Ring Testimony

Hey, wise guys, it's Penny with Penny Wise Coaching. I am here with my friends Ben and Frannie who have agreed today to share a little bit about their experience and their journey with financial coaching and what that has meant to them and what their experience was like. So I kind of want to introduce them, and they are way across the country from me but have graciously agreed to be here with me today. So thanks, you guys, for doing that. I appreciate it. So, I just kind of wanted to get some perspective from you about what it was like for you before you sought out coaching and why you sought out coaching, how you even knew to look for that and kind of where you were at before we got started.

OK. Let's see. We have been married for 19 years and that pretty much the whole time finances have never been something that we were taught or we knew how to deal with, and it was often paycheck to paycheck. If we ever had that excess, it somehow disappeared in that great black chasm. We are not quite sure what happened to it, and we would try to make wise decisions with our money, but we never quite knew what we were doing. So, I think I came to the point where I was just sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, feeling like we never had enough, and it was always a struggle and we could never make enough. So, I knew that we had gone to talk to financial advisors before, but that is not the same. We didn't need to know where to put excess money. We needed to figure out where we had excess money. So, life coaching is really big. I am actually getting certified to be a Coach, and so I was like, there has to be a financial Coach out there somewhere. So, Ben and I talked about it, and he is always a great sport. You were like, you are right, this is what we need to do. And so we just researched and we found you.

Good.

Yeah, and for me, Frannie is the one who provided the momentum, the initial impetus to find a Coach. But for me, I was also pretty sick of just the same patterns that kept repeating over and over again. You know, we, as Frannie said, we were living paycheck to paycheck. We'd get ahead a little bit or we'd feel we'd get ahead and then life would happen and we'd end up going backwards and our debt was just kind of snowballing. And, um, and when she said, hey, a life coach would help, or a financial coach would help us, um, I thought, well, anything's better than what we're doing, or, you know, seek wisdom where you can find it. And so, um, yeah, so we found you and And things have changed tremendously.

So tell me about some of the changes. What have you experienced? I know, you know, sometimes people have told me that they thought if they hired somebody like me that I would come in and tell them how to spend their money and all of a sudden your life would stop and you wouldn't have any fun anymore. So what's that been like for you?

It hasn't been that way at all, actually. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But, and my, you know, when it came time to budget previously, I had experienced great anxiety. I'd actually like run away from it. I wouldn't do it, you know, and then we, you know, that was part of the pattern that we were in. But what I found is that, I don't know, I enjoy it now. My whole mindset has changed. And a large part of that was because you didn't come in and tell us what to do. You asked us questions and found out what we wanted to do, and then kind of taught us some good disciplines and gave us some tools, honestly, that have just taken away a lot of the fear and uncertainty and helped us realize that what we have is managing what we have is sufficient for us. So I don't know, that's been amazing.

Well, and I think you started us out just sort of budgeting, figuring out what we have and where we wanted to go. What I love about you is that you definitely have goals for us, but if our goals divert, like go off of your goals, you're like, hey, if that's the way you want to do it, we can do it. Or if especially in the beginning when we would overspend or we wouldn't track, there was never any judgment. And that was huge for me because I approached this with a lot of shame. I've had a lot of shame when it comes to money. And so it's interesting because I was the one who started seeking you out. But then like before meetings, I would always feel slightly, I would feel resistant, like, no, I don't want to do this. And it wasn't you. I think it's my relationship with money because money is very emotional. It's more than just numbers on a page. You know, we learn so much from our parents and our culture, and I think that was a large part of it. I feel like you have helped me so much just realize it is a tool. It has no judgment on who I am or how we do life, and that we can have our own goals. I think a big difference for me is that even we have recently had some life, a lot of life, where you have a few extra bills that we weren't expecting, where before it just felt like this big black pit. Pit that we kept digging down. It just kept getting blacker and blacker. Now it is like, it is not my favorite thing, but we have a plan. We have a direction and we are looking up despite the extra debt that might have accumulated from just life things that we couldn't help. You know, and, you know, we did the initial 6 months intensive with you and then we have kept you on every month to just check in and having you, having somebody to be held accountable to, someone who is nonjudgmental, but who will help us stay focused and not go back into bad habits, because I think that is the thing is, even though we hate living check to check, our comfort level is living check to check. So, we tend to try these new habits, makes us uncomfortable, so it is easy to start veering off. So, it has been really great to have you continue with us even after our initial 6-month intensive.

Yeah, and that 6 months was significant because we did get the tools and we did start to develop some new habits. But, you know, just being able to contact you when things come up and get your counsel and before we, you know, make impulse decisions, we can, you know, kind of slow down and you help us think about it in a variety of ways.

Because we can just text you and be like, "Hey, our car's dying again. Should we look into buying a new car?" Right. You're always great about following up with that. For us on that.

Well, I don't always know the answer, but I can process with you, right? There's not usually a cut-and-dried answer to everybody's circumstance.

And we still make the decision we— it's our decision we end up making, but, you know, we do it in a more informed manner, right?

And you take the emotion out of the stress, the sudden, like, emergency out of it, where it's like, this is just a decision, right?

And, and I tell people all the time, it's like death by a thousand cuts, right? All those little decisions really do matter. And, you know, we like to think it's the big stuff, but really it's the little stuff along the way that really, I think, helps us move towards the ultimate goal.

It is. I mean, I would love to have a windfall, you know, of $100,000 to rid all the debt and do— but the thing is, is that even— I think that was the point for me with Ben where I was like, even if that happened, we would blow it all and we would be back in the same place. So, I would rather take the small steps that you teach us because that is going to teach us, that teaches us how to do money responsibly. No matter how small or big our paycheck is, we still approach it wisely. So, in 10, 20 years, we are building wealth, we are building income as opposed to just paycheck to paycheck.

And honestly, we have tools and ways of thinking about money that, you know, we can teach our kids to use.

Yeah.

That was a I think for us it was like, you know, this is just going to be generational. Our kids learning from us. Well, now, you know, we know how to talk to them about it and that's huge.

Does money topics come up differently at home now with kids at home?

Yeah, I'd say so. Now it's about, you know, where do we want to send our money? Where do we want to, you know, allocate our money? Whereas before it was just like, you know, do we have enough money to do X, Y, or Z? So it's, you know, the decisions, the money conversations are much more intentional. And sometimes we're like, well, nope, there isn't money for that this month. Let's plan for it next month. And so we're a lot more deliberate with our spending choices and decisions than we have been previously.

That's great. Well, I appreciate that. Is there anything that you would tell somebody who's contemplating financial coaching? And, you know, I get a lot of like, why would people pay for something like that? Can't you just read a book and do that yourself?

Do you want to go first, Andrew?

I'd say it's better and more significant and more life-changing than you can even imagine. Because, you know, I thought, yeah, okay, this could be good, we might learn a few things, but I never anticipated that, that it would be as life-changing. I mean, I used that phrase a couple times, but, you know, I never anticipated that it would make as much of a difference as it has. And it's not the kind of thing you can do yourself because, you know, someone has to show you the way out of that mindset. You can't just kind of pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We tried that for 19 years. Right. And so I would, I mean, I'm a much bigger believer in coaching than I was before. You know, I was like, well, okay, Franny, I'll go along with you. But now I'm—

There were meetings he dragged me to.

Come on.

Yeah, exactly. It goes both ways, right?

Yes, it does. And I would say it has been life-changing for us. You have changed our lives because it is, it is, you have changed our lives. You are going to be changing our kids' lives because money is such a personal thing and an integrated thing in our lives that we can't ignore it anymore. You have given us tools and you have helped me face not just how to budget wisely, but also how I deal with money mentally and emotionally. And that's been huge for me. I would say for anybody who's considering hiring you, A, they should, they should just do it. No matter how frightening it is, they just need to do it. And the cool thing is, is I had no idea how we were going to pay you. I thought we were going to put you on the credit card. We did not put you on the credit card at all. You helped us find the money. And I'm just— I sit there and I marvel at that. Because at the time, we didn't have the extra money. Right? That was from the tools you gave us. So you are worth Every penny and more. And but if you are going to work with Penny Kidd, you need to be willing to do the work. If you are unwilling, don't do it. You have to be ready to do the work and you are going to be uncomfortable and sometimes you are going to want to run away screaming because it is uncomfortable, but you walk through that and the other side is a better life for you.

Yeah, right.

Coaching is worthwhile if you are coachable, but If you are not coachable, then it is wasted money then, right? But you really helped kind of relieve us of our anxiety and our fears. Like Franny said, you were never judgmental. We would be like, well, you know, we kind of screwed up this month. And you are like, OK, well, where are we? Let's move forward from there. That took a lot of emotion out of it for us.

Well, it is a journey for all of us. And I feel like, you know, I am years ahead of you, but we still all fall down and get back up. Right? And everybody thinks that everybody else is doing their money perfectly, and reality is the vast majority of people are not, right? So, and I wish there was a way for me to wave a magic wand and help people get over the shame and embarrassment about money so that we could just move on and get better with it.

Right, but that's part of the process, because we carry the shame and embarrassment that often our parents gave to us.

Yep. Right.

So generational curse we don't want to pass on to our kids. Right.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. You make me cry. It's truly been my pleasure to get to know you guys and, and call you friends and be a part of the journey. So I hope that lasts very long time in the future. And I appreciate everything you're saying because I agree that I don't want people to waste their money on something they're not going to do the work. 'cause then that doesn't resonate with why I'm doing this.

Right.

It's not for me about making a buck. It's about helping people change their lives. So, and yet I have seen over and over again that when people invest in themselves, it comes back to them tenfold. Yes. So even though life doesn't quit happening, like you said, you keep like, oh really, one more thing? But now you're more equipped.

Yes.

To deal with it.

It's not just, you gave us the tools, not just help us financial, It helps us mentally, emotionally. It makes our marriage better. It helps us deal with the kids better because we are not trapped in this ugly mindset anymore. I mean, that financial, honestly, I mean, that is a great part of it, but it is a small part of everything we have got out of our relationship with you.

Good. That is what I think is the epitome of what true financial freedom is. It is not about debt reduction or buying a thing or investing. It is about that peace that comes with that and the relationships.

Yes, totally.

Awesome. Well, thank you. Clearly it's Christmas time in our world, so thanks for giving me a few minutes of your holiday time to record with some other people. So, and I'll end the recording here. So, as I like to end every conversation with, be wise.