What It Means To Make Decisions Solely About Money With Patricia Talavera | HMM 27

EPISODE 27

[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]

[00:00:28] JH: Hello this is Jen Hemphill, thank you so much for tuning in from wherever you're listening from, whether it's on a drive in a car or you're taking a walk, or maybe you're listening to this with a friend, who knows? I really, really appreciate you. It means the world to me that you're taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to this podcast.

Today I've got another guest for you to give you yet another perspective and another money story. So on today's episode we will learn what lesson our guest, Patricia learned on a middle school field trip and how it impacted her. She will also share how and why they buy all their cars in cash, and then she also shares what leaving her job taught her about money.

So I'm gonna go ahead and share with you a little bit about Patricia. So our guest Patricia Talavera is one half of the dynamic duo behind Save Your Time Biz Solutions is the name of her company. It's a family run business, which actually I'm gonna do a little spoiler alert which she runs with her twin sister, isn't that cool? So again it's a family run business with tech and design talent up the wazoo.

And SYT Biz Solutions takes women entrepreneurs who are doing it themselves, so DIY-ing it - I don't know how I would say it - to the next level. Patricia's a pro at helping women entrepreneurs not only learn how to delegate the tech stuff, but focus on doing good work and expanding their business. Her favorite part of the business and that part that comes most naturally is making sure that everything is running smoothly.

So let's go ahead and meet Patricia.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:34] JH: Welcome Patrica to the Her Money Matters Podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you here.

[00:02:41] PT: Thanks so much for having me.

[00:02:43] JH: Well I am excited to have you here and recently we just got connected so I'm getting to know you a little bit and I'm really looking forward to know you more. So are you ready to dive in with the questions?

[00:02:56] PT: Yep.

[00:02:58] JH: Perfect, perfect. Well Patricia, please go ahead and tell us a little bit more about you? We know about you the professional, but tell me more about you the woman, the mom — if you're a mom — the sister, the aunt. Tell us a little background about you, maybe something you haven't shared before and that you're willing to share?

[00:03:19] PT: Okay. Well I am a mom to a three year old girl, she's turning four in December and I just celebrated nine years of marriage with my high school sweetheart.

[00:03:34] JH: Oh congratulations! That's exciting.

[00:03:35] PT: Thank you! [Laughs] Thank you. So there's that. And I work with my twin sister who also happens to live down the street from me, which makes it really convenient cause I get to walk to work.

[00:03:49] JH: Wow! So now you have a twin sister, and not only that, you work together in the business, and she lives right there. Wow, that is awesome. That is definitely very convenient. That's exciting. And so how long have you all been working together in your business then?

[00:04:07] PT: We started our original business about five years ago when she was a military wife and I was willing to quit my corporate job. But things have been kind of happening, I was in grad school and babies were born. So we really only started trying to grow our business about two years ago when we rebranded Save Your Time Biz Solutions and started doing WordPress websites

[0:04:32] JH: Okay.

[0:04:35] PT: But I mean technically it’s been like five years.

[0:04:37] JH: Okay, perfect, perfect. And I’d like to know a little bit about how you grew up around money. Share with us like growing up, how, what you heard, what you experienced, the conversations maybe you had with family, parents, those type of things?

[0:04:54] PT: Okay, well I mean I think I knew early on that there was something different. I remember we were on a field trip I think it was for like my seventh grade class and when I was in middle school, I think we used to get $20 a week for allowance.

[0:05:12] JH: Okay, wow, that’s good.

[0:05:13] PT: Which sounds like a lot of money. It didn’t occur to me how much money that was until we went to go on a field trip and one of my classmates had $20 and she said I saved for weeks to get $20 and that was kind of when I, I’m like, “Wait, what? How much do you get because I get $20 a week but you just said you had to save to get to $20.”

[0:05:40] JH: Right.

[0:05:40] PT: That was kind of what’s started my thinking of, “Wait, how much money do my parents make?” I knew we had a decent amount of money because we had a house and my parents each had a car and I knew we had some kind of money plus my mom’s worked two jobs for as long as I can remember. I knew we weren’t like broke, broke but I actually had no concept of how much money my parents were bringing in until I started looking around at other people.

But I mean other than that, my parents didn’t really talk to us about money except for the fact that you should work to make money even if you don’t necessarily like what you do because you need money, because of your life. That’s pretty much the only message that I got from them is that a job is a job whether or not you enjoy what you’re doing.

[0:06:31] JH: Okay, they instilled the work ethic and importance of working too to make money. Tell me, from that day, when you were on that field trip and you realize, well you knew you got $20 a week and then the person on the bus had been saving that $20 for who knows how long. Tell me, how did that change? Because at that moment you were already getting $20. Did that change how you spent the money, tell us a little bit about that.

[0:07:05] PT: Yeah, I would say I started to be a little bit more careful of how I was spending my money because I think it’s easy to take it for granted when you know you have money coming in all the time. I started to be a little bit more careful about how I spent it but I still would say that I didn’t necessarily know what it meant to have that kind of money in my pocket until much later.

[0:07:31] JH: Gotcha, and when was that much later? When was it that you realized you had no other realization on that?

[0:07:38] PT: Probably not until, honestly like college. Because when I got to college and my parents were paying all of my bills but they also gave me money and were like, “Okay, this is all the money that you get, make it work until next month.” So college was when I first started going to the grocery store by myself and buying all that stuff for myself because even though I had a meal plan for campus, it only covered I think 10 meals a week.

That means I couldn’t eat there every meal because I didn’t have enough meal plan. I would cook my own food and order my own food and that money that they gave me also included going out with my friends. That was really the time when I started to look at, “Okay, I have this much money and I need to make it last and these are the things I need to buy in the meantime,” type thing.

[0:08:32] JH: Right, okay, perfect. I like that. Currently, are you would you say, because you’re married and you got a child, are you the money manager in your home or do you divvy up the task or how does that work in your family?

[0:08:48] PT: No, I handle all of the money and all of the bills. I’ve done that, I mean my husband and I have been together I think going on 14 years and ever since we got together I’ve been handling the money. Because he had a job right out of high school and he’s been working since high school. I’ve been handling all that stuff since we were together like really early on.

[0:09:12] JH: Oh wow, so even before marriage? Interesting. So 14 years, you’ve been together and you said nine years you’ve been married. Tell us a little bit about how it’s managed, do you have a certain system, a way that maybe once a month or twice a month you sit down, you look at the money, you pay your bills, tell us a little bit about that.

[0:09:38] PT: Honestly, it’s mostly me. I have a spreadsheet of the bills that need to be paid and then a lot of them are automatic but the ones that aren’t then I just make sure that they get paid and the bills that need to get paid and he doesn’t really know much about what’s going on. I mean I don’t hide anything from him, it’s not like we have a ton of debt I forgot to tell him about, but he doesn’t rely keep up with the day to day stuff.

Although that’s actually something I’m trying to change right now because we’re getting ready to switch roles where I’m more of the bread winner and he’s more of like the stay at home parent. All this stuff is going to be his job soon. I need to sit down with him and actually start talking to him about everything that’s going on and how everything works so that he’s not just like drowning when the time comes.

[0:10:29] JH: Right. So basically you use a spreadsheet, you automate most of the bills that you can. You’re more of a spreadsheet — you don’t use a software and you stick to the spreadsheet. And do you sit down like once, twice, how often do you sit down to do to take a look and do all these things?

[0:10:51] PT: Usually on pay day so it’s twice a month.

[0:10:53] JH: Okay, perfect, perfect. And tell me a little bit about the best money you’ve spent?

[0:11:03] PT: The best money I’ve spent would have to be on a coaching program. I didn’t really get the results from it that I wanted but it kind of led to other stuff that led to other stuff. I think it all started with the fact that I was willing to make a leap into that program. Even when that didn’t work out, when I got contacted by the next coach who I really felt like was a better fit for me and what I was trying to accomplish, I went ahead and made that leap as well. Since then, my business has grown at a much faster rate in the last six month than it had for the prior two years.

[0:11:45] JH: Wonderful, wonderful. And how about on your personal life? What would you say has been the best money you’ve spent?

[0:11:57] PT: Probably cars, we buy all our cars in cash so we don’t have to worry about a monthly thing and it’s cheaper in insurance because they’re all older cars. It’s just nice to know that no matter what else, at least I own something, like this is mine, no one can take that thing.

[0:12:13] JH: Right. You say you buy older cars and do you set money, you save towards your next car automatically or tell us how you managed to buy your cars in cash every time?

[0:12:28] PT: Well the first time — we usually buy cars when we get huge sum of money like when we had a tax return.

[0:12:37] JH: Okay.

[0:12:37] PT: Then we bought my car. Then the other time, the most recent car I had, my mom bought it for me in exchange for a babysitting arrangement with my sister so she paid me all my money up front because I agreed to do this arrangement and that ended up paying for the car that I needed in cash. Anything else that kind of comes along, we just deal with it as it comes because right now we just got gifted my father in law’s car so we only had to pay the titling fee and $10 to transfer it instead of paying to register the car and all that.

[0:13:12] JH: Okay, perfect, perfect. And what would you say is your best money memory?

[0:13:19] PT: My best money memory was getting paid all at once for one of my website projects because I had just raised my prices and I was still kind of shaky when I would tell people this is how much it costs and then I ran into this client that was just like, “Oh that sounds great,” and then she made the payment all at once, it was like the biggest cash payment that we have ever gotten. So I think it was really great because it just really reinforced that we were moving in the right direction with raising our price system and the kind of clients that we were attracting.

[0:13:57] JH: Oh beautiful. And how about your best money memory on your personal side? You knew I was going to ask that, right?

[0:14:05] PT: That’s a good question. I think honestly, I don’t know if this is going to make any sense but to me the best money memory I had was when I quit my job because I was young and right out of college and I accepted the first job that I got, which actually got offered before I even graduated. It was a lot of hours, it was more money than I would have imagined getting right out of college but it was a lot of hours and it was a really stressful working environment and my husband told me, “It’s not worth it. If you want to quit, walk out right this minute, just come home and we’ll figure it out.”

[0:14:49] JH: Aw, a very supportive husband, I love that.

[0:14:52] PT: Yeah. I actually hung on for a few more months but it got to the point where I was like, “You know what? I can’t do this anymore,” I accepted a nannying job because that’s my background, is taking care of children. It was 70% pay cut or some massive number like that.

But I just remembered thinking to myself, “It means so much to not have to make my decision only about money,” because my sanity is worth something too. My marriage is worth something my health is worth something. So to be able to walk away from that and for my husband to be so supportive of me to say, “You know what? It’s just money, we can always make money, just come home right now and just don’t even worry about it anymore.”

[0:14:52] JH: I love that story.

[0:15:38] PT: That means a lot.

[0:15:39] JH: Yes, thanks for sharing that. That is a beautiful story. Kudos to your husband, I love seeing those supportive spouses like that, it’s a beautiful thing. Tell me about your most favorite money guru celebrity? Who would you say that is?

[0:15:59] PT: That would have to be Denise Sheffield Thomas, she’s the author of Get Rich Lucky Bitch. What I love about her stuff is like, you know, prior to her, I had read The Secret and I was looking into all that stuff and I’m all for the laws of attraction and all that, I do believe in that and I do think that you can create your reality if you focus in all the right things, you’ll attract all the right things, I believe in all that but I also think that what was missing form some of that is the work within yourself that you have to do like the forgiveness and getting past your money block.

It doesn’t matter if you win a million dollars, if you’ve convinced yourself you’re not worth it and then you will go through that million and then two months down the line you’ll be like, “Wait, how am I now better off than I was before?” I think that the big part of what really attracted me to her is that she’s like, “You’re not just going to get all the stuff you want by sitting here, thinking about it. You have to put in some work.”

[0:17:00] JH: Absolutely, take some action. Yup.

[0:17:02] PT: Yeah, whether it’s scary action or forgiveness or whatever. All that stuff matters and I think that’s a big part of it, especially when it comes to forgiveness, forgiving yourself for past money mistakes and be alive and, “Okay, it happened, there it is, let’s move on from it because you can’t keep beating yourself up forever. You know what I mean?

[0:17:22] JH: Absolutely. I’m a big fan of hers too, she has a lot, I’ve learned so much from her. Lot of good stuff, down to earth, genuine, definitely got to love her. Patricia, as you know, this podcast is all about making money simple and taking control of it. How would you finish this sentence? Her Money Matters because ____.

[0:17:50] PT: It makes her more powerful.

[0:17:53] JH: I like that. That is beautiful Patricia, I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you so much for being here, tell us where is the best place for people to find you and learn more about you?

[0:18:06] PT: The best place is actually on our website which www.sytbiz.com.

[0:18:15] JH: Okay, perfect and I’ll definitely make sure that I include that in the show notes. Again Patricia, thanks so much for being here and sharing more of you on the podcast and hopefully we’ll talk and connect soon.

[0:18:30] PT: Sounds great.

[FINAL MESSAGE]

[0:18:31] JH: Alright, thank you. You’ve got to meet Patricia and learn more about her and I hope you enjoyed getting to know her as much as I enjoy chatting with her. A really big take away from my conversation with Patricia was her lesson that she learned when she left her job. She mentioned about how making decisions doesn’t always have to be about money because your sanity matters and your health also matters.

So of course in this world, I know and we all know that we need money to survive and we’re all guilty of letting our perceptions of what that means, what needing money is in terms of how much and everything and that in turn gets us stuck. I’ll explain to you because I’m going to share with you a story from my experience.

I know personally I’m guilty of this. I know that it has happened for me more times than I care to count and really, the most painful one for me that I’m going to share with you happened nine years ago. Nine years ago, we had moved yet again, we found out we were expecting our second child, we had a house that we had been renting and since the market was booming, naturally when the tenants, our lease had finished, we decided to put it on the market.

Because the market was booming, it was just the right time to sell but with our luck, once we had put the house on the market to sell, the market just happened to crash, that’s just our luck. And so we continued to try to rent it but then we didn’t have luck with the tenants and they would disappear and so we try to sell the house again and they just wasn’t selling. It took a good while for it to sell.

We were paying rent and mortgage on a one income. Fortunately for us, we were good savers that helped but the savings, when you’re paying a mortgage and rent and especially the mortgage, it just tends to vanish, your savings are going to vanish quickly. So I personally was just really stressed and being pregnant didn’t help because if you’ve had children before, when you’re pregnant, your emotions, those hormones and everything, it just — you have these ups and downs, I felt the need to bring more income quickly, that’s how I felt.

Even though we still had some savings, the savings were going quickly, so I felt the pressure and I pressured myself too to find that income. So I did find a part time job that I worked for a bit until the baby was born and then I ended up becoming a realtor because they told me that was a flexible career or flexible option. So if you’re thinking about it, I’m telling you, it’s not very flexible and you have to work a lot of hours. But anyways, that’s on a side note.

My second son was born and because of the real estate job, like I mentioned, you have to work more hours than I thought or that was explained to me and I learned it already when I was on the job. I felt that I needed to find day care for my son. Of course my husband supported me and it was something that I didn’t want to do but I felt, well I actually pressured myself to do because I felt I needed to make that money right away, therefore I looked for — I was looking for a part time day care, that’s all, really that I was looking for by the way, that’s really, really hard to find here in the states, but I managed to find it.

Basically — I’m trying to prep myself here because I’m a ball. I’m not going to do it. I don’t want you to witness me balling. Okay, hold on a second. My husband’s a very private man, I’m not going to, I’m going to spare you the intimate details because he’d absolutely have my head if he knew that if I shared with you all these intimate stories, intimate details. I’m not going to share with you that.

But long story short, I made some quick decisions okay? Because I was stressed about the finances, notice that I said, “I”. Even though my husband and I are a team, I made these decisions because I was pressuring myself because I was stressed about the finances. He wasn’t as stressed but I was stressed, I was making this quick and hasty decisions. This decision really lead to a nightmare for us when our child was injured at the day care.

I’m not going to get in to that because that’s where it all start balling but in hindsight, if I look back and reflect back at that time, I could have taken more time to find other ways on to make money or maybe other ways that would have avoided me putting my child in daycare. Now, I’m not saying here daycare is bad, this was just a situation that happened to us and not all day care is bad.

I’m not saying that but for us, I just felt like I could have looked at other options but because there was so much stress that I put on myself, that’s what I did. It is what it is. I really made those decisions solely on money and fear if you think about it, that’s what it came down to. Based on what I felt like the money that we needed and the fear of not having any money. Then, if I think back to it too, it was two years that I lived on a lot of stress and then those two years I gained weight, I felt completely awful, I think I was actually probably depressed at a portion of the time if I’m honest with you.

Talking to my husband about money was super tense, it had never been that tense and then of course, the incident with my son just made it even more painful. I wanted to share with you that so you’re going to have an example and look at your own life and to see when you’ve made those decisions solely on money and fear and what it really looked like for you.

Reflect on that because that could be just a lesson or some reflection to maybe be more careful the next time you’re put in a position to maybe finances are tight or whatever they may be and you are quick to react based on what you feel is how much is lacking or the fear that you feel. I told you, I’ve already been guilty, I shared with you a story and I’m sure you have too. Just take a moment to reflect on that and see what it has looked like for you when you’ve made those decisions.

That is it, it’s a wrap for today so I really want to thank Patricia for joining us and sharing her story. It’s always really neat to hear these different stories. It’s always really neat to hear this different stories because you definitely take something away from it, I know I have with each conversation that I’ve had with each of my guest. Make sure you, you can go ahead and check out the show notes on where to find Patricia at Jenhemphil.com/27, as in episode 27 an there’s also a transcript. If you didn’t know, we have transcripts.

And also before I forget, if you have not heard, I have created a community just for you. It’s the Her Money Matters community that I invite you to join. It’s on Facebook or if you’re on Facebook like me and tend to be on Facebook quite a lot, I really invite you to join us. You can find that in the show notes and also you can go to jenhemphill.com/community. So I really invite you to join, right now there’s women from different parts of the world so it’s going to be a fun group to be a part of.

Really, the purpose and intention of this group is to provide a safe place for support and money conversations. Money is a theme and it’s a topic that we don’t talk about enough, that we’re afraid, there’s all this emotions involved with it and I want to make it a safe place for you to come and discuss your fears, your frustrations, challenges, those type of things. There’s going to be other likeminded women there to support you and cheer you on.

Also, another purpose of the group is really to celebrate each other’s successes no matter how big or small they may seem, here’s the deal, we are so focused on what we don’t have or what we want to have that we forget what we have already accomplished. I want this place to be a place where we can celebrate you and those accomplishments that you’ve already had.

Also, finally, the third purpose of the group is really to continue conversation from the episodes of the Her Money Matters podcast because that would be fun to do, I would love to hear your insights, your takeaways, maybe things that you want to hear more about guest that you want me to interview, those sort of things.

That is it finally, even though I said it was a wrap earlier, I just almost forgot to mention that. Thanks again for joining me today and we will talk again next Thursday.

[END]