Being Healthy and Wealthy with Amanda Steinberg

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I give you the latest cutting edge intel to help you look, feel and think better. All right, today, today we are going to be talking about being healthy and wealthy.

Yes.

You know, they talk so often you hear that the comment of the first wealth is health. And there's a couple things that money really are key for here. I mean, number one, you know, as my son's been going through this accident in the recovery from a severe traumatic brain injury, I've been able to do things for him because I was working super hard in my business and I was able to afford some cool alternative treatments like intrathecal stem cells that have made a big difference. But the other part of that is, and this is another place I've been to, Scott, going to near bankruptcy a couple times is that when you're anxious about money, it can totally take down your health. The stress of that is horrific. So I have an amazing guest with me today, Amanda Steinberg, who I met a couple years ago through a mutual friend. And I just fell in love with her attitude about money right away because she has such a different approach to it and such a different approach to the mindset around money and will really make you help you not feel anxious, guilty and know how to take action in a way that works with your personality and your life. So let me tell you a little bit about Amanda. She launched Daily Worth in 2009 and this website, which is amazing, it reaches 1 million subscribers with its newsletter and it's growing. 2015, she started the digital investing service Worth FM. And then in 2016, Fast Company named her one of the most creative people. Oprah selected her for the inaugural Super Soul 101 and then forums named her one of 21 new American money masters. She is just definitely out there paving the way and making a big difference on how we think about, approach and save money. And she has got a fantastic book out worth it. Your life, your money, your terms. I've given it out to quite a few of my friends as well. So I am super excited and honored to have Amanda Steinberg with us today.

All right, let's do it. Amanda Steinberg, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today, jj.

I can't wait.

This is an awesome subject. And, you know, the two go together. Health and wealth. Like, if you don't have your health, it doesn't matter if you have a bunch of money, but if you don't have money, it's super hard to take care of yourself. So it's a perfect subject for the audience, especially since I see so many women in their 40s and 50s with some really wacky ideas about money, me included. And so I'd love to jump into how you got into all of this, Amanda, because you have a great story, too, and it also leads into how you really help people think about money. So let's talk about how you got. How you got to where you are today with Daily Worth.

Sure. Happy to. So I got to starting Daily Worth because when I was very young, my parents separated, and I watched my mom go through a 10 year transformation that started with many years of crying on the edge of her bed. And during that time, I saw what it was like for a woman to go from thinking she was the good girl who was doing everything right to having her entire identity and foundation just destroyed beneath her feet. And then what she did to resolve it. So also that incredible role model. But in the meantime, she turned me into a maniacal entrepreneur who was obsessed with money. Thanks, mom. And so I became a computer programmer because it enabled me to make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year doing what I loved most, which was actually building systems for nonprofits. There's some pretty big wealthy nonprofits out there, so you can still make a lot of money doing that. But I wanted to also help people while making money. So to fast forward, I turned 30. I was making $200,000 a year, but I also was $100,000 in debt because I had no idea what to do with money after it came in. I bought the wrong house. I messed up my taxes. It was just a total and utter disaster. So I started Daily Worth because I looked around at all these powerful, amazing women in my life who had big dreams and big aspirations and wanted things to be different than they were.

And.

And yet they were all disengaged from money. So I said, I'm going to start a business that's all about making money relevant, meaningful, and inspiring to women.

And why do you see this? Because I think back to my own, you know, when I was growing up. And here's my mom.

She had a.

She had graduated like, I think, magna cum laude from Cal Berkeley. My dad had an AA degree. My mother was not allowed to work. And we never talked about money ever. Ever. And I remember still being in college and getting my first credit card sent to me in college and thinking I just hit the jackpot and went out and bought everything I ever wanted. Totally.

Right.

You know, and graduating from college with like, even though I had a scholarship to college, I had all this debt because I run up all these credit cards and, and you know, you.

No idea.

Just paying interest only. And I. And it really took years to start to really understand money and what that type of thing can do to you. Why do you think that there's so much, what I would call financial literacy, especially around women, especially women, you know, late 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, what's going on?

Well, because I think the system is benefiting from women's financial ineptness. Look, look at all the work we do for free. Look at the fact that we work for less. Look at, you know, there. And there is, there is still a fundamentally strong belief that families are better when women are at home. But the truth is, is that the number of women breadwinners is on the rise and more than 50% of women are also now single. So either by choice or by circumstance. So the demographics just don't match the traditional ideals, whether you believe that they are valid or not. So there's just, there's all these reasons. Socially it had made sense to keep women in the dark around money. It just doesn't make sense anymore.

So why do you think? Because I know for me it's been very, the whole financial thing's been stressful. I didn't take ownership or responsibility for so long. Why is there, why are we so either in the dark about or stressed out about it? Why is it such an anxiety producing concept?

Well, there's really two reasons. The first reason is that the ideas about what it means to be feminine are completely counter to what it means to be a money manager. And I can give you some examples of that. Or maybe it's obvious. And then the second reason is that they never really teach us anything. The public school system doesn't. Colleges don't really teach personal finance. And if you don't know what you don't know, you don't realize that you don't know what you don't know until you're in trouble.

Yeah, yeah. And often you don't really know you're in trouble until you're really, really in trouble.

Exactly, exactly.

So for someone listening that thinks, okay, you know, I haven't really taken a good look at this. Like maybe, maybe you're, you have a job, you've got a 401k, but you're not really focused on it. What's the first thing that we should do?

Well, the first thing that we should do is, first of all, recognize that it's not your fault. You've actually been socialized to disengage with money. And you've been rewarded for focusing more on your external appearance and how everything appears than how it is that you're taking care of yourself. So, first of all, if you're blaming yourself and you've got a lot of regret and shame, stop that right now. It's not your fault. Next, what you have to recognize is that in order to look at your financial statements and try to figure out your retirement and stuff, you're going to feel completely and utterly sick about it unless you look at your core beliefs around money. And so just if you're someone who walks around and goes, I hate money. I'm not interested in money. I'm bad with money. I can't hold on to money. Money is evil. Money is the source, greed and all bad things. Try to take a pause and look at that and go, hmm, maybe I should let those go for a while. And then the third thing is to let go of traditional ideas about what makes someone good with money. I'll give you some examples, which is that you may have heard a financial advisor or someone that you know in your life say, well, what you really need is to budget, and then you need to create goals, and then you need a plan to get to those goals. Now, if you've heard that advice before.

That'S the one that sets me up to fail every time.

Yes, me too. And for people who budget and are successful, awesome. Keep doing it. And they think I sound like a crazy person. But the truth is that it doesn't work in my research for about 70% of people. And no one is really talking about this. So what I have created is an assessment called Moneytype Me. I know I'm talking really fast here, jj, we'll put some stuff in the notes.

We'll make this very easy. So you can just go to jjvirgin.com moneytype and you'll be able to get that assessment. So we'll make sure we put it in the show notes. You can do this. I know when you first sent me your book and I went and took the test, a huge eye opener. So let's talk about what that assessment can give you and how that can.

Help you change your story.

Sure.

So you do not have to be good at Goals, plans, and budgets in order to be successful with money. And I have extensive proof on this. What's important is to recognize that all of us are perfect and whole and complete as we are, and that we all have strengths. We all have incredible strengths, and we all have blind spots and weaknesses. That's what makes us human. And we're not supposed to figure all this stuff out on our own. But once when you go to money type, what you discover is, are you someone who does, like, goals and plans and budgets? If so, you'll find out you're called a producer. And if you aren't, that means you're one of the other four categories. And that means that you have other strengths and sabotage patterns. And the point of money type is to focus on your strengths and your gifts, because that's your key to financial success. And then to build systems to make sure that your sabotage patterns don't damage the progress that you make.

You know, it's so similar to how you would approach health and wanting to make some shifts in your health and then building systems in so that you're accountable and that you make sure these things are happening. And. And, you know, when I just. I gotta make metaphors over to health all the time, but, you know, you hear people talk about, oh, you know, I blew it on my diet, and I'm like, well, why did you bring the ice cream into the house?

Right?

And it's the same thing here. It's like, how do you set yourself up for success so that this becomes something that you don't have to think about? And how do you kind of accept who you are and what you are so that you can make this work for you? You know, if you have someone who hates going to the gym, you don't set up a whole program where they have to go to the gym every morning at 5am that'd be silly.

Exactly. That's it. There's this dominant narrative that the media distills down as if there's one way to be right and everybody else is wrong. If you think about it, it's kind of like how our school system works. There's the kids who get A's and B's and C's. I hate that about our school system because it makes the kids who get Cs think that they're dumb, even though they probably have other extraordinary gifts. They're just not measured well in a school environment.

I know. And it's so funny to live in the entrepreneurial world because some of my best friends, like, barely Finished high school, and they're hu. Huge, hugely successful, making massive impacts in the world. So it is such an interesting concept, and I love the way you approach this because it's really the mindset behind money. Because all I've ever heard is budget, save, get your retirement plans in order. And none of this other stuff has ever been taken into account. And it's never worked for me. And when I read your stuff and started looking at this one, oh, this makes sense. I love it. Now, I'm gonna throw a little bit of a curveball at you here before I throw that curveball at you. Hold on. I'm not going to throw it yet. You have this story that I'd love to bring up about folding socks because you have kids, and I know you were raised to be really kind of freaked out about money, so I'm sure you're doing it differently with your kids. Right. So the sock folding lesson of money for your son. What?

Where did you hear about this? I've barely talked about this yet. I love that you've heard about it, though.

Yep. Some of these things just travel around.

Amanda, I clearly, I love it. So here's the thing with sock folding is that I realized that my son is always asking me for, like, mom, can I have two 99 for this app? And things that are really irritating to spend money on? And so I have this trigger anger response at him. How dare you child want to spend money on an app? Which is completely ridiculous and honestly not fair to him. So at the same time, $2.99 isn't going to break the bank for me. So what I've done is, first of all, I love this company called Famzoo. If you have children that you want to teach about money, go check it out through Famzoo. It's like a custodial account for your children. I've given them three bank accounts, a spending account, a savings account, and a giving account. And I've given them an allowance where 50% goes into spending, 40% goes into saving, and 10% goes into giving. And then in addition to that, my biggest, biggest pain point as a mother, single mom, is that I have to fold socks every week. It's just out of control. And not only do I never have socks that match, I'll be a half an hour late to work or to a meeting because I can't find socks that match. So what I realized is, rather than negotiating with my kid about what it is I will spend money on, won't spend money on, he can earn $1 for every pair of socks folded. And he's 10 years old. I thought that was a little excessive because we got a lot of socks, which means he can make a lot of money. But what I've recognized is I require that there's that 50, 40, 10 distribution. He can't touch the savings, and then he can spend his spending money on whatever he wants. And he's making $15, $20 a week on top of his allowance now. And. But then once it's gone, it's gone and there's nothing he can do about it until he makes more money. So that's it.

Such a good.

And I have socks. Everyone has socks.

And you have socks.

Oh, my God.

Yes, I know. We finally discovered. It's so funny because my fiance, he's. He's one of those people who actually folds his dirty clothes. Came from a military family. And I'm like, I can't tell if they're dirty or not if you fold them, honey.

And.

And he always has all of his socks, and somehow I always have missing socks. And we have a washing machine that literally will eat my socks, not his. It's like I go, is this just some weird karmic thing going on here?

I don't know.

It's so strange. One final thing, and I know this is so not the sexy topic, but it's on so many, so many people's minds. Especially, like, you start to get 40, 50, because you always think in your 20s and 30s, oh, I'll have X amount of money when I'm 50. Of course you do nothing about it. And so wherever someone is right now, financially, what's. Is there some kind of secret to having the perfect retirement?

No, there's definitely no secret. And in fact, the retirement concept is made up. It was made up about 100 years ago when people started living beyond their work years, and. And it became an industry that was sold and packaged to be a certain way. And it's totally broken now, which means that only about 10% of our country has enough to retire at the quote, unquote, typical normal retirement age, which is 65. And most people don't. And so I think that what we really need to do is to stop holding ourselves to that accountability, because it's an industry that is no longer relevant and instead look creatively. And really, the way I have framed retirement for myself is I would like to not work until I die. It's a goal. That's one of my goals, not to work until I die and to save consistently toward My retirement using my IRA or SEP IRA or 401k so that I know in my much older years that I am going to have money. But otherwise, if you start to look up your retirement goal online, you may have a heart attack right there on the spot because it's hard.

So that would solve the problem.

But instead think about how you are consistently funding your now, your 10 years from now and your old age at the same time. You know, whether it's $100 a month that you can put into each, whether it's $1,000 a month. Awesome. Just so that you are creating some end of life money for yourself in a way that you know you're taking care of yourself is a good idea, but also starting to think creatively. Like, I have a few friends who are going in on a retirement real estate investment together because they already know 30 years from now that they want to have a house together. And if they don't end up wanting to, they'll probably be able to sell a portion of that house. That's a really cool idea. If you don't want to invest in an ira is start to create a real estate investment with friends. I think there's going to be a lot of, you know, if you don't have children and you want to go abroad, you can live. I've heard. Don't. I've not proven this, but I've heard you can live for about $10,000 a year in Costa Rica with great healthcare. That sounds really cheap to me, but I imagine there's going to because there's such a huge demand and there's so much real estate around the world. I imagine there's going to be more international development to take care of old people. My point is to not hold yourself. The thing I want to leave you with, J.J. and everyone is my favorite quote from Leslie Bennett and that is women did not create the rules, but we're the ones who follow them. Well, guess what? We are earning and inheriting the majority of money right now. And so it's time for us to rewrite the rules and that includes retirement.

And I got to tell you, and this is why I'm going to keep harping back to health, because I think for so many people, health holds them back. Like I have no, I love what I do so much that I would like to be able to do it anywhere in the world, but a couple hours a day, every day for as long as I live, you know, and so I have no intent of ever retiring, but I want to have the options.

That, that's the, that's the critical point. Find something you love to do or that you know you can do if you need to.

Yeah, I don't want to be a Walmart, no Walmart greeter in my 70s and 80s, you know, unless you know, and if someone loves that, great. But that would not be my thing.

For me, it's like, yeah, I don't want to work at Dairy Queen because my arthritis, I can see, will flame up if I have to work the frozen yogurt machine. But yes, it's about options. It's about choices, not having to.

You'd be pushing that dairy drug too, so that would be the problem.

I'm so sorry.

Gosh, you brought up dairy and sugar all in one breath. All right, so I'm going to throw one little curve ball now. I warned you about. I just would love to hear the one thing you do every day, Amanda, that you feel makes the biggest difference in your life.

I talk to my man Jordan. I just have this. I have an incredible partner. He loves my ambition, my intensity, my desire for independence. That's my big healing thing right now is him.

Yay. I've got a timing. They are amazing. Took me 50, took me like 50 plus years to find so.

Oh yeah. He took me 35 years to find another marriage. And yeah, so took a long time.

Two marriages, a lot of bad dates and. But they're out there. There you go. All right. I want to remind everybody to take that assessment@jjvirgin.com money type and what's the best place for people to go? Dailyworth.com Amanda yeah. Dailyworth.com Dailyworth.com and of course you want to grab worth it. Awesome book and go through the how to really understand your story around money. That was so revealing to me and I just want to thank you so much for being with us today.

My pleasure. Anytime. Yay.

Now after the break, I'm going to be answering listeners questions. So stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And these are questions that I find when I'm doing my Facebook lives. If you're not over there at JJ Virgin Official on Facebook, where I do my Facebook lives, come hang out with me there. It's super fun. And what I do is I go and I look at the questions that I get asked most often or just things that pop up on my wall posts. And I'll tell you this question that comes from Robin Bakersfield. This comes up, gosh, probably once a week. And I feel like it's one of the biggest urban legends out there. And it is. You know, jj, I want to eat healthier, but I'm on a strict budget and it just costs more to eat healthy. What do I do? And you know, it is interesting because this has come up over and over and over again and I got like, it's one of those ones that just makes me annoyed because the reality is it actually can cost less to eat healthy. Now. Long term, you know, it's a lot cheaper to be healthy than to be sick, let's face it. But in the, even in the short term, you actually, now more than ever, there's so many things that you can do to eat healthy and stay on a budget. It's incredible. So the first thing that I would tell you is wherever you are, see if there's a farmer's market that comes into town and also see if there's a local collective, they're called CSAs, where you can work with the local farmers and get a basket delivered each week to whatever is local, seasonal and organic. The real key with eating healthy on a budget is to eat locally and seasonally because that is where you're going to save the money. You don't have the food transport costs and you're also going to eat better. And then also to go to Environmental Working Group ewg.org and look at what they say as the Dirty Dozen and the clean 15. This changes every year as they update their their stats. But you want to make sure that you are eating organic when you're choosing from the dirty dozen foods. Those are ones you want to make sure no matter what, you get organic. So you really see where you have to spend your money. But you also can get to know those local farmers when you do the farmers markets and you're going to find where you can get the best deals on products. Obviously, if you can buy in bulk, buy store brands. One of the big secrets out there is Whole Foods has their 365 and 365o. They built those to compete with the other store brands. Super deal. So buy, buy store brands, buy in bulk, stock up, save, freeze, cook things. Rather than buying the broccoli florets, buy the whole broccoli, you know, cook things and yourself. Instead of buying pre packaged, pre cooked. I went to the supermarket and deployed all of these things at the supermarket. And so I bought what I would typically buy in a week versus what a. And you know, the typical family of four trying to eat healthy but not over the top would buy in a week. So I fully expected as I did this and I bought grass fed beef and wild salmon. But I was eating, you know, mostly from the perimeters, not processed food, not packaged foods. It was lentils and nuts and avocados and lots of greens and a little bit of fruit. And I fully expected, though that it would be about even between what I was buying and what the average consumption for a family four would be. And I was totally wrong. To my surprise, to my surprise, it costs $36 a week to eat the other way, not the healthy way, because a lot of these processed foods, packaged foods like the salad dressings, the already made chickens, a lot of these things cost a lot of money. And you can save it. You might spend a little more on the grass fed beef or the wild salmon, although now you can even buy them in the big places like Costco, but you'll save it on the vegetables, on the lentils, on the wild rice, and buying in bulk. So the other thing, and it's a mindset shift, and that's why I wanted to answer this when we were talking to Amanda today is the mindset shift of where do you really want to invest? And one of the most important places to invest in is in yourself and in your own health. The most expensive thing that you can be is unhealthy. It's going to be expensive in terms of, you know, medications, but also it's even more expensive in quality of life. So the best place you can invest is in yourself. All right, if you'd like to submit a question for me, just head on over to my Facebook page at JJ Virgin official. Now, this is the gratitude portion of the show. And this is where I pull up and share with you one of my favorite reviews. Now, here's what we've been doing with these reviews is every week we have decided that we are going to pull up and read and do a big shout out, a big gratitude shout out to one of our favorite reviews of the week. And I will tell you that over on itunes, we, the team reads not just me, but our team reads all of the reviews. And it really makes it just, it's how we get our grades. You know, we go through them. We're like, it just, we absolutely love this. So it makes a major difference for us as well. So I just want to thank you so much. And today we're going to do a shout out to Josie loves fitness and she says, I enjoy listening to your show. It's perfectly timed so I can listen to it as I get ready for the morning or drive to work. The guests are great, too. I would have given it five stars. See, now I'm reading these just exactly like they are. I would have given it five stars. But I'm not sure if you realize that you pause and switch swallow every minute or so. Not a big deal, but I've noticed it more often.

So there you go.

And I will stop swallowing and pausing. Actually, that's just our editors need to jump in there. So we'll see what we can do about that. But Josie, I so appreciate it. I strive to bring in great content and we also strive to improve. So thank you so much for that. And again, you can pop on over to itunes and leave a review. We totally appreciate it. I thank you so much for joining me today. And I hope, as always, this information serves you. I'm really looking for all of the best information out there by the most amazing people to help you get better every day and every year and how you live and how you think and how you feel. But here's the biggest way that you get better. Take this information and take action. And if something you heard today kind of made you think, it almost made you a little scared or uncomfortable, even better, because that means that you're pushing, you're pushing outside your comfort zone and you're going to a bigger place in your life. So I'm going to leave you with this question to help open you up to even more possibility in your life. What would you like to show up for bigger in your life? All right, until next time. Time, it's JJ Virgin signing off. Thank you so much for joining me.

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