Elevate with Grace

S2, Ep 8 Mindsets, Tips & Conversations on Money

• Elevate with Grace • Season 2 • Episode 8

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The third in our money in focus series, this episode rounds out the conversation we started in Episode 6 with Sallie Krawcheck's Own It and continued last episode (#7) exploring mindset, conditioning and biases.  In our final epsidode in this series we bring to life the tips, hacks and conversation starters to drive you to take regular, sustained action.   

From mapping out your current situation with candles and permission not to judge or whip yourself, through to heavy goal setting and incremental changes to achieve a far bigger goal than possible today.  We also offer conversation starters to ensure we are collectively supporting and lifting each other up and some great articles, social links and thought leaders that don't spin the same old hold the smashed avocado.

This episode will leave you with some great life hacks and thought leadership to take action and master your productivity.  to help set up your next big goal, your super.  Neither Miranda or Claire are qualified in any way to give financial advice of any sort., simply girlfriends having a chat, encouraging you to start a conversations and offer some new reference points to explore.

Action Challenge:
This episode your action challenge is to pick one of the 3 key money tips areas (mindset, ) and really make headway with a dedicated focus that you know will help you elevate your financial prowess in 2022 and offer opportunities to design your life on your terms.

Social/Article references:
The Broke Generation, https://thebrokegeneration.com/blog/2020/10/30/financial-personality-questions-money-mindset/
The Financial Diet & the Financial Confessions Podcast & Socials, https://thefinancialdiet.com/
Budgetista, The Financial Wholeness Quiz (2mins)  https://thebudgetnista.outgrow.us/thebudgetnista-2
Scott Pape, The Barefoot investor Monday newsletter, https://www.barefootinvestor.com/
Financial Gym, https://financialgym.com/blog/2021/2/25/how-to-talk-to-your-friends-about-money

Book References:
Tiffany Aliche, Get Good with Money, https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/GetGoodwMoney
The Latte Factor, https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/LatteFactor
The Financial Diet, https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/financialdiet
Sallie Krawcheck, Own It, https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/elevate-own-it
Gary Keller & Jay Papasan, The One Thing, The Surprisingly Simple Truth behind Extraordinary Results https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/elevate-theonething
Emma Isaacs, Winging It link: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/ElevateWingingIt
These are affiliate links

We would love to hear your thoughts on this episode - check out our Instagram, LinkedIn or  Website or Email elevatewithgrace@gmail.com

Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah

Miranda:

Welcome to season two of the elevate with grace podcast, for women who are short on time and long to take steps to create success on their own today. This podcast is here for women who feel overworked, underappreciated, and stuck in a constant wheel of spinning plates and want more from life. We take the plethora of Intel out there and curated into the highest value insights. We combine it with our lived experiences to offer bite-size actionable tips. So you can look back at the end of each quarter, end of the year, knowing that you are working towards achieving success on your own terms.

Claire:

Hello, and welcome to episode eight of season two of the elevate with grace podcast. I'm Claire. And with me is my immigration and Uber smart co-host Miranda. In today's pod, we're going to be chatting about some of the fab content we've uncovered in books, articles, and other great sources that have helpful tips and hacks on getting our mojo on for managing our money. While you can absolutely listen to this episode as a standalone it's also the third of three episodes we've been doing with the focus on women and money and the important role it has in creating success for ourselves. On our own terms. The first episode, a couple of pods back we were looking into the book, own it by Sally Krawcheck, which is all about. Women and career success and money and finances. And then the last episode we were talking about the importance of looking after your money for your future self and some of the things around mindset and why in today's current environment, it's really important for us as women to find the fun in finance as I coined the term last time. Now having chats in pods is great. And I love the conversations each episode, but Miranda and I are also very passionate about the importance of turning our chats into small actions each day and each week, so that we can live the life we want for ourselves So the tips, ideas and hacks that we're talking about in today's pod fit into three themes. The first is about our money mindset, the second is about exploring and then deep diving into some great resources to learn more about the areas of managing your money that are important to you and the third thing that we want to talk about today is having more conversations about money. With that in mind, our action challenge for today's episode is to pick one of the three areas that we're diving into over the course of the episode and challenge yourself to really make some headway. One of the three that will help you in elevating your financial prowess in 2022. And intern, your opportunity to design the life for yourself on your terms and for your future self. I do want to just remind everyone and make it clear that Miranda and in this episode, in the last couple of episodes are basically having a chat about money between close friends, which we're passionate about you emulating with your friends and partner and boss but just a reminder that neither Miranda or I qualified in any way to give any financial advice of any sort, what does having chats on all things, money and finances between friends Before we dive into the episode, we'll just recap on our action challenge from the last episode, which was to take some time to reflect and ponder on our mindsets around money and to write down some emotions that we're feeling around money. And the second part of the action was to think about the financial goals that you've been putting off, write them down and then take some action on just one before today's episode. So before I go on any further Miranda, hello there. Have you had a good couple of weeks? And did you have a crack at the action challenge from the last pod?

Miranda:

Hello. I am very happy to be here. And yeah, it's been a big couple of weeks or all going well there. In terms of the action challenge. Yes, I did. I was pretty open and honest about my mindset around money in the last episode. And so continuing to track those emotions was really interesting for me. I think there's certainly some resistance to dealing with things like my super account so took that on. And I've got a couple more to go. I need to change my car insurance. And I also want to look and get get my texts done and, it's so funny I think it's not even embarrassing to not do your tax so time anymore. It's just like the how else can we, how do we fit everything in? So you really want to work on my mindset for that and be on the ball for next year and get it in quite early on next financial year. So two months time because it is something that just sits there and it hangs over your head and, it's just doesn't really get done, which is crazy.

Claire:

So I don't know why we do that. Do we, are there, I have got better at it in terms of just setting up some systems. So when I'm getting receipts are now have I take the picture of the receipt and I just email it to myself. And it's in a folder called 20, 22 tax because I was finding the same being, I was just getting to the end of the year. And then you grappling around. Finding all of that information to support deductions and stuff. It is a bit of a drainer. So just having a consistent process has helped a little bit by that. But you're right. It's almost tax return time.

Miranda:

Yeah I could do one from last year and then we'll get this one done, but it's all going to have to roll into the same action and just keep those actions going. So what I want to do now is just be like, what's my financial challenge for this weekend and keep doing those challenges each week. To get myself into a position of strength. I did talk to a financial planner as well, which was interesting. I think what I've learnt from that is that they're not all going to be aligned to your values and the way that you think, and also it was a bit of a difficult conversation. And so I don't want it to tear our listeners from having those conversations, but I think just know that, getting some hints from your girlfriends on who to talk to and where to go for that kind of support is great. Ellevest is probably another one I've really, flipped into that and another couple of groups to join and to follow and get some more advice. Yeah. I think it doesn't all have to be one conversation and then you go, oh that didn't work. And so therefore that's not the right path for me which I have done in the past to be perfectly honest. So there's been some good actions there. What about you, Claire?

Claire:

Yeah, so my main action, which has been on the back of my mind for a little while, there's a lot of press around the rising interest rates. And I've just been looking at different options. So it's a good kick in the pants to have a look around and do a bit of a shop around whether there's some better rates that I can be getting on my home loan before the interest rate rises start to kick in. And the other one is superannuation too. I know that I don't, I have some money that's not in the funds that have the lowest fees and the highest returns. And there's some good information on the tax office website as to what those funds are. And so I'm just exploring that and the insurance within your superannuation. So one of the things that is my sticking point is that there's insurance in your superannuation. That's really important. And if you're moving super funds, you need to make sure that's moving along as well. Yeah, so those have been my two focus areas, cause they've been, it's been good to have this as an accountability buddy, really, because they've been playing on my mind for some time, but I've actually made some progress towards them in the last couple of weeks. And you're a hundred percent spot on, I think with financial advisors It's really looking for recommendations and finding people that financial advisors or financial coaches that are open to understanding what your life goals are, because really it should be driven by what your life goals are in terms of how you should be setting up your finances. So yeah it's interesting to hear. I'm glad that you brought that up because it's like it's like any of those things finding a health coach or finding a gym coach or the right gym, we wouldn't be put off in other parts of our lives. Finding the right financial advisor and the right financial coach also is the same as finding the right any type of relationship like that in your life. So it might not work out the first time.

Miranda:

Yeah, that's a good point. That's it keep looking which brings us to hour episode and the first thing I wanted to dive into. We spoke about mindset in the last pod, but we didn't really go dive into that the tips and how we can start to work on our mindset better. I wanted to do more digging into this space as we've seen in so many of our episodes, if we can shift our mindset, if we can address some of those challenges and like even this conversation with the financial person instantly just made me feel. I don't want to have these conversations. I don't want to share I'm not comfortable and wanting to backpedal. And so deep breath. What is my mindset telling me here? Okay. There's some discomfort. I don't need to hide from this. I don't need to just stop taking any action it's not comfortable. And so understanding that mindset, but then also taking action against that mindset is so important. So in the last episode, we discussed a pretty gorgeous gins Forbes article that some of the common emotions around money, shame, guilt, envy, fear were really quite powerful. That will absolutely getting in our way. And I loved Claire share where she said those emotions were more freedom and of equity, which was amazing. Was it equity?

Claire:

Equity. Yeah it is related to freedom but feeling like I'm independently earning my own money,

Miranda:

yeah. So emotions of freedom and equity a far more powerful than hiding behind shame and guilt. So without awareness, we know these emotions can override our rational thinking and drive us to actions that we're not in control over. So instead let's take some control.

Miranda (2):

For me, this becomes my one thing for the next few months. So until I can shift my mindset to one more kin to that power, that freedom et cetera. And I can trust that when financial elements need to be tended to that, I will make it become a priority and not shove it in a drawer, physical or digital. That it becomes the one thing that I set myself a priority to do each weekend that I look. For those things that I haven't resolved, that I look for those financial challenges I need to get on top of and keep working on that. So I think that's going to really help with my mindset and just get me into a really strong position. I do personally feel that part of the problem is there is very few good books, good role models around this. And I think there's almost this fear of being lectured to we definitely saw a lot of the discouragement of having brunches or avocado toast, buying the lattes, et cetera. And it's great to see a new generation of independent women we do have that independence. We are earning our own money and we just need to see a few more, good role models right on wine book on how this is going to work, because it wasn't in the past role model as this sexy female thing to worry about, it was you just do your thing and the money will be taken care of, or not. We are independently earning our own money and we also need to learn how to manage those. And I think the literature is going to catch up. And we've got to ignore some of the patronizing turns that come out of that literature. There are some great thought leaders appearing in this space. And so it's not having one bad experience and then not getting into that space further. It's going on the dating. It's trying to find the right person until you get to that space where you go. Yes. I've found somebody that aligns to my values and hopefully we've got some recommendations in here that both Claire and I have comfortable with and we feel like they get it. In one way or another.

Claire:

I completely hear what you're saying. And it's interesting for me to listen to, because of course having been in the financial services industry for the best part of 15, years, I have seen a solid positive shift. Over the last decade in terms of, a light bulb moment going on, that we need to support women differently, we need to support women in the space of their financial decision and getting their mojo around money. I think that is improving, but I do also agree in listening to you that there's still a lot of opportunity in that space. In Own it, Sally Kaushik talks about the reason she went and set up Ellevest is because a lot of the research that they did indicates that it's as if the current way that the financial services work. Really speaking to men it's not really speaking to women. And so it's like women trying to understand Chinese when they speak French. And so a lot of ellevest is about turning the language that, that attracts and looks after women. One of the people that I do like in this space and it ties into, talking about exploring our money mindset is Emma Edwards. So she's the mind behind the broke generation and the broke generation is a great one to follow on Instagram, but she's also got a great website with lots of different blogs to explore. She does a newsletter, which is interesting too, if you want to sign up to the newsletter. On the topic of money mindset, she's written a short blog called. Five questions that will teach you about your own financial personality. And so there's a lot of bite sized, blogs and actions that come through from Emma via the broke generation. And that could be worth checking out as one of your action challenges.

Miranda:

Another one called get good with money tiffany, Ellie, and she's actually also set up a cool financial health survey. She keeps it real and it starts with mindset. So she recognizes the challenge of coming through your money, getting really honest about where you're at in all sorts of walks of your financial acumen and encourages creating a calming environment. So she's even recommending centered candles music, and a reward post accomplishing those financial tasks, which I thought was really. She's also set up a bit of a fun blog. So she's one to check out. Once you've started with the mindset, you've gotten past some of those mindset challenges she really recommends having a really big goal. So trying to work out what your financial goal is. So not just going, I need to get on top of this. I need to solve the super working out what your ultimate bigger goal is. Here, we're all about achieving success on your own terms, but what is that really big goal that you're looking to solve for? And being able to direct that mindset. I think we all know that we can save for a deposit. That's what we're looking for. Or we can save for a You say for out three month financial buffer if we know what we're looking for, we're very smart cookies and we can absolutely set'em on to achieve anything. But knowing what that goal is being really clear on it can be a huge help and a great book that actually dive into this was the latte factor and the latte factor, thankfully was not suggesting that you don't buy the. It was actually just acknowledging that a small amount of money each week and making that kind of headway towards a bigger goal. And in the book, it was a travel photographer who dreamed of doing a photography course and being able to travel and take beautiful photos that by just doing, investing the five or$10. I paying herself first, before she paid her bills et cetera, because she knew what she was working towards was a really great way to take back control and not feel overwhelmed or victimized by the lack of money that she was having. Or maybe the amount of bills that she was incurring. Still setting a budget, still making sure that she wasn't, Spending more than she was bringing in, but paying herself first was a very interesting concept within the latte factor. So that was another another good one and I must admit the title gave me pause. But I definitely, I dive in and checked it out. And another one that I've actually been following their Instagram is called the financial diet by Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Vander Hague. Very refreshing, very relatable and definitely called out the need code out the need to start a conversation around money, which was great. So she started a podcast called the financial confessions. So it's taking on that the shame, the guilt, the embarrassment, and turning it into something that's a bit more fun, but also using that podcast to talk about how we live and interact with money and inspire us in how we can do this better. So there's a great. Great post the other day on her Instagram, where it's like, what being good with money can look like. And it's saying, some of the tip things could be not having to worry about buying the$5 latte, knowing that price is not the same as value keeping tabs on investments without overthinking them, being able to confidently say that's not in my budget. So actually being open and saying that brunches and in my budget, I'd love to catch up with you. Let's do it in the park or let's do it at a simple cafe. So being really honest about. I'm getting a thrill out of every transfer to savings. So really owning that pace. And yeah, so I really liked that post and there's some really fun things, both in the book. And also in their instance,

Claire:

I will have to check those out, you can become, sit in your ways. I've got a few tried and true favorites to go to. And it's almost, plumber with the worst plumbing in the sense of, I don't read finance books at all too many years studying, in that space. But I do like all of the bite-sized stuff. So that's probably where I go to mostly I've got some key, go to use that. Just keep money front of mind each week from different sources, but I'll have to check the ones that you mentioned. My go-to is Scott Pape. The barefoot investor. He's got the barefoot investor for families. And I think at the moment he's talking about writing a book written for kids about how they should approach and think about money I think his weekly newsletters are great. It's a short segment on something that's top of mind at the moment. It's really easy to understand. And then there's some Q and a with people that are writing into him, it's a quick read. And I get a lot of value out of that. So the barefoot investor's weekly newsletter would, you can just subscribe to on the barefoot investor website., as we spoke about in the last part. I'm an advocate for having a flick through the Australian financial review on a regular basis. Again, it's about finding the stuff that resonates with you. So yes, in the financial review, there's a lot of heavy content on politics. Things like crypto currency, loads of really heavy financial content if that's not your bag, like it's not line either. Then you just do what I do and do what we do on any other media platform is you just scroll on by and you look for titles and things that peak your interest. So for example, as I mentioned at the beginning, I've got one action on my superannuation and my second action is on where my mortgage is with basically two, whether I can get a better deal before interest rates keep rising. In early may, there was a couple of articles. One was three practical strategies for what women can do to close their superannuation gender gap. a couple of pages some good gold nuggets in there. And another one that was on strategies to help mortgage holders handle rate rises. We're through them, we've got a couple of tips. And I do encourage, that the Australian financial review is a good source of being across from a financial news perspective. And then the last one, which you've already mentioned Miranda is aye. Follow Sally cautious and elevate posts and articles on LinkedIn. Frequently. Clicking on them. And there's heaps of actionable ideas on all things, money spoken in a really plain way. The main thing that we're calling out here between us both is you've just got to find some awesome thought leaders that are talking about finance and money in a way that resonates with you and where you're at and your financial mindset and your financial goals. Between us, we've come up with some good options to go away and have a play around with and see what they like.

Miranda:

And like I said, when I first dove into this and I must've made Claire, I was really struggling to come up with a content for this episode because I just kept finding the same. How to make a six figure income and, big investments and things to getting to, and just wasn't finding the right kind of content that I was comfortable with. So I'm thrilled that we've been able to track that down and we'll definitely share it on all of our socials because it is There's some fun stuff and there's some great stuff in there. And I love your idea of making finances fun, but coming at it as somebody, who's probably not put enough focus on it in the last sort of 20 years. I'm thrilled to be having this conversation now, and I'm desperate to have these conversations with my other girlfriends and start sharing. I do think it's going to take some time to get in, to have those conversations with our girlfriends. I think this is something that has been really challenging for so long, we don't tend to want to have these conversations. We'll talk about our sex lives. We'll talk about what's going on in our bodies with our girlfriends, but we don't necessarily want to talk about what's happening in our finances. What we don't know, what we're uncomfortable with a whole area of finance, which would just complete to very complete

Claire:

avoiding and not just for that girlfriends. Like it's, It's when need to call out that it can even for couples Conversations with your partner around money and can be hard conversations with your boss around money. It can be hard. I've had both examples. A friend that's struggling to talk to a pay rise that she believes she deserves and has come through a girlfriend channel to talk about that stuff, which is great to see. But it doesn't take away from the fact that these conversations Actually pretty hard. And so we've just got to make a little bit of progress each day and each week to being a little bit more comfortable and a little bit stronger about having these conversations

Miranda:

but it's going to make us all so much better. If we do have these conversations, Claire, I'm a convert a lot more open about the conversations. I'm a lot more open about sharing, about money and wanting to have those conversations. And that there is this sort of mindset that hang on your, is your money just going to pay for the household and is your husband's money going into savings? Do you know where that's going? Do you know how much it is? Because. That's a team effort, right? So I think these are really important conversations that we need to have, and we're not doing ourselves any favors by hiding behind that discomfort. I found a bloke called the financial gym and it actually had a post called how to talk to your friends about. it goes into some great tips and again, we'll put it into our socials and this one we'll put onto Insta as well as in the show notes, but it's suggesting that we keep our money chats judgment free, and really be honest about the fact that we're not looking for. For judgment and we're not looking to judge. We just want to make sure that we're supporting each other and, we can maybe find some comfortable ways to do that. We certainly don't judge each other about our sex lives, so let's not talk to each other about our money. Don't be afraid to ask those questions of your friends. What do you think about the super? How do I take on this pay challenge? I'm really struggling with that. Communicate your financial boundaries. I think this is really important, what are you comfortable to? To talk about, but more importantly, with this one, what are you comfortable to spend on a weekly basis? What are you comfortable to spend when you go out to dinner? Don't feel like you either have to say no, or you're not available to your friends actually say, Hey, I can't really afford that brunch or this indulgence this week, but I'd love to see you. Can we do something else? That's probably a really strong one. I think we could all have with our girlfriends in different ways and then seek to avoid comparison. We're all running a diff our own race. We're not, we've got to try super hard, not to compare ourselves with others, but know that what we're doing is our journey and our path and try and avoid those comparisons because it will make for much richer conversation. And we will absolutely take on more from what our friends are sharing. And we know that our collective is always stronger than us individually. We can really, if we can bring about this conversation, it's only going to do us the world of good.

Claire:

I don't invest enough as I should. And I know I need to get better. So yeah I think I'm not great at having financial conversations, but I feel more comfortable in doing it after being in that sort of industry for a long time. And so I just love I think your perspective is and that blog about the tips on how to talk about money. And the judgment factor. I just think yeah, I've got a lot of debt out of that as well, because he, it brings into context how you should be approaching these conversations when you're trying to approach them and things to keep in mind. So I love that article. I'm definitely in check it out.

Miranda:

Fantastic. I think we've reached the end of our podcast. This has been really strong. So we've spoken about mindset and some tips and things to get around our mindset, getting some less scented candles, having some good moments. We've definitely got through a lot of great tips, blogs and content. So you can either read a couple of books if you're into that or some great articles or just some, dip in and out. Tips and things to prompt us and to remind us what to do in this space. And then also just a encouragement to start those conversations and share that with your girlfriends, you'll all be better off for it. As always, we've put all of our curated content that we've mentioned today in the pot episode notes. So you can check them out over the next while and dip into stuff that resonates with you and will inspire you to take those small, actionable steps for your own success journey.

Claire:

A quick reminder of our action challenge is to pick one of those topics that we've talked about today that Miranda does summarized whether that's your money mindset or exploring and diving into some of the resources that we'll put in the podcast notes to help you with your financial learning journey or thinking about how you can embark on some of the tricky conversations about money, whether that's practicing with your girlfriends or more serious conversations on the home front and the Workfront. And the challenge is to really make some headway with one of those things that will help you in elevating your financial prowess this year and intern your opportunity to design your life on your terms for your future.

Miranda:

Beautiful. Check out our website, elevate with grace.com.edu or hop onto our socials for more curated content. And we'd love, love, love to hear from you and how you're going. Please drop us an email@elevatewithgraceatgmail.com and please like, and subscribe to this podcast. We are going to be taking a mid-season pause And when we come back, we'll bring you some great new curated content around our elevate with grace pillars on cultivating your career, taking smart risks and finessing your finances to help you live a life of success on your own terms and taking actionable steps each week, each month, each quarter to get you where you need to be. Can't wait to chat with you again soon as always. Claire, thank you so much. It's been wonderful chatting with you and thank you to our listeners. Appreciate you.

Claire:

Yes. Thank you so much and see you after a little break. That'll be great. Look forward to it.