EFR 723: How to Get Rich, Expand Your Money Mindset, and Become More Financially Independent with Scarlett Cochran

0:00:01 - Speaker 1 Scarlett, welcome to Ever Forward Radio. It's a pleasure to have you here.

0:00:04 - Speaker 2 Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. I love talking about money.

0:00:08 - Speaker 1 We're gonna talk about money, but I wanna actually kick things off in a unique way. Talking about money is not something that I really grew up with. Money was this thing that you know we didn't really have a lot of. It wasn't ultimately the end all be all marker for success, or definitely not love in my family. But you know, even as a kid we're like okay, some families have more of it than we do, and that was even more interesting for me.

Going into another thing we have in common besides trying to lean more into our financial wellness, and that's the military. I enlisted right after high school into the army and kind of following along in a long family legacy. But in the military, other than I bet you know what I'm talking about other than the Thrift Savings Account, thrift Savings Program, tsp, we never really got a lot of financial awareness. So I went from being raised with not having a lot of it and not really always having a lot of in-depth financial conversations to starting my life without having significant or at least recurring financial conversations, and it's a tricky place to be. I'm sure anybody can relate that's maybe joined the military or gone off to college or left house on your own If you're not starting from a solid foundation and then you're not actively building a strong foundation in any area of our life, especially finances. Becoming an adult is even that much more tricky. Would you agree?

0:01:38 - Speaker 2 I would. I will say, though, as someone who also enlisted, but in the Marine Corps right out of high school, that we were actually pretty lucky that, even though we didn't get a lot of financial education, financial literacy training, it was adulting on training wheels, because the military provides your housing right. If you're a single person, you're living in the barracks, so you don't have to learn how to pay bills. They also provide food, so you go to the chow hall for your three meals a day, and including on the weekends, so you don't have to figure out how to feed yourself. You don't have to pay any bills. You live right on base, so you don't need a car, and so it really is adulting light. So if you were like me, where your paycheck would come in and you had no idea how to manage your money, but you're just like, well, i'll just spend money, and you ran out of money well before the 15th because we got paid on the first and the 15th.

But you didn't have to worry about losing your housing, you didn't have to worry about not being able to feed yourself, you didn't have to worry about not being able to make it to work because your transportation failed, because your work provided you with housing near your job that was like walkable, and so that allowed us to kind of be like a day's ago about our finances without experiencing the real world, adult consequences that most other people would. So we do have to look at kind of where the military benefited us, and of course we also had access to healthcare, access to dental care, paid time off, sick time, things that not everyone else gets. But of course, having financial education and knowing how to actually maximize the money that was coming in would have set us up for success a lot earlier. But I do think it's important for us to recognize what we did have.

0:03:40 - Speaker 1 Absolutely. I had a lot. I had all of those same things being a fellow in listed service member myself. But as you kind of break it down and talk about it, i think about someone who might be in a similar circumstance. They didn't join the military, but let's say they do leave home, right, And they embark on the next journey, the next phase of life, and they don't need to really worry about a lot of these things, let's say, because maybe they came into some money, maybe their parents or family member, they have some kind of financial lifeline.

That is always. It's like they are our uncle Sam. They've got somebody floating them rent. They've got somebody sending them money for clothes or sending them clothes. They've got somebody that is still keeping them on their health insurance. So it's kind of this sort of kind of adulting, not really where we do get to flex our financial muscles, flex a little bit of freedom well, a lot of bit of freedom in some ways probably we haven't had before. But are we still missing the mark? We're not quite learning the lessons we need to learn, because there's that known or even sometimes maybe unknown safety net, security net, keeping us from the bottom dropping out financially.

0:04:59 - Speaker 2 Yeah, 100%. I didn't have to learn how to manage my money properly until I had a dependent, until I had my daughter, which was a really young age. I gave birth to my daughter when I was 19 years old, so just in my second year of enlistment.

0:05:16 - Speaker 1 So you were still active duty. Oh, I was active duty, absolutely Even then, not to downplay motherhood at all. But even then you had support system right. You had healthcare for your daughter, you had all these doctors visits covered.

0:05:28 - Speaker 2 I did, yeah, and, like I said, i had sick leave towards the. I had paid parental leave six weeks, which most people in the United States don't get. So I absolutely had all of those things And it really did help me. But again, the training wheels were removed somewhat when now, suddenly, i have to actually provide for a household. Now I have to figure out how to actually pay bills, because I didn't stay in on base housing, i rented an apartment, i bought a car.

So now I'm like a regular person, but making basically a minimum wage job, making $24,000 a year, but with benefits, very true, but still trying to provide for a family on that income. So that really allowed me to start paying attention to where my money was going. Did I get 100% immediately better at managing my cash flow and not running out of money before the end of the next pay period? No, this was back in the day when checks were a thing and I learned how to flow checks, which you're not supposed to do. But again, no one really told me that don't do that, and so it took me It's a gray area a little bit.

So it took me a few years to figure out how to do it And thankfully I figured it out before. Electronic transactions took away the three to five day grace period you had between when you wrote a check and when it actually posted to your bank account. And also sometimes checks would bounce and I would pay the fees right. That's the other thing. Sometimes life is more expensive when you don't know how to manage your money well, because then you're having to pay all these extra fees and things like that because your cash flow isn't what you needed it to be. And still again, as a military person, i definitely had it way better off than someone who was making a similar amount $24,000 a year but maybe working at a fast food restaurant or working for tips. Well said.

0:07:32 - Speaker 1 And I wanted to kind of shift gears now into setting the tone for the rest of the conversation. The core of the show here has always been wellness, physical fitness, nutrition, mindset. Oh, did I lose you? I'm still here, but I don't know why my camera is cutting in and out like that It usually does not.

0:07:52 - Speaker 2 This is actually very rare. I'm getting a remix.

0:07:54 - Speaker 1 It's where it's going small going big going, small going big.

0:07:58 - Speaker 2 I'm trying to see if turning it off and turning it back on would That might do the trick.

0:08:06 - Speaker 1 I'll go ahead and try that.

0:08:10 - Speaker 2 Well, maybe we can just go on without the video.

0:08:14 - Speaker 1 Oh, it's just, it's just weird, so weird Okay.

All right, let me reset here, so.

So I would love to set the tone then for the rest of the conversation, to kind of get the listeners mind right about the real reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you, and that's.

I think there are a lot of areas of our total wellness and at the core of the show living a life ever for it is the multifaceted nis, nis, nis, nis that is, our wellness and the human experience, and if we think about every kind of slice of the human pie as a contributing portion to what makes us feel the best, what makes us live the longest and have the highest quality life and quality relationships and success and inside and out, i really want to set the tone here that our finances, as a component of that, our financial wellness, is a huge player to that. How would you describe or define financial literacy, getting better at your finances? that doesn't quite maybe mean just yet wealth, you know, you know making it rain, so to speak, or just, you know, becoming, you know, more wealthy, but rather just becoming better at what you do have. How would you describe or define finances as an area of our total wellness?

0:09:35 - Speaker 2 Well, i know that for many people, finances are it's one of their top stressors, because they don't feel fully in control of their finances.

They don't understand how to use what they have to create the best lives for themselves now, and then also how to create that upward trajectory and that momentum that will allow them to afford the kind of life that they really dream about.

And so, like you said, when it comes to managing your money, it's not just about the nuts and bolts, about how much you're spending and how to save money, but also how do you feel about your money.

And I'm a firm believer that, no matter what your finances currently look like, it's so important that we get ourselves to a place of emotional stability and, ideally, even joy, all at all of the time when we're looking at our finances, because, at the end of the day, having negativity towards our finances will leach into other areas of our lives, and it doesn't help us improve our finances, it just makes us hate the process of even looking at our finances. So, yeah, so, since managing your finances it's a part of living your life, i think it's important that we make sure to find a way to make it enjoyable so that, no matter what you're experiencing whether you got, you know you paid something late and you got a late fee, or inflation is happening and things are becoming more expensive that you're able to navigate those things from a place of, at the very least, calm and confidence in your ability to thrive, no matter what, and I think that that helps us feel good about our finances and our lives, and it leaches into the other areas of our lives as well.

0:11:25 - Speaker 1 You know, when you said how do we feel about finances. That really hit home for me because over the years, as I have consciously made an effort to prioritize financial literacy more and more and more and it's taken me some time, total honesty. It takes me back to a book that I read, that I'll reference in the show notes, of course, as well as yours, and that's from Jensen Sherrow. You are a badass at making money And this was really the first time as a collective piece I had Well, i didn't paint the dots, you know, she kind of did them for me and I was just listening and absorbing on the audio book but the feeling associated to money And that really opened me up and I would love to share kind of the exact feeling I had of money then and where I am at now with you and the listener. And I love to get your interpretation because I don't think I'm alone here.

Like I said earlier, growing up in a very, very small town not having a lot of money, i never felt like we really wanted for anything. I was, i had a great childhood, but again, especially now as an adult, i can look back and go oh yeah, we definitely did not have as much money as other people And, in fact, the ultimate decision for me to join the military besides legacy and besides not really knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up and go to college, i didn't want to waste money, and I knew that was money my parents didn't have. My father told me, chase, no matter what you want to do, i support your decision. If that is college, i'll figure it out. I'll figure out a way to pay for it, and I didn't want to be a burden And so, really, i took that on, decided to join the military, and so my entire feeling about money was, whenever I would hear the word money or talking about any kind of large amount, i would retract.

Just talking about money made me kind of retract and feel like I'm not supposed to be in this room. I'm not supposed to be having this conversation. Let me retract and kind of shrink back Where I'm at now and understanding that feeling and going back and painting that feeling to some memories and trying to better understand them and rewrite that financial narrative. I'm really leaning in. I would say the best way to describe it instead of retraction is curiosity. I'm finally curious and I feel worthy enough to step in to a lot of these conversations and to step into these rooms, because I've built up my foundation of knowledge of where I'm at, but also what I want in my financial wellness and what that financial wellness will really mean for myself, my family, my future, other than just abundance and having more. So I've gone from retraction to really curiosity. What do those mean to you? How would you interpret those?

0:14:06 - Speaker 2 Yeah, So I would say that you are not alone. Most people retract when it comes to talking about their finances because most people are not lucky enough to come from a household where money conversations are had much less also had with children And so it feels uncomfortable. And maybe you may have also gotten some messages just hearing your parents talking to each other about money and where they would maybe talk to each other in hushed voices and not talk about it publicly with their friends. You learn well, money is something taboo that we don't really talk about.

0:14:49 - Speaker 1 It's actually the very first memory I have. Sorry to interrupt, but it's so spot on. The very first memory I can recall as a child, about four years old, was that basically exact conversation you're talking about between my mom and dad that ultimately like literally, I think the next couple of days my parents split up And so I immediately associated mom and dad not being together or loving each other anymore anymore, even mom not loving me because she left. I shouldn't say that their decision was for her to go one way and my father go another. And so I associated we don't have enough. we don't have enough money being saving a family or not.

0:15:32 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and we get so many of these unconscious messages from society, these stories that layer on top of us as we get older, not just from our immediate family, but from our peers, from television shows, from the news and social media, and it becomes part of this unconscious programming.

I think it's a beautiful thing that you have found one of the sources right, because I'm sure it's only one of, whereas a lot of people that I speak to they're not even sure where it came from.

It just feels like something that's always been there, and then you couple it with the fact that you came from a family that didn't have a lot of money, and we also have this societal narrative about rich people being bad, and so that also would have added to your retraction. When you're in rooms of people who are now talking about larger sums of money than you had ever encountered before, or where you are now a person that is now the well to do person, you have to fight against the societal narrative that you are bad, that you are greedy, that you are not a good person, that you don't care about people, that all you care about is money, because that's the narrative that we have about money Either you're struggling or you're stealing from someone else to get that money And so both of those things where you don't want to be someone who struggles but now you can't talk about hey and look at the success that I've created, look at what's possible.

Of course, that's going to create a retraction, but I think it's a wonderful thing too that now you've brought yourself to a place of curiosity, so now you can create your own story, which I talk a lot about in the book, rewriting your money story that you can be a good person and a wealthy person. You can be wealthy and generous.

0:17:28 - Speaker 1 Those are concepts. Yeah, sorry, a little laggy there. I thought your pause.

0:17:33 - Speaker 2 Yeah, you can talk that. you can talk about money, because that helps show people what is possible. When we talk about money, we spread information and more people can change their financial lives versus we don't talk about money.

0:17:48 - Speaker 1 That, um, that's sort of another unique kind of memory for me, associating feelings to money that I wonder if anybody else can relate to. I think a big part of that retraction process was I was kind of I felt kind of straddling two worlds. Like I said, we didn't come from a lot but we didn't want for anything. In my family My parents absolutely did prioritize education, so they found a way to put me into a private school, middle school and high school, and in private school I'm sure you can imagine they're pretty affluent people and experience that I had many times was that retraction aspect, because the things that these other families and my friends were talking about and just their day to day lives or vacations they would take, or cars that they drove or clothes they would wear. But even beyond that I kind of felt like, well, what am I doing here? I don't belong? Am I with them or am I not? Um, and it's this ability, this this aspect of really reciprocity because I would get invited.

You know extremely genuine, amazing people And I know they never had, you know, an agenda against me, but as a kid especially feel some kind of way Oh, i'm being invited to this guy's lake house, his family's lake house.

So my other friend wants to take me with her family, you know, to skiing in Colorado. You know, in the winter we're going to do this trip, we're going to go there, do this, whatever. And it's like, am I supposed to be here? I'm doing things that my family doesn't do, but also I'm not in a position my family is in a position to return this. We didn't have a lake house, we weren't going to Colorado, we weren't doing all these things. So I think that's still lingers with me now And I love that you hit on that point of it's, you know, and being able to associate a better feeling with it, but also being able to really do something more with it. And it might be this, looking back at your life and you know, kind of maybe wanting to do good on things that you know people did good for you.

0:19:53 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and you bring up another good point too, which is that we're also not used to having conversations around not being able to do the same things financially that other people can do. It's seen as a shortcoming, whereas what we should be able to do is be respectful of each other wherever our means happen to be and be willing to meet each other where we are Now. Of course, as children, it's challenging to have those kinds of conversations, because you just want to fit in and you want to be like everyone else. But I see this a lot too with adults.

Adults who have friends who spend a lot more than they're able to spend right now, because maybe they have other financial goals that they want to focus on And they're afraid of being ostracized from the friend group because they can't keep going out to, or they don't want to, keep going out to brunch every single Sunday or going out to the club every Friday or Saturday. And it's like we need to be able to have those conversations to say, look, i've got some other financial priorities right now. You don't want to spend in this way, or I can't spend in this way. There's no way that I could do this right now, even if I wanted to. So what can we do? Can we do a different? can we do a potluck? Can you know what's available here? Because otherwise what people end up doing is they withdraw, like you said.

0:21:17 - Speaker 1 You didn't take them up on the offer, and so that And then people think they don't want to be friends with you anymore. Exactly, They're like why don't you like me?

0:21:24 - Speaker 2 You don't come out anymore.

0:21:26 - Speaker 1 I've been there absolutely.

0:21:26 - Speaker 2 Yeah. And so instead we could offer them to say, look, i want to be your friend, i value your friendship so much, i just can't do this right now. So what can we do? And that gives you an opportunity to connect, right, because when we share with people, when we share our inner world and our truth, when we have real conversations with people, then we can build authentic relationships. So you're right, money touches on every aspect of our lives, even the kinds of relationships and connections we make with people, and how authentic we feel, and also whether or not we feel like we belong in our group.

0:22:02 - Speaker 1 Belonging. I think, no matter what we're really talking about here, whether it be you know, your chosen form of physical activity, the diet you abide by, your job, your relationships I mean, ultimately all comes down to which tribe is going to accept us. Which tribe do we want to be in? We might feel like which tribe can I afford the buy-in for? You know what's the activity level here. What do I got to keep up with? I know this and a lot of other amazing points are at the core of your work in the book. It's not about money, a proven path to building wealth and living the rich life you deserve, And some of those points in there, I think, are just amazing little bullet points that are very tangible and tactical, One of them being the three core purposes of money. What are they and how would you describe them here for us today?

0:22:54 - Speaker 2 Yeah. so the idea behind the three core purposes of money is to help put money back in its place, to help us have a framework for thinking about how we make financial decisions and what we use money for. And, ultimately, money exists to serve us to make our lives better. That's the whole reason why it was created to facilitate transactions, so that we could specialize and do work that we love and get paid for that work. So when we think about money's purpose in our lives, i believe that it really serves three purposes joy, stability and freedom. So money should be spent for joy. That is why it exists, so we could spend it on the things that matter to us, and too often we deprive ourselves.

That is the narrative around personal finance that you spend the least when in reality, you should be spending in accordance with your values. You spend enough to get the things that matter to you and the features that matter to you. But secondly, we have stability. So money exists also to make sure that we're able to weather life's inevitable ups and downs, whether it's a job loss, illness, a bird flying into your window and breaking it, needing to replace a roof All of those things. you want to make sure that you are putting money away so that you have the financial resources to take care of those things when they happen. And then, finally, it's freedom, or if and when you are ready to stop working. you still have the financial resources to support yourself at your ideal lifestyle, that you're not having to make trade-offs and sacrifices later in life. You have the financial resources to where you can live your best lifestyle. You can be generous with others. You can donate to causes you believe in and continue to support future generations with the legacy that you leave behind.

0:24:55 - Speaker 1 When it comes to our relationship with money. which do you think needs to come first? Do we need to develop a better feeling, literally work on the relationship to our finances, no matter where we are in our finances, so that we can hit the ground running and you actually have a good, say, mental, emotional connection? Or would you recommend first maybe doing some things to make better our financial situation so that we can get that traction, a little bit of confidence, and with that comes the better emotional, mental connection? Is it the work first, then the feeling, or is it the feeling first and then the work?

0:25:36 - Speaker 2 So I'm gonna say you start with the feeling, and the reason why I say this is because we do not make our highest and best decisions from a place of negative emotion, from fear, from anxiety.

When we have those emotions, we're actually shutting down our higher brain functions, we're shutting down our decision-making and problem-solving sections of our brain and taking ourselves to fight or flight, and we don't want that.

We want to be able to make decisions from our highest selves, right From clear thinking and clear decision-making, and so, recognizing that a lot of the emotions that we're feeling are caused by our very own thoughts, how we interpret our financial situation, we wanna start paying attention to those thoughts, because those thoughts are what we will be using to make decisions.

So, for example, if a thought you have is that budgeting is restrictive and I hate restricting myself and I work too hard to not be able to treat myself well, then changing your spending habits is going to be an uphill battle, because you are resisting it, you're not bought in, and so that's why we start with changing the feelings and the thoughts. So now you can be motivated, right? You feel good about your finances, you feel good about what's going to happen in the future, you feel motivated to make a change And then from there you can start moving into wants like how you want to change the future that you want to create, which will then build up your intrinsic motivation, which will help you sustain the changes over time, especially during periods of habit slippage and backsliding, because changing your habits doesn't just happen overnight.

0:27:26 - Speaker 1 You mentioned that it's a cute-. What does that look like in our financial world? What?

0:27:29 - Speaker 2 does the?

0:27:29 - Speaker 1 financial habit backsliding look like.

0:27:31 - Speaker 2 So what it would look like is that you've decided your financial priorities include going on an international vacation every year And you've decided you're gonna spend let's say you're a family, so you're gonna spend $8,000 every year to go traveling internationally, because that is something you value. You want your children to see the world maybe because you didn't get to see the world when you were a kid just speaking from one of my values And so that amounts to, let's just say, like $650 a month somewhere around there. And you look at your eating out budget and you realize that you eat out four times a week And if you just cut one of those, that's your international travel. So you decide you're only gonna eat out at most three times a week and that's where your 650 is gonna come from. Well, to make up for that, you're gonna have to cook. That's the habit that you're going to have to change.

And so the first month went great. You cooked every single week. Then, month two, something happened. On the day you were gonna cook There's some extra activity that your kid decides they wanna do, so you go and do that and you don't cook. And now you've eaten out four times again that month. And then something else happens and that whole month was a wash. And so how do you come back to the plan? And most people expect they're gonna create the plan and then it's just gonna work, whereas I've seen it could take people up to a full year, if not more, to get their grocery budget where they want it to be, because you're truly changing so many things How you cook, what you cook, how you grocery shop. That's a lot. So it's important to recognize that changing a habit, even something as simple as eating out one less time per week, is something that's gonna take you a few months to change and then also stick with.

0:29:26 - Speaker 1 I love what you're talking about here and just you know Oh.

0:29:31 - Speaker 2 It's okay. I mean, do you need the video?

0:29:34 - Speaker 1 No, I'll just keep flowing. then This is so weird, this has never happened.

0:29:38 - Speaker 2 Like I'm now I'm gonna be troubleshooting this, like I have no idea why this is happening.

0:29:42 - Speaker 1 Yeah, i don't know, that's weird. I was gonna say I love how a lot of what you're talking about it just kind of my old health coach brain pops on And that's really redefining our goals, i think one, but also really having a better understanding, a better feeling of the work it takes to get there. And I think once we begin to do that, in the beginning a lot of us think that or it feels like restriction, it feels like I can't do this, i can't do that, i can't do the things that I used to do or how I used to do them, or I can't just do whatever I want whenever I want. But that's not actually the case. You have decided what you want. You have then decided what you are going to do to get you there And you're becoming clearer on the things that either serve that goal or inhibit it. And that, i think, is the mindset shift we have to have, no matter what we're here to talk about, but especially in finances. I mean, i think that is such a great practical example, because I think a lot of people I'm in Los Angeles. I don't eat out four times a week, definitely. I went through a phase where that was the case. But I think in big cities like LA I used to live in DC or just any big city, especially if you're a social person or maybe you're in sales or that's just kind of part of quote your norm, that is a very easy way to just shave off one day a week to save several hundreds of dollars at the end of the month, and that is such an important component to financial wellness here.

But another thing I want to bring up is getting better at goal setting. I think it goes back to like the most ancient thing here. Right, we all know in personal development, professional development, what is your why. If you know why you do something, you're gonna be that much more successful. You're always gonna have the framework to fall back on to keep pushing you forward towards that goal. Your why should be very solidified And I think a lot of us don't have a solidified why to our spending habits, to how we define wealth, to how we want to spend $20 or $2,000. How would you advise someone I know this might be kind of a blanket statement here, but how would you advise someone to develop better goals if their finances, so that their financial spending habits along the way, are at least majority of the time, gonna be supportive of that goal.

0:32:14 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so there are two different aspects to this. This is the short term why And the short term spending and the long term. Now, we as humans are not really great at connecting with our future selves and doing the things It doesn't exist yet.

0:32:27 - Speaker 1 Yeah exactly, you can't shout them a lot of that. Yeah, brains are weird everybody.

0:32:30 - Speaker 2 Exactly doing the things today that we will not reap the benefit of for 10 or 20 or 30 years down the line. So what we have to do because we are not naturally good at this is that we have to actually just practice it, because our brains are wonderful. If you start building the neural pathway, over time it will deepen and you will feel that connection to your future self. And I say this because the long term goals things like investing for retirement there is no getting around the fact that you've got to connect to a future. Why for that? because you're not gonna be touching the money for decades. And so, for future self, think about what kind of lifestyle you want to have later on in life. What kind of experiences do you want to have in those later years? Because the only way to have those experiences in the future is to start preparing for those experiences now, and this works both with your finances and with your health. Right, but short term. And so we've got your long term values Now, looking at short term, i say you've gotta pay attention to where your money is going and look to see which spending provides you the most joy.

That is why joy is one of the core purposes of money, because so many of us we're actually spending. We have default money habits, we're spending in default ways, but we're not spending in the ways that actually maximize our value. So if you value the lattes, if you value eating out on a regular basis, then include that in your budget and actually enjoy it. Don't be mad at yourself for spending the money. Savor it and put it in your budget, because then you know that you are taking care of current self, because you're making sure to fit what matters to you in your budget now and you're taking care of future self. So your value is taking care of you and making sure that you have all of the things that you want for your entire life. So when you take that perspective now, you're prioritizing.

0:34:38 - Speaker 1 You know I'm so glad to have a financial expert drive home, something that I personally went through again, and you know not to keep making this all about me, but I this is what I personally love most about my show here is the really the level of honesty and transparency I have in the content I do really feel not only makes for better conversations but does give me the best feedback for my listeners. So listeners, here again is another God's honest example What I go through, what I struggle with, what I succeed in and then I bring in the experts to kind of expand on it. Last year there was, you know, all this kind of new development of, you know, the recession and just you know, a lot of uncertainty and just you know, at least I couldn't quite put a pulse on it, quite couldn't put my finger on exactly. Oh, this is going away, this is for sure staying. The whole majority of my livelihood is made from the podcast, through sponsorships and partnerships and a couple other things, and in about a 60 day time not even really for us, like six to eight weeks, about $12,000 and 12 to 1512 to 15,000, depending on the month of recurring income for me went away And that's a very good chunk of change, and what old Chase would have done was he would have retracted immediately.

He would have had all of these old limiting beliefs come up about. Of course you're not worth all this money. You don't know what to do with it, it's never going to come back again And I would never have gone out for a cup of coffee again. I would have turned down meetings, i would have turned down going out. Now Don't let me paint the wrong picture here. I did get pretty aggressive and you know what gave me joy and what didn't, what was an actual investment and what was not. But what I did not do was stop doing the things, or at least as frequently, that gave me that level of joy, such as literally the.

I think the most easy example here for most of us is going out to your favorite coffee spot getting a cup of coffee, because for me what that meant was a lot of times that meant I didn't leave the house that day, working for myself if I'm not in the studio. So I need to get daily physical activity, i need to get out of the house, i need to interact with other people And, location wise, where I go, for this coffee tends to give me unique opportunities, such as running into a friend, meeting somebody that you know I want to have on the podcast, or just running into somebody that I've always wanted to connect with. It does provide unique forms of value in other ways, well beyond that. I'm getting $7, depending on what I'm getting for the cup of coffee. So it serves my soul, it gives me physical activity, i get sunshine, is better for my mood, my mental health, and you know everything else I mentioned, and so I'm just so glad to hear that from you that if it gives you joy and, first of all, you can have awareness or I maybe chase you don't do this every day but don't automatically throw on the restrictors.

And that helped me navigate that situation leaps and bounds better than I think I ever could, because what that also meant was I was always staying in a positive mindset about the situation, and one time I definitely let out a big scream and I was pissed off. You know once you know that that that other thing kind of fell through. But that's the human in me, and so I recognize that. Let it happen. But I was like you know what. This temporary change is not going to undo all the work that I have done with my financial health and wellness and you could insert an example here. You know deviating from your diet you decide that's not going to undo all the other work that I've done towards this And that helped me navigate those couple months so much better.

My mindset was so much better. I then was able to step back into revenue generating opportunities that I firmly believe would not have been there, i would not have seen or I would have said yes to the wrong things just because I wanted the money, needed the money and know to others, and so I think mindset here is the most important thing we can have, but it is also a very difficult thing to upkeep, especially when it comes to our finances.

0:38:54 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and I think you you touched on so many good points there. One of them is also understanding that finances will always have ebbs and flows. It is the nature of what, how money is in and it flows out.

Here again, absolutely yeah, and one of the mistakes that people make when it comes to habit change generally, but also when it comes to determining their progress towards reaching their goals, is they get upset every time the market dips, every time we experience a recession, and every time they experienced an unexpected bill and expected car repair, where they've been building up this reserve and now they've got to spend the money. They actually will feel very frustrated because they're like well, i just got it to this amount and then I have to pay it. I'm like, but that is the reason why you created this account, so it could be there, so that you could pay it. This was a win, right, and so it's understanding that ebbs and flows are normal And you still have an upward trajectory right. You can still get where you want to go despite the ebbs, because our financial plans are based on the fact that there will be periods of loss and there will be periods of gain. It's the net growth over a long period of time that we're looking at.

0:40:14 - Speaker 1 Absolutely true. Such a good point. Thank you for that. I want to get your input here on something that you outline in your work and that's about redefining wealth. I love this concept. I think it's perfect timing. I actually was just having a conversation with a friend about You know, the number that I came up with that I realized is necessary to live my dream life is a lot less than I expected. I think a lot of us especially you know side hustlers, entrepreneurs, you know anybody working in any capacity really we just think we need to get more, we need to do more, we need to have more, we need to succeed more, and then whatever that more is is going to be enough. But I'd be willing to bet it probably. You know, enough is never really enough unless you have clarity and you have an idea of what that goal really is. So what do you mean by redefining wealth and how can we take this so that we can rewrite societal narrative, our own narrative, around what we need financially to actually feel wealthy in our own right?

0:41:14 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's you. It's exactly how you described your what your friend realize. He's lucky that he realized that the life that he wants actually cost significantly less than he thought. When it comes to money, so much of our narrative around money makes money, the, the, the ends in and of itself, not just the means to an end, but the end, and everything that we do is measured by the dollars and the sense. So, for example, the fire movement, which is financial independence, retire early. So again, everyone gets to make their own choices about what fulfilling life looks like for them. But with the fire movement typically, what you will often see is people hurrying to get to the million or whatever so that they can retire as early as possible, without really thinking about well, what does a fulfilling life look like to me, what type of work do I enjoy, what kind of schedule, what I like to have?

There's that, that parable or story where the business person goes to a fishing village and talks to a fisherman And he says you know, how do you spend all of your day fishing, like I've got to, i've got to work. And the fisherman is like why? and he's like, because I've got to save up. You know, make all of this money so that I'm financially secure. And the fisherman is like, okay, and then what are you going to do? I'm like, move to a fishing village, and you know, and fish all day. And so why, if you know that the end is to go to the fishing village, do you have to do all of these other roadblocks in between? or you know, you just move to the fishing village now, and so that is why it's important that we really define what a rich life looks like for us, for each individual person. For some people, it's going to be the high rise in the city, the penthouse in the country. Some people want to run a mega company that changes the world. Other people want to live on a homestead and have a hydroponics farm. My partner, joseph Joseph, is toying around with this idea. I'm from New York City, so the idea of living out in the country, living off the land, i'm trying to wrap my head around it. We were gardening this year, so maybe.

But the point is that we should all feel free to lean into our vision of what a good life looks like, because, at the end of the day, we are the ones that have to live with the consequences of our decisions.

We're the ones at the end of our life that has to look back on that life and see what regret we feel and whether or not we actually lived in a way that was true to us and did the things that we wanted to do. And so that is where we start that vision of a good life. And then we ask ourselves okay, so then how much does that life cost? and also, what am I willing to do to create that level of financial security in my life? because just because it costs x amount doesn't mean that you have to become the lawyer or the doctor and work at the firm and, you know, do plastic surgery so that you can get the money. Maybe you can become an entrepreneur that teaches artists how, or teaches people how, to relieve stress through art, and you made the same amount of money, but in a way that was enjoyable for you.

0:44:34 - Speaker 1 I know in your book you talk about debt as well, And debt being one of the many things you talk about kind of really redefining our terms, redefining our relationship with it. What do you mean by that? How do you redefine debt here in 2023?

0:44:50 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so I spent 10 years as a banking and finance attorney regulating the consumer finance industry here in the US And so when I came to kind of the personal finance publishing media, consumer facing side of things when I started One Big Happy Life, i was actually really surprised at the anti-debt narrative because I had never heard that and that was not at all what the as a consumer advocate in the industry.

That was not a narrative that we used at all, because we understood that access to high quality credit actually improves consumer outcomes. So when people understand these financial instruments, they can use them to actually grow their wealth over time. And in fact there was a study done by the Federal Reserve that showed that the gap between middle income and upper income households when it comes to wealth it's because middle income households hold too much of their wealth in their personal home, so they've been paying off mortgages instead of investing in the stock market, because a personal home is not going to appreciate in value at the same level that the stock market will. And then also, when you add to the fact that that money stays in the personal home until the parent chances are, passes on, so it's locked in for a long period of time.

0:46:21 - Speaker 1 It's a long game.

0:46:22 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and also, just to give another example, payday lending, something that most of us would think is like the worst form of lending, aside from, maybe, like pawn shops, paying lending, pawn shops. Consumer advocates understand that there's a place for those types of lending, even though they are some of the most costly, because the places where that type of lending is happening often is consumers only access to any type of banking. That is the only way to get a check cashed. So, while we work on the problem of how can we get increased access to high quality banking, if you remove payday lending, then these families are going to struggle.

And so the point is that every financial instrument, when in the right circumstance, can add benefit to our lives, and so oftentimes, with debt, it is vilified as the reason why people can't build wealth. But in reality, debt, first of all, can be very useful. Right, i mean, people can build wealth even while they have debt, because money can work on multiple goals at the same time. But also, debt is not actually the problem. Debt is a symptom of a bigger issue, and it comes down to two things It's either a spending problem or it's an earning problem. So, income or spending, debt is just the symptom, it's the cough, but to say that it's the cough that caused the problem, it's not. It's whatever infection, whatever bacteria or virus is in your body.

Absolutely true.

0:48:00 - Speaker 1 Yeah, so good. As we get towards the end here, if you could maybe rapid fire again. Blanket statement here general public, in your opinion, what is one money habit, what is one financial habit that you see a lot of people have that is absolutely serving them, and what is one that you wish people would you know, work on stopping today, right now.

0:48:25 - Speaker 2 One that is serving them. So I do think that people will have the urge to spend money on themselves at some point. They can only deprive themselves for so long before the urge to actually do something nice for themselves with their money breaks through, and I think that's a good thing. We need to honor that more, not just when we're you know, not as a binge after a deprivation, but as a normal part of how we treat ourselves. And then in terms of the bad habit, i would say, ignoring their finances, that's going to be the biggest, baddest of them all that they're upset about the way their finances look, so they avoid them And it just creates the problems, just compound. The best thing that you can do is just keep coming back to your finances without any judgment and trust yourself that you're going to figure this out. You just have to give yourself time. You just haven't figured it out yet.

0:49:18 - Speaker 1 So well said. And one quick little add on to that What is one financial tip you would give Mass America here again To implement that is most likely easily implementable today, that can yield a pretty quick We'll say return? you know, maybe that's not an actual investment. You know, maybe you can make some money, maybe it'll help you develop a better feeling about money or spending or saving. But I think that's just one thing someone can do right here, right now to lean them closer into that right financial mindset.

0:49:51 - Speaker 2 Yeah, i would say the simplest thing is to start writing down what you're spending, when you spend it, and rate it on a scale from one to five how much you actually enjoyed that spending. because that awareness, giving yourself permission to say, hey, i actually didn't like that, i want to do something different next time because I just want to that's powerful.

0:50:10 - Speaker 1 I couldn't agree more. You know, like what's the thing that happens the moment you rent out to your partner. So there are a lot of things popping out and going, yeah, when I think back to you know, kind of a rating system, even qualitatively, to work outs. You know, so many times I, or a former client would, you know, go through a workout or go through a physical activity, like, yeah, i did it, i did the thing, i showed up and I moved my body Cool, but honestly, like that, i felt like I kind of just phoned it in that activity, you know. So we're leaning into that feeling. I think it all boils down to joy and clarity on our why can really help us navigate every decision throughout the day, or if not most of them.

0:50:54 - Speaker 2 Absolutely.

0:50:56 - Speaker 1 Well, this has been amazing. Thank you so much, Scarlett. I'm going to have all the information in your book down on the show notes again for everybody to check out. It's not about the money proven path to building wealth and living the rich life you deserve. But before we wrap, I got to ask my final question and would love to hear your interpretation of living a life ever forward through the lens of financial wellness and redefining wealth and all these things we've been talking about. What are those two words mean to you here today?

0:51:24 - Speaker 2 Yeah, one thing that I regularly say is that life is the thing that happens between our goals, and so it is so important that we enjoy the journey along the way and understand that, wherever our finances are right now, this is just the beginning, that our finances will continue to evolve and get better over time, provided that we tend to them, that we give them the attention that they deserve, and that everything that you want to experience in your life is possible and available to you. You just have to grow your capacity to manage your money well and make the kind of income that you want to make over time.

0:52:05 - Speaker 1 So wealth. I love that. I think we can be talking about money. We can be talking about anything there. That was a great interpretation, thank you.