Saturn Returns with Caggie - 4.7 Financial Freedom with Erin Lowry aka The Broke Millennial

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Saturn is about rooting things in reality, and in terms of the material world, it doesn't get more real than money. In this episode, Caggie is joined by Erin Lowry, aka The Broke Millennial. Erin started the Broke Millennial brand as a blog, and today has published three books aimed at helping people to find financial freedom. Caggie and Erin talk about her own upbringing around money, break down some of the taboos around it, and discuss why we find money conversations so difficult. Plus they talk about the necessary and very Saturnian steps we need to take to create more financial freedom. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. My big feeling is that you really have two choices in life. Either you control money or money controls you. And you don't have to have a lot of money to be in control. My guest today is Erin Lowry, aka The Broke Millennial. Erin is a blogger and author of three books on money, which help people understand and improve their relationship with their finances. I came across Erin on social media, and I knew that she was exactly the right person for me to speak to on Saturn Returns. In this episode, we have a really in-depth chat about her own upbringing around money,

how our childhood impressions of finances really shape our adult life, which is obviously a theme we explore in many different facets across this podcast. We also discuss how gender plays a part in our finances and why we all need to sit down and face the nitty gritty details however hard it seems. Now a lot of this conversation I found difficult because I am someone that likes to put my head in the sand when it comes to finances but it's an incredibly Saturnian principle and so it was important for me that we had this conversation. And I think you will learn a lot from it. But before we get into this episode, let's hear from our astrological guide, Nora.

Astrologically, we relate self-esteem and our relationship with money very closely together. self-esteem and our relationship with money vary closely together. This is because money, values, love, self-love, to name a few, all fall under the realm of Venus. And so Venus in a chart winning great dignity will indicate that we grew up hearing positive messaging regarding our self-worth, our voice and opinions, and in turn also our relationship with money. However, when Venus or the second house is under the influence of a more restrictive force, such as Saturn, this often translates into having a scarcity mentality. We subconsciously picked up that we are not worthy, that we are not enough when aligned with our authentic voice. And so we turn into people pleasers.

So conversely, we shut everyone out. Either expression, though, remains rooted in low self-esteem and later on expresses itself in our relationships, both professional and personal, and also our relationship with money. So when Saturn comes back, during Saturn return, and we have a signature of low self-esteem or scarcity mentality in our charts, it helps us break free from it by reminding us of our own authority and agency in writing out a life that suits our true will.

Saturn return can help us become aware of the root of any scarcity mentality through tough lessons that emancipate us from the grip of the initial negative subconscious messaging we grew up on. As we grow on value for self, remain rooted in our authentic values, the grip of the subconscious devaluing messaging releases and our relationship with money, interestingly enough, becomes healthier as a consequence. interestingly enough, becomes healthier as a consequence. My parents were very progressive and very strict in a lot of ways about how money was discussed and handled. So it was never a taboo topic. My parents talked about money openly. It was clearly not a tension between the two of them. So I never

got the negative messaging around. It's inappropriate to talk about it. It's painful to talk about it. We fight when we talk about it, which is the message that so many people get from their family or from whomever is taking care of them growing up. And my parents also really taught me and my sister a lot about things like impulse control and delayed gratification, some of which is nature nurture questions, but also things such as when I was a kid, if I wanted to buy something, I was in the store and I was a sucker for stuffed animals and saw a stuffed animal I wanted to get. I was in the store and I was a sucker for stuffed animals and saw a stuffed animal I wanted to get. It was never a, oh, can I have this?

They were like, sure. It was either a, okay, we'll pay 50% and you have to pay for the other 50% or no, you just have to buy it yourself. Interesting. And that really started to teach me in an incredible, we're talking like seven, eight years old, this is happening, and started to teach me at a very young age about like, okay, well, I had to sell lemonade on the corner to earn $10 this week. So is this stuffed animal worth seven of those $10? Like I was starting to be taught how to do that kind of thought process very early on. So for those not familiar with the concept of delayed gratification or impulse control, can you explain how that applies in a financial sense? Yes, because first delayed

gratification is the idea of waiting for something and getting the gratification later. Like it's exactly as it sounds, you delay the gratification. So a classic example of this, I am the kind of person that on Christmas morning or on my birthday, if there are presents, I want to wait till the end of the day to open them because I want to savor this experience and the excitement. I like, I relish in the excitement of this forthcoming thing, as opposed to, hey, I just want to rip all the paper off and Christmas morning is done in 15 minutes when everybody just opens all their gifts at the same time. That's my nightmare scenario. difference of my friends are going on a trip in a month and I want to go versus I really want to buy a house and the thousand dollars that I would spend on that trip could go towards the house. Now those are having to balance choices. That's something that we're always going to have to do. But the other thing is like the little indulgences that we think about all the time. Do I want to

give up going to happy hour, getting a latte, all these low hanging fruit scenarios. I believe in balance. You can do both, but also knowing that every financial decision comes with the potential delaying, negatively delaying another goal that you might have. So some of that is delaying the today pleasure for a tomorrow payoff. But on the flip side, that can come with its own negative consequences. Those are the same people who can often suffer from a scarcity mentality. They can hoard. Like frugality is not always a positive because it also can be tied to other negative emotions. Truly, the key here is balance, like trying to find a balance in all of it, which is not easy. And that's why anytime we're approaching money conversations, give yourself so much grace,

know that you are going to screw up on this journey. That doesn't mean that you have to scrap it. It just means we need to pause, reset, analyze what went wrong, figure out how to fix that and keep trucking. because I do think so often people take one shot at getting their financial life together whether that's let's say paying off credit card debt that you might have amassed or trying to save to a goal that you have and you slip up along the way and then think uh whatever I already screwed up I'm just going to keep screwing up so why bother yeah? Yeah, absolutely. There are a couple of things that I want to get into in this. And you touched on one, the scarcity mentality,

because even if you are someone that's, you know, making money and able to save money, if you are living within that framework, like you said, it can be, it can be very limiting and it can have a negative impact emotionally. So what are some of the reasons that that happens, if you know any, and what are some of the ways to combat that kind of mentality? A lot of the reasons it happens have to do with your upbringing and what you were exposed to. Now, again, spoiler, everything about your relationship with money has to do with your childhood yeah i am not trying to blame people's parents but there is something to be said about the messages that you were getting growing up always play a role in how you handle money as

an adult and that that's the script that you were given that you're trying to either push against in some ways or embrace in others. Now, when I think about scarcity mindset, there's a multitude of reasons that you could end up with it. It could be because of something big that happened in your childhood. Maybe you grew up in a socioeconomic situation where there wasn't a lot of money, where it was constantly a source of pain. Perhaps you experienced being unhoused for a period of time, or you didn't always know if there was going to be food in the pantry or in the fridge, anything like that that can create like an understandable, literal scarcity of your basic needs in life, that's also going to tend to

manifest as an adult with wanting to hoard your money when you have access to it, because you want to make sure that that doesn't happen to you again. So it still ties into a scarcity mentality because you're thinking about money as a finite resource that you only get access to a little bit of it. And I better guard the amount that I do get access to. It could be also maybe as an adult, you had money and then lost it. Now that certainly happens to people, particularly thinking about the United States, where it feels like we're all just one medical scare away from bankruptcy. Yeah, absolutely.

So if something really traumatic around money happens to you, And so if something really traumatic around money happens to you, it's going to scar you in a type of way, just like any other emotional relationship that you might have. If you go through a really bad relationship and get mistreated by a partner, you're always going to carry that baggage into future relationships. Yeah. Unless you look at it. And even if you look at it, I think you always have it. You just learn how to handle it, how to discuss it, how to set boundaries for yourself and with your other partners. And I do think that that's something to consider is like, I'm somebody who struggles with a scarcity mentality. And so I know I have it. I'm aware of it. I see where it starts to manifest in certain

ways in my financial planning. And then I have to think, why is this being triggered? Reasonably, what has happened to me over the last year, two years? Is there a logical reason for me to feel this way? Is this actually going to play out the way I'm doomsday prepping for, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of it does have to do with excavating how we feel and looking at the actual tangible evidence. For example, I'm a freelancer, I'm self-employed. And so there's always a boom and bust mentality around that where some months are great and some months aren't so great. And it's still five years into this, hard for me to trust in those months where it's not as great to trust that it will come back around, even though I have five years of evidence that prove that that's the case.

Absolutely. I can, I can totally relate to that. And what's interesting is that I grew up in a very financially comfortable environment, but my parents are, my dad's one of six kids. My mom's one of nine kids. Wow. My dad's one of six kids. My mom's one of nine kids and grew up okay, but not like a ton of extra. And my dad's family did see sort of a boom and bust cycle happen with their finances. So I think his scarcity mentality is inherited from seeing that happen. And then mine is inherited from subconscious things that they did around money. My parents, again, incredibly financially comfortable when I was growing up, but very rarely spent much.

It's really interesting the way you speak about your parents and, you know, they were very conscious about their decisions around finances and how they wanted to inform and educate you. And it sounds like there was a lot of conversation that went into that. And I don't think my framework was not, it was like money was a bit taboo. It was like, don't talk about it. And then in my early sort of financial life, so when I actually started earning money for myself, because of the nature of the industry I was in, it was very volatile. You know, I'd suddenly be getting paid quite a considerable amount for essentially

what I felt like wasn't that much work and then wouldn't have anything for ages. And so it definitely enhanced that scarcity framework of, oh, well, it's unpredictable and I don't know when it's next coming in. So that makes one feel a little bit panicky. And I think for all the freelancers listening, and I think there are so many today more than ever before, that's something that everyone really struggles with because it's hard to be in a position or to remain in a position of trust when things may not feel like they're flowing abundantly it is and I also see how money often works to give us the illusion of control

and in general in life so much of what we do is just trying to give ourselves the illusion of control and I say that as someone who is deeply type a and very much identifies as a control freak um but then also addressing the emotional relationship to money which is an incredibly complex one how do you navigate that now? Well, a big part of it too, is being in a partnership and being married. You have to also then recognize that somebody else's emotional relationship with money is playing a role with how your household handles money. And I see a lot with couples who fight perpetually about finances. A lot of it also is a lack of understanding your partner's situation and why your partner

is triggered in certain ways and by certain behaviors when it comes to money. And it is really important that you both do that excavation of why do I feel this way about money? How do I feel about money? My husband and I grew up in different socioeconomic circumstances. And you see how that plays out in particular ways. And one for us that's very interesting is that our financial situation today exceeds what my husband expected period. Wow. And so he's very content in a lot of ways, where I'm always feeling like, let's go, let's go, let's go. We're not far enough along. I want

to be at XYZ place. And part of that is having access to seeing what it's like to have significant wealth. I grew up around a lot of people who had a very significant amount of wealth. Some of them are trust fund kids. I am not. So to be kind of trying to like work my way back to what I grew up around by myself has been an incredibly frustrating cycle. And part of that is me having to work on contentment and gratitude and doing my own work. Yeah. Do you have open conversations about that? Oh, all the time. And I have even had open conversations with my in-laws about some of this stuff. Like this is something that I think is incredibly important to discuss. You know,

I have a sister, so my parents only had daughters and I joke that they were really feminist without even recognizing that they were being ultra feminist by teaching us a lot about money and really sending the message of like, don't depend on another person. And I have a lot of girlfriends who have brothers who the brothers were taught about money and the girlfriends were not. Yeah. And there's a, there's a massive gap there and that's actually something I want to want to ask you about is the gender norms around money because obviously we've just spoken about how it affects relationships but deeper within that it's like what are the the messages societal messages as well that we experience as we're growing up as a woman and as

a man. And then how do they kind of play into each other? Because obviously society has shifted so much and continues to. And we're living in a time where I think there's a lot more equality, we've made huge progress. But we don't have these conversations at the early stages of relating with another because we don't have the tools to and we just also go into it presuming a lot of the time and I think that's where it causes a lot of issues so I would love to kind of explore some of some of yeah the gender norms around finances oh it is riddled with gender norms, unfortunately. And for me, one of the most frustrating is how often women cede control of the family finances to a male partner. So specifically women in heterosexual relationships and marriages,

where they're not engaged with the investing. They don't necessarily know where all the accounts are. And in some degree, listen, in a lot of couples, one person is just more interested. I tend to be the chief financial officer of my household. I'm more interested in money, but it's very important to me that my husband is engaged with the process that every month when I check on our net worth, where I make certain financial moves, he knows what they are. I explain what they are. I think that should I get hit by a New York City bus tomorrow, he should be able to completely take over seamlessly and pay off all our bills and know

where the investments are. And women tend to outlive men. It's like, please be engaged. And we see a reckoning often happen with that, where when the spouse who handles it dies, it's deeply stressful for the family to try to figure out where everything is, how to handle it, particularly if you die without an estate plan. So here's my plug to please have an estate plan, greatest act of love you can do, make that will even if you're in your 30s. And even if you're not super interested in handling it and you want to let your partner do that because he or she is more interested, you need to at least know the information and know the passwords and how to access the accounts and

what is happening and what the financial plan is and be an active member with making the financial plan. And all I mean by that is goal setting. What do you want? How much do you want for retirement? Well, that entirely depends on what kind of life do you want to have in retirement? And then how much money does it take to achieve that life? Or do you want to buy a house? Or do you want to pay for your child's college education? Or, you know, take that glorious sabbatical with a six month traveling around the world, whatever it is that you want. There's a price tag associated. And then that informs how much you have to save every month to achieve your goal. And this is backwards planning?

Yep, that's all it is. And the more specific you can get with financial goals, the better. So down to, I want this amount for this goal at this time. So, you know, my husband and I want to go to Japan next summer, pandemic allowing. So that gives us, you know, July 2022, we know how many months, we know how much we want, we divide the amount that we want by the months that it takes until we want to achieve the goal. And that's how much you have to save, or the longer the goal invest. God, you are literally like Saturn personified. This is is like this conversation is so saturnian it's making me feel uncomfortable

because um to to go back a little a couple of steps to you know what's going on at home what we're picking up in the media and all these other things i was definitely on some level always thinking for a multitude of reasons, like I will have to rely on a man. And that comes down to the fact that I think as a creative person, that was kind of the subliminal messaging to me that I would never be able to be financially independent or actually have create something that, you know, was really successful. Yeah. I always kind of thought, well, if I wanted these things, you know, these nice things in life, I'd probably have to marry a wealthy man. And it wasn't really until my Saturn maternity coming into my thirties that I was like, I want to be a fucking rich man. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, to co-share. I am the rich man. Yeah, I am the rich man. And that's kind of,

I feel a lot of people are coming into that place. So, but they don't necessarily have the tools or access to wonderful people like you who can show them the ropes a little bit. I also want to make it abundantly clear too. I should have said it earlier. You don't have to be great at math to be good at money. I hated math. Hated it. Oh my God. I have nightmares about doing math class at school again and then I'm studying math and I forgot and I can't do anything. And that has a hundred percent made me feel that therefore I'm not

good at money. Yeah. Those need to be separated. You need to know some real basic calculations that you can Google and you can use Google. Please separate this thought of like, I need to be a master of art or I've studied finance to be any good at money as a journalism and theater major. Are you kidding me? And now I professionally write about money. You're fine. I think also to pick up on something that you were saying that I find very dangerous as someone who is a creative myself is the starving artist narrative. Yes. This is what I'm saying. Yeah. And it's, it's dangerous for two reasons. One, it really undervalues creativity. You know, we get messaging from parents, teachers, professors,

media, that if you want to pursue a creative life, you're going to be a starving artist, which is not true. And on the flip side, I think within the creative community, there is this thought that money corrupts and it's only a pure artistic endeavor if you are struggling and the issue that I take with that it is so time consuming to be broke the amount of mental anguish and anxiety and thought that has to go into not being sure if you can meet your basic needs takes up so much of your mental bandwidth, which then disrupts so much of the creative power that you're able to have. Well, and also to add a third to that is this idea that being a creative is synonymous with being bad with money.

And that's something that I felt about myself. I was like, well, I'm the creative one. Like I can't be good with these things, but actually I never learn. And so I'll just often people just carry on in bad habits doing things that aren't really helping them because they don't want to ask for help and they don't want to say they don't know how to do something because they're an adult and they feel they should just know it's so true that shame piece

around money is really prevalent or the other side of that too can be that you are the one person within your group whether that's friends family what have you who is making the steps to get your financial life on track but then you realize no one around you is doing it so you start to second guess yourself and wonder if you're doing something wrong you know one of the taglines of my second book which is is Broke Millennial Takes On Investing, is that it's time to ditch the misconception that investing is just for the wealthy. Like we really think that in our society, that investing is only for wealthy people. And we have got to get rid of that. Yeah, that's I want to get into that in a second. But before we do, I just want to

step back to what we were discussing about the gender norms because I would love to explore what it means for a man because I know that there are a lot and there's probably a huge amount more pressure in many ways well yeah that's the key thing is that truly I think the amount of pressure that a lot of men feel to provide is huge and most of it's self-inflicted. But I do feel that I have a lot of empathy for men who, I mean, I don't have a lot of empathy if you want to uphold traditional gender norms, like that needs to be another conversation. But I have empathy if they're in a dynamic where traditional gender norms are being upheld and they feel immense pressure and some parts guilt if their career maybe isn't progressing as it should, or they can't provide in the way

that they thought they were going to. And I do think that that also needs to be more conversation around taking the pressure off and that being part of the reason we want more equity when it comes to handling money and also having more conversations about so much of this is seasonal. Like we just think about careers and money as this, it has to be this upward trajectory that just keeps ticking up, up, up every year, as opposed to, yeah, sometimes maybe one person steps out of the workforce for a period of time to care for a child, care for an ailing relative, handle their mental health, handle their own physical health. Like there's so many reasons that there needs to be the ability to kind of understand there will be contractions

in our financial lives and not everything is just going to be you know more and more and more and more every single year that's I love that money is seasonal because I think you know we all are guilty and you spoke about it at the beginning of this we want more and when we achieve that rather than actually being like okay I have I have the things that I want you don't even give yourself a chance to feel that feeling you're already on to something next and it's that hedonic treadmill mentality yes more more more I want the bigger house I want the faster car it is and I think a big part of it too is what are you surrounded by yeah think about that a lot lately with comparison yeah the comparison trap that you fall into and

social media obviously just makes like digitally you can be surrounded by a lot of stuff too but in your day-to-day life I see a lot of people who tend to be a bit more content are also with others who are in similar socioeconomic circumstances. Yeah. And also, you know, we have to dismantle that idea that wealth equates to happiness. Oh, a hundred percent. That is so important. And there've been all of these studies that have been done that after you reach a certain tipping point on wealth, and some people say the number is about 70 to $75,000 in America, USD, that's enough to live comfortably. Your happiness doesn't actually increase.

Right. So like after that amount, it's kind of like, it might be like a temporary, yay, I get to take this nice trip or do this thing. But once your base needs are met, and then a little extra, usually you don't see a huge amount of happiness fluctuation. You mentioned the hedonic treadmill, like once you have base needs, and then some, everything else just becomes almost this race to who can have more who can have better and it can be a self-inflicted thing it's not necessarily just observing everyone around you it can very much just be like well we had this last year so we have to have at least that and then more from a psychological perspective where do you think what is that trying to sort of satiate that it can't

it's very easy for money and what money can purchase for you to temporarily fill whatever emotional voids we have at the time yeah and it it can also scratch different itches for different people. Like I'm a deeply competitive person. So a lot of this also has to do with me being largely competitive with myself, but yeah, also competitive with people that I know. And I find that that manifests more within my work than it does in personal life because my husband and I aren't very flashy with like purchasing of things that's not something I really care about like if you know more of an internal dialogue yeah like if one of my friends has a Birkin bag I don't want a Birkin bag so that's not gonna be a like jealousy flare yeah yeah but if I know somebody who just secured

a six-figure partnership with a brand that I wanted to work with that's going to give me some feels yeah and I think we you know it kind of goes to show that money is a tool like so many other things and we can use it to empower ourselves and progress and we can also use it to to beat ourselves up when we're not hitting those bent at those goals it's also a socially appropriate obsession and compulsion which is part of the problem like i feel that you're allowed and it's almost socially acceptable to fetishize and be fixated on money even as we kind of are drastically phasing out of the greed is good era and thinking a lot more about, you know, consumption, waste, our impact on our planet,

all of these other things, there's still something to be said about people using money to validate not only themselves, but where they stand in society. And it becomes this, you know, we're allowed, quote unquote, to really be fixated on wealth in a particular way, where it might be considered taboo to fixate on other things in the same way. Well, I guess it's been viewed as the currency of survival, but we are now living in a time when we're realizing that actually that, like you say, greed mentality is having all sorts of consequences that are causing us to have to reevaluate. And ultimately, and I've said this word a bunch, comes down to balance. And I, I've given examples too, about this is literally my job. I write and talk about money all day, every day. And I do not have a perfect relationship

with money by any means. And I have all the information. It's just like your therapist probably doesn't have perfect mental health. Everybody also has their own journey that they're on. And again, I would caution anytime you're comparing yourself to anybody else's financial journey, they're only showing you a sliver of the story. What I wanted to speak to you about as well is self-worth is something that we talk about a lot in this podcast and I would love to know your thoughts on how self-worth and money correlate to each other well there's an expression in personal finance that you hear a lot where people talk about your net worth is not your self-worth And that is true. And it's very easy to conflate the two. And it's also easy to substitute out net worth and just say salary. But just because you work a job that is not as highly paid as your

friends, your siblings, your cousins, what have you, it does not at all impact your overall worth. And I think it's also really important for us to kind of separate from our career, especially in so much of Western culture, it feels like what do you do is the first question we get asked when we're meeting people or at a cocktail party. And yeah, we're so much more than that. Yeah. And it is incredibly important that we build an identity outside of just what our job is and how much we earn and what we can afford. And creating your own self-worth and standing in it takes a lot of work. It can be really hard. There are so many factors that come into play outside of obviously financial. You're looking at your physical health. Do you feel comfortable

with your body and how you present to the world? Do you feel comfortable with what your mental health is? There's just so many factors, but money touches most of those. And my big feeling and the line that I reiterate over and over and over again, is that you really have two choices in life. Either you control money or money controls you. And it is so important that you take control and you don't have to have a lot of money to be in control. You just need to understand how much is coming in, how much is going out, how much you need, and then start setting your goals. And that will start to inform a lot for you. So getting super clear. Let's get into investing then, because we mentioned this

a second ago. And you said that, yeah, I think at large, it's viewed as something that people with shitloads of money can do and that it's exclusive to them. Well, the first big thing is that and I'm speaking very specifically to the American dynamic, but we usually use the wrong language when we talk about retirement. We say we're saving for retirement. You're not. You're investing for retirement. The money that you put into funds like a 401k or an IRA, which insert whatever it is for

you in your location where you're listening, that is money that needs to be invested, not money that is being saved. It is very hard to save your way to big financial goals, particularly the amount that you want for retirement. And you can just do the quick and dirty math on that. If you want $2 million to retire and you want that to happen in 35 years, divide $2 million by 35 and see how much you would have to be saving every year to reach that. That's hard. Or when you invest the money, it does some of the work for you. That slow and steady is so critical because so often I hear, I'll just wait to put that money in my retirement

account when I've achieved X, Y, Z, when I've paid off my student loans, when I have this amount saved, please don't do that. Because first, it can take so long. If you're waiting to pay off your student loans, that could be 15 or 20 years. So you have lost so much good time. The best thing that you have as an investor is time. So if you start even really small, let's say your company on your 401k matches you at 3%, put in 3%. And if you can't afford that, let's say your company on your 401k matches you at 3%, put in 3%. And if you can't afford that, put in one and every six months, push it up by half a percent. So you barely feel a difference in your paycheck. That's a great start. Because slowly

over time, it really does start to be this wonderful snowball rolling down the hill, snowball rolling down the hill, building up effect, where if you wait decades and try to put in twice the amount and play catch up mathematically, that very rarely shakes out in your favor. The person who started earlier with little bits almost always comes out ahead. And so that is incredibly important. And to remember, life tends to get more complicated, not less, not to be Debbie Downer for anyone. But isn't that the truth? Yeah, you might get married, you might have a kid, you might buy a house, you might have a family member who needs your help, you might have a health crisis, you might lose your job, like so many things happen. So just because you've achieved, you know, paid off the student loans or what have you,

yay, goody, now I can finally start putting more money in my retirement account, life might have gotten a lot more expensive. Yeah. What are some of your practical steps in terms of, because I think a big one is most people, I'm going to speak for myself, I definitely went through a phase of just having one account, just put everything in it. Would you suggest that people put different things in different accounts? Because obviously, if you can't see it, you're probably less likely to start nipping away at it. Yeah, I love multiple accounts. I also personally keep my emergency savings and like big savings goals at a completely separate bank from my day to day checking that I use for whatever I'm feeling day to day. Yeah. Cause yeah, the out

of sight, out of mind, I mean, I never want your money to be totally out of your mind, but one, it takes a couple of business days to move that money over. So if there's something that I'm impulsively wanting to get, I then have to go back to move the money. And that's sort of an immediate checks and balances where you're thinking about having to do that action as opposed to like, oh, it's right there and super easy to transfer between checking and savings at this bank. The other thing is nickname your accounts. Do not touch. Well, you can say do not touch but you really should say like the goal that it's for and the more specific the better so you know I mentioned that my husband and I want to go to Japan so we have an account that says Japan July 2022 and that just anytime you think about pulling a little bit out you're reminded what you're saving for.

And also that just completely epitomizes delayed gratification in the best way. Because I think even if you do have the disposable income to go on a fancy trip or whatever, I think there's a big guilt piece that often accompanies it if it's not allocated for that, if that makes sense. So I think if you can actually start getting in that rhythm of putting things aside, you then have a sense of accomplishment rather than guilt. Yeah. And the other thing too, for anyone that's listening, and you're really at the beginning of your journey, one of the hardest pieces is facing your numbers. And that means you really sit down and you write out a list of what the debts are, who owns them, the interest rates, the amount that's due. So the principal balance and then the amount that you have to pay every month. Getting all of that information down in front of you can be one of the most painful parts

of the process of starting to get your financial life together. But you also cannot create an effective plan without that level of nitty gritty detail, because you need to be able to look at all of that and then figure out what's going to work for you. The only thing you want to do is use the method that's going to be effective for you. And this is so true with everything with money. You test it and if it doesn't work for you, pivot. And also be aware that as your life evolves, so too will probably the way you handle your money. The way I budgeted when I was 22 and had just moved to New York City and was working three jobs and making less than

$25,000 a year is very different than the budgeting style I use now at 32 married with a stable income. There's a final thing that I want to explore with you for a second is obviously within the spirituality space, there's a lot of conversation around abundance, manifestation, and the law of attraction, and all these sort of principles that, you know, we essentially are using to try and attract money into our lives. From everything that we've discussed, it feels like these are the things that set the foundation before going into any of that stuff. And so I wanted to know a little bit about your thoughts on some of those things, whether you feel they're problematic, whether you agree with them. My headline feeling

is that they can be very dangerous when bastardized. And what I mean by that is that like scarcity mindset is problematic when it comes to money. Abundance mentality can be a healthier way to think, but only if, and particularly when you think about manifesting, goal setting is paramount. And goal setting is not that different than manifesting in terms of you set an actionable goal, but the key is that it's actionable and you're coupling it with monthly daily actions to make it come to fruition for yourself. It is not a, I'm just going to speak it out loud and write it down and then do nothing. And the universe will provide. That's not how any of this works, but unfortunately that's what's being sold to the fact that that's what some people think.

Absolutely. And also, you know, the fact that that's what some people think. Absolutely. And also, you know, the spirituality space is awash with people, you know, charlatans essentially preying off people's vulnerability and financially benefiting from it. So I say like everybody navigate the space wisely because, you know, to go back again to Saturn's principles principles it's like all about autonomy all about being your own authority and there aren't quick fixes there aren't like shortcuts with this kind of stuff and i think this manifestation abundant you know very woo-woo kind of thing is it's nice and wishy-washy whatever but if you're looking to do that to kind of not actually do the groundwork that we're talking about in this episode forget about it agreed and so often when you see again kind of like the clickbaity whether it's articles or you know tweets that somebody

who's very successful now will go back into their twitter from eight years ago and pull out the tweet that's like I'm going to be a millionaire by the time I'm 42, or I'm going to perform at the Super Bowl or whatever it is. In that eight years between the tweet and the thing coming to fruition, they put in hundreds to thousands of hours of work and action working towards that goal. It wasn't like they put it out there and then magically it fell in their lap. Now, can sometimes things fall in your lap? Of course. But that's the exception, not the rule. And it is just so important that we always pair desire with action. I think that's a perfect place to end unless there's anything else that you want to share with the audience. I just want to say my final thought is that because money can be so tied up

in shame and have a lot of very negative associations for a lot of people this is not going to be an overnight change even if you become very aware of why you're associating that way with money, it takes a lot of time. And just please be patient with yourself and give yourself grace and let yourself stumble, but don't let that completely derail you from the ultimate goal of just taking back control. That is our very first goal here. It's taking back control and then looking to level up. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I really enjoyed it because my money journey has really just begun. And I think it's such an important conversation that we open up, that we discuss with our friends, that we kind of break those stereotypes and taboos around money

so if you would like to hear more from erin you can find her on instagram and twitter at the broke millennial and you can find her website brokemillennial.com and her books are available from any good retailer you can also follow our astrological guide Nora on Instagram at Stars and Klein and me at Kagi's World and you can follow the podcast at Saturn Materns Co. If you enjoyed this episode I would love it if you could share it with a friend you think might find it useful and leave us a review on Apple. This helps us get in the ears of more like-minded people. Saturn Materns is a Feast Collective production. The producer is Hannah Varrell

and the executive producer is Kate Taylor. Thank you so much for listening and remember, you are not alone. Goodbye.