Why You Feel Poor — Even When You're Not

Everyone thinks that money is about numbers, but money is never about numbers. Money is about the stories that you and I tell ourselves about the money.

It starts from our earliest memories because everything involves money, right?

The way you spend, the way you save, the way you even look at your bank account— most of that started when you were a child.

You know, all of our lives are so very different. the very beginning with money, and all of that shapes our thoughts around money.

Some people feel guilty spending money, some completely avoid it, and some spend their lives chasing it as if their life depends on it, as if everything will be solved when they'll have the money.

Even an overachiever can only achieve to the level of their mindset.

In this conversation, we break a few myths and explore what your relationship with your money is. If you're ready for this, let's dive in. Welcome, Linda, to the conversation.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

I'm excited about our conversation today because, you know, money is something that we all have a very deep-rooted relationship with, but it's not often that we understand that relationship fully. So I'm pretty sure that through our conversation, we're going to come up with some mental models that people can put into practice and reframe their relationship with money.

Yeah, let's hope so. Let's give them some tools.

Yes. And there's always this emotional baggage around money, right, that I'd love to explore. But for us to go right into the deep end and understand who Linda is, the first question, Linda, that we start our podcast with is, if that 8-year-old little girl, Linda, wherever she was growing up, if that 8-year-old Linda comes and meets you right now, what kind of a conversation would emerge between the two of you?

Oh gosh. I think that I would probably just let her know that things are going to be okay and that you don't have to grow up so fast, but also to think bigger, not let her world be so small as she gets older, to broaden her horizons.

I love how you start with, oh gosh, and then there's wisdom, which is you're saying— and I think it's fascinating, right, that when we are young, we all want to kind of grow up too quickly and become an adult and see what it is to be on that other side. And then we realize being young was such a dream.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we're always thinking the grass is always greener on the other side, right?

Yeah.

When you're younger, you want to be older faster. And when you're older, you want to be young again.

I agree. I agree. You said something fascinating, which is that you would ask that Linda to think bigger. What does that really mean?

Oh, gosh. That's something that I always say when people ask me what I would tell my younger self is to think bigger. I just had a really small world. I didn't know any different. I didn't grow up with a lot of mentors or, or people that were helping me along to show me the way things could be. I had to find that myself. And I didn't find that until much later in life. And originally it was a person who brought me into a mastermind group that really opened my eyes. And then from there I was like, oh my gosh, there's so much more everything. And I really went on like this personal growth journey and started reading mostly books. And the books became my mentors. And I started learning about, you know, personal growth and how to succeed and all of the classic books that everybody knows about, you know, Think and Grow Rich, and then the newer ones too, you know, and just the idea that there's this whole other way to grow as a person. And that was the biggest thing is that I didn't realize that till much later in life.

That's really interesting. And you call books being your mentors. Kind of first kind of speak about that mastermind you spoke about. What was that experience like? Like what shifted in that mastermind? Because mastermind, to my understanding, is like a group of highly successful people meeting for either an event or long-term. But what was your experience like that really shifted the way you thought?

Yeah, so this particular mastermind was a mastermind on one of John Maxwell's books. The 21 Laws of Leadership. There's something more to the title, but basically the 21 Laws of Leadership. And it was, so it was, it was, there was a facilitator who was a John Maxwell certified coach who was leading us through this. And we were talking about the different chapters. And I think the one that stands out to me is there's a chapter about the Law of the Lid. And the Law of the Lid in leadership is that you can only lead to your ability. And that you have, you can strengthen and build that ability. Like you have a lid, but you can keep raising your lid. So personal growth and skill development makes you a better and better leader. And then the better leader you are, the better you can lead, which makes sense. So, but what I got out of it was something completely different. And it came from, now this isn't in the book, but this is an example that the coach gave. There's a story about fleas in a jar. And if you— fleas can jump really high, but if you put them in a jar and you put the lid on, they can only jump to the lid and they can't get out. But then once you take the lid off, they don't get out of the jar. They just keep jumping to the height of the lid because they've been trained to think that they can't jump any higher. And so as I was listening to this, like, I just had this like moment where I was like, oh my gosh, this explains so much in life, in my life. Because I wasn't the flea that was stuck under the lid in some cases. Some cases I was, in others I wasn't. Some cases I was the flea that knew we could get out of the jar, and I was trying to tell everyone else that we could get out of the jar, and everyone thought I was crazy. You know what I mean? I just had like this bigger vision, um, in some cases. And so I realized that I was in rooms that I shouldn't be in because of that. And I started to change the rooms I was in.

That's such a, such a beautiful example, right? And, and as you were saying about this, a lot of different things were coming to my mind, this example of an elephant who's been kind of tied to something in the ground. And from a very young age till when the elephant is like really large and powerful, but it still feels that it needs to be stuck there. Or that ant example that the video's gone viral multiple times. I've seen that on LinkedIn and so on. What is it about? Like, what do you think happens that primes us to put these restrictions on ourselves?

I think a lot of it is just that we, for me, I didn't know any better, but I wasn't introspective. Like I didn't really think of things in that sense. I was just doing and going about my life and everything was like happening to me rather than me making things happen. Now I say that, but I was an overachiever. Like I did a lot of things, but I have a quote at one of my books that I wrote in. I did, I did a chapter in, there's a, there's a quote I like to share and it's Even an overachiever can only achieve to the level of their mindset. And I think that is when I wrote that line for that book, I was like, that's it. That's exactly what it was. I was an overachiever and I was doing all these things, but I didn't have the mindset that I needed in order to move any further.

And what's worked for you, or what have you seen work? And we'll get into the money aspect, but I think the mindset plays a massive role even before we talk about money. So if someone's really thinks that they are overachieving and they are doing really well in terms of their job or whatever they're doing, how does one shift that mindset? What kind of work is needed?

I think the first thing is to allow yourself to be introspective and allow yourself to get outside of your own head as much as you can and realize what lens you're looking at things through. Trying to see things through a different lens, somebody else's lens, Um, meaning like all the stories that you've told yourself and all the things that you have that you've experienced in your life affect how you're seeing things that are happening around you. And the more you can understand that being introspective, and then again, step outside of that to try to look at it through someone else's eyes, that different lens, the more personal growth you can have.

It's such an easy And yet so difficult to achieve shift, right? Because what you're saying is that just step out of where you are and how you're seeing the vantage point, the lens with which you're looking at your life. And that's all that is needed. But again, to be introspective, and I was talking to someone this morning, Linda, and we were speaking about how sitting and creating space is such a difficult and almost uncomfortable experience because we feel that we are not doing something. But then as you create the space, Nothing's gonna emerge for you. How have you seen that play out, if, if at all?

Well, I have to say, I'm, I'm not the best at creating space for myself. I have to, I struggle with that. Like, that's, that's a something I have to do very intentionally. But I always tell my clients, you know, you have to have space to let your mind wander and think or let it be empty because That's where you get the true creativity and where you realize things. If you think about it, you know, it's, it's, here's a great example. When you go to bed at night and you're like lying in bed and then you're like, oh my gosh. And you like remember something. It's because your mind is free. It's not being act— it's not active and it's, it's sorting through things and it's giving you that space to, to like just think, you know, not think so that these things can come up. And so that's my example. I didn't say it very well, but hopefully you got the gist of it.

No, I think that makes a lot of sense because what you're saying is that when we go to bed at night, as soon as the head hits the pillow, there's this space, right? You're not— once you've switched off your phone, once Instagram is out of your way, once Netflix is turned off, then you've created the space where your mind now starts to wander. And as soon as it wanders, new thoughts start to emerge in your head, but they, at that time when you can't do anything about them, lead to, in some cases, almost like insomnia. So if you could be more intentional is what you're saying, then that might work for one's benefit.

Because then if you're taking time, you know, just to clear your head throughout the day, then that'll give you time to like process some thoughts and things.

Yep.

Love that. Yeah.

I love that thought. It's such a simple Yet something that's like attainable, difficult to do, but absolutely attainable. But in your journey, when did money become that centerpiece? Was there like a personal struggle that you went through in terms of how you saw money that led you to create these breakthroughs? Or was it someone like just kind of, you fell into this niche?

So I have a lot of money stories from my past. So, I mean, I grew up with my parents not really talking about money, but I knew they were living paycheck to paycheck. I knew that we weren't saving. Um, and I knew that I wasn't doing the things that my friends were doing and I didn't have the things my friends had, but it was never really like talked about. And then I became a mother very young. And so I was then fiscally responsible for myself and another person from a very young age. And I was good with money, meaning I didn't create debt. I lived within my means, but I also kept living paycheck to paycheck. So. I was good with money, but I wasn't great with money. Then I eventually got married and was married for a very long time and then got divorced and had to figure things out all over again because, you know, I was trying to figure out what do I have? How can I live? What do I do? And, you know, it was, it was a struggle. I mean, I lived going backwards for a while right after I got divorced because I, you know, wanted to keep my kids in the lifestyle that they had, not have to switch them schools. Things like that. So I had all these money stories that played into things, including that I got a job that I thought was going to be my dream job, and then I wasn't making enough money to survive, and it was a toxic environment. So I ended up leaving it and going back to school and spending money to go back to school while I wasn't working and I was a single parent. So that was scary. But I ended up starting a career in financial services by happenstance through like a series of events, but it wasn't something I was necessarily looking for. And then I started this career in financial services and I loved it because I could help people. I was learning about money and I started, you know, had a successful career in financial services and worked with all kinds of people, helping them with their financial plans and money and everything. And what I realized when I came to a pivotal moment was that I wanted to help all the versions of people who I once was that maybe didn't qualify to work with a financial advisor, that didn't have money that they could transfer over to a financial advisor, or didn't have enough assets for somebody to even talk to them, right? So that's when I decided to leave financial planning as my main source of business and do financial coaching and financial wellness speaking to spread the word and reach more people that are not served by traditional financial advisors.

That's just fascinating. Let's just go at right where the things kind of Again, for all of us, right? So just this idea of money, and I think you somewhere said that it's a lot on how what we've seen with our parents that kind of almost decides how we evolve this relationship that we have with money, which is like if parents are living paycheck to paycheck or if we're spending a lot or if we're really consumptive or if we're saying that money is the root cause of all evil, that's what we kind of end up—

Yeah.

Where does it start? Like what's, what's, what's at the root of this relationship that we have with money?

It starts from our earliest memories because everything involves money, right? Whether you get that new toy or not is all about money. When you, when you see something you want, are you, does your parent just buy it for you? Are they making you save money to get it? Do you have to wait? Are you just never getting anything? Are you always being told no? Are you always being told yes? You know, all of our lives are so very different from the very beginning with money. And all of that shapes our thoughts around money. If you grow up in a household where your parents argued about money, you're probably going to avoid money because it has negative feelings for you. If you grew up in a house where people didn't talk about money, you're probably going to feel like not that you shouldn't talk about money. So it's just interesting how everything that we deal with Goes along with us, right? And it happens like when you start with it, like when you get your first job too, and you start and you're like, you know, you probably start at like whatever job you can get. You're not worried about what you make or even what you're doing. You're just getting a job to get money, right? So you start there and then as you progress through your life, you know, you're putting value on yourself a lot of times by your job and how much money you're making and how much money you're making decides how you can live. And every decision that we make is about money. So it's really important to understand your relationship with money and understand where it came from and how you interact with it so that you can be introspective when it comes to money and start to understand when you're following patterns or doing things that are based on that.

As I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, you know, it's, it's so fascinating. Imagine me being like someone who's say 35. And I've had experiences with money, what I've had, and I'm someone who I can't go back and erase those experiences, right? So where do I begin? What's the process?

Just start paying attention to your money. Start paying attention to how you feel when you spend money, how you feel when you save money, what triggers are happening when you realize like, oh, okay, I'm impulse buying right now, or I'm emotional spending. And Start getting to understand your, your money patterns. I have a money personality test that I, that I have that's on my website, which we will talk about later, but the money personality is all about how you interact with money. And there's no wrong one. I think that people think if you're a spender or if you're an avoider, that that's a bad thing, but it's not as long as you understand it and you know how to work with it. You know how to work with you as an avoider or with you as a spender or with you as a security seeker. Right? You gotta understand who you are and then set things up for success under that personality.

That's fascinating. So step 1, what I'm understanding is to just observe your money patterns. How does spending money make you feel or how does saving money or are you avoiding the conversation? And so by, is there, and you're speaking about, we'll put all the links in the show notes for people to really go and experience those things, but what's the process? Have you seen something that's worked with your clients or coaches who you make them do something and they're able to, because it seems really hard to even sometimes really understand how you're feeling about spending or saving money. So is there a process to it?

Yeah, I use what I call the Me Money Method as my process. And really all it is, it's super simple, is you take a set amount of money, whether it's per month or per paycheck or whatever, however you want to do it, and you say, this is My money that's for me. So you're not doing a full-on budget. You're not saying like, this is what I'm spending on all these different things. You're just saying, this is my money for me. Anything that is for me alone comes from this bucket of money, not responsibilities, you know, not, not rent, not housing, not, not, not sometimes clothing, but not, you know, food unless it's like going out to eat. So any treats or anything that's just for you comes out of your me money bucket. You get to decide what that means. And then you live within the means of that money, meaning that you get this set amount and you realize that if you buy this thing now, you say yes now, you might say no to something later because you don't have that money saved. If you say no to the thing now, then you might be able to say yes to something later because you have the extra money. And so it just really makes you think differently for each purchase that you make for yourself. And then it allows you to value different things. Like, is this worthy of my me money or not?

I love the concept. I love how simple yet powerful it is. So me money, and I can almost like visualize myself putting aside $500 for myself. Like, this is my money. I get to, if I want, I buy new shoes with it, whatever I wanna do. What's happening underneath? What's happening for someone to be able to do that for themselves through that me money, what's happening underneath the human being?

Yeah, let me, let me tell you the story about how it originated. So it originated because I put my husband on a budget. So I handle the finances. I know how much money he's spending because I'm very detailed. I said, I, so I said, I'm putting you on a budget. You have this much money to spend. You have to live within your means. And then you have to save up for the other things that you're going to do.

Hmm.

Now I knew, I already knew the amount because I knew how much he was spending, but I needed him to understand because he, to me, he wasn't understanding how much he was spending. He was just like, oh, it was only this much. I'm like, yeah, but all these other things are attached to it. So when you put it together, it is a big amount. And he had no idea. So I told him I'm putting him on this budget. And he said, are you going to put yourself on the same budget?

Hmm.

I said, sure, I will give myself the exact same budget. We'll have the same amount of money. We live under the same roof, same lifestyle. So we're going to do the same thing. So we actually opened separate bank accounts and we started moving every paycheck. We would move the same amount of money out and that was our money to spend on us. So if there's any, we did it like, if there's anything where I'm going to where he's not involved, then I have to pay for it out of my me money. If he's doing anything where I'm not involved, he has to pay for it out of his me money. That's the way we decided. And we, you know, made up other certain rules about it. But so we did this for a little while and I came back to him and I said, how is it going? And he said, fine. And I'm like, well, define fine. What does fine mean? Right? Fine. He's like, well, I'm just making better choices. And I was like, oh, tell me more about this. And he said, well, I saw this golf shirt that I wanted. He's a golfer. And He's like, I decided not to buy the shirt because I knew that if I bought the shirt, I would have that much money less to spend on the golf trip that I have coming up. So I chose not to buy the shirt and to go and to save it for the golf trip. And I said, did that make you feel restricted? Like, are you feeling like I'm controlling you or do you feel restricted by your money? And he said, no. He said, I didn't need the shirt. And I, and I go, do you feel bad that you don't have the shirt? He's like, no, I have a whole closet full of golf shirts. I don't need another one. And I'm like, so, so you don't feel bad. You don't feel restricted. And he's like, no, I just, and I'm like, he's like, I just made a better choice. And so he realized that he was making better choices.

Hmm.

And I was like, wow, this is powerful. This is very powerful. So in my, in my money personality, he's a spender and sometimes avoider. So he can cross over into 2 different personalities, but this put framework to him so that he was making better choices on what he was spending his money on. And he was paying attention to his money and not avoiding it. So he's understanding more about how much money he was spending. Now, when you flip the script over to me, because I remember I gave myself the same budget, I was the person who always said, I can't afford that. I can't go on a girls trip. I don't have the money because I, and I would feel guilty when I would spend money on myself. Now, I'm not saying I didn't spend money on myself. I would justify like 10 things for $10, but not some, not one thing for $100. Like my justification was different. I was looking for a bargain. I was looking for a sale rate, something like that. But here's the thing. Now that I had the money set aside, I started buying things that I never would have bought in a million years for myself.

Mm-hmm.

Like, because it's already there. Like if I see something that I want and I'm like, oh, And I'm like, wait a minute, I have the money. So I'm also making better choices because I'm choosing to buy the thing I really want rather than 10 things that I don't really want. You know what I mean? So I'm also making better choices, but it's giving me guilt-free. Like he didn't have the guilt. I had the guilt, but I, I can now buy things guilt-free because that money is already set aside for me.

Yeah.

Then the other layer that I didn't expect was that it leveled the playing field for us in our relationship. Because I didn't even realize I'm the one handling the money and I'm the one saying no to everything. And he's saying yes to everything. I didn't even realize that there was some, I don't know what you want to call it, but like jealousy or whatever, that he was living this different life than I was. But now it was leveled because we have the same amount. So whatever he chooses to do with it, he can do whatever he wants with it. Whatever I choose to do with it, I can do whatever I want with it. And we never really had to answer to each other. We weren't answering to each other. But this allowed us the space for just the freedom to not have to feel, or me at least, not have to feel that. So I hear stories all the time of like, you know, a woman who wants like a designer pair of shoes and her husband's like, oh my gosh, like you cannot spend that much money on a pair of shoes or guys now, guys now with their tennis shoes are right there with us.

Yeah.

So that, you know, so they can be that way too. But the thing is, is if it's set aside and it's your money and that's what you choose to spend it on. And you and your spouse have the same amount of money, then they can't, you don't have to answer to them because we both have the same amount. You choose to do with yours what you want, and I'll choose to do with mine what I want. And it just evens everything out. So yeah, I just, it works with, with almost any money personality that I've found because it just puts a framework and intention to the way you spend.

I love that because what it's doing is, A, what I'm hearing you say is Me money is leading to better choices, is making it more intentional, is giving you the freedom to choose. And it's also leveling— like, it's great for relationships because now there's no questioning, like, why did you buy those sneakers and I can't buy that makeup from Sephora? And it's all clear because you've divided it and it's something that's not restricting you because that's the lifestyle you want to maintain. Yeah, that's a great insight coming from personal and then becoming a framework. Where have you seen this becoming still like really hard? Because it seems, and I love to play the devil's advocate on the podcast, like where you felt that someone set aside $2,000 for themselves of the me money, but this, and then they did not need even that much, but they still felt like restricted. They felt like this is not working for me. And how did you help them reframe the situation?

So the people that still feel restricted or that it's not for them, I've I feel like they're, they're still letting their money personality lead them. And the me money is supposed to give them freedom and intention and purpose. And so when they're still having those feelings about it, they're still letting that personality override the purpose of the me money. So it's just reminding them that this is supposed to be a freedom space. a space for you to just do whatever you want, be creative, and, you know, color within the lines, but color.

Yeah, I love that. You're speaking again, again, it's making me feel like really intrigued. What are the money profiles that you've, you've like on the scorecard that you see? What are those?

So yeah, I defined 5 different ones. Now there's all kinds of different money personality things out there. I didn't create that idea, but the ones that I define are Um, a risk taker, a spender, an avoider, a saver, and a security seeker. And I went from like one extreme to the other. An avoider's in the middle, not paying attention to anything. A saver is someone like me who is still spending money, but feels guilty when they're spending. A security seeker is someone who is much more defined. Like they want everything planned out. They need to know where everything is going. And it's really hard for them to spend money at all. A spender, when you say spender, people think that sounds bad to be a spender, but you can be a giver spender. Like you're spending, you could be spending money on other people or spending, you know, giving it to friends or treating people to things, giving big tips, you know, treating friends to dinner, all those kinds of things. So. It's not a bad thing to be a spender. Um, a spender is someone who just, you know, uses money to feel good, right? And then a risk taker is someone who wants like bold moves, go big or go home. Like they're in it for like the experience and that they're all, these are all fantastic personalities. Like there's nothing wrong with any one of them, but you can see hopefully that when you understand what yours is, it makes sense why you do things that you do with money. And then by putting intention around just that amount that you spend on yourself, it can help either, like my husband said, make better choices and decide what really is of value to you. Or if you're someone like me who has guilt, it allows you that space to have freedom and not feel guilty about spending money on yourself.

So what I'm hearing you say is that it's not about changing people from one personality to the other, but it's about giving that Freedom, the intention, the ability to make those better choices is what we are after.

Exactly. And that is why, that there in a nutshell is why a lot of times traditional budgeting or financial advice doesn't work because you're giving like a one-size-fits-all, like do your budget, you know, watch your cash flow, but you're not taking into account the person and how they interact with money. And it's so important.

That's fascinating. As you were speaking about the trauma of our growing up, right? Or how we've seen parents or people around us, or how that relationship with money has evolved for us. What do people come to you with? Like, what I'm trying to say is like, what are some of the symptoms that you see that someone's had some level of money trauma that needs to be thought about?

It's not all about money trauma necessarily, because I don't want to think— because money, there is money trauma out there where people have been abused by like not having access to money or things like that, which is completely different. But I would say That the biggest thing is, is for women mainly, like we always feel like we're behind or like we should know more about money by now. And it's men too. I don't mean to, but it's a lot of times in my generation anyway, Gen X, it's women because we traditionally didn't talk about money and let the men take care of the money. So we are now in a situation where whether we're getting divorced or we've been widowed, or maybe we're just Real waking up and realizing we need to know about this stuff. So it's really mostly, mostly that. But everybody has a money story. Like I talked to someone, a 70-year-old, okay, 70-year-old client who we were talking about how she grew up with money. And she said that her mother was always dressed to the nines, like always had great clothes, but she was only taken shopping for clothes every year. When it was a new school year, that was the only time she got new clothes. So what she realized through our conversations was that she was doing the same thing with money now that she was older. She was not taking care of herself with money, but she was taking care of everybody else with money. And so she realized that she was sacrificing for everyone else, but not knowing that she was sacrificing because she just always had, it had always been that way. Like, and so she finally was like, oh my gosh, I need to spend some money on myself because, because I'm worthy, you know? And so she was like, I feel like, I feel like I'm realizing now that I've grown up my whole entire life, and now she's 70 years old, feeling like I'm not worthy of money, but everybody else is.

It's amazing how, how it seems on the surface that money decisions are really logical, but they're so deeply rooted and so emotional at so many levels. Have, like, what do you think are different emotions that you see behind, say, people overspending or underspending or avoidance? Like, yeah, what emotions have you observed?

All of them.

I like that answer. All of them.

All of them. Because yeah, that's, I mean, it's all emotional. The whole idea behind a personality is, in this sense, is emotion, right? You're having emotion when you're When I'm not spending because I'm a saver and I'm trying to spend it on myself, I'm guilty. When somebody is spending money on other people and giving, they're having like this, this great emotion because they're giving, right? When people are avoiding money, they're trying to stay away from an emotion that feels negative to them, right? When you're a risk taker and you're, you're like all about the experience and you're going on like big vacations or doing like skydiving and you're spending money on that stuff, like You're getting a rush from it, right? You're getting a rush from that. I mean, think about like, you know, the, the endorphin rush that you get when you hit buy now when you're on your cart on Amazon, right? Or when it used to be on eBay when you would bid on stuff and you'd, you'd be like waiting for the auction to end and you'd be like trying to get it. I mean, you get that emotion, right? It's all about emotion.

And how easy have these platforms and apps and online shopping is made, right, to Just keep clicking on that buy now button because it gives you that surreal feeling.

Yeah. Add to cart. And then I would say change that to add to wishlist and then revisit your wishlist once in a while and delete the stuff that you really didn't need.

Good idea. Yeah. I think a couple of rules that have worked really well for me is to really cut down on the things that I need and not for like the sake of, oh, I don't get to buy, but just like for simplifying, like just have like a black t-shirt for the podcast and then have a set of different color t-shirts that I use. And we've been asking Uniqlo to promote the podcast, but they're not listening. Maybe this will nudge them. And what I've also seen is like, if I buy something new, something has to go out because otherwise it just creates that pile. So I think these are things that have worked for me. When did this shift for you personally, Linda? You spoke about giving yourself the permission to buy something. Was it that experiment that you did with your husband or somewhere else that this permission started? it to kind of evolve for you personally?

That part of it came about from the situation with my husband. Absolutely. And that's when I was like, wow, there's something powerful here. And I started having other people implement it and found that, wow, this is phenomenal. Like, this is really mind-blowing. And I'm not saying that I'm the first person to figure this out. There's different versions of it I've found since I created it. But I mean, there's definitely something to it. I think that part of the reason I'm so interested in it is because when I was doing financial planning for people and they would come in and talk to me, I was always amazed at like the stories they told themselves and the mindset blocks that they had. And they're like, you know, when they'd come in, they'd be like, well, my father always told me this. And I would be like, your father lived in a completely different day and age. Like, you know, when your father had a mortgage, his mortgage rate was probably, if it was in the '80s, it could have been up 17%, you know, and your mortgage is at 2.5%. So the things that he's telling you are based off of economic times that are completely different than yours. And then I'd have people come in and say, well, my brother, my brother is investing in this and he thinks I should look into it. And I'd look into it and I'd explain the risk and everything that was with it. And they'd be like, yeah, I just want to do it still. And I would try to explain like the risk that your brother is taking, he can take. Your brother's got X amount of dollars more than you, and he can handle this risk. You cannot handle this risk because you don't have that much money. You're not living within your means and you need to be sure that you don't lose your money because otherwise you're going to end up broke. Like you can't take this risk. So, but they were just so adamant that they needed to do what their brother was doing, or they needed to do what their dad told them to do, not realizing that their circumstances were so completely different. So this whole mindset part, like, just really got, I really got interested in that and how we have like these obstacles because of these things that people tell us and how do you, you talk to your clients and help them to understand the view that you see as opposed to what is ingrained in their head already. Um, so that's something that I was working on in my financial planning and working on understanding how people think and how you can help them to see that, have that introspection to see where those stories are coming from.

Love it. And as you see, it's almost like a battle between money and the mindset, right? What do you see that changes first? Is it that people's mindsets evolve first, or do the numbers in their bank or the spending that they do shift first? What follows what?

Well, with the Me Money Method, it's the financial strategy first, and then the mindset shift just happens. It comes with it, right?

Hmm.

If you don't do the Me Money, uh, I think that you have to do a lot of introspection to figure out what your personality is, pay attention to how you're interacting with money, how you feel about money, and eventually you can work through that. But I think the Me Money just is a tool that works right away to help you start seeing that. And then you could recognize it in other places in your life too, because you're having so much intention around it.

It's almost like a virtuous cycle you're building, right? Your mindset shifts to leads to your money and money will then absolutely lift the mindset. If I'm almost like, if you could restart everything again with the current amount of knowledge that you have about money, what 3 pieces of advice or what mental models will you give to someone who's like 21 years old starting their career right now? They've just come out of uni or maybe 22 years old. They're getting into their first job. What 3 mindsets should they operate with so that they're able to manage the mindset and the money better?

Mindset. Let's see. I would say the mindset is just to be intentional with your money. If I had, I'm going to answer the question differently, not the question that you asked, but if I had one thing that I would tell them or one concept that I would introduce to them to have them understand, it's lifestyle creep. So what happens is You get a new, you get a job and you start earning money and then you start living off of that money. And most people are just living to survive at that point when they get their first job. So they're not saving anything because they just need to live to survive. But what happens is, as time goes on, you get stuck in that pattern. And every time you get a raise or you get a new job or you level up, you just keep living with, with, within that money and you don't increase your savings. And the power of compound savings, compound interest, or investments sitting for a long time is huge, absolutely astronomical difference between starting 10 years earlier, 20 years earlier. So watching your lifestyle to make sure that every time you get a raise or a promotion or whatever, you get more money, that you're purposely setting aside more money towards savings and not just letting your lifestyle keep increasing. As you earn more money.

I love that advice. I think it's, again, as the other concept that you've been sharing, it's super simple, but if you put into practice, it's going to have a deep impact. And just this power of compounding, thank you for touching on that, by the way. I think it's just a magical concept, right? Because the first time I— it was, I think, about 18 years ago, I started investing in some specific fund which compounds really well, and I was back home in India at that time. The interest I got on the 14th year of that fund, I was like, it's just mind-boggling. But if you would've told like Utkarsh 15 years ago that Utkarsh, someday you'll earn, get that much interest from something, compounding is something unless you experience it, it's really hard to really believe. Why is that?

I think it's just because, like I said, if you don't have someone right there helping you, mentoring you, explaining it to you in real time, It's easy to just ignore and just keep living your life the way you are.

Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. And to all the youngsters who are listening to us right now, someday, 15 years later, you will realize that compounding is a real thing. But for that to happen, you'll have to start doing it right now. There's no other way. You cannot go back 15 years ago and then restart it. It just, just start, just start investing.

Yeah, absolutely.

What have you seen that's like the most harmful advice that's still being given about money, Linda?

Well, that's a hard one. Harmful advice about money. Well, I think I would have to say that playing the stock market, picking stocks or day trading and trying to buy, sell, buy, you know, you know, buy low, sell high is great. But if you're trying to play that game, it's a losing game. If you want to play that game, set aside just a small amount of money proportionate to what your whole portfolio is to have as your play money and know that, that you could just lose that money. Um, I'm, I'm very much in the passive investing myself personally. That's my theory. You put it in something, let it ride, rebalance it to keep your risk tolerance or your risk level to your tolerance and sit, let it sit and let it keep growing. So I think that people think when we say start investing, sometimes younger people think that means picking stocks.

Correct.

So I would think that would be the thing that I, how I would answer that.

I think, I don't know what podcast I was listening to. They said something like that the most growth portfolios that they see across like the last 50 years is either Warren Buffett or people who have died and they can't touch their portfolios. Because I think again, that investing, it could be another podcast, like a full episode, but I think with investing or trading or the stock market, it's again a very emotional decision where you feel like, oh, I'm going to catch that curve. But you never catch it. It ultimately burns you down. So I love that advice. Don't play that game. Invest for the long term.

Yeah. And if you want to play the game, make sure you just set aside that little amount to play the game with that, you know, that, you know, could, you would be okay losing.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I do for crypto.

Yeah, exactly.

No one should do that, but I've like, it's almost like I've put enough money in there that if I lose that, I'll feel like, oh, 2 dinners lost. That's okay. And I'll do that over long term. Yeah, trading is not the game. I love what we've spoken about. I think money is such a— it's such a universal topic, but the conversations could go anywhere, right? But what you've done today is really simplified, Linda, and I really appreciate it. But now the final question that we have on the podcast is that if now we go a few decades into the future, Linda, and that 80-year-old Linda comes back to you right now, And has one piece of advice on how you should lead the rest of your years, what would that 80-year-old tell your current self?

Gosh. Okay. So, it's gonna be some of the same things that I would probably tell my younger self because I, you know, you have to keep reminding yourself things throughout life. So, I think it would be stop waiting to be certain and trust yourself. Clarity doesn't come first. Like, you have to just take action in order to move forward. You know, it's easy to hesitate or overprepare or second-guess And I don't think any of that really matters in the long run. Yeah. So I think that's probably what I would say, you know, like just take action and just go do it.

Yeah. Just go and do it. Thank you for this beautiful conversation. To everyone who's still listening with and is with us, we'll put all the links in the show notes, but I want to kind of just recap the whole conversation so that you can really summarize this and get What Linda and I tried to give you today in the next, in the last 15 minutes. We'll start with the 80-year-old Linda. Stop waiting to be certain. Just take action. That's the best thing you can do yourself. The only harmful advice about money that we are saying is that don't try to win these short trading games and feel that you will get rich if you want to try that. And this is not for the traders. This is for people who are on the ground, mere mortals who can't predict the stock market. Put a small amount to it. Don't try to put everything. The power of compounding works everywhere. Works with your money, works with your health, works with the podcast, works with anything and everything that you're doing. But you have to keep at it. So find the joy and it'll happen. The idea of me money— set aside some amount of money, whatever that money looks like for you. You need to decide that for yourself because it's a very personalized approach that Linda brought for us today. Set amount, that, that me money for yourself, and then be okay in however you want to spend it, whatever you want to do with it. And that's the best thing that you can do for yourself. Money choices are logical, but they're mostly driven by emotion. And if you can start to be intentional about how and why and what you feel when you spend your money, you will get to learn a lot more about your own selves. We've all been told money stories. Some of them are true. Some of them not. You've got to move forward from those money stories and build your own. But to be able to do that, again, you have to go back and be intentional. Finally, remember the law of the lid. You can only jump as high as your mindset allows. But to help expand your mindset, you've got to surround yourself with the right people and learn the content and expose yourself to the content and be intentional about growing your mindset. And to that 8-year-old Linda, think bigger. Don't grow up too fast. Have a lot of fun while you do all of this. Any closing words, Linda, before we sign off?

Oh my gosh. Just think bigger and just become your best self. Be all you can be. Pay attention to your money.

Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. If you've spent 50 minutes with us, that means this was of value. Share with someone who you think will value this. Do not share it with the large masses. Not everyone is ready for such conversations, but if you feel someone in your network is ready, Do that. If you're on YouTube, put your name in the comments, put something that you've gained from this episode because Linda and I are watching and we'll respond to your comments. And to everyone who's on a podcast platform, keep sharing this. We love bringing these conversations to you, to many more through this year and beyond. This is Utkarsh and Linda signing off.

Bye-bye, everyone.