What is Your Money Relationship Status?

Hey, girl. Welcome to the get yout Guy Coaching podcast. My name is Anwar White, but you can just call me your own personal dating and relationship coach. Each week you'll hear actionable advice, tips, and strategies that you can implement in your own love life. I'm talking about healing your heart, dating effectively, and understanding men so that you can. You guessed it. Get your guide. Are you ready to level up your love life? All right, let's go.

I never felt the way I do without anyone but you.

Hello, my loves. And thank you so much for joining the get your Guy coaching podcast. I have something to tell you. I have someone here who is going to blow your mind.

So, obviously the title of this podcast is what is your money Relationship Status. But I have someone who is one of a kind. There is no one out there that does what she does. Her name is Wendy Petties, and she is the Date youe Money coach. She is a money and dating coach, and she will tell you all of it, but it's like the same thing. So that's what we're going to talk about today. But, Wendy, girl, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to talk to you.

Thank you for having me. I am so excited to talk about this and to hang with you again. Girl. Girl, yes, yes.

We were in Vegas cutting it up not too long ago. Yes. Acting a fool and all of it.

All of that.

But, girl, tell these people what you do and why you're so amazing.

Well, thank you. Thank you. So I am an mba. I'm a psychologist, and I'm a sex educator. And I know, I know, I know. I know that when you handle your. The way you handle your money is the way you handle your dating life. I know it. Absolutely. And so that's how this came about, because we started talking about it and we were like, we do the same things for people. We try and help people to manage their. Their lives in a way that really suits them. And part of it is about your money.

Yeah, definitely. Now, why is this so important to you?

Oh, so one thing you'll learn about me is I have no shame and no guilt, and I don't allow it in other people either. We have to give ourselves a little grace. So I'm going to tell. Tell the truth. Okay. So I filed bankruptcy. I filed bankruptcy. You know, I worked on Wall Street. I made a whole bunch. A bunch of money. And then I worked for an airline and didn't make a whole bunch of money. So worked on Wall street, couldn't be myself but made a lot of money. Worked on. Worked for an airline and was absolutely being myself, but wasn't making any money. And I was sick throughout the whole time. I wound up having to file bankruptcy for $310,000 worth of debt. And it was shameful. It was difficult. It was painful. And I just said, I'm never going to be in this situation again. Okay? Now, what got me out of that situation was remembering my early training. Way before I got my mba, I had been trained as a sex educator.

Girl.

I was going out to communities of color in the height of HIV and AIDS time. When I first came out, I was going out to communities of color and talking to women about how to get their men to use condoms. I was the condom negotiator. Girl.

Yes, girl.

And I was trained, and I was in my stupid 20s at the time, and I had my little flip chart and I was trained, and I could. I could just see myself with my little skirt and my little flip chart and my markers and stuff. And I was gonna go and tell these women, and these women were like, honey, honey, let me just tell you something. We appreciate you coming out here and talking to us and trying to save our lives and. And we hear you, but we are not having sex with our men. This is, you know, gets into what you do, too.

Yeah.

We're not having sex with our men the. Out of pleasure and out of all this. You know, like, we. We find joy in this. This is kind of transactional, you know.

Obligational.

Yes, obligation and transactions. We. We feel like we have to in order for him to do something else, or we feel like, let's do this so that we can get him to do something else. It was not about pleasure. And so I started. I was shocked, first of all, you know, because in my stupid 20s, I thought I was doing. And I use that facetiously, but I was really in my stupid 20s, you know, like, everybody 20 is not stupid. But I was okay. So no offense to anybody in their 20s who thinks they know it all, too, you know, I'm just saying I see you. And that was me.

Yes.

But anyway, I began to dive into this notion of pleasure and how it can affect our psyche. And I saw the sadness in a lot of these women's eyes. I saw that the. It just broke my heart. So I was on this quest to figure out, you know, how do we connect pleasure, which I know can fill us up and give us confidence and make us feel good and we can make better choices and choices that serve us no Judgment in the choices, but just choices that serve us. And so I began to have this quest. And I was asking all my friends, asking all my family, are you having sex without pleasure? Like what? You know, like at the Thanksgiving table.

They would be like, girl, a mess. A mess.

But anyway, I began to dive into it. So I've been trained as a sex educator. I got the psychology degree because I wanted to kind of understand that connection between sex and pleasure. And then I got an mba. And so originally I was going to start a brothel for women, but that's a whole other podcast.

Girl, you and me both been wanting to be the madam.

Yes, yes, yes. That's what I did my thesis about. But I digress. Anyway, I. Once I filed bankruptcy and I was at my lowest, I went back to what I knew to be so that I had to fill myself up with pleasure. And that meant little baby steps, little things like deciding, is this the meal that I want to have? Are these the clothes that I want to wear? Is the. Are these relationships that I have? You know, friends, family, whatever, are they serving me? How are they serving me? And it started with things like pension. You know, like a pen.

Yeah.

As I'm writing, is it getting on my nerves? Because we all know that pen that doesn't write anymore, girl, every two weeks.

I was having the shitty ones and now I have these high quality ones. Yeah.

Because we can choose those things, but you got to feel good in order to choose that for yourself in order to do that. And I went from bankruptcy, $310,000 worth of debt to being worth $1.3 million at last count.

Yes. I love that.

By filling myself up.

Yeah. I love this. I'm so glad that you're giving numbers and figures because nobody talks about money, but we're going to talk about money.

We're going to talk about.

We're going to talk about it. Yes. Why aren't people talking about money?

I think like, sex, you know, we're taught to sex, race, politics, money. All of those things that are like, we whisper about, you know, we're not. We don't stand up and say, yeah, this is how I'm getting down. Yeah, this is what I make ye. Yeah, this is my. These are my politics. I think we're conditioned that way. And I think it has to stop. It has to stop. If we can't have these real conversations, we can't find out what we don't know. Okay. We may think that six figures, like people are like, oh, I can't wait to make six figures. But people don't realize and really think about six figures spans from $100,000 and a penny to almost a million dollars.

Yep.

So what do you really want? You know what I mean? And we have.

So you're telling the people, find that number.

Yes, Find the number. And not just the number, but the why behind it. Because that will anchor you to actually getting it.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I talk about clarity. We gotta get real clear about where we are right now so we can even see the gap between what we really want and what we're doing right now. You know, we have to. We have to. We have to. And I think people. Like I said, people do not talk about it because we've been conditioned not to. We've either been told directly that that's not what good girls or good boys talk about. You know, like, that's improper to say that. Even with people we love. Yeah.

You know, I think especially with people that we love.

Right.

Especially being of color. Like, our parents weren't really talking about money.

No, they weren't.

Not at all.

And we're not blaming them because they weren't talked to about money either.

That's right.

You know what I mean? And I keep talking about shame and guilt and blame. I do. Because I think we have to get that out into the conversation, too, because so many are. They don't want to look at things. They don't want to talk about things. I would imagine in your work, also, in the work that I do with people, it covers the sex stuff and the relationship stuff and it covers the money stuff because it's so aligned. We have secrets about things that we're ashamed about or that we don't want to talk about because we don't want anybody to know.

Right. You know, I think I'm so glad that you brought up that point about shame.

Right.

And as we think about our families, I think our parents and our parents. Parents had a lot of shame about the money that they had or the money that they wanted. The number that they wanted and they couldn't get because of a variety of different circumstances.

I think it's important to note that also this is not a quick fix. And there are all kinds of things, barriers and obstacles and challenges in our way. Especially as people of color. Yeah, especially as people of color. A lot of it is in our head, A lot of it is in our mind. A lot of it is in our heart. A lot of it is in our body. It is ingrained in us. So this is deep Work.

Oh, my God. The deepest.

What?

The deepest.

You know, and so it's got to be done in a safe space with people who are like, yeah, me too. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, like, I get that that has happened to me, you know, that that's why it's so important to me that we have these conversations and I do the work that I do in the way that I do.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

All right, girl.

Well, you have a variety of different statuses for our money. Our money relationship statuses. I think status is.

Talk to us. It's not stat eye. You know how they do that.

I was just thinking, too, and I was like, I don't think that's it. Oh, yeah.

Can you break it down for us? Like, I think that we, you know, we will land on one of this. One of these money statuses, and I want people to understand where they are and how they can get from where they are to where they perhaps want to be.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think there's a couple of things for me. The first step. There's three steps to even going through this process. You got to kind of figure out if you're really ready for a relationship, you know what I mean?

And so you don't really have a choice, do we?

Well, much like in dating, you do because you're. You are ready or you're not, or you're getting ready or you're. You know what I mean? So. So there are people who don't have money on their radar at all and don't have relationships on their radar at. Okay, so I think finding out how ready you are and if you're really ready is really the first step. Then, much like dating, we have to find out who we've been attracting before. So what kind of money have you been attracting? Does your money come to you and hang out with you, you know, or does your money come and slip through your fingers like a friend without benefits? You know what I mean? Like, it may show up on payday. It may show up on a birthday, you know, little. Little celebrations. Maybe it's there, but. But then that's done, that's gone. You know what I mean? So we need to look at the attraction phase. Then we get into pre commitment, which is. Okay, so now I'm really understanding what I've done in the past. Let me see what I can do next in order to really set myself up for success. So what have I been telling myself about all my past relationships and all my past money situations? You know, that you Know, either all men aren't fill in the blank or all men are fill in the blank with your money. It comes up as, you know, you gotta hustle and grind, you know, to get money, or money doesn't grow on trees, or every single time I get some money, somebody needs something. That's what I hear a lot. You know what I mean? We move through there to get you to commitment. Okay, I know these things about me, and let me really look at my money. Let me really see what's going on and what part I'm playing in this. You know, in my. In my work, we talk about debt being a blessing. Debt being a blessing.

Same.

So usually when people talk about debt, they're like, you know, it's weighing me down. It's horrible. And we have to start to look at things as the truth. The debt is this. I owe X amount of dollars to whatever. Rent, a center, Sears, you know, cable, whatever it is, Sallie Mae, college, Sallie Mae, whatever it is, I owe this amount. So that's the first thing. And then instead of feeling bad about it, we have to find a way to make it not reflect our own worth, but to find out what are the blessings in there. So, for instance, you said Sallie Mae, okay, you have $80,000 worth of student debt, for example. But that, first of all, you had the ability to get that credit, okay? And not everybody can. So that is a blessing. Also, who did you meet at college? What kind of opportunities has that led to in your work, in your life? You know, like, let's look at it for the full experience and not connect what you see as a bad thing and make that feel like you are now a bad person. Yeah. You know, you have to be whole. I know you talk about this. You have to be whole before you can be with someone else. You have to be whole with your money and independent and fully single. Because. Because that's. That's really what we're trying to do is, you know, we ain't getting you all booed up. We trying to make sure that you are single and whole and independent for yourself, you know, so that you can move on to the next step, which is bliss. It's sexy, juicy, yummy bliss with your money. And that's when you have. You are clear about where you are. You have the confidence to something about it. And then we get into doable steps, which are, now what now what now how do I actually fix these things and make sure that I'm set up for success for the rest of my life? So that's, that's a long explanation, but that's really the process that I take people through, and it is aligned to how they show up in their relationships.

So we are looking to be single slash independent status as the final point to our, like, money relationship journey.

Absolutely. Right. Absolutely.

Yeah. I wanted to clarify that because I think it's important. Good. So you talked about clarity, confidence, and competence as it relates to getting to our single status.

Right.

What sort of, what sort of, like, can we break down the clarity and the confidence and the competence a little bit more? Like when you say clarity, what do you mean? And how can I be confident with my money and then therefore competent?

Yeah, yeah. So. So clarity for me is about in, in this instance and your listeners. I'm going to give them some concrete things that they can do like right now. Okay. For the clarity piece. So when you're looking into clarity with your money, a lot of times we have blinders on. We do not want to look in our bank account.

No, we don't.

Okay. We do not want to look at our credit report or our credit score. And so. But you have to get comfortable with what is before you can get to what you want or what you want to have. So one thing that I have people do is in the clarity phase is think about how you are really treating your money, how you're really treating it. So for the listeners and for you, my friend, I want you to think about, where is the money in your house? Is it in and. And, and like, you came and hung out with me in Vegas. So when we pulled out the money of your wallet or whatever, is there junk in that wallet? Are there receipts in that wallet? Is the money, you know, put in in order so that it's not just crumpled? Is it just stuck in your pocket? You know, for the ladies out there? Is it in your purse, your pocketbook? Is it thrown in the bottom of your bag? Is your bag junkie? You know, because money doesn't want to hang out with you if you're going to treat your. Your space that way, it's just like you wouldn't bring a human being in that you wanted to spend some time with. And your house is all junky or they got dust on their feet because, you know, because you didn't sweep for the last six months. Okay. So that getting clear is. It's just a little exercise. Just think about where you keep your money. And it's paper money. It's our credit cards. It's the change. Do you throw the change on your dresser or in your drawer or is there a beautiful bowl or jar or something that you keep it in? It's the way we treat it. So that's how we get real clear about how we're really, really treating our money.

I love that.

It's really a simple thing to do and can be life changing to really think about. Huh? Now it's important to get clear because once you know, then you can do something about it.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's right.

The second thing is about confidence. So confidence. This one is a little fun. So confidence is about juicing up your body, feeling sexy and yummy and delicious at all times and at will. At will. Okay. I think I did it in front of you. We're sitting there and I need something from the waiter. I just turn it on. I don't care if that waiter is someone that I would do or not. Okay.

I believe flirting is making you feel good by making someone else feel good. And so it is about turning yourself on just at will.

Let's stop there. Because I think it's really important. I think for so many of my listeners and clients or potential clients, they think of flirting as something that is for the other person, but it actually can be for you. It's such an amazing reframe. Right. That actually flirting, when you're flirting with other people, you're also flirting with yourself, right? Yes.

And it doesn't have to be sexual. It is about feeling good and making someone else feel good. Genuinely, genuinely. Like, don't use it for evil or manipulation because it will backfire. Okay. And you may get yourself in some sticky situation.

We don't want that.

We don't want that. But when you flirt, when you can turn yourself up on, and turn yourself up, you just feel good. And then you share it with someone else and they smile and they get a twinkle in their heart and you, you walk away with a little pep in your step.

Yeah.

So the tip that I teach there is about a tail, okay? So I want you and your listeners to imagine you had a tail on your butt, Okay? A tail. Okay. So what kind of tail might you have? Tell me about the tail that just came, girl.

My tail. The first thing that came into my head was a dinosaur's tail.

Woo. Okay, now imagine, imagine that whenever you need to feel like, I got this, I'm raising my prices, I'm gonna negotiate a raise, I'm gonna reach out to someone that I might be a little shy about. You put that dinosaur tail on.

Okay.

When you put it on your Butt. A dinosaur moves in a very distinct way, right? Yeah. And it. And from the psychological perspective, once you call into play any part of your body, your whole body responds. And so if I have a dog tail on, then the way I move is a little different than the way I move when that dinosaur tail is on. And so it seems silly, but I'm telling you, I use it when I go on stage to speak. I use it when I walk into the bank and I need to handle something.

Yes, ma'. Am.

I use it when I want to. To ask someone to do something for me. I use it all the time. I put that tail.

What do you have?

It depends, because I have lots of tails.

Okay. What is the tail that you use the most?

The tail that I use the most is probably the dog. It's probably the dog. It's the dog and the dragon. Actually, I use a dragon tail. The dog is like, when I need to be, like, high powered, energized. And the dragon is like when I need to be centered, when I need to just get into my groove and get into that centered part of myself, then I put that dragon on, and I negotiate all kinds of things with a little, you know, little. Little twinkle in my eye. But I still am standing strong and powerful. And when I have the dog tail on, then I'm playful and I approach things. You may hear the different tone in my voice when I have the tail on, but when I think about the tail and I think it's attached to my butt, how would my body respond to that?

Right. What's your posture? What's all of that?

Yeah, your voice, the tone of your voice, the way you look at people, the deliberate, you know, so any shyness goes away because it's not me. It's me embodying this tale and making my body come alive to do whatever it is that I think I need to do at this point.

Yeah, I love that.

So that's another tip. The third part is competence. Because sometimes we don't know what we don't know. We don't know how to do what we don't do. But we have to keep checking in with ourselves about things. And so my tip there is to become more aware about our intuition and the choices that we have a lot more control over than we may think. Okay.

Yeah.

So, for example, do you take a shower regularly?

So.

Yes. Good, good, good. Well, I could. I could. I know you smell delicious. I hugged you. I have hugged you.

Hello.

I know.

Let the people know. Honey, I'm not coming Stink stank.

No, no, no. And it is such a delightful, delicious hug. And see, we can flirt and we can play. And it doesn't mean that we are like, oh my God, I'm going to sleep with you. And whatever. It's just we're playing and we.

That's right.

You know, that's right.

That's right.

And so when I think about the competence we have to make sure that we are checking in with ourselves and making decisions based on how we feel, how we really feel. And so I asked about the shower because I find that a lot of my clients, and probably yours, when we. We're busy people. We're busy high powered people. Okay.

And when we take a shower, taking military showers.

What? Okay. They are in there just, just going really quickly.

Right.

And you know, like, it's a task, not an experience.

Yeah.

So they don't have time to check in with themselves about what they want and don't want. So the next time you or any of your listeners or anybody out there takes a shower, I want you to just be deliberate about it. You may still have only 15 minutes. This is not about adding on and all this. It's just about being aware and making sure that you make choices. And if you don't know the answer, you find the way to get it. So your shower. Think about the five senses when you take your shower in the morning or the night. That's a choice right there. Do you prefer to take a shower in the morning or the night? First of all, then what about the soap? Do you like a bar soap? Do you like bath gel? Do you like this? Do you even like the smell? Or is that what you've just been doing for a long time?

Years.

For years. Okay. Are you a washcloth or a loofah person?

So time out for us or none of the above? Some of us are none of the above. No names, no call outs, no nothing.

I was in the car yesterday. We got a big discussion about you don't use a washcloth. I was like, what? What? And then somebody said, the person I was talking to, who I will not call out, said, no, they don't use a washcloth. Which I had some emotion about. And they also said that they knew people who wash their bodies with bleach.

Uh huh. Uh huh.

And I had never heard that before. And you never will and I never will. But he was really insistent that this was a thing. And I had a whole moment and I had to bring my body back. Yes, she did. Okay. That's what I'M talking. It goes back to that. Because. Because it can, you know, when I'm out of control or when I need to be in control, it's the same skill. So I put my tail on, and I was like, wendy, you know, don't be judgmental. Don't say some rude crap. You know? You know, so. So it works. So I digress. But in the shower, so what about the lighting? Okay, what do you want to see in there? Like, if you do it in the evening, do you want it by candlelight? If you do it in the morning, do you want the sun blazing, or do you just want to be calm? Because this is how I chill in the morning. Okay.

Right.

You know, what do you want to smell, you know, again with that soap? Like, is it a scent that really thrills you, that really gets your body going, gets your mind going? These are choices that you have to learn to make and that you are entitled and should become accustomed to doing. And it's such a simple thing, but it can change your life once you get into this habit of, I don't know, so let me find out. Or, yes, hell, yes, with your whole body, or hell, no, with your whole body or anywhere in between. So those are the things that I try to help with.

I love this so much, especially that competence part where you're talking about the shower. Because the shower is actually a place where we can have some of our best ideas if we allow ourselves to be intentional about that time and that space. Right. You hear it all.