Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - This One's for the Pre-Mamas

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Having a baby is a huge financial commitment. Before you make that commitment, there's one thing you need to do first. Today, Nicole explains.

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money is working as hard as you do. So why overcomplicate your money? Keep it simple with Bank of America, your one-stop shop for everything you need today and the goals you're working toward tomorrow. To get started, visit bofa.com slash newprosmedia. That's b-o-f-a dot com slash n-e-w pros p-r-o-s media. bfa.com slash newprosmedia. Hey guys, are you ready for some money rehab? Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player, GameStop. And should I have a 401k? You don't do it? No, I never do it. You think the whole world revolves around you and your money.

Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. Last week, I put out an episode about the finances of being a stay-at-home parent.

And after putting out that episode, I had people writing in saying, screw whether or not I can afford being a stay-at-home parent. I don't even know if I can afford to be a parent in the first place. Before you make any moves, there is a question you must, and I repeat, must ask yourself. What do I want? One more time to make sure we're all clear. What do I want? If you answer, oh, come on, Lavin. Obviously, I know what I want, especially when it comes to the family I've been dreaming about since I was a kid. Really? Well, then you can clearly articulate that dream in the one-line elevator pitch and break it down into 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, your markers. No? Then care to change your answer? When people used to ask me any variation of what

do you want to be when you grow up or what do you want to do when you grow up, I would get super nervous, like palms sweaty, armpits definitely sweaty, a little nauseated, kind of nervous. Because deep down, I knew that I couldn't actually answer the question. But the only way to quell that anxiety around the question was to answer it for myself first, which meant leveling with myself about what I really, really wanted out of life and when. Sure, I knew vaguely what I wanted, but I hedged by saying, well, that depends on if I meet someone or who knows what's going to happen. That's bullshit. And that's the mean girl or mean guy inside your head talking. More often than not, the biggest enemy attacking our life goals is between our ears. We often

diss our own dreams because we think they're not attainable or they suck or something else not true. Or even worse, we are delusional and we think we know what we want but aren't specific enough to hold ourselves accountable to those goals. When I finally took the time to ask myself what I really wanted out of life, I thought I already had it. I was killing it at work and had become a boss, literally, but I wasn't treating myself like one. It was my own humming and hawing and qualifying my plans that made me feel queasy about my life. The last person that should be queasy about that was me, and the antidote to that was to hunker down and buck up and actually answer the damn question,

like with a pen or a document on your computer or a note on your phone. I don't care how you do it. I only care that you actually write it out and do it. When I say family planning, you're probably imagining some sort of calendar where you tick off certain days of the month in which you're more or less likely to get pregnant. You might think of tracking these fertile cycles to maximize your odds of pregnancy or to avoid it altogether. But planning for a family isn't just about charts and graphs, although I do love me a good chart or graph around your period. It's about figuring out your innermost hopes and desires, defining them clearly, and then grabbing them by the hoo-ha,

which, as my forever shero Betty White famously pointed out, is stronger and able to take the pounding that balls cannot. I digress. Let's start slowly. Do you want to get married? Do you want to be married before you have a kid? Do you want to have kids? If so, when? How many kids do you want? I'll go first. Here were my answers to those questions a few years ago. Do you want to get married? Yes. Do you want to be married before having a kid? Yes. Do you want to have kids? If so, when? Yes, within the next five years. How many kids do you want? Five. I'll be honest, my answers to those questions have changed, especially around the five kids

part since I first did this exercise, and I will be talking about that in future episodes. But all I want you to know right now is that your answers might change too, and that is a-okay. Life happens. Writing your answers down doesn't mean you're setting your future in stone. You're just laying the foundation to help you decide and get what you want. Studies have shown that people who create cohesive narratives for themselves and their lives are more likely to be successful. So let's figure out what your narrative is. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. As you're writing down

your goals for family planning, don't forget to factor in the costs of having a mini me or more than one mini me and thinking about how those costs will affect the timing around growing your family. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson. Our mascots are Penny and Mimsy. Huge thanks to OG Money Rehab team Michelle Lanz for her development work, Catherine Law for her production and writing magic, and Brandon Dickert for his editing, engineering, and sound design.

And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.