Imagine having a comfortable amount of money but still feeling financially insecure—it's more common than you'd think. It’s time to rethink how we view and interact with money and embrace a healthier financial mentality. Annie and Susan introduce the Life and Money Show Financial Wellness Blueprint and shed light on how ingrained habits and beliefs about money can affect our overall wellness.
The Life & Money Show Financial Wellness Blueprint
1. Define what financial wellness means to you.
2. Figure out the big rocks in your way.
3. Get familiar with your money.
4. Create short-term and long-term goals.
5. Give yourself permission to do something with your money that feels good.
Holistic Approach to Financial Wellness
[00:09:50] Wellness is really that relationship between you and your money and how you feel about it and how it impacts your life, because I know times in my life when I had very little in the bank account, but I felt really good about my money and where I was at and where I was going.
[00:20:52] There's billionaires who never feel like they have enough. And so to be able to define what is enough for you and start to think about how the world is abundant around us instead of scarce, again, that's not just looking at the problems, it's looking at the solutions and other opportunities around us.
[00:28:04] Because your vision of financial wellness today might be different from what it was back in your 20s, or what it will be 10 years from now, 20 years from now. So, it's good to continually reflect on what financial wellness might be.
Audio/video editing and show notes by Podcast Abundance. Find out how they can help you too by visiting www.podcastabundance.com/services
00:04 - Annie (Host)
Hey there.
00:05 - Susan (Host)
I'm Annie Dickerson and I'm Susan Elliott, and today's episode of the Life Money Show, we are gonna look at financial wellness and financial self-care in a new light, because we talk a lot in this day and age about taking care of our bodies, exercising, eating right, getting the smoothies, getting kale into your kids something I think a lot about but what we don't talk about is the kind of things that we need to do to maintain a higher level of financial wellness. We're talking health here, but, as it relates to finances, we're going to give you a blueprint, a very concrete step-by-step process to be able to check in on your financial wellness regularly and maintain the level of health here that allows you to live a life by design.
00:49 - Annie (Host)
So stick around for that, and here's the thing financial wellness, just like your own social, emotional, physical wellness, isn't a one and done. You need people around you to keep you accountable, to help support you along the way, to help you overcome challenges that come along. So we have created a great community of people who are all for financial wellness, who are building their own wealth through investing in real estate and living a life by design, and that's called the Good Egg Investor Club. And if you're listening to this, you are invited to join. It's completely free and you'll get connected with our team and our community of investors. So to join, just go to goodegginvestmentscom. Slash invest, Susan. Where do we want to kick it off with financial wellness?
01:41 - Susan (Host)
Annie, I want to hear when have you felt financially unwell in your life, Like a little bit of financial disease, a little bit of financial sickness in your life? Tell us a story about how that's felt for you.
01:53 - Annie (Host)
You know there have been so many little moments in my life. If you're a longtime listener, you know that I grew up with two parents with very different beliefs about money. My mom was a saver. My dad was always a gambler, so it was a very different viewpoint on money and spending and what you should spend it for. A lot of stories come to mind, but the one that I'm going to tell this seems kind of silly, but just bear with me.
02:22
This is early on, after we started Good Egg Investments and Julie and I. We regularly went to Las Vegas, actually because one of our business coaches was there. So when we would go to Vegas we would stay at this hotel right by the airport. One of the first times we went, I remember I get in, I do my normal thing, I fly into the airport. One of the first times we went, I remember I get in, I do my normal thing, I fly into the airport.
02:49
I have researched it ahead of time. I knew that the hotel had a free shuttle, so I'm standing there waiting for the free shuttle. Then I get to the hotel room later than Julie does, of course. She has taken an Uber. We get there and she's drinking one of the bottles of water from the hotel room that you have to pay for. So just those two things. I'm like, oh my gosh, there was a free option. I waited around, I did the free, I've got tap water in my water bottle and then I'm like wait a second. Why do I think I'm not worthy of like a $5 Uber ride and a $2, $3, $4 bottle of water?
03:30 - Susan (Host)
Oh my gosh absolutely.
03:31 - Annie (Host)
So in that moment, as much as I wanted to be like Julie why didn't you take the free shuttle and why did you pay for that bottle of water? I was like, wait a second, there's a different way to look at this. And I'm like looking at my own habits and really thinking about why do I think I'm not worthy here? And that clued me in to one piece where I was maybe not at that level of financial wellness that I wanted to be at.
03:57 - Susan (Host)
That you knew was there. You saw it in front of you. Right, You're like Julie clearly doesn't stress out about a bottle of water right now. Yeah, and how come that's causing me stress. And it was the financial piece of that bottle of water that was causing you stress. So you had this moment where you saw that stress happen or you saw the thing, and then the reality check came in of, like Annie, that's a $2 bottle of water.
04:19
Like you deserve that. I've had so many of those, Annie, I'm so glad you brought that up and I love asking you these questions because I do feel like I've heard all of your great financial stories until I'm like no, no, Annie, I want you to tell me a different one. I think it's like an element of like welcoming money into our lives and a regular day-to-day thing. I think I've felt the most unwell in the tight periods of my life where I've like shoved money to the side and been like, okay, I'm just going to take care of my bills and we're just going to set everything up. Then I'm just going to forget about it because I don't want to deal with it. That's as if you're taking your whole bottle of vitamins right at the same time. It doesn't work.
04:54
When I can bring money into the conversation, where I am welcoming it, into this, like how does it make me feel? How does it turn into stress in my life, as you just demonstrated? It allows that money to be in the conversation along with my wellness, and I think that's how I start to think about financial wellness. But what is financial wellness to you then, if you've ever kind of reached that wave, as you said, it's never just an end spot. There's never a destination of being financially well, just like you're never end spot. There's never a destination of being financially well, just like you're never financially fit, and then just like, all right, I'm done. Yep, good check.
05:31 - Annie (Host)
That's what I was thinking of, because I think people are more familiar with that level of physical wellness and fitness. And here's another background story. You may not know about me I grew up as a fat kid. Oh yeah, you may not know about me I grew up as a fat kid. Oh yeah, you didn't know this about me. That's tough. Yeah, I was not very nutritionally minded. My mom was the one who was the saver. She's also a very permissive style parent as we started to get some more money in with my dad's income. She would just buy all these snacks, just eat, eat, eat. No, don't worry about it. And all of a sudden, by age seven, eight, nine, I blew up like a balloon. I didn't know.
06:14 - Susan (Host)
I don't know what it was from and your mom probably didn't know either. She was like I'm treating my daughter. These are special things, yeah.
06:22 - Annie (Host)
I used to come home from school, I would eat every day half a box of fudge covered Oreos. Every single day, oh, my God Dreams.
06:33 - Susan (Host)
It was heaven. Dreams are coming true. My daughter. She'd like do snow angels in a pile of Oreos if I could give her permission to do that. Oh my gosh.
06:42 - Annie (Host)
Yeah, you would have to buy her bigger size clothes. I will tell you that because that's what's happened to me.
06:48
So all through adolescence, young adulthood, even. You know I have remnants of it now, just this fraught relationship with my physical fitness and nutrition, because it wasn't until probably my late twenties, early early 30s that I really connected the dots around sugar and nutrition and physical wellness. As simple as it sounds now, it was a complete light bulb moment for me. So I changed the way that I ate and I changed the way that I exercise. Exercise has come and gone.
07:21
I know you have a great regimen and you love exercise and I do now sort of I've grown to love it now, but about a year ago I had fallen off the exercise wagon, so to speak, up until about a year ago, so for about a year prior, wasn't really taking care of my body, but I'd step on the scale and I'd be like that's a decent number, I feel fine, I look okay, my clothes still fit. But here's the thing with financial wellness as well. It's not about the amount of money you have in the bank, and for me it wasn't necessarily about the number on the scale. I didn't feel good about my body and it's the same with financial wellness. It doesn't matter. There are people with millions, even billions of dollars in their accounts, in their net worth, where they don't feel good.
08:13 - Susan (Host)
And they never feel like they have enough. Yeah, they're constantly feeling uneasy.
08:18 - Annie (Host)
Yes. So to me, wellness is really that relationship between you and, in this case, your financial wellness, your relationship between you and your this case, your financial wellness, your relationship between you and your money, how you feel about it and how it impacts your life, Because I know times in my life when I had very little in the bank account but I felt really good about my money where I was at and where I was going. So to me, that's wellness in a nutshell.
08:43 - Susan (Host)
I like the phrase that it's a state of well-being that's achieved when you know what you have, or all the money's at, how it's moving, how it's flowing in and out of your life. You know where you're headed. So you have this kind of idea of your long-term plans, your long-term vision, and you're taking the steps regularly, those preventative steps of, yes, keeping my financial wellness moving, the gears turning, and the ultimate part is that you feel good about it. The feeling element, I think, is what we neglect typically when we talk about finances. You look at your numbers, you make a plan, you set the plan, you do the plan and then you're done. And if you don't integrate those feelings part of it, you could just be going off on someone else's plan or you could stop taking steps towards your plan because you're ignoring how it makes you feel.
09:33 - Annie (Host)
Yeah, I think that's so wise is that you can make a financial plan, you can check off all the boxes, you can go work with a financial planner, but at the end of the day, you might be going through all those things but you feel so anxious or you're so unsure, or you're just hiding from all the problems, and that creates a level of financial distress. So that's what we're trying to bring awareness to and bring out in the open so that we can have a conversation about it. More importantly, get you to a point where you can start to assess your own level of financial wellness. Because, susan, as you mentioned, this life is a roller coaster ride. There's never a single thing in life where you can check it off and be like well, I'm done with that thing, I don't have to learn any more about that, I don't have to worry about that for the rest of my life, nothing.
10:26 - Susan (Host)
Just before we hit record. We're like how are you doing, how are you doing? And I'm like, well, so far all the childcare I have planned is happening, so that's good. Here we are on a Monday recording this and I'm like, I don't know, no one's sick. That's amazing. So yeah, you just never know what kind of things are going to happen along the way and how you have to reassess and move and change your plan. Finances shouldn't be any different.
10:51 - Annie (Host)
That makes me think, because we were talking about the wellness of our kids and how, when kids get sick, you have all these plans for your week and you're like I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to check this off my list, I'm going to run this errand, talk to this person, make this appointment, and then a kid gets sick and you cannot like so much just has to go to the side and you have to recalibrate your whole week.
11:16
And I think it's in some ways kind of an analogy for financial wellness, because if you're not feeling good about your money, how can you focus on building wealth? Because you've got that stable foundation, then you can focus on building wealth. But when things aren't going well below the surface, you've got to push things aside. You got to focus on that first, to build that foundation, so that you can then go and achieve your goals.
11:42 - Susan (Host)
Yeah, I'm going through a very deep period of that too, where I've realized that there's some deep money beliefs and money habits that I've come across in the last just year I would say that are totally different than the ones that I refer to as my big financial breakdown. That happened in around 2018, 2019, that sent me to real estate investing in the first place. I'm like I need to kind of fast track my ability to invest for my family and I let. That led me to real estate.
12:08
I'd been doing a little bit of stock market, but these days there's something that, like I'm still releasing with it so that I can kind of show up as my true and full self, being able to look at like how I'm still a little financially unwell in different corners of my psyche and be able to like dig deeper into that and use that to inform the next action. So that makes me think of like how we can help you, the listener, to be able to understand where these little kind of corners of financial unwellness are in your life, because maybe you're the kind of person that is starting to invest your money, maybe you have a good job and you've got income, maybe you're doing kind of automatic transfers into your investing account and you're making those investments every year, but something doesn't feel totally well to me in that department. So, annie, let's talk a little bit about some flags that are like what does financial unwellness look like? I think that this will really help the listener.
13:01 - Annie (Host)
So unwellness. I mean, we hit on one of them, which was this incongruence between the amount of money you have in your bank account and how you feel about it. So, for example, having a lot of money or whatever you think a lot of money is in the bank, but feeling really insecure about it. And I can tell you, my husband has felt this way, I have felt this way, and we look at their bank account and we're like we have more money now than we did back in our 20s, for sure, but why are we feeling this way? Why are we feeling insecure? So that's a big clue that maybe something is a little bit misaligned.
13:43 - Susan (Host)
I would say one way to do that is, like you said, compare yourself to yourself in your 20s. That's a great big flag and that's a great way to just say like, oh, I'm doing pretty well, I'm actually like taking care of my financial wellness to some degree, so give yourself a little credit for that. Typically and maybe you're not maybe you're in more debt than you were then, and that's okay too. But to be able to also say like, oh, I have plenty in my emergency savings fund to live off of for the next five or six months like that's a huge win in this and a way to say, like to check yourself with that scarcity because the word scarcity is like Well, I don't know if I'm feeling scarce or not.
14:18
Well, if you can look at a number and say like, well, actually we'd be fine for six months, can I change this ship around in six months? Well, probably I can do some pretty big things to move the ship around, so we're kind of fine and that's a way to check that scarcity mindset in you a little bit. Also, not having a clear plan for your money is an element of financial unwellness. So if you don't really know, like if you had an extra $10,000 right now to invest what you would do with it to fit into your diversified investing plan, then that might be a good sign that you need to have a little bit more structure inside your plan. Or you might be a little bit financially unwell in terms of planning, not having a plan at all or like not knowing where that plan is going to take you.
15:03 - Annie (Host)
Mm-hmm, not having a plan for the money. It's kind of like money comes in and you're just like I don't want to think about it right now. I don't know. And knowingly or unknowingly, it creates this burden, this guilt and this shame that you may be harboring on the surface or under the surface that you're just. You don't feel good about where your money is going and what it's doing for you. So that's really where the clear plan comes along. And even if the clear plan is, I'm going to put this money into my savings account so it earns a little bit of interest. Then, after it reaches a certain amount, then I'm going to start to invest. That's great, as long as you have a plan. Then that way you can feel good about that money sitting there or going towards something. I would add to that oh, this is a big one. Feeling guilty whenever you spend money.
15:55 - Susan (Host)
Oh my goodness, this is where I bounce back and forth especially every time you spend money and you mentioned guilt and shame around money. Those are just huge flags that like something's not right here.
16:07 - Annie (Host)
Yeah, and I remember earlier on and sometimes still, like I said, it bounces back and forth. It's never one and done. I remember I would feel so good about spending money on other people and I would feel so guilty when I spent it on myself. The littlest things, like I would choose the cheapest thing for myself and choose the best version for somebody else. And that is not just a financial wellness. There's more going on there, but financial wellness is certainly a piece of the puzzle there as well.
16:39 - Susan (Host)
Absolutely. Another one is questioning whether you have enough, and I wanna give you this quote by Lisa Peterson in her book the Mindful Millionaire for this one, because the idea of do I have enough? That's like a really hard concept, just like scarcity. It's a hard concept to like put concrete thoughts around. My analytical brain wants to like define that in clear terms or just be able to relate it back to me. What does enough mean to me? What does scarcity mean to me?
17:03
So she says, scarcity causes people to become myopic and single-mindedly focused on problems at hand rather than seeking to find helpful solutions. So you're seeing the problems. That's a good flag to say is this enough? Am I feeling scarce in my life around finances? But once our focus, she says, becomes tunneled in like this, you become less likely to consider all of your options. That's the abundance. We're focusing on the scarcity of not having enough. We're not focused broadly on what is there, what is in front of us, what could be. And I like that. She kind of put those concrete words around what it means to have enough, what it means to feel scarce. Like we said, we can look at our big bank accounts and say we still don't have enough. There's billionaires who never feel like they have enough, and so to be able to define what is enough for you and start to think about how the world is abundant around us instead of scarce, again, that's not just looking at the problems, it's looking at the solutions and other opportunities around us.
18:03 - Annie (Host)
Yeah, and so just tying them into physical wellness, too, is another framework. It reminds me of the times growing up that myopic vision was focused on just the number, on the scale, and that was my scarcity mindset. That was the one problem that I was focused on. Rather than thinking about all the possible ways to become a more healthier version of me, I was just focused on getting that number down. Getting that number down, I think it precluded me from a lot of healthier choices that I could have made along the way, so I love that.
18:38 - Susan (Host)
Absolutely. How about feeling stressed because you don't understand your investments? That's a form of financial unwellness. We often like outsource that to a financial advisor or a partner or someone to just deal with the investing piece, because that world has not been traditionally sort of open and education. First we'll call it, especially if you're a person of color or race or a female or anyone outside of the traditional what we would think of as he who handles all the finances. It's not been easy to understand that. So if you feel stressed because that world feels closed off to you, then find a world like Good Egg Investments, who leads with education and just wants to really uplift the level that people understand about their finances and their investing. But that stress is a good flag that you have a little bit of financial unwellness in your life.
19:30 - Annie (Host)
Absolutely, and related to that, not having a clear picture of your overall finances or not having a plan for your future or for retirement. Any of that ambiguity or the fuzziness around where you currently are or where you're trying to go doesn't always but it could lead to you feeling bad, feeling guilty again, those tough emotions coming in and that's what clouds your relationship with your money and leads to that financial unwellness.
20:02 - Susan (Host)
I'll tell you a quick story about the plan for your future retirement, because I think that this kind of highlights that it can be more of a systemic thing in a community or a phase of life that you're in. So in my 20s I was a professional whitewater kayak instructor, river guide. I did some teaching and some writing and all kinds of little things along the side, but I was surrounded in a community of people that just didn't make a ton of money, so the words retirement or plan for retirement were not part of our vocabulary. It's not as if there was something else, but I think we all just defaulted to like, well, we're just going to have to work until we die Like I don't know. And by being a part of this surrounded community that had that shared language of not valuing making a lot of money, not being sort of financially well off, because it just wasn't as easy to do that in this profession or this career, this line of work, it was totally possible, and I now believe that everyone, when they become wealthy, just becomes a better person or a better version of themselves. We'll call it so.
21:04
There's a lot of people out there who would do amazing things for the world if they could just kind of get out of this financial scarcity or this insecure financial place that they're in. And I know that that's where I was too. But I think that's a good trigger. If I'm never going to retire, I can't do that. If you just kind of close a door off or maybe, like I can't invest in real estate, you're closing something off without actually doing the due diligence to see if that is. I think that's a form of financial unwellness as well, a form of not having your plan or retirement or considering those options. You're tunneled in again. So maybe you need to expand it a little bit to be able to feel financial wellness.
21:42 - Annie (Host)
Yeah, and you bring up such a good point that sometimes it's as easy as finding one other person who may think a little bit differently, who can get you out of that myopic vision, that tunnel vision, even if what they're doing might not work exactly for you. But it expands your viewpoint and gets you to think huh wonder, what else is out there. Even listening to this podcast is a version of you expanding your mindset and seeing what else is out there.
22:10 - Susan (Host)
Absolutely. It's one of the things that helped me get out of that place. I mean this podcast, literally back in 2019 or 2020, when you launched it with Julie, it was one of the many podcasts, but this one especially because I had just had my first child and I was like, oh, they're moms too, like, oh, mom life. Thank you so much, highlighting everything that goes into that too and connecting it to our financial wellness. Well, let's jump into helping the listener get some really concrete steps. So the Life and Money Show Financial Wellness Blueprint. Kick it off, annie, all right.
22:42 - Annie (Host)
Well, first I'll say that this doesn't necessarily have to. There are five steps to this financial wellness blueprint, and this does not have to be done in order, and it's not meant to be done one time and then you put it away. It's kind of like a give and take. You kind of have these five pieces and you're assessing and you're constantly reflecting on these different areas, and each of them gives you a clue into your overall financial wellness, and they'll change throughout the various phases of your life as you invest, as you have kids, as your kids go away to college, as you're buying a home, as you're traveling all these things may change, and so it's a good framework, a good blueprint to revisit time and again. All right, I mentioned there are five pieces, so I'll start with the first one, which is very simple, is just to define what financial wellness means to you, and we've talked about it a lot between me and Susan.
23:40
But for you, financial wellness might be something different. Maybe it's a feeling, or maybe it's a number in your bank account. Maybe it's having a steady stream of feeling, or maybe it's a number in your bank account. Maybe it's having a steady stream of income, or maybe it's having a certain investment portfolio size or whatever it is, but pinpoint what that target is and then figure out what the gap is between where you are and that vision of financial wellness. And this is where it could come in again and again, because your vision of financial wellness today might be different from what it was, let's say, back in your 20s or what it will be 10 years from now, 20 years from now. So it's good to continually reflect on what financial wellness might be.
24:23 - Susan (Host)
And be sure to not just give yourself one number here. Don't make financial wellness a single number, whether that's what you want to make this year, what you want to invest, have invested for retirement. Also, talk about, like, how you want money to feel every day in your life. Place of like future planning, of retirement planning, then we never give it. It's sort of like daily emotional support, the preventative financial wellness maintenance that you might need every day. So, like, how do you want to feel about spending your money? That's a great one. How do I want to feel about when I go on vacation?
25:02
Anytime you're spending money, you can determine how you want to feel about that. So number two is figuring out the big rocks in your way. Figure out what stresses you the most around money and think about, like, what are immediate solutions that you could do to alleviate that? Maybe just immediate actions for longer term solutions you could take. But these big rocks are really kind of like probably what you see and you just turn around and walk the other way when it comes to financial wellness. But like, let's take a look at them.
25:30 - Annie (Host)
Yeah, and it's so important to start with the big things first because you're going to have the most energy to put towards that and, yeah, they might be the scariest but they'll also probably make the biggest difference. So that's why you want to start with those biggest things first. So that's why you want to start with those biggest things first. Maybe it's investing in your first real estate property, or maybe it's moving your money to a different type of account, or maybe it's starting a new type of account to save towards something, but figuring out what that biggest thing is and then working towards that, because that's going to give you the greatest sense of okay, I'm really on this path, I'm really making progress toward financial wellness, and then everything else will be much easier. All right, the third thing in the financial wellness blueprint after you know what financial wellness means to you and you've figured out and tackled a few of the big rocks in your way, then the next thing is to get really familiar with your money.
26:33
Often, the fears around money come from not knowing where your money is. You're not knowing where it's coming from, where it's going out, when the bills are due, what's what. So this next step is really about cozying up with your money, getting really in there and figuring out okay, I've got this pile of money here, this pile there. Oh, I forgot, I have this old retirement account here. Okay, let me move that over here.
27:03
What about my spouses? Okay, they've got this account here, this account there. What about insurance? What does that look like? What about taxes? So really getting familiar with all the different things that touch your money, not just the amount in your bank account, but having that holistic look at your money. So Leslie Batson actually she was a previous guest on this podcast she talks a lot about all the different pieces of your financial picture, not just what's in your bank account. So if you haven't already, go back and listen to that, because she really dives into a lot of different pieces there. But if you know where you are, then at the very least you know where you stand, so that can help you to feel more financially secure.
27:53 - Susan (Host)
It gives you so much power. It gives you, like the agency, to know that I know where it all is right now and I can actually take steps now to move it, to improve it, to do something with it. But when we leave it in the shadows and we don't think about it and I'm speaking from experience then we have no hope to be able to change it. You're just shuffling it under the rug. So bring it out from under the rug.
28:16
Step number four is to create short-term and long-term goals. So as you gain confidence about how your money's coming in, where it's going out, think about some short-term goals. Maybe these are monthly goals, maybe it's within the next year that you can do to help yourself feel a little bit better about your finances, to uplift that financial wellness status. So go back to what you want to feel about your emotions and what you want to. If maybe it's, you don't want to feel guilty around spending every dollar.
28:45
Well, if you know how much is coming in and how much is going out, maybe you can say you know what. This is my budget for my self-care every month and I am going to feel great about spending that money because I know I have it coming in and I know we're taking care of ourselves. So you're going back to those feelings and you're actually making the short term plan to uplift them, to feel better about your finances. Also, take long-term action or create long-term goals, I should say, and then you're taking the small steps to get towards those goals, because financial wellness is this long-term journey. We do want to be working towards retirement. We're going to have to take care of ourselves as we age some way or another and taking those steps now can really uplift the way you feel now.
29:30 - Annie (Host)
And I would say don't forget that those goals don't have to be completely money related. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to go and invest, you have to go and move your money or do this with your money. It can be related to education. It can be related to connection Go to, let's say, a local real estate investing meetup and meet one other person who's doing something that you want to do, or listen to two to three podcast episodes a week on money mindset or whatever it is. So those can be related to your short-term goals too. It doesn't necessarily have to be directly money related to contribute to your financial wellness. And finally, we've got your meaning of financial wellness. We've got the big rocks identified and tackled. Now you're familiar with your money and you've got some short-term and long-term goals, so now you should be feeling pretty good about your money. So the final piece is to give yourself permission to do something with your money that feels good, and do not skip this one.
30:39 - Susan (Host)
What would you do right now, Annie? If you had $100 to spend on yourself right now, what would you do?
30:44 - Annie (Host)
My goodness, I would take myself on a date right now. I would cancel all my afternoon meetings. I would go get myself a nice cup of coffee, I would get myself some flowers and I would spend some time. I don't necessarily even know if I need the full $100, but I would go and spend the afternoon with myself and just really feel good, feel the sunshine and feel that time by myself, with myself. What about you, susan? What would you do? I would go to.
31:15 - Susan (Host)
There's this place called the Society Hotel up here in the Northwest. It's basically a spa with hot tubs and sauna.
31:21
And I would spend an hour there and then I would just spend another hour in the bathrobe sipping tea and writing in my journal and reading, just like you. It's a time thing. And so ask this question to yourself listener, right now, what would you do? Someone gave you $100 right now, and your answers to that question are gonna help you determine how it is you wanna feel about money, what you wanna be doing with your time. Did you notice how Annie was like? I may not even use the full $100 here. I actually just want some little time slivers to myself to slow down and do these things. So maybe that allows Annie to say you know what? I'm not gonna feel guilty about spending X amount of money on just going to the coffee shops once a week, going to get my nails done to show up a little bit more brighter in my meetings this week, and these kinds of questions are really fun ways to throw out, to give yourself permission to do something with your money that feels good, to just even know what that is for you.
32:18 - Annie (Host)
Yeah, and that's such a great point is just to know what it is, even if you're not going to go do it right now, but to know what that is to make you feel good about yourself. And maybe it's not even something for you, maybe it's you want to go and give, you want to buy something for somebody else or take somebody else to have an experience. But I think that's key is to have that in mind, to know, oh, that would make me feel really good. And that then feeds back into this cycle of financial wellness, because then it gives you that motivation to say, oh, you know what I really do want to feel good about my money, because when I do, I can treat myself to things like this and then I'll feel really good. And that's what it's all about. It's not about the money, it's about the relationship and then being able to do these things for yourself that make you feel good.
33:06 - Susan (Host)
Life is about feeling good. Yeah, not amassing billions and billions and billions of dollars, as it turns out.
33:13 - Annie (Host)
I know it's about feeling good.
33:15
Yeah, amassing billions and billions of dollars comes with its own burdens. I mean, people think money is the be all and end all, but I was just listening to a podcast where this young entrepreneur she started a company at 21, sold it by 26 and had hundreds of millions of dollars within a five year period. She's a single mom and the host actually asked her well, does that impact your relationships and your friendships? Because people might just want to come into your life for your money. And she said absolutely so. It's not like if you have this high dollar amount in your bank account, it solves all your problems. It just brings on new problems. And each of us in this life are here for different learnings and we're on a different path. So we're not here to compare. We're here to help all of us to elevate and to reach that level of financial wellness where you can feel really good. So that's our hope for you. We're so grateful that you joined us for this conversation, susan. Any last words before we wrap?
34:17 - Susan (Host)
I would just say, like, this is a community thing and this podcast was a rock for me in the early days. I'm so happy to be here. Please share with us to go over to Instagram. Share with us what it feels like to have a financial win. What does financial wellness mean to you? We would love to hear from you. We will give you a shout out on the podcast sometimes, so go over to at good egg investments and share your story. Tag us in it and we'd love to hear what other people are doing to uplift their financial wellness.
34:47 - Annie (Host)
All right? Well, again, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the life and money show, and remember that your financial journey is a lifelong adventure and we're here with you every step of the way. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time. Thank you.