More Money Podcast - 250 Budgeting for Your Best Life - Mykail James, Founder of BoujieBudgets.com

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Maybe talking about your spending shouldn’t make you feel bad? Maybe a hobby doesn’t have to become a side hustle? Maybe striving towards early retirement by living extremely frugally isn’t the ideal path? These are just some of the fresh takes about personal finance I discuss with my next guest Mykail James, founder of BoujieBudgeter.com. Having had her interest in personal finance sparked in her early school days, Mykail naturally went on to obtain her MBA in accounting and become a Certified Financial Literacy Instructor. But what’s unique about Mykail is she likes to use her fresh take on finance to reach people outside of the normal personal finance bubble. That’s why she uses pop-culture references, relatable language, and Instagram as one of her main platforms to help her audience understand confusing concepts like budgeting, saving, and investing…and actually feel good about it at the same time! Because living your best life shouldn’t be about doing something extreme and unsustainable, like living on practically nothing for years or side hustling until you burn out. You can live your best life and still work towards your financial goals as long as you practice being intentional and well, take some of that traditional financial advice with a grain of salt. For full episode show notes visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/250 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the Mo Money Podcast. This is episode 250. Yes, 250. Damn. Damn. How did that happen? How did that happen? All right. My name is Jessica Morehouse. I'm the host of the Mo Money Podcast. Welcome to the show. If you're new, hello and welcome. I hope you're here to stay because I've got obviously 250 episodes for you to listen to if you want to get more familiar with the beautiful world of personal finance, financial independence, and everything that you can think of about money. And if you're a loyal longtime listener, welcome back. Thank you so much for sticking around all

these months, years. Man, I love all of you. You're so awesome for sticking around for so long. So for this episode, I have a gal who I've been following on social media, specifically Instagram for quite some time. And I really like her perspective and the content that she puts out. She is kind of a refreshing take on personal finance. I find it like having so I've been talking to so many people on this show over the years. It's actually kind of unique to find someone with a very kind of different way of thinking. And so I have the wonderful Mikael James. She is the founder of bougiebudgets.com. And she's also kind of her stage name, so to speak, is the bougie budgeter. So she has bougiebudgets.com. It's an online platform dedicated to teaching Gen Z professionals how to finance their best lives. And FYI,

I'm apparently not Gen Z. I'm a Gen Y. As Michael says in the show, she's really, she is a millennial, but she's on the cusp. So she's Gen Z, Gen Y. She's both of those things. It's interesting talking to someone younger than me, which makes me feel old even saying that, even though I know I'm not old, but she's basically a decade younger than me. So fascinating just getting her take on things because the world has changed so much in the past 10 years and also not a lot in some respects. Anywho, going back to Mikael. So her whole thing is educating Gen Z professionals how to finance their best lives, who doesn't love that? And her stories is, you know, upon graduating with her MBA focused in accounting, so she knows what she's talking about. She also became a certified financial literacy instructor. And she, like I kind of said, has a fresh new take

on managing money and finances. And her teachings use, you know, pop culture references and relatable language to help her audience understand confusing money concepts such as budgeting, saving, and investing. And the goal is really to make positive money moves while still controlling your finances because you can only live your best life when it's properly financed. And we talk a lot about this in the episode, but what I really appreciate is she comes from the perspective of you don't have to live in extreme in order to have a better life. And I think a lot of the financial information education, a lot of the books and all of the different kind of niches in personal finance specifically, very focused on extremes or giving up things instead of balance. How about having a decent life, enjoying your life and also saving money or paying down debt

and building wealth and all that kind of stuff. Is it possible? I personally believe so because I'm not a big fan of extremes because they don't work long term. They can short term, but not super long term. So that is what we're going to be talking about more in this episode. Before I get to that interview with Mike Hill, here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is sponsored by PC Financial. There's something very exciting happening. If you're a big fan of no monthly bank fees like I am, PC Financial recently launched their PC Money account. That's right. They are back. Their PC Money account has some major benefits that I think you're going to be very interested to know about. The big draw for me, of course, is that it charges no monthly fees, but on top of that, you can also earn 10 PC Optimum points for every dollar you spend,

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Welcome to the Mo Money Podcast, Mykale. I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you, Jessica. I am super excited to be here and to chat with you. Yes, I know. I've been following you on, I think, Instagram probably, well, I don't know how long, but it seems like a while. I really enjoy your posts. And I'm like, oh, she'd be very interesting to have on the show. And so excited to have you here. So you are a certified financial literacy instructor, but you also have an MBA that was focused on accounting. So it sounds like you were kind of naturally inclined to the personal finance world. Do you want to kind of share a little bit about your background? Did you always kind of, well, it sounds like maybe you wanted to work

in accounting first and then maybe pivoted to more personal finance. You want to kind of share how did this all start for you? Yeah. So I am I like to say that I'm like the product of what happens when you actually teach your children about finance and personal finance. So my mother was actually she she started school. She didn't finish, but she started school and she was an accounting major. And I actually took my first accounting class in 10th grade. So I was like, I ended up getting put into the accounting class because, you know, that's like one of those like random electives that nobody wants to take. And it just ends up on your schedule. And I like, I look at my teacher, shout out to Mr. Anderson. And I say, you know, I'm only going to be in here for a week. So until I get my schedule

changed and literally it took one week for me to fall in love with accounting, just the system of money was always super interesting to me since, like I said, since 10th grade. So by the time I went to college, I was doing the full accounting cycle in college accounting as a freshman, actually as the senior in high school. So I've honestly been in the accounting world, in the finance world for the past 10 years. And people get so surprised when I say that, but because I'm 24, but it's really been something that's always been a part of me. Like I said, my mom is, she's the purse holder. So I'm used to seeing women in charge of money and making money decisions. So it just was a natural gravitation for me.

And then I went to school and I got my MBA. I got focused in accounting, did everything, you know, by the book. And graduated, went into finance for an engineering company and realized that I knew nothing about personal finance other than the things that my mom taught me. But money is a little different from how she used to teach me. And now we have kind of our different methods and we talk about it, but I was 22 when I first started in corporate America, making over $60,000 a year. And, you know, what do you do when you're 22 making, bringing in almost like $3,000 a month? Spend it all because that is all you can do. And then I decided, you know, I wanted to find someone or some type of like help for my personal finance to make sure, you know, I was going on the right track and I was hitting some goals and milestones. And when I started looking through Looking through the personal finance community, I just got a lot of this weird budgeting and a lot of this shameful talk of like, why are you buying stuff when you have debt? And it's like, okay, like, what am I supposed to do?

Like, the debt is not going to be gone overnight. And I still need things. And I still want to live a nice life. I like to travel. I like to do things. I think one of the first few posts I saw was like, if you don't have $10,000 in your bank account, then you shouldn't be traveling. What?

That is crazy. It's just, I realized that there was so much shame around that type of just the money help. And I wanted to create a platform where people like me who didn't want to wait until they paid off every penny of debt and had $10,000 in savings to actually start enjoying life. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's interesting that you say that because I definitely have similar experiences. I mean, now we are maybe 10 years difference in age, but when I first started self-educating and reading blogs and stuff, there was definitely a lot less in terms of voices. And so there was just a certain. I mean, there was a lot less in terms of like voices. And so there was just a

certain kind of voice, but there was definitely a lot of shame. And I think part of that was, I guess, maybe a strategy in order to motivate people. Instead of a reward system, a system to make you think twice about what you're... And I guess that can be effective. It was effective for me for a while because I'm like, oh, I shouldn't do're... And I guess that can be effective. It was effective for me for a while because I'm like, oh, I shouldn't do this. Because I guess the thought process is like, we're saying yes too much. We need to say no or something. Who knows? But what I realized is it's effective to a certain point. But as humans, we need positive reinforcement, not just negative reinforcement. And so it's not going to

work for a lot of people. And like yourself, it didn't work at all. You're just like, this is not for me. Why does it have to be an extreme? And I think that's the other issue too. There's a lot of extremes going on in the personal finance community, which is an interesting story, interesting headline, not effective for a real life person who just wants to live their life, but manage their money. So what was something when wants to live their life, but, you know, manage their money. So what was something when you're like, okay, well, I want to become, you know, a financial literacy instructor and also start creating my own content with this kind of new mindset. What was something that you're like, this is how I want to present this

information? Well, originally, I just wanted to like, maybe help someone else or like, you know, just I just wanted to to really figure things out for myself. I really didn't set out to make an entire platform, but it really stemmed from I my marital status, that were giving financial education. and you're married, your budgeting is going to look a lot differently from a 22-year-old that just started working, that is just starting to build. And I did not like it. And I wanted to make sure I created something where people could see themselves reflected and they didn't feel shamed for wanting to take a vacation or buy a luxury item. Because again, a lot of times when we're talking about budgeting, the first thing people tell you to do is like, oh, well, look for things that you can cut out. No one is telling you, look at your life and think about the things that make you happy. Because there's this thing that there's no emotion in money and that I'm calling BS because it's

absolutely false. Every decision that we make is a money decision, but even further, it stems from some type of emotion, whether it's a money trauma, whether it's a positive emotion. If you were a child and ice cream made you happy, so you buy ice cream. So are you just going to stop buying ice cream in the name of saving $5 so you can take two years to become debt-free? your ice cream. Like, it's okay. It's okay. Like, it's not going to kill you to do things that still preserve your quality of life. I've read stories of people who like only ate pasta for their entire life, like for two years and biked 20 miles to work. I'm I'm like first of all I'm not doing that

this is not happening I'm not I don't I don't even know how to ride a bike I'm not doing that I am not going to sacrifice my health either so you know there's there's definitely have to be a give and take and I was also just tired of looking at that bad report card because I did it. I did that traditional budgeting where you have every line item and you're trying to like guess to see how much money you're going to spend. And then when you spend $5 over that, you have these big red numbers to say, hey girl, you suck because you can't spend within your means. And you just feel terrible.

And I was like, my money is, I work hard for my money. I work 40 hours, yeah, 40 hours a week. And I work hard. Why should I not enjoy how I'm spending money and reframe that? So even if your goal is to get debt-free, you should be enjoying your debt-free journey. You should not feel like you are just slowly killing yourself in the name of debt freedom. That's not a way to live. Like you said, it's not sustainable. It's not feasible. And after a certain time, it's just going to be like, all right, I am sick of this and I need to do something different. Yeah. Well, I've seen that with a lot of people I've known over the years who were on debt-free

journeys. And lots of people have done different strategies. But the people that did the extremes, which we all see those headlines, I was able to pay off this amount of crazy debt in a short amount of time. Very cool to see. Whoa, that's crazy that that's possible. But I feel like when it comes to extremes, when I talk to people, they just, they aren't sustainable. And like you said, it's, it's, I feel like it's, it's good for you to achieve that one goal, but what happens after that goal? All you've learned is how to live in extremes. And that's not something that you're

going to continue once you're debt free, you know, you, we want to create some sort of balance. And I think a lot of the information that we get from the media and just other people out there, other money experts, they tend to talk about extremes because it's more exciting for the publication or whatever the case. But for real people like you and me who've gone through our different journeys, yeah, extremes only work for a certain amount of time. And then you're like, I am so unhappy. And like you said, I think that's so beautiful that if you're on a debt-free journey, you shouldn't be ashamed. It shouldn't make you feel bad and you should enjoy it. I love that

idea. What do you mean by enjoying it? How were you able to figure out a way that people can start paying off debt, have more organization with their finances, but also feel good about it and also enjoy the process? What does that kind of look like? Celebrating each win, number one say it all the time. I'm grateful for the money in my bank account, whether it's $5 or it's $5,000. That's still money that I'm grateful for. It's not money that I'm grateful for because maybe some people don't have money or I'm grateful for this money because it could be worse. No, I'm just grateful. I'm just genuinely grateful. And that's where I think some people also fail that they have to feel grateful based on stipulations. Feeling grateful because I have money and somebody else doesn't, does that not sound like the craziest thing to you? Yeah. Like when someone's like, wow, like you need to be grateful because other people don't have these opportunities.

What does that have to do with me? Like, you know, and why should I be grateful because other people don't have that, this luxury? No, I'm grateful for the money in my bank account because I'm grateful for the money in my bank account and that's it. And then yeah, celebrating the wins and just hyping yourself up. You got to get excited. So if you are on that debt-free journey, every dollar that you put towards that, say your gratitude and get excited, reward yourself. Like again, like we said, positive reinforcement. So if every time you pay a snowflake payment or, you know, make a payment towards your debt, watch a movie, you know, do something fun, do something that

makes you feel good. And it doesn't have to cost anything. It can be free. Watching movies are free. I mean, if you using somebody else's Netflix, I don't know, but watching a movie can be free. Like, you know, doing something to make yourself feel good or to reward yourself for the great work that you are doing. We forget to compliment ourselves. We forget to tell ourselves, you did a great job, Jessica. You did a great job for paying off debt, or you did an amazing job for saving $500 this month. And you need to reward yourself. Reward yourself by whatever you feel like is a reward and create that system for yourself. Create a reward system. Make yourself feel great about the money decisions that you are making because no one can tell you what your correct money path is.

I can give you what I did. Jessica, you can tell everyone what you did, but at the end of the day, we can't hype you up or the listener up. You have to hype your own self up and you have to be confident in whatever money decision that you make. And that's one thing that I want to make sure that my audience always takes away is like, I don't care what you spend your money on, as long as that you feel comfortable and confident in every money decision that you make. Because you could say, oh, I paid off $500 worth of debt and there will be 10 financial people lined up at your door telling you how your decision was wrong. Oh, I know. It's wild when I talk to financial counseling clients to hear the advice they've

gotten from other people or other authors or experts. And part of my role is to not be judgmental, which is fine. I'm happy to do that. But so I have to kind of check myself and be like, okay, okay. Try to be unbiased and just really look at kind of the facts. But it's interesting. Sometimes they have to unlearn some bad advice, which is really tricky. I've been seeing a lot more things on social media about... And I think this kind of goes into the whole idea of debt is bad. You should feel bad that you have debt. You should only feel good once you're debt-free. You should aggressively paying it down and that should be your only goal, blah, blah, blah, which ignores so many other factors like you mentioned. Well, it shouldn't just be about cutting expenses. It should be cutting expenses that don't provide joy or add value to your life.

That's how we should look at spending, which I think is becoming more... I've been hearing a lot more people talk about that. And man, if I knew that in my 20s, I think I'd probably have an easier time on my own personal finance journey and also feel less bad about that because we shouldn't feel ashamed of it. But just the idea is like I had this one client who asked about the kind of program I created, which was you're building up your emergency fund while paying off debt. Because the only way to stay out of debt is if you have cash, if there's an emergency. We've all seen people that have gotten into more debt because they didn't have cash on hand to pay for the emergency. And she read from some other well-known money expert, oh, well, I think I should just pay off my debt aggressively.

That's what they say. And I'm like, you know, again, it's up to you to do what you want. But I feel like that is kind of bad advice because I've seen this time and time again. People just aggressively put all their money on debt. Guess what happens? An emergency and they have no cash. What do they do? They use their credit card. So it's like you said, people need to realize they're accountable to themselves. People can give you advice all day long, but some of it may be good, some of it may be bad, but you are the one that has to live that life and it's your money. And so it's that, I think that other element is like, we need to, and I really like how you said that, do the gratitude with ourselves and hype ourselves up. Because if you're always looking

for external validation, you're probably not going to get it. Or you're going to get a bunch of people saying you did it wrong when you're actually doing it right. Yeah. There's no right or wrong way to do money, honestly. There is a million ways to make a million. There is a million ways to pay off debt. There are so many different strategies. I just want you at the end of the day to feel like I did it the way that works for me and I feel great. That's all we need at the end of the day. At the end of the day, it's about us setting whatever goals make us feel good. Like what do we want in life and then achieving them? And I think for me, when I was at the beginning of my journey and learning this stuff, I didn't, I couldn't grasp that concept because it did seem, because there's so many opinions, it

did seem like there was a right and wrong way. And I was always unsure if I was doing it right. And then as I, you know, educated myself more, I realized actually, yeah, like you said, there's a million ways to make a million dollars. There's a million ways to pay off a million dollars. And we need to realize that. And part of that is just like getting confident with yourself and being able to tell people, thanks for your advice.

I'm not going to take it. I'm moving on. I'm doing my own thing. It really is. Like for me, I am not someone that's super into the stock market. I'm not really into real estate. Those aren't things that like when people are like, oh, yeah, I want to own a bunch of houses or, you know, I'm checking the markets. I'm like, I don't care.

I don't I don't care. And am I wrong for not caring about it? No. There are so many other ways to grow your wealth and grow your net worth that why am I hung up on the fact that I don't want to be the wolf on Wall Street or Mr. Monopoly collecting all these properties? I don't want to do it. And it's fine. I'll leave it to someone who actually does. But there's even ways that I could get into real estate and not own one property. And we're so conditioned to want to actually be out there doing the work and stuff like that. I'm going to be honest with you, that flipping houses stuff, someone else can have it. Yeah. Like watching the TV shows about it, but I don't

want to flip a house. I do not. I don't want to lift a hammer. I don't want to go house hunting. I don't want to do any of it. It's just, it's not appealing to me. I don't want to be someone's landlord for real. Like, and it's like, I don't have to. Just because someone else is making money that way does not mean that that's the way that I need to make money. Exactly. Exactly. I want to kind of talk a little bit about the mindset of Gen Z. So you're a Gen Z. I'm a millennial. I feel like there's a lot of similarities, especially what we're going through right now. It's sort of reminiscent of when I graduated university during the recession. Now we're entering this other weird world that is hard to kind of... I've had lots of people ask me like, what's it like as a millennial going through this again?

I'm like, I don't know if I can compare. And I don't know if that's fair. Because it's like, I can't... Back in my... When I was going through this, the advice was get a side hustle. I don't know if that's fair because it's like, I can't, you know, back in my, when I was going through this, the advice was get a side hustle. I can't, I feel so weird telling people to get a side hustle when there's like a health crisis and it's still like going on. But I mean, what I have seen, at least from the Gen Z, Generation Z, which I think is honestly great, is I feel like there's so much energy and hope, and I'm just really excited. I mean, you guys are going to probably save the planet, so I'm all on board for that. But I'm curious, what's the kind of money mindset from your generation? I feel like the millennials were... I don't know what the people think anymore, but people would think that it was the me, me, me generation. We were lazy

and entitled, yada, yada, but really we were just trying to make it work and hustle because we were broke and there was no jobs and all that stuff. It seems like Gen Z is a little bit more positive or optimistic. I don't know. That's my perspective. What do you think? Well, I think when I'm still technically a millennial, I'm like, I'm like one of those cusp leg is like, you know, either way. So I was born in like, I was born in 95. So very, very much on like the cusp, like depending on what article you read, I follow either one, whatever.

I like to think of it as in the relation to technology. So let's think about the last time there was a recession, 2008, 2009, what just happened? The first iPhone comes out. The first iPhone came out in 2007, right before the recession, right? And that is when we started to shift the way we receive information. That's when YouTube is huge. And well, YouTube was just growing. And it's just a thing where people are like, well, what is this? Like, we don't really know. Oh, yeah. I remember it being like, this is a fad.

It's going to go away in a few years. And now, fast forward, it's not even 20 years later. YouTube is an epicenter of education. How we receive information is so different than it was even 20 years ago because of the development of technology and how we are grown up on it. Like, you know, a lot of the especially the older millennials, they didn't grow up on technology the same way as a person like me. You know, we were on computers and learning how to use Macs and stuff when I was in like first grade. And that wasn't a thing, right? is where the breakdown becomes because there's this idea that, you know, Gen Z doesn't want to listen or things like that. And, you know, reckless, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, when you're looking at the statistics, because we have more access to education, younger people are starting to build 401ks and retirements

now faster. I did a talk at Columbia University and they're asking about retirement as freshmen in college. So because now we're starting to hear more about it. It's not a secret. And then the other thing is that we are in the land of influencers. We have the Instagram influencers, Twitter, whatever, these social media influencers that are shedding light on some things, even when we're thinking about how the music industry changed and how people are deciding to be more independent and then exposing how contracts are written and things like that. Like the information is out there. So people are taking more advantage of it and trying to figure out and it's, you know, using the technology to become more accessible. So that's how I think of it. Like,

because social media really is a 24-7 news cycle, you always have access to this information. There are 15-year-olds that are researching how to learn how to trade on Robinhood. Free account. I mean, they have to be 18. So they just got to get parent approval or something like that. But how to learn the strategy, they can do that themselves. Yeah. I guess it's beyond... When I was growing up, it was like the lemonade stand was basically the most I'd learned about money. It's like, if you set up a business, you can make some money. And that was it. And then it's basically we just spend the money. But now those kids can learn how to trade, which is wild. But for me, I think this is, I think there's a couple, there's a couple issues.

But I think in general, it's so great that the information is more accessible, because I think that was the problem. It wasn't like you said, it was kind of like a secret or private, it's so great that the information is more accessible because I think that was the problem. It wasn't, like you said, it was kind of like a secret or private. It was hard to find information about how to invest or how to manage your money. And now it's more out in the open. But I think also the problem is so much information and so much, you know, is this good information? Is this biased information? So it's also like the kind of job of, you know, everybody basically is deciphering what is good and what's bad or what works and what doesn't work for me or what should I listen to? What should I just, you know, not listen to? It can be a lot. Yeah. And I think that, well, first there definitely is such thing as bad financial information there's some bad advice but when it comes to like just figuring it out and i think that we also are in this like side

hustle because you mentioned like you know everyone's like just oh just go get a side hustle like we're in this weird side hustle everything is a side hustle and nobody wants a hobby. Oh my gosh, get a hobby. Like everything does not need to be a side hustle because like I was talking to one of my friends and I was saying, I like to sew. So very random. I taught myself how to sew in college

and I've made a couple of things. I've made some really nice pieces that I still wear to this day. And she's made a couple of things. I've made some really nice pieces that I still wear to this day. And she's like, oh my gosh, like you need to be selling these pieces, get some money in. And I was like, no, cause it's, it's not going to be fun anymore. As soon as somebody starts to like, as soon as I have to run it like a business and, you know, be professional and no, I don't like it. It doesn't seem, it's not fun anymore. I don't, I'm not going to enjoy it. So we're in

this side hustle, like bubble because number one, the gig economy is crazy. That's another thing that did not exist. Even 10 years ago. The gig economy did not exist. And you can tell that because of how these laws are changing, how they're creating laws to support the gig economy workers, the Uber drivers, Instacart delivery services, all of those things, like the people who are independent contractors, technically, but they do it full time because you can be a full time gig economist, to be honest. The way we can make money is so different from how it was 10 years ago. Yeah. And I find find there is some positive things

because I remember when I did graduate university and was broke making hardly any money at the full-time job I got and living in an expensive city, I needed a second job. I needed a side hustle. And so I did have a second job. It wasn't quite a side hustle because it wasn't a business I ran. It was me working at another company at night and weekends. But it's like I literally needed that to survive and pay my bills. And from that, I found a lot of empowerment because I'm like, oh my gosh. So there was an opportunity out there so I don't have to live paycheck to paycheck. I can have a second job.

So I found lots of positive things. But like you said, it seems like everyone's all about just life optimization. Like how could we profit off this? And I think we've lost a little bit about what is life? Isn't life worth living? It's not just about working and earning and saving and spending. It's also about like having a hobby. And like when you're talking about that, I'm like, I honestly don't even know if I have a hobby. I'm like, I think everything's sort of related to my business, which is fine. But also I'm like, damn, I don't know if I could tell you a hobby reading. I don't know if that's really a hobby. That's just reading. I mean, reading is a hobby. As long as it's like, you know, a fun book, you know? Yeah, I've read like fun books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think,

yeah, definitely, we'll see the evolution of all of this. And I feel like there may be like a rebellion of, you know, everything. And I've been seeing a lot of people, maybe it's also like the bubble I'm on, you know, Instagram or social media, there's a lot of young people I now follow. And they're very much of the, you know, following Gary Vee. And it's all about hustle, hustle, hustle, which I'm like, I get that's great motivation to get off the couch and do something. But also there's the dark side of it where it's like, you're just working and hustling and spending all your hours working instead of actually living. And I feel like that we're going to see a shift. Yeah. Burnout. Burnout wasn't, that wasn't a concept when I was younger, but now my gosh, everyone's talking about burnout, this burnout, that I'm like, that's a problem. That shouldn't be normal. Like we should be taking weekends off, you know?

And honestly, because like, that is kind of how we're taught. And I know, you know, we all have our biases. And that was the other thing, like every financial influencer is going to have their own bias because we're all different people, right? I speak from a perspective of a Black woman because that is the only perspective I can give you. I cannot give you anything different. And I remember talking to one of my friends and I was like, my grandma, she was like one of my favorite people in the world. She's literally my best friend. And she was a worker. That's because that's what she had to do. She had five kids. She was a single mom. She had to work. Working is what she had to do. And when she retired, she lived for five years

and died. And I was like, that is not the life I want to live. And I don't want that to, of course, that's not her legacy. You know, she's, like I said, my best friend, but I don't want to live this life where I am constantly in hustle mode. I'm constantly working and I can't even look up to hang out with my friends. I can't even look up to enjoy a good movie. Like these pages that are like, if you don't, if you're not a millionaire, why are you watching TV? Because I want to, like I'm bored. I want to take a break. Yeah, I need a break. I want to take a break. I need to do something fun. I need to

unplug. And that is where I want people to really understand, like, again, have a hobby, have something that you look forward to, back to the positive reinforcement, I ask every month at the beginning of the month, what was your favorite thing you spent your money on? Which is something that no one else in the personal finance is going to really ask because everyone else is talking about never spend your money and keep it locked away in the freezer so that it never thaws out. And I'm like, well, what did you spend your money on that made you happy? What was your favorite purchase? And some people will write to me and say, you know what? I've never thought of a purchase that was my favorite purchase before. And that's because we unconsciously spend. We unconsciously and

we stop being intentional and celebrating ourselves, celebrating our money because we're in this hustle. We're always in this, I got to get this. I got to get that. I got to get this. And it's just like, take a break, you know, be happy with what you have. Yeah. Yeah. Which is again, such a great message. And that's something that I've been like, as I've been getting older too, and have reached some of my financial goals. It's, I realized, you know what, the goal shouldn't be to like make a million dollars or have a crazy high net worth by a certain age. Cause I guarantee you, cause I've talked to these people, you'll reach that goal and then you'll be like, now what? And then it's just like, it doesn't actually make you that much happier. What makes

you happier, I think, is being present in the moment, actually enjoying your life now and realizing it's a balancing act. Extremes don't really work. And you can enjoy your life and have a good time while you're on your debt-free journey or while you're starting to save and invest for the first time. It's okay. But like what you've been kind of talking about this whole episode that hopefully people will take away is it's really about,

and I love how you mentioned the being more of a conscious spender because I totally agree. We need to be more conscious and present and mindful. And also don't feel bad about spending because at the end of the day, the only reason you have money is for you to spend it. It may not be now, but it could be in the future. When people think about saving for retirement, you know you're going to spend that money in retirement. That's what it's for. You're going to spend the money

at some point. When you have an emergency account, you have to spend that money. You have to. Yeah. So many people I know I've talked to, they're like, oh, I have this emergency, but I really don't want to dip into my emergency fund. I'm like, but, don't touch until you need to. So it's like, we need to make this shift in our minds to feel good about our money, basically. And doing some of the things that I think you share on your blog and your Instagram. So I appreciate you kind of sharing that message. We need to hear these messages, I think, a lot more so we could feel better about what we're doing. I think we shouldn't feel bad about our money. We need to let go of that concept. It's not working for anybody. Absolutely. It's a drag. And I like to live my life of abundance and positivity. And that's something that I've adopted and it's made my money journey that much more enjoyable because

maybe I don't have a million dollars in the bank account and maybe I do have $75,000 worth of student loans, but I am also 24 and I have an MBA and my parents had six children, you know, it's like when you start looking at your, your situation from a full picture, how else were we going to be able to afford education? How else? Like, you know, and instead of being one, being someone that's like, oh, I'm boggled under student loan debt, I celebrate, okay, great, I got this education. Now that I have this, let's figure out how I can make $75,000 so I can pay it off. Instead of, you know, being feel like I'm like being dragged down. This is making my creativity like run faster. Like, you know, let's get creative. Let's create something that is going to generate more money instead of thinking about life as less.

Think about it as abundant. Yeah, 100%. I know you have this financially innovative workbook on your website that people can check out. Do you want to kind of share a bit about that? I like the concept of it. Yes. So financially innovative is the guide to avoiding financial rock bottom while still living your best life because that is important. So it takes you through the four steps, my four main steps and my financial flow, which is you're looking at your income, going to your expenses, your savings, and then your spending. Those are literally the only four

steps I do. I don't do all these extra line items and figure out, you know, every $6 I'm going to spend, I don't care. I'm very free spirited on that note, because like I said, I was tired of looking at a bad report card, but it is a super interactive workbook that takes you through every step, breaks it down. We talk about what bank accounts you need. We also talk about the new zero, which is something that I live by when it comes to how I look at the money that is actually in my account. So all of those things wrapped up into one workbook that is interactive and again, takes you through your steps. We talk about habit building and how you can make these commitments to yourself because your money journey is a commitment to

yourself, whether you have realized it or not. Amazing. And since I've mentioned your Instagram a lot, but I'm sure you're on other platforms. Where can people check you out, learn more about you and follow you? Right, so you can follow me at The Bougie Budgeter. So T-H-E-B-O-U-J-I-E, because bougie with a G looks like boogie to me. Budgeter is B-U-D-G-E-T-E-R. So The Bougie Budgeter, I'm mostly on Instagram, but on the other interwebs,

you can find me at Bougie Budgeter. No, the Instagram is the only place where it's the, but I create content because I love to and it's fun. And I bring the creativity back to money and finance. And if you want to jump into it, I have a platform called Young, Rich, and Responsible that is all about how to be young, rich, and responsible. That makes sense. And it's just a place where we are not shamed for money and we are just having a great time. We also have a virtual summit coming up soon by that same name.

So look out for more details about that. I'm super excited to be sharing it with everyone. And, yeah, that's where you can find me and that's where you can connect with me. I definitely do respond to DMs and messages and all of that if they're not crazy. If they're crazy, then I'll just block you. Yeah, I mean, that's fair. We never have boundaries. Well, thank you so much, Michael, for being on the show, sharing your perspective.

I love it. It's very positive and I'm all for it. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for inviting me, Jessica. This has been so great. And that was episode 250 of the Mo Money Podcast with Mike Hale. James, make sure to check her out at bougiebudgets.com. That is spelled B-O-U-J-I-E, budgets.com. You can find her also on Twitter at bougiebudgeter and on Instagram at the bougiebudgeter. I love saying bougie. That's a fun word to say, bougie. Bougie. Okay, enough, Jessica. Get a grip. Anyways, you can find her, like I said,

on her website. You can also find out more about her financially innovative workbook at bougiebudgets.com slash shop slash financially innovative or just go to the show notes for this episode at jessicamorehouse.com slash 250. I will include a link there and more info about her and all the links that you could possibly want in order to learn more about my kale. So I have some, I've got some things to share, some actually really crazy, exciting things that I haven't shared with anyone. But before I get to that, I just have a few words to share about this episode's sponsor. So sit tight. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is sponsored by PC Financial. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, then you already know that one of my biggest pet peeves in the banking industry is monthly bank fees. I can't stand them, especially when there are so many great alternatives to choose from nowadays, like the new PC Money account from PC Financial that launched this September. Yes, that's right. PC Financial is back and it's going to give its competitors a run for their money.

You see, not only are there no monthly bank fees, but you earn PC optimum points on every dollar you spend anywhere you shop. That's right. No matter if you're buying groceries, paying bills, or buying one of the many personal finance books I talk about on this show, you earn points. 10 points per dollar to be exact. Not only that, you can earn additional points for paying bills online, linking an external bank account, and setting up and using direct deposit with your PC money account too. You can also earn 25 points for each dollar you spend when shopping at Shoppers Drug Mart. So my question for you is this, what kind of perks are you getting with your bank account? And is it time to make a change? To learn more and to stop paying monthly bank fees but start earning points, visit pcfinancial.ca. Once again, that's pcfinancial.ca.

Okay, so, so, so. So first and foremost, if you're new to the show, let me share something very exciting with you. I'm giving away a ton of books this season of the podcast. Basically, if someone has been on the show that has a book, I'm giving it away. If you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest or just again, go to the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 250, you'll be able to find a link to the contest page and enter to win a book that has been featured on the show. Another way you can find out when I'm doing all these giveaways or anything exciting, because sometimes I don't put them in the podcast because sometimes I'll do these recordings in advance and not like the week of. Today is special.

I'm doing it like the day before, which never happens. My husband is not happy because he is the one who has to mix my episodes. And I'm sending this at 10 p.m. on Tuesday. He is not pleased. I'm usually much better. I'm usually not a last minute gal like this, but whatever. Anyways, what was I talking about? Definitely contests. Oh, no. I was telling you about my email list. So if you go to

jessicamorehouse.com slash subscribe, then you'll be in the loop. I only send it out pretty much every second week. Also, if you do that, you can also get access to my resource library. I have a ton of fun, free downloads, some past webinars that you can watch. If you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash resources, you get access to my free resource library. A couple other things you may want to know. I have a new shop page on my website just launched in this summer. I have a bunch of amazing budget spreadsheets. So if you have been listening to this show and you're like, I need to get my stuff together and you need some sense of direction on how to actually do that. Well, the first step is it's a budget because a budget is just a plan for your money. It's a

spending plan. That's all it is. And I have a bunch of spending spreadsheets for so many different scenarios. If you're an individual employee, if you're a couple and you're both self-employed, there's so many different ones. If you go to jessicamaras.com slash shop, you'll find them. Also, when you download the spreadsheet, if you get it, you also get access to a whole library of different video tutorials that show you specifically how they work. On top of that, you'll find on the shop page, well, also I include a bunch of other cool downloads and worksheets from other content creators that have actually been on the show. They've all been on the show, so make sure to check those out. So I have two courses right now. I've got my Fix Your Finances Masterclass. I've got my Investing Foundations for Canadians course. And this is the exciting

thing that I haven't told anyone. So you can still buy them. You can still register. I'd almost encourage you to do it now because I'm reworking both of those courses to become super crazy, amazing, awesome courses that will basically be relaunched in the new year. So first with the fixture finances course, this is something that I created last winter as a way to basically be that kind of first component because I had my investing course first, but a lot of people, they're like, I want to start investing, but they were not ready because you really need to have a full financial plan. Your financial has an order before you start investing. And so that is what that kind of answer to is like, here's your basically financial planning

course. This is kind of what it is. We go through everything that you need to get together with your money in this course. And then, of course, I have my Investing Foundations for Canadians course, which is really just a course I developed to educate people about investing. And then I was going to be making a third course called DIY Passive Investing for Canadians, which showed you the different ways that you can invest if you want to be a passive investor. Well, I actually went away this weekend. I don't think I even shared it on social media. So I was trying to be present in the moment. Went to the cottage, went to the cottage. Love to say that. I don't own a cottage. It was definitely an Airbnb. Okay. But went to a cottage with my

husband just to refresh a little bit and had some time to think. And yeah, I'm going to be making some big changes to both of the courses. I'm going to combine that DIY course into my investing course. So it's going to be a fully transformative course. So basically you can go from zero knowledge of investing to you're going to be investing by the end of it. You're going to know what steps to take. I'm going to show you specifically. And then also making some huge, big updates to my Fix Your Finances class. So I can't really share too much more about it because I'm in the process of doing it now. I'm going to be spending basically the next two months,

November, December, to do all of this and then launch hopefully in, knock on wood, or glass, which is what's on top of my desk, in January. Not going to put too much pressure on myself, but I also don't want to get done before the new year because I love starting the new year being like new you, new year, new life. Let's get rid of 2020 and get some stuff together. So just wanted to share that.

Oh yeah, the important part, the reason why I'm sharing this with you now because you're like, why do I care? I'll just wait until you tell me it's done in the end of the new year is for anyone who signs up to either of my courses, my investing course, or my fixture finances course, you will be grandfathered in to the new courses. Okay. And why that's important is I'm definitely going to be raising my prices of my courses because as I've been told recently, I am not charging near enough money. So if you want to basically get a good deal on my new and improved courses that are coming up, I would highly recommend that you sign up for my current courses at their current price points. Because you may not even know this, but I actually lower

the price points on both of those courses in the spring as kind of a answer to the pandemic because a lot of people want to take my courses, but financially needed some help. So I lowered my courses by $100 each. Yeah, I'm going to be raising those prices way up even more to what they used to be in the near. So that's my little tip for you. If you want to save some money, sign up right now. What else do I have for you? I feel like that's kind of what I'm doing. That's kind of where my head's at, really.

So that's kind of all I've got. But yeah, I've got, you know, I think in terms of the podcast, I think I've got another eight weeks of it. So eight more guests definitely coming up. I still have a few more guests to actually book. So let me know specifically if there's a topic or a guest that you want on the show. And I'll do my darndest to get them on the show. But I've got some great guests coming up. So make sure wherever you're listening, subscribe or like or share.

Follow the Instagram account for this show at Mo Money Podcast. Also, there's a Twitter at Mo Money Podcast is where you can find it. But also make sure to follow me, Jessica. I'm only like 100 followers away from getting to 5,000 Instagram followers, which I know depending on who you are, you're like, that's nothing. I have like way more than that. But I'm not like a super good Instagram. I'm not really good at it. I'm getting better. I'm getting better, but I'm not naturally talented at Instagram, but I'm getting better, which is why I'm almost at 5,000. So make sure to hop on to my Instagram at Jessica I. Morehouse to follow me. Do it. Let's do it. Okay. That has taken up way too much of your time. And I know that was a way

more self-promotion than you were expecting because I rarely talk about that kind of stuff. But well, I've got a free contest. Remember that? Remember I'm giving away free books? JessicaMoranhouse.com is the contest. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, that's it. That's it for me. See you back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode. Thank you so much for listening. Have a good rest of your week. this podcast is distributed by the women in media podcast network find out more at women in media.network