Build A Wealthy Spirit

This week, Michelle and I discuss the five love languages and how to choose a gift for each person based on their love language. We also share tips for gift-giving for each love language. For example, for someone who loves gifts the packaging can make the whole gift. A beautifully wrapped gift says I came here to give this gift to you, whereas a present in a grocery bag says I thought about this last minute.

Show notes

• The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman
• Love Languages quiz 
• Lush massage bar 
• Episode 120: How to Make Friends as an Adult - Nick Gray 2-hour cocktail party
• Episode 141: Student Loans with Becca Baldauf

Community Time

• Congrats Carla on getting more months certified for PSLF! 
• Thanks to Abby for sharing that she sometimes uses her values to guide her gratitude practice. Genius Idea!
• If you live in or near Charleston, SC, join our meet-up group! Come to our upcoming ugly sweater party on December 9!

BWS on Social Media

• Instagram
• Tik Tok
• Youtube

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

The end of the year is a busy time with multiple holidays, end-of-year deadlines at work, and family gatherings. With all the hustle and bustle, we often neglect our end-of-year financial tasks. This week Michelle and I created a five-step money checklist for the end of the year. 

5 Essential Year-End Money Must-Dos 

1. Max out/contribute to your tax-advantaged accounts 
2. Sign up for Health Care and make vision/dental/medical appointments
3. Spend FSA money
4. Consolidate Student Loans by December 31
5. Make charitable donations 

Show notes

• Top 6 tips: Your year-end financial checklist by Vanguard
• How to Do a Backdoor Roth IRA by White Coat Investor 
• BWS 141. Student Loans and the new SAVE plan with Becca Baldauf from Student Loan Planner

Community Time

• If you live in or near Charleston, SC, join our meet-up group! Come to our upcoming ugly sweater party on December 9!

BWS on Social Media

• Instagram
• Tik Tok
• Youtube

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

Sammie and Michelle take a look at gratitude with a twist, specifically how you can use gratitude to manifest more abundance into your life.

Let us know your thoughts at buildawealthyspirit.com!
---
AirHelp is our partner for this episode! We’ve been huge fans of them because they are so easy to work and solve a problem almost anyone who flies encounters. We’re talking about canceled flights or obscene delays. With AirHelp, you give them your flight information and they go to contact the airlines to see if they can get you compensation under your Air Passenger Rights. 

Bookmark them for the holiday season, though we hope you have safe travels and don’t need it! 

Click here to see if you are eligible for compensation!

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

Taking a break from work might seem like an easy thing to do, but anyone who has taken a sabbatical can speak to the surprising changes that occur when we leave traditional work. 

The Seven Habits of a Highly Effective Sabbatical

1. Prioritize Quality Sleep 
2. Maintain a healthy diet and exercise routine
3. Form a meditative spiritual practice
4. Foster an Abundance mindset
5. Practice Self Compassion
6. Limit yourself to 4 Projects
7. Build Community

Show notes

• Sammie’s sunrise alarm clock
• Seven Habits for a Happy Retirement
• 2-hour cocktail party by Nick Gray
• Our podcast with Nick Gray, author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party
• How to build your dream community, BWS episode 

AirHelp: Partner For This Episode
Check out our partner for this episode, AirHelp. AirHelp is a part of the Association of Passenger Rights Advocates (APRA) whose mission is to promote and protect passengers' rights. Click this link if you've had a cancelled or delayed flight as well as support our podcast: AirHelp Affiliate Link

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

See here for full show notes

The financial independence number is the amount of money a person needs to retire or not work again. Using information from the Trinity study, linked in the show notes below, we can find out our FI number by taking our annual spending and multiplying by 25.

I’ve found knowing my FI number incredibly motivating in saving and knowing what my financial goals are. Michelle, on the other hand, feels that people place too much importance on the FI number. She finds that people use the FI number to trap themselves in a job or stay in a mediocre situation. 
Today on the podcast, Michelle and I discuss the FI number and debate its importance. Don’t worry, there will be no hair-pulling or kicking each other’s shins. 

Show notes

• The Trinity Study: Retirement Savings: Choosing a Withdrawal Rate That Is Sustainable
• Mr. Money Mustache’s take on the Trinity Study- The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement
• Grant Sabatier author of Financial Freedom
• Cody Berman co-host of The Financial Independence Show
• Navigating the Friend Recession: Building Stronger Communities, a conversation with Doc G of Earn and Invest
• Sunrise Sun Lamp
• Choose FI episode 461, discussing community and Nick Gray’s 2 hour cocktail party
• The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings by Nick Gray

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

In November 2021, Michelle and I came up with a concept called “Death Clock”. We were driving back from my job interview in the middle of the desert when we started pondering scenarios involving our own mortality. If we had a timer next to our head that said we only had ten more years to live, would we change anything? If the timer said five years or one year, what would change? 

This thought experiment shed light on the perceived and real limitations that were preventing me from making changes. At that time, the death clock exercise made me realize that under no circumstance would I stay at my current job in San Jose because it was both taking up all my time and paying less than my future job in the desert. 

I ended up taking the desert job. We moved to the middle of nowhere. A radio tower fell on our house. Michelle started working two jobs related to her interests and now is writing regularly. I ultimately quit my job to take a sabbatical and now we are living in South Carolina. Life moves fast when death clock is on the brain. 

Today, we discuss how the concept of death clock has impacted our lives and how death clock brought clarity to the life changes that needed to be made to live more closely in alignment. 

Show notes

• Death Meditation Can Reduce Anxiety and Improve Your Life
• Our previous Death Clock episode 

Community Time

• Listen to us discuss the Friendship Recession with Doc G on Earn and Invest
• Thank you
• Sean Murphy for sharing our episode on 

Deprogramming from the Corporate Mindset

•  on Instagram. 

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

We are excited to revisit one of our most popular episodes and a topic we love, Deprogramming from the Corporate Mindset. How fun to share it with our spooky October theme song as well. 

Leave a comment at buildawealthyspirit.com

When Michelle left her sales job, she knew she wanted to take some time off and eventually start more creative projects. Her days felt fulfilling and in alignment, she was living at home, got to spend time with her parents and launch this podcast with Sammie. However, she felt so guilty for months because she still thought a productive day had to fit within a 40 hour work week or within the 9-5 workday. 

It’s funny to reflect on that now. Michelle needed a mental break but refused to give it to herself. We've realized this is common for people who leave the traditional workplace for any reason. It’s easy to feel guilty if we aren’t as productive as we think we would be if we were in an office. 

When we launched this episode initially, Sammie was still working her PA job in our small town and didn’t have a sabbatical on her radar. What a difference a few months makes! We found revisiting this episode was a great reminder to us to enjoy the present moment. Whether or not we’re working a full time job, our value is not defined by our work identity.

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

Budgeting, or planning how your dollars are going to be spent in the future, is more tricky than simply tracking each expense. I’ve always marveled at zero-based budgeting software like YNAB, You Need a Budget. With YNAB, you take every dollar from your income and assign it to a job. Some money gets set aside for rent, groceries, savings, etc. However, as someone with a high savings rate, zero-based budgeting strategies seemed a bit overkill for my needs. 

Not working complicated all of this. Budgeting and tracking my expenses is so much more important when you don’t have a job. At the same time, you can’t “budget” a non-existent paycheck. Was I supposed to assign each dollar of my net worth a job? That seemed insane and very difficult to predict so early on in my life. 

Michelle and I took time this week to discuss simpler ways to budget. Our friend and fellow podcast listener, Arjun, told us that he has a general idea of what he spends on most things each month, so he knows how much he typically spends. 

We took this concept and combined it with tracking your spending. First, we calculated our monthly fixed expenses; rent, utilities, health insurance etc. For me, this number is around 1600-1700. Next, we use data from tracking our spending to track our other spending categories and costs. As an example, my typical spending categories are groceries, gas, hanging out with friends, home supplies etc, which can range from about $800-3000. Spending at this rate would result in an annual spending of about $43,000. 

I can use my typical monthly spending to estimate my next month's costs and consider any extra expenses I might have- travel, Christmas, etc. When I see how much I spent at the end of the month, I can tell if I am above or below my average spending which helps me decide if I am still on track. 

Though this method may not be as accurate or stringent as zero-based budgeting, Michelle and I found that it helped paint a realistic picture of our spending which relieved money anxieties and our scarcity mindset. Listen to today’s podcast for the details of our method. 

How do you all track your expenses and budget? Are you on a break from work or self-employed, how do you manage your spending? Let us know in the comments below. 

Show notes

• How to Choose a Budgeting Strategy by Emily Hudson from YNAB
• YNAB- You need a budget
• ClassPass 

Community Time

• Thank you Joshua Lelon for your insights from our 

episode 142 “What are you telling the universe” 

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

What are you telling the universe? If the universe sent a little scribe down to record everything you are thinking and doing, what would this log look like? Imagine if a genie could turn that story into reality – would this story bring you satisfaction? If you continue doing the same actions that you are doing today, what will be the end result? These thoughts and actions become our reality, so we must be deliberate about them. James Clear talks about “Identity-Based Habits”. Rather than simply performing daily habits, he recommends first, creating an identity in your mind, then living a life that matches that identity.

Show notes 

• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Identity-Based Habits: How to Actually Stick to Your Goals This Year by James Clear 
• Sign up for ClassPass
• Episode 141 on Student Loans
• Hinge

Community Time

• Carla has consolidated her loans and is awaiting PSLF approval for her pre-PA school job. Check out our student loan episode here. We hope you are forgiven and those loans are gone! 

AirHelp: Partner For This Episode
Check our our partner for this episode, AirHelp. AirHelp is a part of the Association of Passenger Rights Advocates (APRA) whose mission is to promote and protect passengers' rights. Click this link if you've had a cancelled or delayed flight as well as support our podcast: AirHelp Affiliate Link

Notice anything spooktacular about today’s Build a Wealthy Spirit Jingle? Yes, we did have a spooktacular edition of the theme song because I’m OBSESSED with Halloween. Do not fret! This eerie jingle is here to stay for the month of October, so be sure to join us next time as we put down the ghoul-book and rethink the status quo.

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!

Feeling anxious about starting Student Loan Payments?  Feeling confused by all the new SAVE plan changes?  If yes, this is the episode for you!

Becca Baldauf a CPA and Certified College Financial Consultant with Student Loan Planner joins us to have a conversation on Student Loans. Starting October 2023, student loan payments resume. President Biden has also recently launched the SAVE plan which has many new changes and potential HUGE benefits for many borrowers. Becca gets into specifics about student loans such as consolidation, public service loan forgiveness [PSLF], loan forgiveness in general, the different plans for repayment and their benefits, and general ways to approach loans. This is a must-listen episode for anyone who has student loans! Share it with anyone who is wondering how to approach their student loans. For questions on your specific situation, you can book a consultation with Student Loan Planner here. 

Here’s some exciting points from today’s conversation

• Borrowers who work at a nonprofit but who are employed by a private company (because they are not able to work directly for the nonprofit) can now qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). Ex: Kaiser Permanente physicians 
• If you worked at a nonprofit in/after undergrad and you were paying your student loans, then those months can now apply to forgiveness for all your loans. Your loans must be consolidated for this to apply. The deadline to consolidate is December 31, 2023. Ex: Susan worked as a lab tech at a nonprofit hospital for 1 year prior to PA school. She was paying for her undergrad loans during that time period. She went to PA school and accumulated grad school loans as well. The 12 months count towards her entire 120 loan count towards PSLF not only for the undergrad loans. 

Show Notes

• Book an appointment with Student loan planner
• Student Loan Planner website 
• Information on One-Time Payment Count Adjustment for Eligible Borrowers
• Certification form for public service loan forgiveness

Notice anything spooktacular about today’s Build a Wealthy Spirit Jingle? Yes, we did have a spooktacular edition of the theme song because I’m OBSESSED with Halloween. Do not fret! This eerie jingle is here to stay for the month of October, so be sure to join us next time as we put down the ghoul-book and rethink the status quo.

Find more show notes and interact with the Build A Wealthy Spirit community at buildawealthyspirit.com!