#8 - Using Money to Revolutionize Your Relationship with Nicole Stork-Hestad

Get ready for an episode that's bound to change the way you think about money! Join us as Nicole Stork-Hassad, a seasoned money coach, and Chelsea Williams, a financial expert, dive deep into the heart of managing money in relationships. 

Nicole takes us on her personal journey, from financial struggle to stability, unmasking the toxic beliefs and scarcity mindset that often sabotage our financial growth. She reveals how our brains naturally function and why it's crucial to craft a money system that aligns with our unique needs.

Episode Highlights:
1. Explores emotional aspects of spending and the importance of facing feelings for better financial choices.
2. Addresses the complexities of couples managing money together, advocating for open communication and teamwork. 
3. Shares insights for transformative financial journeys and the benefits of financial education and coaching.

Ready to revolutionize your relationship with money? Tune in now and discover the power of embracing emotions and proactive financial management.

See how we can work together to transform your relationship:
https://moneymastery.mykajabi.com/relationship-financial-strategy

Nicole Stork-Hestad, Money Coach & Wealth Enabler, is on a mission to empower individuals and families to fund lives they're genuinely proud of. With over a decade of immersive learning in personal finance, family economics, financial counseling, and more, she's become a true expert in financial transformation. Armed with a Master's degree in Family Science and ongoing Ph.D. pursuits in Personal Finance and Family Economics, Nicole designs tailored money programs that help clients identify money challenges, understand emotional triggers, and overcome limiting beliefs. She crafts new money management systems, ensuring lasting positive change, all while using her own family's finances as an experimental canvas.

Nicole's Links:
https://www.nshmoneycoaching.com/
https://www.instagram.com/nshmoneycoaching/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nstorkhestad/
https://www.facebook.com/nshmoneycoaching/

Always and Never About Money Episode Links:
Video Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyMasteryWithChelsea
Socials: https://linktr.ee/the_money_whisper
Money Mastery Website: www.moneymastery.work
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlwaysandNeverMoney/

Transcript

Chelsea Williams
Hey everybody and welcome back to Always and Never About the Money. Today I have a special guest with me, Nicole Stork. Hassad. Did I say that right? Hassad? Yes you did. That was perfect. Okay, we got it. Okay. Nicole and I met through a networking group and immediately hit it off like sometimes in business and in life you meet, I think it was Richard Branson, he said that like in the first 15 seconds of knowing somebody, he knows if he wants to work with them or not. And that was us, right? Yeah. Because what you do is such a necessity and a perfect pair to what I do and coupled together is how we really create change and evolution in people's money story. So you guys, Nicole is a money coach, a wealth enabler, and a personal finance and family economics nerd.

So already we're understanding why we do it so well.

Right? So, Nicole, share with us your, your story around how you came to do what you do and, and what keeps you doing it, what you love about it.

Speaker 1
Oh gosh. Okay. So we'll start, we'll go one question at a time. So my name is Nicole, as you mentioned, and I'm so excited to be here with you. Chelsea, you have no idea.

This podcast is just gonna be one of my favorite things to record ever. I think my story, the short version is I was totally broke, completely broke, had to choose between like going to the grocery store and paying my rent in full. And I didn't like living that way. It kind of sucked to always be worried about money and whether enough was gonna come in and what I was supposed to do with it and if I was making the right choices or not. And watching myself collect debt and watching myself and my marriage just be strained by every choice being directly related to whether or not I could afford it. And so I took matters into my own hands.

One night I was bent over our coffee table that we pulled out of the trash and I was doing our food stamps application and I said, I know better than that. Like I know there's more than this. I did not grow up poor. I grew up comfortable in a family that we always had what we needed and then some. And so to come into a place where we literally had nothing and we're just trying to make, it was foreign to me and I didn't understand what we were doing wrong. And I finally figured out that the thing I was doing wrong is I didn't know anything about money or how it works or how to leverage it in my life or how to use the other resources because there, there wasn't, that wasn't part of my education, formal or informal.

And the thoughts and feelings and beliefs I had developed about money were just extremely toxic, highly scarce. And so I did something about it and I started, I went and got my first ever library card that was in my name and I marched myself down to the library and I proceeded to check out every single literary item that the library had and borrow interlibrary loans. And I read everything more than once. And I started to, and this is the key, apply the plans that were made.

Apply the plans that were given to me from these financial gurus. I had to work the financial plan. And some of them were super basic plans 'cause I didn't have any money. So a lot of the plan, I had to do a lot of adaptations. I also, as you know, we, I'm, I'm in the neuro minority, right? I have a D H D. And so like sticking to a plan is not my strongest,

it's not my strongest personality trait. And so really learning to develop and create a system of money that worked for my brain and for my husband's brain, 'cause he is also a D H D. So that we could actually grow into a, not just financially stable place, but a place where we felt like we had more than enough has been quite the journey. It is, it started informally with the library and it has moved all the way to, I'm in my PhD program as we speak, working to get my PhD in personal finance and family economics. So this is my short story. And then I became a money and I became a money coach. 'cause I love helping other people achieve what I've been able to achieve, but like way faster.

Speaker 0Yeah. Yes. And that's, I appreciate your story because you're hitting on a lot of the things that we talk about. You're hitting on what you learned about money as a child. Yes. And then you came to this point where you realized, okay, what I, what I learned is not what's happening. There's a gap here, right? Yes. There's a gap in knowledge and education and information.

And you went out and you found it. And not only did you find it and implement the plan, but you did it within the dynamic of a marriage.

Speaker 1Yes. Which.

Speaker 0In and of itself is a huge struggle.

Speaker 1Yes. Ooh. Yes.

Speaker 0Yes. And for you guys listening, pay attention, listen to the rest of the episode. At the very end, we're going to tell you about a really cool thing that me and Nicole are working on for you. If you are in inside of a relationship, inside of a marriage and any of this resonates with you.

Speaker 1Yep. If you have a money partner, definitely stick around.

Speaker 0Yes. Yes. And so you went out and you got all of this education and you actually implemented it. And I also, one of the things I really appreciate about the work that you do is you are addressing and bringing awareness to the neuro minority, which is so important because everything, money is a mirror. You know, I say this all the time, and this is a perfect example. Money projects you as a person and if your brain works differently, your money is going to show up differently and it's gonna take different things for you to be able to manage your money effectively.

Speaker 1Right? Agree. Yes. The boundaries, the, the boundaries have to look different. The rules that you create for yourself have to look different. And a lot of times it can feel like you're almost breaking rules in order to enact something that is going to actually work for your brain to override its impulsive nature, its desire to jump from one thing to another, the inability to focus or those big feelings that a lot of people in the Nora minority or that have mental health struggles, like anxiety, having those really big feelings that come with financial decisions are enough to make us make poor financial decisions just because we're trying to escape them or not face 'em. And so when I work with my clients, and it works for typicals too, so all those in the typical brain, the typically wired are welcome.

But the idea is that we can't fight our brains to create wealth. We have to mine our brains and create a system that works with how we naturally do things in our natural rhythm in order to get where we wanna go. Otherwise, we'll constantly be in this state of defeatism. And so that's one of my favorite pieces of my job and getting up every morning is just helping people step out of being their own worst enemy. And into like, no, no, no. I am my own champion in this financial world and I can make the best financial decisions for me even though everybody else's the typical system may not look what like I need it to look like in order to thrive.

Speaker 0Yeah. And you're right, you said big emotions and I, I wanna talk about that. 'cause one of the things that we discussed is like the emotions around money and how those show up. So tell us kind of what it is that you see the, the emotions that you see and and how it relates to money.

Speaker 1So one of my core philosophies within my coaching practice is that we are always only ever buying a feeling. Anytime you go to purchase money with your money, you use your money to buy anything, you are only ever buying a feeling. And so if, if your brain, if it hits your brain, those of you listening, if that hits your brain and you wanna fight it, I encourage you just to sit with it for a few minutes because it really is true all the way down to like, I, you know, I have a feeling of hunger. I feel hungry and I need to eat or I feel want to feel safe so I pay my mortgage or I wanna be able to communicate and stay connected.

So I pay my phone bill. Like anytime you're paying or buying something, it is for a feeling. And sometimes we're trying to buy a different feeling than we're already feeling. So if we're feeling sad or we're feeling angry or we're feeling depressed or we're feeling dopamine low, all of my neurodivergent friends, if we have a low dopamine, we probably try to buy our way into a better feeling. And so sometimes it's not just always trying to get that high, sometimes it's because you feel too low and we wanna reverse it. So, but yeah, that's the big thing with me is the emotionality of it is we're always trying to buy a feeling. And so if we can learn to sit with our feelings, if we can learn to understand what's driving our behavior because we're feeling something or we don't wanna be feeling something, we're able to make major shifts in how we use our money.

Just because you're checking in with yourself and you're bringing awareness to like, why am I doing what I'm doing?

And if it's to buy a little bit of happiness or a little bit of dopamine, it's kind of like, well, we could probably just make that in-house. We don't have to go out and we don't have to go out and buy it. We could just, you know, conjure it because it's ours to do that. Right. It's within our power to create emotion without buying them.

Speaker 0Yes. Like those alternative ways to address those emotions. And I feel like you just put it in a different perspective for me when you said like when you, it's, it's a physical feeling and then it's also an emotional feeling. Like when we spend money on food, it's because we feel hungry when we spend money on our mortgage, we want to feel safe. Like that's so true that I can't think of anything where we would spend money that it was not outta some sort of feeling now.

Speaker 1Exactly. It kind of, it's a mind blowing thing when you like allow it to sink in. But money is just, like you said, money is just a mirror. Right. And so when we look at the mirror of money and hold it up, you're like, oh yeah, I definitely didn't wanna have my electricity cutoff. Right? Like, I don't want that feeling of having something taken away from me. I don't want that feeling of being without or out of control. And so we make purchases to create our own safety, to create our own happiness, to avoid feeling yucky. Right. To avoid feeling anything that we just can't sit with or that's too big. Right

And or to like stoke the fire on a feeling that we wanna feel more of. Yeah. It's just how, it's why we use money, you know, it's makes.

Speaker 0No, it makes sense. And like let's, let's pivot that for a minute and think about the idea that money is a mirror. Yeah. Yeah. So like, let's take it to the money mirror in the relationship.

Speaker 1Yes. Dynamic.

Speaker 0Like what, what is your insight there?

Speaker 1You mean between two people? So two people looking at each other as they are like.

Speaker 0Like in a relationship in a marriage that the emotion behind the shared money situation.

Speaker 1So when you think about a marriage, like I don't, I've been married for a long time, my husband and I just celebrated 16 years and we got married very young and as you know, nobody taught us how to do money otherwise we wouldn't have been applying for food stamps at the age of 22. And with that, having those two money beliefs coming into a household where we were expected just to be able to use this tool effectively together without any training, no YouTube video or anything like to watch to get a precursor, it did not go well. And so even when we were trying to make decisions about what we were to spend on versus what we weren't to spend on, or should we be spending now or how physically how to let money leave our bank account so that we could each track it so that there was a tracking system of like only this much here and he's using it and I'm using it.

Nobody really tells you how to do that. There's not like a class on that when you decide to partner with somebody that they require you to take. So it's one of those things where you can always tell the frustration because there's always a financially dominant person sometimes by choice and sometimes it's pushed on them and it's expected of them that they are to run the money situation. And so you have a lot of struggle and strife between the partners just because there are expectations of each individual that they're not holding themselves to, but they're outsourcing to the other person. And so when you have this happening, this breakdown in communication and breakdown of being on the same page, and you have a breakdown of a common goal as well than other than survival, right?

So a lot of times we can see couples come together for a survival purpose, but once they've made it past that threshold of survival, they don't know what to do to optimize and into a thriving. And so they'll actually sabotage the couple unintentionally will sabotage themselves and come back down into that thriving or that surviving place just because that's no how they know where to work together and where they're all on the same page, even if it is a causing like disagreement and strife, they're still working together, they're making moves to get to a stable place and then they will cycle back up and down cycle, back up and down in this money miscommunication and money mis expectation and having expectations on another person that aren't fair or clearly articulated and keep changing. Right?

And so that's the mirror that we see a lot of times within couples is one person thinks it should be this way and one person thinks it should be that way, but they're not talking about it or the benefits of either path or collaborating on it. And so it's causing so much yucky feeling it sounds like separately and independently and hide it from each other too. Right? So you can have this Yes. Other cycle happening behind the scenes of like hiding from the partner or trying not to get in trouble with the other person or trying not to be nitpicked at or being controlled by someone else. Right. Even in healthy relationships, this isn't happening in abusive relationships or in toxic relationships.

These are people who truly like each other, but they can't get this piece to fall into place.

Speaker 0Yeah. It it sound to me what I hear is the idea of it's a familiar discomfort.

Speaker 1It is. Yeah.

Speaker 0Right? Like it may not work the best, but at least it's familiar. Yeah. And, and we like what is familiar to us.

Speaker 1The brain considers it working operable. Yeah. Not broken I guess would be the way to put it. Like it's not broken even if it's not the best operating system to be working on within your partnership.

Speaker 0Yes. So then my question would be in your experience when you're working with, with couples and money and they're in this place of, okay, we realize that we are in a comfortable discomfort. Mm. But we have also come to the realization that it's not going to work for us anymore. We don't want this to be Yeah. What we have, like what has to shift in their mind for them to be prepared to step into a new uncomfortable and change that.

Speaker 1So, oh, that's a great question Chelsea, that you're such a good question asker in my experience and when I work with couples on my end, my clients that come to me as couples one follow the frustration. So we talked earlier about how you're always buying a feeling on, a lot of times people buy their way out of frustration back into tolerability. So if a couple has reached the point of like, it's so friction, we, they're both on the same page of it can't go this way. And really not even both, I like to say one of my favorite marriage coaches that I follow and and just adore, she says that it only takes one person to change the relationship. Hmm.

And that goes the same with finances. Like it only takes one person to say, we're doing money differently, I want you to come along with me, right. And pitch it to the partner of like, we, I wanna do money differently out of that place of like, I'm done with this, this is no longer, this is now intolerable the way that our money works. We should, especially if you should have enough money on paper. It's like, I'm, I make enough. There's enough here. And by enough we mean I think the new standard for a family of four, if you are making enough, you need to be making around between one 50 and 1 75, right? So like you are making enough the household brings in this amount of money, then that frustration is right, because you shouldn't be feeling financially stressed if you have the finances that could support the lifestyle that you're in.

So then it becomes a mismanagement situation and a a, a breakdown in communication. And so to have one partner pitch it to the other that like, Hey, I wanna do things differently, that's the first change. Not buying their way out of the frustration but following it into change. The second thing, and this is a key thing, especially if you're the frustrated partner and you know, you've gotta pitch someone else, pitch the fact that you're gonna be uncomfortable either way.

Like you're already uncomfortable in your financial circumstance. So why not be uncomfortable creating a new financial circumstance that allows you to actually reach the financial goals that you wanna achieve and move into a more thriving place with your money and overall with the life that you're living. Right? So if you're gonna be uncomfortable either way, it's like, okay, well when you put it that way.

Speaker 0That part, it might.

Speaker 1As well walk that might as work, walk in this direction. Right? And so, and that's like, so follow your frustration, realize you're gonna be uncomfortable no matter what. And that you're already the thing you're afraid of, whatever it is you're afraid of losing control, being uncomfortable, losing money. You're already doing that in this toxic cycle of money that you're in with your partner. And then think three, realize that in my experience, people who have come to get help with their money and they come and they collaborate and they actually do the work, they do the, they commit to do the work, right? Maybe not even forever.

I just ask them to commit to the work for six months. In my experience, I have yet knock on wood to have a couple whose relationship got worse.

So like that's the third piece. You're literally trying to make something better. So come and make it better. Like you would come and do that thing. And to be afraid that it would get worse is just your brain lying to you to keep you and that familiar uncomfortable rather than moving into the new uncomfortable because the brain doesn't like to expend resources, it likes to be a couch potato, you know, and just do the same thing over and over again because those require way less neural pathways, right? Like just psychological, like neurology, a little neurology nerd coming out, right? Like the brain doesn't wanna do the work to create new pathways within it.

It doesn't want to have to learn to do something new because it's comfortable, it's happy, it's got its system and its routines. Even within the neuro minority brains like mine. We still have our habit. We do the things we do and the habits that we have because those as associations within our brain are established and they're just easy to do. Versus this like having to break patterns or generational cycles to create a better situation, not only for you, but anybody that you decide to bring into the world after you or claim into your family after you. That's a lot of hard work and it makes sense that your brain may not wanna do it, right?

Speaker 0Yeah, no, absolutely. And what I appreciate about this is one of the common pieces of advice within a relationship, and I believe it and I have done it in my own life and other in relationships with family, with friends, with intimate people, is that if you want somebody to change something in that dynamic, you change it first.

Speaker 1Yeah. You change the boundaries.

Speaker 0You take the lead and you do the thing and be the influence or the inspiration. And this is like a perfect example of how your money story is a mirror, your money is a mirror even in a relationship. Yep. You're saying when we see this change happen, it's usually one person who is stepping up and saying, Hey, we need this and I'm ready to go do it, let's go, come with me on this journey. Yes. And it is absolutely a journey. And what Nicole and I are putting together for you is an opportunity to fill the educational gap that Nicole went to the library and got all these books and spent all this time listening to all this stuff to learn all these things. Like we are giving you the system, right? Yeah. And so the system, the numbers are, are easy.

Math is so easy. People have this belief that like what us finance people do is so complicated, but honestly, you know, the math that you need to know in fourth grade to do what I do. Right? And so the math is super easy, very straightforward. But what I know and why you and I and what we do works together so well is that we can give you the math, we can give you the system and every single thing you need to do to get from where you're at to where you want to be. But the hardest part is where what Nicole does comes in and that is the journey in following the system Yep. And working it together. So what are some of the things that, when you work with people going through this journey, what, what do you see in that?

Speaker 1So one of the big things that I see that I learned the hard way through trial and error in my own financial journey. Like I told you guys, like I, I was, I mean like we, I wa the food stamps was a major turning point for me. But there's been several iterations of my journey into creating stability all the way from like having to leverage debt and being in debt in order to move forward, right? Or having to break a lot of financial rules that I probably wouldn't advise other people break now that I think about it. But like really having to do a lot of things wrong in order to get to this place. And one of the things that would have gotten me there faster that I work on with my clients is this ability to sit with the emotions that come up with the decisions that are being made or the consequences of those decisions in order to move forward.

So a lot of times people don't move forward with their money because they don't have the accountability to sit with their emotions and so they back out of a decision. That's right. Right. Because they feel scared. So for example, if somebody comes to work with us, right? And they're like, oh, I really want your help. And you're like, yes, it'll be this amount of money for this amount of time. Here's what you're gonna get. And they're like, yes, I want that. And then they email you the next day and they're like, actually, just kidding. I've really thought about it and it doesn't work for me. I'm really, the reason why they've backed out isn't because it was the right decision.

It was absolutely the right decision. I will tell anybody that comes onto my calendar, yes, you should work with me. I am absolutely the right decision for you. Mainly because I would rather chew broken glass in the morning, every morning for the rest of my life than let you down. Right? Like you're, if you come to work with me work, we're moving this financial train forward. Like whether you like it or not. But the biggest thing is like they had a feeling, they got scared.

They doubted themselves.

They got worried that if they used that money to invest in themselves, they wouldn't get a return on the investment. It felt like losing money.

And so, and they don't, like, nobody likes to feel like they're losing money. Nobody likes to feel doubt in themselves. Nobody likes to feel scared. So immediately we crawl back to that con toxic discomfort, right? Like that comfortable discomfort that we already know of. Like, well I'll just do it on my own a little bit longer. Hmm. Or I will just go to the library like Nicole did. Right? I will just, I, I can do it. And so like when we see that happen, when we see that walk back from the new decision, I always encourage my people, I always ask them like, what's gonna keep you from sticking to the thing that you said, right? Like, what's gonna keep you from sticking to it?

And it's always a doubt in themselves. Yeah. It always comes back to a doubt in themselves. Either they don't understand what they're getting in that case, just ask questions, they don't understand how they're going to be getting it in that case just ask questions. But the one that they only they can answer for themselves is how am I, what do I wanna do to hold myself to this change? Yes. I can tell you there's no better way to hold yourself to a change that you wanna make than to literally pay for it and to pay an uncomfortable and make it an uncomfortable payment for it. Because you're not gonna lose that money.

You're gonna go get the thing because you invested all these dollars, you're gonna make sure you get the change that you're going for. And what's funny is once people do that, they don't even, they're like, oh yeah, that was worth every penny. You know, I would've paid triple that. Yeah, of course. Look at how much better my life is now. And I get this for the rest of my life. So like if you're 35 and you have 40 years of knowing exactly how to use every dollar to buy the life that you actually wanna be living for the next 40 years, by my count, like when I actually did the math, like you said, all we need is fourth grade math, that's like 1.4 million in return.

And that's like without investments, let's just like thriving money that you increased your income with money. You didn't spend uselessly money that you didn't waste because you didn't realize you had 75 subscription. Like just the little dollars adding up it becomes 1.4 million over that 40 years. And so like it's like, yeah, of course that's worth it. Of of course that's worth it. Yes. But people get scared and they walk themselves back out of a decision that they've already made, which is, I would like to, I would like more out of this life. Please.

Speaker 0Yes. And it makes so much sense. The hardest part is our emotions. It's always.

Speaker 1The emotions. You always are feeling a feeling and then you buy your way out of them if you can't sit with them.

Speaker 0Yes, yes. And especially in a relationship marriage dynamic, I see money as a huge opportunity to come together and really discover things about each other and discover how you guys work together that maybe you didn't realize before. And like build a strong, like I could see people coming out of this type of program stronger and and applying what they learn through getting finances together in a very technical way and apply it to other areas of their, of their relationship, of their marriage.

Speaker 1Well yeah, because how you do one thing well is how you have the ability to do everything well, right? Like it's a transferrable skill. So like if you can communicate about the flow of your bank account, you can communicate about where you wanna send your kids next year or if you should do soccer or not, or where you wanna go on vacation or what your retirement looks like. Like it's way easier to open those lines of communication, especially since talking about money tends to bring with it some of the more intense emotional pieces. If you learn to navigate the emotions within that setting, you get to take that skill into every other area of your marriage or partnership if you're not married, right?

And you get to take that into other relationships and how you wanna communicate with other people. And so, I don't know, I just think that doing this money work has so many benefits. Clearly I will, I will tell people that they should do it all day long.

Speaker 0Yes. Yes. And guys, we are making it so easy for you to be able to do this and to implement this in your relationship, in your marriage and come out the other end, like we said, stronger and learning things about each other and, and going through this journey like we are here to support you and combine our superpowers to deliver something that really, I feel is truly going to make an impact in people's lives.

Speaker 1It'll be fun. It's gonna be super fun.

Speaker 0Yes, it is. Awesome. Well, we have come to the end of our time, but guys, I want you to know that we are gonna have all of the links on how to check out our program on how to see Nicole and everything that she has to offer on all of her socials.

So as kind of a, a parting question, Nicole, for people that have heard this and they have those doubts that you were talking about, like creeping up in their mind, what are some questions that they can ask themselves to really answer? Like, is this, is this something that is really gonna benefit in my life? I know I'm putting you on the spot.

Speaker 1It's okay. And you can help me with this too if you want. But the first question, if you're doubting whether or not you should do this one, I want you to say to yourself, doubt is a normal piece of the decision making process. There is no such thing as a hundred percent certain. And as humans of course, that's the thing that we would like to guarantee ourselves because then we can't get any trouble, right? Like we can't have an un no, I'm 100% certain is a feeling that we're all seeking, but you're never going to have it. It's just a self-validation. So I would ask, if you're feeling doubtful, ask yourself, where am I invalidating my own intuition?

Speaker 1Where am I invalidating my own intuition? I know I need this help. I know I'm willing to put in for this help. I know that this is gonna take me where I wanna go, especially if I commit to do everything that needs to be done. And I'm gonna have support, not just support, but like literally somebody practically doing a metaphorical version of carrying me on their back in order to accomplish this goal.

Where am I invalidating my own intuition that this is the right choice for me? So sit with that. And then the next thing that I always tell people to do is we spend a lot of time as human beings thinking about what could go wrong, what could happen, what all the downsides are, where we're missing something, where we could be blindsided by something. We have a lot of what if thing that works to talk us out of the decision that we've made. And the only request that I have is that however much what if and you do for what could go wrong, you have to spend equal time What aing about what could go, right? And so if you sit with that, like what could go right?

What if this works out? What if this is the best choice I've ever made in my entire life? What if this solves everything for me within my relationship and within my life? What if this sets my family up for generational wealth? What if I really do get what I am wanting out of doing this money work? And sit with that equally?

Sit with it equally. You don't even have to only be there, go ahead and go down your rabbit hole of what if could go wrong. Like sure stuff could go wrong 'cause.

Speaker 0It'll, right? Like something like something's gonna happen. Guaranteed something's.

Speaker 1Gonna happen. It's fine. What's fun about our plan is that we do that with you is that what if thing of like strategic, I think Adam Grant calls it strategic pessimism. Like we look at like, okay, well if there were gonna be a plot to twist or there were gonna be a pothole, where would it be? Right? And like we do that together though, so that we can pull your brain back into like, okay, but now we're planned for it. Now we know what to do. This is how we could fill the gaps, right? And, and do our best to like lay a plan that is the most ideal plan, right? And if plot twists happen that we didn't foresee you have support there with you, right? Like doing the money work with us. Like you, you have that support right there with you.

But then take that down the other direction. Just what if it all goes amazingly well? And even though there will be things that, things within that that go wrong, it's kind of like having a bad moment and an otherwise good day. A lot of people tend to like that. Let that one bad moment ruin their entire day. Well the people that are the most successful in this world, they have good days with bad moments, not bad days, with good moments. And that's where we wanna pull like doing this money work. That's the number one side effect of doing this money work with me or with you, is that you become the person who has good days with bad moments rather than staying in that toxic relationship of like, I'm so stressed about my, I'm having such a bad day.

I'm having such a stressful life. I have such a no money, such situation. You you with moments and glimmers of good things, you come over to this other side where it's like, yeah, it's like basically good stuff with moments and, and and, and glimmers of like sad or yucky things tied in because that's just fully experiencing life as a human, right? Like you're gonna have bad things happen sometimes, but like overall, you'll be looking at your life and going, yeah, I'm so glad I bought this for myself. I'm so glad I bought my life for myself. I'm so glad that since I have to buy my life anyway, since we're always only ever buying our life, I might as well be buying the one I want. Right?

And that's what we pull your brain to. So those are the things sit with where you're invalidating yourself. If you are doubting yourself, ask where you're invalidating yourself. And then two, just sit with what if it could all go right. What if it works?

Speaker 0I love that part. And even you just saying that, like what if insert your goal, dream big hair, whatever it is, what if this works? And even just listening to you say it like I get butterflies from that perspective. Like just for our listeners, like seriously sit there right now after this podcast ends and, and ask yourself out loud, what if this works and I get to pay for my kids' college with no worries. Invest in my retirement fund and live the life of my dreams. Buy that vacation home, buy a home for my family, me. Like if until you get butterflies, yeah. Sit there and list all the things that will happen if this works, because we know that in every situation, and again, there will be hurdles. This is not, this is not an easy thing. You're.

Speaker 1Not promising a a bump free ride, right? Like it's life.

Speaker 0Yes, yes. But what we will help you realize is that there are always options. You always have options. And living that good day with bad moments is absolutely within your reach.

Speaker 1Yeah. If there's one thing that going from food stamps to finance coach has taught me, it's that you always have an option.

Speaker 0Oh, I love it. I love it so much. Nicole, I am so excited. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise and your insight with us and, and I'm really excited about what's to come. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Me too. Oh, thanks for having me. Bye everybody.