A Real Money Conversation Amongst The Ladies | Bonus Episode

BONUS EPISODE

[INTRO MESSAGE]

[00:00:08] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Her Money Matters Podcast, the podcast to help you take control of your finances. Join your host, motivational money coach, Jen Hemphill, as she shares with you practical, simple money insights into real life stories by women like you.

Let’s get to it!

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:26.4] JH: Hey there, thank you so much for joining me. As you see, this is a not regularly scheduled episode. What I’ve done here recently, I was at Podcast Movement in Chicago. I had a conversation with three wonderful ladies, two of them which have already been guests. You will hear who they are and we just had really a candid conversation in the different areas of money. So I hope you enjoy it and if you have not joined us in the Facebook group, please do so.

The whole point in doing this podcast and this episode as well is to get you talking more about money, to get you more confident about money. Let’s not delay, let’s go ahead and listen to this episode. Mind you, a little thing. This was done live, meaning in a conference where people were walking back and forth. You will hear a background noise of people chattering so it’s a little different from what you normally hear.

So enjoy it and I will talk to you soon.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:47.6] JH: Welcome ladies, this is the first time I’ve had multiple guests on the show and I’m excited and we’re live here at Podcast Movement. I want to ask — well I want to first introduce you, I have here Jen Hatsung from the She Percolates Podcast, I have Adrienne Dorison from The School of Self-Mastery and I also have Jodi Flynn from the Women Taking a Leap Podcast. Jen, starting with you, tell me a little bit about your podcast and a little bit about you.

[0:02:18.6] JH1: Yeah, so again I cohost the podcast She Percolates. So my cohost is Danielle and we interview women each week on what their definition of success is and the idea was just to show women that success looks different for everyone and there’s not one stereotypical societal definition and so we do that and then on Friday’s we have a coffee talk.

So my cohost and I pick a topic and we chat about it for 20 to 30 minutes and the idea is, it’s what you would either maybe overhear at a coffee shop or what you would be chatting with your girlfriends about. So sometimes it’s a life topic, sometimes it’s business, sometimes it’s a mix, sometimes it’s fun like we did an episode solely on Taylor Swift, so stuff like that.

[0:03:04.0] JH: Love it, love it. Jen has been on the show before, we’ll put a link on that on the show notes. Adrienne, School of Self-Mastery. Please tell us a little bit about that and about you?

[0:03:17.0] AD: Yeah, so I host a podcast called the School of Self-Mastery and I do talk specifically to entrepreneurs mainly about success as well as how we become the best version of ourselves, which is through different habits, which may or may not be the same as other people’s habits. But as long as we are working to become that best version of ourselves I think that we’re on track.

So I have a topical episode every single week where I just kind of rant about things that might be helpful to entrepreneurs and then I also interview experts who are just interesting humans on whatever it is that they are specifically experts on. So that’s where the show is right now and being at Podcast Movement, maybe some things will change, but that’s where we’re at right now.

[0:04:09.3] JH: Wonderful, you’ve also been on the show and I’m about to put Jodi in the spotlight because you haven’t been on the show. I hope you will be, I mean of course you’re not going to say no to me. But tell me a little bit about your podcast.

[0:04:24.2] JF: So my podcast is Women Taking The Lead and the intention of my podcast is to inspire women to overcome self-doubt so they can lead by confidence, integrity, and a sense of humor. I do that by interviewing other successful women who had their own journey to get there, their own mindsets and struggles that they had to overcome in order to get where they are. These women act as virtual mentors for the women who are listening because not everyone has resources in their own environment, women who they can access and who are willing to help them along their journey.

They can listen in to my podcast and hear about what mindsets this women had to overcome and what practices they have in place now that keep them on track and the resources that they’re using to become even more successful in their life, and then I also do some topic based podcasts where it’s just me talking into the microphone about the things that come up for my clients in my own business and the things that I hear a lot of women talk about and we just cut to the chase and directly address those issues.

[0:05:28.6] JH: Wonderful, I love the diversity here because we all do different things. So I want to talk more about your audience and of course I love talking about money. So let’s start with you Jen. What challenges does your audience face with money? What comes up over and over again.

[0:05:45.3] JH1: Okay, so I feel like this is a little bit controversial but we like we discussed before we went live, this is probably something we should talk about then. So a big thing, I wouldn’t maybe say it’s a big thing but something that we do see and we have heard a few times is that there’s this — I don’t know if struggle is the right word but women have had a hard time investing in their business because they have a hard time with their partner getting on board with that money being spent for that and understanding that you have to spend money to make money.

You have to invest in yourself and in your business and you need to have money in time to make your business grow and so we see that a lot and it’s something that can be hard to talk about because for me, my husband is very supportive. So I can’t relate to that, and so I don’t know always the best thing to say or resources to give them but that’s something that is very hard for them.

[0:06:42.0] JH: Let’s talk about that a little bit because I know my husband has been very supportive. So like you, I can’t relate that but Adrienne or Jodi, if you can chime in, have you seen that with your audience or what’s your experience with that hearing that.

[0:06:55.9] JF: Yeah, I’ve definitely experienced that not myself but in my audience as well Jen, I can totally relate to hearing that and I think that. I think that, and this might be a controversial viewpoint, but I think that that stems from the lack of confidence from the woman being able to go to the partner, the husband and saying, “This is a decision that I’ve made for my business. I would love to have you onboard with that financially.”

I think that you have to make that decision first as a business owner, and then go to the partner and say, “I want us to make this decision together. I totally believe in the transparency between partners of finances but as a CEO of my business, I am the decision maker,” and I don’t think that a lot of women go to their partner with that confidence. So of course their partner is going to be like, “Well if you're not really sure about this then I’m going to keep you secure and safe as the man’s role.”

That’s his primal role and instinct is to be like, “I want to keep you safe, it doesn’t seem like you’re too sure about this. No,” right? I think as a woman, we need to be more confident in our decisions when we know that we’re passionate about our business, when we know that this is what I need to invest in to grow and go to the partner with the decision already made and look for support, not approval or permission.

[0:08:21.2] JH: Yeah, I like that, you touched on confidence, which I know you probably have a lot to talk about. So let us have it here.

[0:08:28.5] JF: Yeah, it’s definitely ditto to all that. It really stems from confidence and whether or not they’ve made the decision because a lot of the time it’s not committing to it. It creates that situation where you can waffle, change your mind and you’re not very convincing because I’ll have people approach me saying I want to talk to you about potentially getting coaching and one thing I try to remember, because this has happened occasionally is make sure your partner’s onboard before we have this conversation.

Because what would happen is, we’d have the conversation and they’d be like, “I want to do this, now I have to go back and talk to my husband,” and I was like, “Why is he not on board already? You weren’t committed to — not just coaching, because it’s not about coaching, it’s what they wanted to change in their business, you weren’t committed to that, doesn’t he already know?” It’s not having made that decision, not having made that commitment that creates the lack of confidence sometimes too. So it’s really — it also, as a woman, you have to feel like you deserve it.

[0:09:35.0] JH: Yes.

[0:09:36.4] JF: That you’re worth it because you are going to make the money back, you are going to do good things with this investment. You have to believe that it is an investment and not just a debit from your household finances.

[0:09:50.6] JH: I like that you said, “investment versus debit”, I like that. Adrienne, what do you see with your audience? You probably all see that. Is there anything else that stands out as a challenge?

[0:10:02.5] AD: I think that’s a big one because of the core issue behind it. It’s like about the belief in yourself to invest to get the support that you know you need and I think there’s a lot of lack of trust within people’s selves to actually follow through and do the work so they don’t invest. But I think, ultimately what I see in my clients is they want to grow their incomes, right? They’re potentially not in the best financial position, which is why I always talk about my debt story and how I paid off all my debt.

I’ve never gotten into business debt and a lot of people think that that’s the only way to do it or to run a business and so I try to openly share that with my people so that they understand there’s different ways to do this, there’s no right or wrong. You have to make it right or wrong for yourself. But I think that primarily, whether if it’s you’ve invested or you haven’t invested and the truth is, the reason people don’t get the results that they want is a lack of trust or belief in themselves.

To show up and do the work, to follow through, to believe that what they really want is possible and so all of that does stem back to money. So there’s all this emotional things around money which I think a lot of people don’t talk about which is what I try to talk about because there’s shame, there’s embarrassment, there’s guilt.

[0:11:25.2] JH: Lack of confidence.

[0:11:27.4] AD: Yeah, I was talking yesterday to one of my clients about how, and what we might get into this, the stage of my life that I’m in we’re looking to buy a house and I’ve gotten out of all my debt. I don’t have any debts, right? I have lots of cash, I can’t get credit. So I have a really poor credit score and that’s something that I still experience. Shame, guilt, embarrassment around like with my partner, right?

So I think that there’s tons of that that people aren’t talking about or that they’re still embarrassed or feeling like no one can relate. We all relate, right? We’ve all been there. I think it’s like having the trust in yourself, really being confident and vulnerable enough to share what’s going on for you and I try to instil that in my audience and my clients.

But it does stem a lot from what Jen said about because of the core. Maybe it’s not your partner or your husband but it’s yourself. Not believing in yourself enough to know what you want or that you can actually do it because you won’t invest in yourself or you won’t get the results that you want if you stay in non-belief, right?

[0:12:37.2] JH: Right, absolutely. Jodi, what comes up with your clients with your audience, I’m sure some of the same things but is there anything else that comes up?

[0:12:46.7] JH1: It was interesting what you said about beliefs too because Jen, you and I have talked about how everyone has money stories, and they stem from our beliefs. I remember my own story when I had my corporate job, it was all about stability. Paying off debt, getting rid of student loans, paying off my car, all my credit cards and I got to a point where I was in my 20’s and I was debt free and was building cash. I had good credit and all that was good. But when I took on my business, I took on a different belief system because everything I was told and everything I started to believe told me that you go into debt and then you come back from debt.

So after cleaning up that, when I started my business, I started spending ridiculously thinking that this is the way you do business, and it’s not necessarily. It doesn’t have to be, it’s one option. I have my own story around that because I also coach business owners and now I’m in a place where I’m like, “I’m still cleaning it up and I’m coaching people on how to hit different levels of revenue in their business,” and of course there is that other story that goes on in my head like, “Well I didn’t do this.”

Now I’m like preaching, don’t do what I did. When my own business and I think especially as a coach, you have to manage your own stuff when you’re helping other people with theirs too and not put your story on them and infuse it and buy into their stories and stuff like that. So sometimes you just have to listen from a place of holding a safe space because it is scary for people to talk about money and to admit what their situation is because it’s so secret that we don’t even know what the reality is of what’s common, what’s not common, what we’re all dealing with.

If you’re in the US, you can pretty much guarantee nine out of 10 people you’re talking to are in debt. It’s that common but we’re still too ashamed to talk about that. So providing that safe space where people can open up and be honest because when you’re honest about it and you look at reality, you can do something about it.

[0:14:55.5] JH: Right, and I like how you say it. You said something to the extent of that “not putting your money story on them” and I think that’s so critical with everything and I’m seeing it just recently, just a little side note, nothing to do with money but with my son. He is a teenager, he’s out in Europe right now and of course as a mom I’m like freaking out at times but it’s all because I’m thinking to how I grew up and my husband’s like don’t…

[0:15:23.8] JH1: The fear based.

[0:15:25.2] JH: Yeah, just the fear of like — not that I was a bad kid, trust me, I wasn’t a bad kid but what I’ve seen and I don’t want that to happen to him. But my husband, he said basically the same thing, “Don’t already put that story. He is his own individual person,” and I mean I know I’m digressing but it comes back to everything, in your clients, in your family life and your relationship, everything. So I think that’s important. Thanks for sharing that.

What’s also incredible here is we have different stages in life. So Jen, you’re just — not a new born but a baby. Your first baby.

[0:16:02.1] JH1: Yeah, first baby.

[0:16:03.1] JH: Then Adrienne is about to get married and Jodi’s a single, successful — I mean, you’re all successful women. I want to talk to Jen, let’s start with you and tell me a little bit about, at your stage of life of being married, having a new born, what are some money challenges that you are facing?

[0:16:23.1] JH1: Yeah, so I think probably just the biggest one overall is the change of income coming in because I’m working less and so my income is a lot less than it was two years ago and even maybe for last year, it’s half way through the year so we’ll see. But just that change of what I’m bringing in and so for me, it’s more of a, sometimes it feels weird to do things or spend money because I’m not bringing in the same amount as I used to before and I don’t know that it would just — if it’s guilt, but I feel like I second guessed or question it.

“Do I need to buy this? Should I spend this money? Should we do this, should we do that?” That it just is kind of a very different dynamic on it of just not having a lot of extra expendable cash and doing things. But then we’ve done other things like we just bought our first investment property. So doing something like that when I’ve like, I’ve cut back on work is such a great reminder that we’re on the right path and we’re making the right decisions and I remind myself that me not doing what everyone else is doing is what’s allowing us to live this way. What’s allowing me to be at home with our baby, which is allowing us to still be making investments and doing that and saving money to go on trips.

We’re choosing how we spend our money, we’re not going — when you have a seven month old and you don’t live near a lot of family, you don’t go out to dinner every Friday and Saturday night like you did before you had a baby. So in that way, we’re like, “All that money is extra.” Just kind of seeing that the decisions that we’re making and money is going into different pots in there, a little bit less of it coming in but we’re still doing well. So that’s kind of where we are in the new baby world.

[0:18:23.2] JH: That’s awesome, how about you Adrienne? You’re about to get married, looking for a house, all those excitement going on?

[0:18:29.1] AD: Yeah, so for us, like I mentioned, we’re in the process of trying to buy our first home together, we have a rental property now by default because we moved when we owned a property and we were hoping to sell it and we weren’t able to sell it and then we put some renters in there. So now we have our first rental property and we’re trying to buy our first home and as an entrepreneur, I’ve only been an entrepreneur for a year.

So it’s very different to try to get approved even though I am the main bread winner, which is also a big challenge in our relationship with the energy, masculine energy that I bring anyways because I have this very masculine personality, very driven and ambitious and that has been like a real challenge not only that in terms of my personality but then also in the finances and then to start looking for a home and really we need him to have the sole income to get approved for that mortgage and then my credit is bad because of I don’t have any debt, right?

I paid off all the debts so now I have poor credit. Then all the shame and guilt comes up again, “Oh I’m sorry. I’m sorry that we can’t get approved as quickly or for the stuff that we want because of me.” But I also bring the cash flow so I’m like, “I’ll pay for the down payment baby.” That emasculates him even more sometimes. So that’s like a challenge for us even pre marriage so I’m like, “We’ve got to talk about this stuff,” and we try to really bring money conversations, we’re so open about our money and we took Financial Peace University, Dave Ramsey’s course together before we were even engaged.

We were like, “We know that divorce happens a lot of the time because of financial issues. Let’s get on the same page to begin with,” right? So he is a huge help and support in my business but also in my finances and our finances are separate right now but we obviously, we live in the same home already and we don’t have hers and mine necessarily, but I can totally relate to what you’re talking about Jen with feeling guilty about spending certain amounts because I know that he does. He’s actually in that space where I’m like, “No, we can afford that or we can do that trip, I’ll pay for it,” and again I think it’s like making him feel less of a man every time that happens.

So I think that’s the struggle in our household and I think that that’s a rising problem for women that’s why I want to talk about that more because I think it affects your sex life, I think it affects your relationship. So it’s something that I want people to talk about more or I want to talk about more because people out there who are experiencing that, there’s not something wrong with you but you do need to talk about it, right?

[0:21:35.0] JH: Yeah, because money is hard to talk about to begin with and with a partner, it’s hard to talk about. So if you’re making more than your partner, that is definitely something that needs to be done for sure.

[0:21:47.5] JH1: What Jodi said earlier about not putting your money story on someone else. I’ve also learned that the way that you grew up seeing money, that is what you’re programmed to do and chances are, the two of you grew up very differently. So trying to merge that and figure that out and do that, is so hard. Because my husband came from a place of always, “Oh we can’t afford that. We can’t afford that.”

I never — we didn’t have a lot of money growing up but it was just a different mindset I think or it was just that phrase wasn’t used. So I catch him often saying that and it’s like, “Actually no, it’s not that we can’t afford it.”

[0:22:28.1] AD: We’re choosing not to.

[0:22:30] JH1: Right. Or, you don’t think that that’s a value so you don’t want to do that and that’s why you’re saying, “We can’t afford to do that,” which I would much rather you say, “I don’t find value in that,” or, “I don’t want to do that,” versus I don’t want…

[0:22:45.5] AD: Or how can we afford that.

[0:22:47.7] JH1: Yeah. I don’t want Ellie growing up hearing all the time like, “Oh we can’t afford that,” because it’s not the case and we’re setting her up for this mindset of money scarcity, right?

[0:22:58.0] JF: Also for me it was a “savings hoarder”, I call it and talk about that.

[0:23:02.3] AD: That’s my fiancé.

[0:23:03.6] JH: I became a complete savings hoarder, and I didn’t enjoy life. So my husband came in, he was complete opposite and he’s like, “Well we work to make money so we can spend it.”

[0:23:13.1] AD: Right, like, “What’s the point?”

[0:23:14.2] JH: And I’m like, “What?” That was like a whole new concept. I mean besides the necessary living expenses, I was afraid to spend that money because I grew up that way, “We can’t afford it, we can’t afford it.” So that was preprogrammed. That’s interesting that...

[0:23:28.9] AD: Yeah, I’m also like, the full blown entrepreneur. I’m like, “Oh if I want to afford that, I’ll just figure out how to go make the money,” and my fiancée is like, he’s like your husband Jen. He’s like, “We can’t afford that. We can’t afford that.” I’m like, “Well, I’ll figure out how to afford it. I’ll go earn it.”

[0:23:47.8] JH: Oh you’ll show him.

[0:23:48.8] JH: “I’ll go find the money.”

[0:23:49.4] AD: Yeah, “I’ll go work and make the money and then we’ll be fine,” right? Which is, that’s just me as an entrepreneur, I’m so driven that way so I believe that I can have anything that I want if I really value and want it.

[0:24:01.0] JH1: Yeah, that’s the key there, “If you value it.” If you value it, you’ll find a way to afford it. Sometimes a good way or sometimes you’ll just throw your credit card out there, which I don’t.

[0:24:13.4] AD: We’re not approving.

[0:24:14.7] JH1: We don’t approve of that.

[0:24:18.1] JF: It’s so true. I had a woman ask me one time, if you walked out of this store and your car, all four tires were flat, where would you get the money? Because you have the money. You would find the money for four flat tires, you know? It’s exactly what you said, it’s choices. It’s like, what you see the value in, your car needs tires, you’ll find the money for that. But something else might feel like a splurge, it might feel like, “I don’t really need that,” so you wouldn’t spend the money on it. So I love how you put that Jen, it’s not that you can’t afford it, you don’t value it.

[0:24:47.5] AD: You just don’t value it. I think it’s so interesting like the conversations around how we grew up because it’s not just about how we think about money but then what we think our family will think of us or our friends will think of us. That’s like a big thing for my fiancée too because he grew up with no money and that’s like been a big fear, scarcity mindset for him but also like, well what will his mom or his family or the people that he knows from college think about him when we make millions of dollars, right?

That is a whole mind shift for people like, “Oh my god, what are they going to think of us? We’re those people now,” right? That’s like a total mindset, shift as well to start thinking about how you think about becoming wealthy or earning more money because no one’s like afraid of success, right? We’re afraid of what people will think of us when we achieve that success.

[0:25:39.8] JH: Right, right. No, that’s awesome. Now Jodi, I really am excited to hear what you have to say being a single woman. Because I have questions from single women but I can’t relate to that, I was only a single woman so much independently before I went ahead and got married. So you’re an entrepreneur, you’re self-reliant on yourself to bring the income. So what kind of challenge do you have with money as a single woman?

[0:26:01.6] JF: It’s a little bit different because it’s a single income, regardless of whether it would be more or less than a partner, it’s still only a single income but there are pluses and minuses to that because you also get to make all the decisions. I don’t have to check in with anybody to decide on how the money is going to get spent.

[0:26:15.6] AD: You can’t use that as an excuse.

[0:26:16.6] JF: No.

[0:26:17.7] JH1: You’re like, “I value this, we’re going to buy it.”

[0:26:19.7] JF: Yeah, let me go ask my — wait, it’s just me, sorry. But that can be a stressor too, all the decisions are on you and so are the consequences of those decisions where I had this practice but I got rid of it because I was like, “Oh this isn’t really serving me well,” where I documented all my expenditures and money coming in but I would also, I had a special column for like, and I think at the top, I labeled the column like “dumb”. Those dumb decisions like I bought something and it wasn’t as valuable as I thought it was going to be or I didn’t need it.

[0:26:57.4] AD: Dave Ramsey calls that the stupid tax.

[0:27:00.0] JF: Yeah, the stupid tax, exactly. Now I just try to learn the lesson from it without that punishing column staring me in the face but sometimes I want to be reminded to stop and think before I make a money decision. So to counter act some of that, to take some of the pressure off is I surround myself and consult with people who are really smart about money. I don’t feel like I have to make — like ultimately the decision is mine and the consequences are mine, but I will consult people who know a lot more about money than I do before I make a decision and I’m not just talking about my mom and dad.

I’m talking about financial planners, people who are in the insurance, people who are all about safety versus risk, and what are the consequences of some of the decisions and there is — we’re going back to childhood upbringing because I grew up very poor and I’m very cognizant that that mindset sometimes is still with me and it’s hard to get around it and people who have money, think about money very differently than people who are poor.

It’s not just abundance versus lack, there are strategies that are different. Some of your strategies, if you grew up in a poor family, will hold you back from really leveraging the money that you have available. So I’m trying to be wiser about money, not just saving it but earning it in new ways that I hadn’t thought of before. Really leaning into that entrepreneurial side of myself. Also just as a woman and an entrepreneur, asking for the sale.

[0:28:33.8] AD: Oh yeah.

[0:28:35.4] JF: That is killer sometimes. I’ve really come to know that it’s really, for me, it’s about being mission driven and coming from a place of service. Like, “I recognize you have this need, I realize that you’re in pain, where do you want to be instead and can I help you with that? Can I help you with that? Because I’m here to help you, I’m not here to push you or force you into any decision that’s not comfortable. I’m here to be of service to you.”

[0:29:01.7] AD: And knowing that your service is worth money.

[0:29:03.5] JF: Oh yeah.

[0:29:04.0] AD: I think that that’s like where a lot of women go.

[0:29:09.6] JH: She’s not looking at me.

[0:29:12.9] AD: Yeah, they’re like, “Oh why should I get paid for this? I can do it for you for free, it would be so nice for me to help you,” and it’s like, “Yeah but…”

[0:29:18.7] JF: Because we’re wired like if we were living in a village and nobody got paid anything, you would just give and give and giveand that would be just you playing your role but we have to change that mindset. We’re not living in villages anymore. You survive in this village by exchanging money with people. Money for services, you pay people for their services, people pay you for your services, that’s how we all like live in community.

So it’s another — we have this old mindsets from like 200 years ago that just aren’t relevant today in today’s economy and as women and as earners now and as more women become entrepreneurs and even as more women are breaking into higher levels of the corporate and leadership have to realize that they bring a ton of value.

One of the books I’m reading right now is Women Don’t Ask. It wasn’t easy to get through the first part of the book, in fact I had to switch from reading it to the audio book because I needed to just power through it. It was so hard to listen to opportunity after opportunity because the women whose stories were shared just didn’t think to ask for things. We’re waiting for people to say, “You did a good job, here’s what you’ve earned.” That’s not the way the economy works, we have to speak up for ourselves, we have to ask for it.

[0:30:40.4] JH: Right, and this brings, and I know you're talking from an entrepreneurial perspective but also in the corporate world, you can’t be afraid to ask. Or also in this day and age where side hustles are becoming a big thing, especially if you're looking for a way to generate more income, you can’t be afraid to ask and get out there so I’m glad you brought that up.

So this has been fabulous ladies, I want to wrap it up. I know people ask me all the time about money tools and I’m just a simple spreadsheet girl and my bank app, USAA, I love them. That’s pretty much it. So is there a particular tool that you use Jen or are you like me?

[0:31:17.8] JH1: No, I’m like you and I will say, go even more so to say that it’s my husband. We recently switched that role. I think we talked about that on the show. I was — I kind of did all the finances and stuff for a long while and because my husband’s in the Navy so he was gone a lot so it just made more sense. So I was like, “I need to know what’s going on all the time and all the details.”

So last year right after I got pregnant I was really sick and I just was like, “I don’t even want to think about this right now,” and he was like, “I really want to take that over.” So it was just kind of the perfect timing and he kind of does all of that and what we do, we’re both a paper and pen kind of person, it feels good to write it down. But every — he gets paid twice a month, so every two weeks he does the budget and we sit down and we go over it, and we talk about things and it’s like, “Here’s the things that I know are coming up that I have to spend money on.” He’ll say, “Here is what I have coming up that I need to spend money on,” and we’ll be like, “Oh yeah, remember we’re supposed to go do this next month.”

So even though he’s kind of doing all the things, we’re talking about it all the time and the more you talk about it, not that it just becomes easier overnight but you kind of realize, the fights, you can stop them because you know what road you're going down. Just the more you talk about it, it’s just — I think you just become more comfortable saying like you’re not asking, “Hey, can I go get a haircut?” It’s like, “Hey, I have a haircut appointment in two weeks, let’s budget that in.” Like, “Hey, you are going to go do this with the guys, budget in golf money.”

[0:32:57.5] JH: Does uniform come up? I had this conversation with Jodi, does it come up quite often?

[0:33:02.4] JH1: The uniform?

[0:33:02.5] JH: The uniform, replacing the uniform. I’m digressing here, I’m just curious.

[0:33:07.1] JH1: No, my husband is like he’s very type A. So he knows when he’s going to need one and so he’ll take like $25 from this paycheck and then…

[0:33:17.8] AD: How much do these uniforms cost?

[0:33:19.3] JH: Oh my gosh, let’s not talk about that.

[0:33:21.2] JH1: Some of them, his basic one that he wears most every day, like a full set with everything sewn on is just over a hundred dollars. But some of the other ones, the dress ones, we’re talking like five, $600. There are certain times when you make rank that you have to wear a new uniform. So you have to go buy a new $400 jacket but see I look at it as, I used to work in the corporate world…

[0:33:46.5] AD: So if you're buying suits, you would have to spend that anyway?

[0:33:50.3] JH1: Yeah, so I look at it that way.

[0:33:53.0] JH: Sorry, I digressed. Sorry, just curious, for another time.

[0:33:56.0] AD: In the budget line.

[0:33:57.0] JH: For another time.

[0:33:58.4] JH1: There we go. But no, there is a uniform budget line.

[0:33:59.0] JH: Yes, we’ve had that too. We’ve had to definitely add that. Oh my goodness. Adrienne, money tools and apps that you love?

[0:34:05.8] AD: Money tools? I am also super simple. I love Simple banks. So if you use Simple.com.

[0:34:14.2] JF: I had someone just ask me about that today.

[0:34:16.4] AD: Simple is a very cool tool. I also use Mint, which I think is like Simple — it’s just very simple budgeting tools that does it. Like helps you expense stuff very automatically, put it in to the different categories just so you can see it and we also use just like Google spreadsheets so that we’re both shared, me and my fiancée, on that. So he can add to it, I can add to it, we can always pop in and look and see what’s going on. That’s for my business finances as well which I use Wave Accounting.

[0:34:47.5] JH1: I was just going to say, okay I do you use Wave for business?

[0:34:50.5] AD: If you're a business owner out there, a small business owner, you can do lots of your own accounting on Wave and even if you use a CPA when it comes time for taxes, it will be in much better order because I think that a lot of entrepreneurs don’t separate, especially solopreneurs, they don’t separate their business from their personal, which is like a huge disaster.

Pay yourself as if you were an employee of your business, right? I always tell people, AdrienneDorison.com is very different than Adrienne Dorison and Adrienne Dorison doesn’t spend all Adriennedorson.com’s money, you know? Adriennedorson.com has her own money. That business is a business. So like using the Wave and then paying yourself out of that and yeah, we just use simple things like Simple and then Mint.

[0:35:40.1] JH: How about you Jodi?

[0:35:41.5] JF: Yeah, I would say, nothing has been more effective for me than an Excel spreadsheet. I think you can put as much detail as you want into it and it’s easy to use, but if people are not spreadsheet people, I know not everyone is. I love me some spreadsheets but not for everyone but in my business I’ll use QuickBooks because I have all of my credit cards, my bank accounts, all tied in.

They automatically go in and I just code them and then it remembers what everything is and then I just approve everything as it’s coming in and when tax season comes around, it’s easy to just hand over to my tax person but ditto on the tools that they’ve recommended too. I mean, when it comes to it, spreadsheets for me are like, if you're down with that, there’s nothing better. You can create it how you want it.

[0:36:29.2] JF: Yeah, that’s beautiful.

[0:36:30.6] JH: This has been wonderful, I loved hearing form all the three of you, it’s been fabulous, I appreciate it.

[0:36:35.8] AD: Yeah, thanks for having us.

[0:36:36.7] JH1: Thank you.

[0:36:37.6] JH: Yeah, thanks for being on.

[0:36:40.6] JF: Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:36:41.6] JH: So what did you think? Those ladies, Jen, Adrienne and Jodi were just so amazing, so transparent, we had some great talks. But I want to hear your thoughts. Did you agree on some of those things or maybe have some other perspective that you would love to share? Because I want to hear that from you.

If you do have it, share it in the Facebook group. If you’re not in the Facebook group, join us at Jenhemnphill.com/community. Here is the thing, in there we have money conversations and I know money can be hard to talk about. But the Facebook group will help you have those money conversations because we’re all in it, we have that same interest in bettering our relationship with our money and managing our money better.

So you’re going to be surrounded with likeminded people, and once you start having those money conversations and becoming more comfortable, you’re going to become more confident. Once you become more confident, it’s going to propel you into action and once that, you’re propelled into action, guess what? You’re going to be achieving more amazing things with your money. I hope that you join me in there if you’re not already in there.

So in today’s show notes that you can find at jenhemphill.com/justladies I will be sure to include where to find Jen, Adrienne and Jodi because I know, I think they’re amazing and I’m sure that you think they’re amazing so that way you can connect with them, learn more about them, see what they’re up to. So they’re definitely inspiring ladies. I want to take a moment to thank you for joining me in this bonus episode and I will see you again Thursday for our next regularly scheduled episode.

Take care and I’ll talk to you then.

[END]