Financial Conversation Podcast

Have you ever found yourself feeling stuck? Stressed? Inadequate? I think we all have at some point.

While there are many reasons you could feel this way, one of the biggest reasons people struggle with feeing stuck in their lives is because they aren't living according to their values.

Instead, we tend to get caught up in keeping up with the Joneses, wether that be by buying things we don't want or need, or pursuing things in life that we don't really value.

We could be trying to keep up by buying a new car, a big house, going on expensive vacations. But you could be trying to keep up in a lifestyle sense by pursuing what society tells you is important.

In this week's episode, we're talking about how we've found ourselves trying to keep up in the past, as well as the steps we've taken to focus on ourselves instead of keeping up with the Joneses.

If you are keeping up appearances or keeping up with the Joneses, you may be in bigger trouble than you think. Of course, you could be in financial trouble for spending money you don't have on things you don't want or need, but there are other dangers too.

Following the crowd and keeping up can lead to unhappiness with your life and the choices you've made. You might even wake up one day and think "How did I get here?". This can be common if you are going along with society and those around you instead of focusing on yourself, your values, and what you truly want to do in life.

This is a continual process that you can't just think about one time. You have to continually check-in with yourself to make sure you on are the right path. Plus, it takes time to learn what your values are so you can pursue them in all areas of your life.

For example, you might find yourself feeling stuck in your career like we did. All three of us took risks and branched out from traditional employment to pursue our own endeavors. But even once we'd achieved that, we still have to make sure we continue to focus on ourselves and not end up "keeping up" with those around us.

Once we because self-employed, we all found ourselves in this community that continually promotes hustling, working 24/7 and earning more money continually. These all sound like good things, but as the saying goes, too much of a good thing is still too much. Or something like that. ;)

Even though we'd broken free from keeping up in a traditional career path, we've now found ourselves having to re-evaluate our focus once again.

In this week's episode of the podcast, we are talking about specific things we've done to stop keeping up and turn our focus toward ourselves.

If you've tuned in to our previous episodes this year, then you know we're focused on self-care this season. All 10 of the episodes in season two will be related to that overall theme.

This week we're sharing our best tips for turning your focus toward yourself and breaking the desire to keep up with others.

• 1:30 - How we have tried to keep up with the Joneses in the past with money and other ways
• 5:11 - Who are the Joneses?
• 11:45 - Keeping up with the Joneses can be bad, even if it's related to a good habit, like frugality
• 17:00 - Social media's impact on the desire to keep up with others

• FCP043 – How to Deal with the Obsession of Earning More Money
• The Importance of Defining Your Values

This episode was brought to you in part by Audible.com. You can listen to any audio book for FREE with a 30 day trial using our link!

Learning what your values are is so important no matter what goals you have or what phase of life you're in.

Often times, we're influenced by outside sources like our friends, family members, celebrities, or even the media and we may interpret their beliefs or actions with things we should value when they're not actually our values at all.

It can take a lot of experience and soul searching to determine what your values are, but in this week's episode, we're focusing in on how we established our own set of values along with helpful tips to enable you to determine what you truly value in life.

Many people confuse values with beliefs and characteristics like morals and ethics but your values simply include things that are most important to you. It sounds like it should be simple to determine your values, but it's harder to narrow them down thanks to things that will deter the process like peer pressure, the imposter syndrome, and social media.

However, if you don't get clear on your values, you may not be able to find your purpose or feel comfortable with your lifestyle. People who are confused about what they value also tend to spend mindlessly, lose motivation to reach their goals easily, dedicate their lives to pleasing other over meeting their own needs, and overall, they just lack any real direction in life.

It's fun in the moment to have a 'YOLO' mindset and live life without any foundation but after a while, it gets old once you realize it's pointless to live with no real purpose.

Some people even identify with having a quarter-life or mid-life crisis, which indicates that they need to slow down, refocus, and choose clear values for their life.

You also might find it interesting to realize that your values change over time just as you change year after year. You may value certain things like coffee or meditation one day and other things like your new car or travel the next.

when it comes to your values, there's no right or wrong answer. But when you decide what's most important to you, be sure to own it so you can live a more intentional life with fewer regrets.

Be sure to tune in to this week's episode of the Financial Conversation podcast.

As you saw with last week's episode, we're switching things up and providing regular seasons with the podcast.

You'll still get to hear our lovely voices chat about important topics that relate to your everyday life whether it's surrounding finance, business, or personal reflection. However, this season is all about self-care and being the best you can be so the 10 episodes for this season will surround that overall theme.

If you've been feeling lost lately in terms of setting goals and being content with your life, you may need to work on setting clear values which we will help you explore in this episode!

• 1:55 - What are our values?
• 8:45 - What do you want to be known for?
• 9:45 - Did you have trouble defining your values?
• 17:15 - Using values to set goals and create a path
• 19:15 - Erin's process of finding values
• 23:00 - 3 questions to help you define your values
• 26:35 - Benefits of having clearly defined values
• 29:20 - Defined values help you take your life back

• The Power of Habits Over Resolutions
• The Seven Stages of Money Maturity by George Kinder - contains the 3 questions to help you define your values

Welcome back to the Financial Conversation podcast! We hope you enjoyed your holidays and we are excited to be back on the show!

We've made a few changes to the show. For one, we'll be doing the podcast in seasons with each season having an overarching theme that all of the episodes will be related to. We think this will make it easier for you to find information on specific topics, and it will help us organize our thoughts to provide you with more valuable conversations and resources.

If you want to catch up on episodes from last season, you can find them here.

For season two, the theme is self care and being the best you can be.

We kicked off season two this week with our first episode about why we chose NOT to set New Year's Resolutions. Instead, we are all trying to use habits to reach our goals this year.

First, we talk about the differences between goals and resolutions, including why goals might be a better way to get things done. We also discuss how goals alone are not enough. It's the daily habits you practice that will actually help you achieve your goals.

Erin even reveals why she doesn't set goals and instead relies only on her habits to work toward her long-term ideas. Plus, Chonce and Kayla talk about how they've failed with goals in the past because of life's ever-changing circumstances. It's clear that for the three of us, habits are the way to.

• 2:03 - Have you ever set New Year's Resolutions?
• 2:18 - The difference between goals and resolutions
• 3:33 - Why habits are more flexible than resolutions
• 6:18 - The habits we are implementing this year
• 12:28 - Have you ever reversed a bad habit?
• 16:10 - The "One Word for the Year" trend
• 21:28 - Habits can help you achieve a goal without ever setting one
• 27:33 - How "over-goaling" can be a bad thing

• Ep. 1 - Our Financial Goals for the Year
• Ep. 43 - How to Deal with the Obsession of Earning More Money
• Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results by Steven Guise

This is a special episode as it's our 50th and our last for 2016. After this, we will be taking a break to spend time with our friends and family for the holidays. We plan to come back next year with lots of new ideas to make the show even better!

To celebrate our 50th episode, we're talking about something a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs think about: how to legitimize their business, and what it actually means for you.

Because we have a lot of questions on this topic, we decided to bring in a special guest to tell us what we need to know about transforming our businesses into actual legal entities and other ways to legitimize your business.

Our special guest today is Eric Nisall from AccountLancer.com and Entrepretunity.com. Eric's an accountant for freelancers and totally knows his stuff when it comes to all the ins and outs of taxes and business law. He's also an entrepreneur himself, so we knew he'd be the perfect guest to join us in this episode.

• 1:50 - Eric introduces himself
• 3:30 - When Eric chose to strike out on his own
• 10:00 - When to consider tax benefits of forming an entity
• 24:50 - Viewing your business as a business
• 35:00 - How to tell a bad accountant from a good one
• 38:15 - Eric's future plans

• Accountlancer.com
• Entreprentunity.com
• What To Do When You Wrongly Receive A 1099-MISC
• Choosing The Right Tax Professional For You & 1 Question You NEVER Thought To Ask
• Your Accountant is Robbing You & Pissing Off Your Partners

This episode was inspired by a reader question we recently received from a listener and fellow blogger who is interested in leveraging his blog to start making money offering freelance services.

Luckily, all of us have experience with this topic as we've all taken different approaches to building a freelance business after starting our own blogs.

Joining us in our conversation today is Sarah Li Cain from High Fiving Dollars. Sarah started her blog and turned it into freelance writing and content marketing business.

• 1:30 - Sarah's introduction
• 2:30 - Why we decided to start blogging
• 8:45 - How we turned our blogs into freelance work
• 24:20 - Have you used job boards? Should you use job boards?
• 45:20 - Sarah's future plans for her blog and business

In this episode we are talking about how our past histories with money, both good and bad, could be affecting our lives today.

Negative history with money could be blocking you from achieving financial prosperity even if you don't realize it. This is why working with a financial therapist can help you work past these issues so you can finally achieve financial prosperity.

So to help us explain the importance of our money history, we had special guest Kiné Corder on. She's a financial therapist who focuses on helping business owners and couples improve their financial well-being with her company Presidential Lifestyle. She also gained international popularity when she worked as a spokesperson for ABC's Extreme Makeover.

We had the privilege of getting to know Kiné in person at FinCon16 a few months ago, and were honored when she reached out about joining us on the show! We had so much fun talking with her and learning from her professional experience as an advisor and therapist.

Today we are talking about how to let go of things you don't want so you can create more space. In this case, what we mean is creating more mental space so you can really focus on the things you want in life instead of getting wrapped up and wasting time and mental energy on things you don't truly want.

This might one of the most interesting episodes we've had so far on the podcast as we were joined by empath and intuitive, Leisa Peterson from Wealth Clinic.

Leisa's empathy means she is quick at identifying the exact issues surrounding why people aren't getting what they want in life and helping them move past these issues. Leisa is a business and money coach who uses her empathy specifically to help entrepreneurs with their money.

• 2:15 - What is an Empath?
• 6:20 - Chonce's on-the-spot session with Leisa
• 21:20 - Is your relationship with money sabotaging your sanity?
• 28:15 - How does Leisa help clients use their new information to help themselves?
• 42:30 - People usually don't know their personal values, how they can identify them with Leisa's system
• 43:30 - Leisa's future plans

• Wealth Clinic
• LeisaPeterson.com
• The Wealthflower Assessment

Leisa is also offering a special for our audience - one-on-one calls to help with identifying issues that may be preventing you from getting what you want. If you are interested in this, email us to be put in touch with Leisa!

Enjoy!

We're discussing our opinions about shopping on Black Friday. Surprisingly, none of us are huge fans of going out and spending money on Black Friday!

However, we know it's easy to get sucked into the hype. There are so many enticing ads and sales going on - before and after Black Friday - and you might feel like you're missing out if you don't take part.

That's not true, and we're here to tell you why. We also give our tips and insights into how to get the best deals, as not all sales are worthwhile.

• 2:15 - Do you shop on Black Friday?
• 6:20 - Stories of false sales
• 21:20 - Black Friday sales tips

• Camelcamelcamel
• Newegg
• Slickdeals
• Everything Finance: How to Avoid Common Sales Traps Year Round
• Consumer Reports

This week, we are talking about how to balance paying off debt with living your dreams.

It's not easy to pay off debt, especially when you want to use some of your money for fun things and to pursue other dreams. But it can be done with some determination and creativity.

We also invited fellow blogger, Liz from Friday Night Shenanigans.

Liz is a great person to help us cover this topic as she graduated law school with $198,000 in student loan debt, which she is still working her way out of today. She is also using her money to live her life and will soon be enjoying a trip to Paris!

In this episode we discuss:

• 2:30 - Liz's Financial Background
• 17:05 - Value Based Spending - Erin's Go-To Strategy for Balance
• 28:15 - Kayla's Inability to be Frugal and Why It's Ok
• 32:30 - How You Can Find Balance Between Debt and Your Dreams

Related links to check out:

• Friday Night Shenanigans
• Friday Night Shenanigans Courses
• FCP039 – How to Pay Off Massive Amounts of Debt and Live Your Dreams
• FCP014 – Saving Money on Travel
• FCP019 – Debt Payoff Strategies
• FCP005 – The Truth About Student Loan Debt

With the holidays right around the corner, we decided to talk about some of our best money saving tips for a budget-friendly Thanksgiving feast.

A variety of sources say that Thanksgiving dinner costs around $50, which is about a week's worth of groceries (or more) for the three of us. We've all found ways to save on groceries and some unique ways to save on a Thanksgiving feast in particular.

We're also talking about our favorite Thanksgiving traditions and how we save money on those too.

In this episode we discuss:

• 1:20 - The crazy high cost of Thanksgiving
• 6:50 - Our Thanksgiving traditions and how they save us money
• 8:30 - Should you go low key or traditional for your Thanksgiving feast?
• 16:30 - Cheap Thanksgiving turkey alternatives

Related links to check out:

• Ep. 22 – How to Save Money on Your Food Budget