram at financialfeministpodcast.