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THE LOWDOWN

In this episode, we dive into the crucial topic of ignoring your finances. We explore why many of us adopt the habit of turning a blind eye to our financial realities and the potential consequences of doing so. It's a common mindset to believe that if we ignore financial issues, they will resolve themselves or disappear over time. However, I challenge this notion and emphasize the importance of facing financial truths head-on.

One of the goals of this episode  is to get you to reflect on your current state of mind regarding finances. Are you content with staying in a state of fear and avoidance, hindering our progress and the pursuit of our dreams? This  extends beyond the immediate concerns of financial hardship, acknowledging that even those in a stable situation may miss out on fully understanding and leveraging their finances.

One of the key reasons for ignoring your finances is the belief that there's always time to address financial matters later in life. I want to  challenge this procrastination mentality, and urge you  to start taking steps today for a more impactful and secure financial future. There are so many excuses why not to start, but I want you to think about what you could create if you just start now.

I also dive into the fear associated with knowing your financial standing is another obstacle. Whether it's student loan debt, credit card debt, or simply not being aware of account balances, face these fears. There is so much power in taking control of your financial situation.

Start small. Start today. Do one small thing today to get you closer to where you want to be. Make sure to tune in as I share with you some small steps you can start taking now to take control of your finances.

MENTIONED IN SHOW:

Website: www.lovealwaysjess.com/getstarted

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/love.always.jess

SHOW NOTES:

Episode begins at [00:00:54]

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Hey, I hope today is going well and that the week ahead brings you [00:01:00] so much fun and joy and beautiful things. Today we're going to focus on ignoring your finances. Why you might be doing it, ways you can stop doing it, and why it's important to not ignore your finances. Oftentimes, we can think, if I just stop looking at it, or if I pretend it doesn't exist, that It'll go away, or it'll fix itself, or that eventually I will do something to make it better.

And while it's easy to do that, and while it's easy to hope and wish for change to come easy, to come naturally, [00:02:00] that isn't always the case. 

at the end of the day, you can ignore the reality in front of you. But you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring that reality. So at some point, you ignoring your finances is going to continue setting you back. It's going to continue to hold you back from reaching your goals, your desires. And we don't want that.

I mean, honestly, sit and ask yourself,

do I want to continue to stay in this state of mind of hiding a fear of not

making the progress and not continuing the steps of creating the, the future that you desire, whether or not that's [00:03:00] From a financial perspective or creating a foundation of solid finances to get your big dreams out there into the world, owning a house, traveling the world, having children, paying for your children's college so that they don't have to take out student loans.

there are so many things that getting clear and focusing on your finances can do

when you decide to stop ignoring them.

It's easy to walk around and think my card hasn't declined. Or I haven't had collectors coming after me. So things can't be that bad. But here's the truth. We don't want them to get bad. And also,

even if you're not in a bad situation at all, I mean, say you have a good [00:04:00] understanding of your finances

without sitting down and being honest with yourself about why you don't. look at them and you don't become intimate with them, you're never going to fully understand how to leverage your finances fully and where to go with your finances.

So what are some reasons that you could be ignoring your finances?

Maybe, maybe you don't understand.

As a society, we don't place a lot of emphasis on teaching from a young age what money means. How to grow your money, how to save your money, how to utilize your money to its fullest potential.

You might hear things that money is evil or

or you might have seen people in your life struggle with [00:05:00] money

and therefore they passed on to you those same struggles.

I remember when I was in high school I took an economics class And we had to put together budget proposals, um, for going to college, for buying a house, for getting married, the quote unquote stereotypical path in life. And it was fun, but I don't remember conversations surrounding how to save up for those events.

What happens when the college and university that you want to go to are 30 to 40, 000 a year or more. I know prices of university has skyrocketed, but you have to take out student loans or you have to find a path to community college and then transfer, [00:06:00] but even still you're still paying the tens of thousands of dollars when you transfer to a four year college.

What do interest rates mean on those loans? What allows you to defer? Those those student loans. Can you change your payment options on student loans? Those types of things aren't taught to us. And so then when we're young, , 18 years old, we don't feel young. We feel like we're on top of the world. But 

When we're 18 years old, 17, 18, and we're on the precipice of choosing the next path for our life after high school,

we say, I have to go take out student loans because I don't have money. My family doesn't have money. So I'm signing this contract that I'm going to pay back X amount of dollars, but I don't understand anything about it. I don't understand what the [00:07:00] interest rate is that I just signed. For fixed or variable.

What does all of that mean? 

There's the lack

of knowledge given to us at a young age that can hold us back 

that can hold us back from truly understanding our finances. Student loans is just an example. but knowing even a fraction

of. What is

an interest rate on a savings account?

Or what is the difference between a savings and a checking account? 

How much money can I put into my savings account? 

What is the amount of money that I can put into a bank account that is going to be covered by the FDIC? There's so

little emphasis taught on teaching us financial success, financial prosperity.

That we don't step into adulthood

really knowing what to do next.

Another [00:08:00] reason

that you might be ignoring your finances is you think I have time.

I'm 35 years old right now and

I have 30 or so more years before I retire. Do I have time to fix things and figure things out? Absolutely. But also, if I start now, I can make an even bigger impact. by the time that I retire than if I continue to wait. It's so easy, and guys, trust me, I do this with myself. I tell myself I'm gonna start tomorrow.

Life gets in the way. Life continues to move forward. 

And it's so easy to say to yourself, I'm gonna start tomorrow. I'm gonna start once I get my bank statements at the end of the month. I'm going to start at the end of Q1. It's so easy to tell ourselves that we're going to start [00:09:00] when, but there is no better time than to start now, today. And I'm not saying stop everything you're doing and sit down in front of a computer and print out all of your bank statements.

And go through and tick and tie everything out.

Look at your bank account. When was the last time you logged into your bank account to see the dollar amount in your checkings and in your savings? That's a great place to start. Now, familiarize yourself with that number. Because you might have a number in your head. Oh, I'm in the ballpark of 100 in my checking account.

I'm in the ballpark of a couple thousand in my savings.

And then you log in and it's a completely different number.

Look now. [00:10:00] And then tomorrow, maybe you print out your bank statement. Or you write down a goal, a small goal that you want to achieve by the end of the month. Sure,

you might have a few decades before things are really going to matter and be important.

And so it's easy to think, I'll just look at it later,

but if you know anything about compounding, the actions we do today trickle over to tomorrow,

and the compound effect means that it's going to double and continue to double, and so on and so forth, until it grows on its own. We do the same thing with habits. If we continue to do the same habit day in and day out, [00:11:00] eventually becomes second nature to us and we just do it without conscious thought.

The same thing happens to your finances. When you put your money into a high yield savings account, you're going to accumulate that interest. And then that interest is going to accumulate more interest

and it's going to do it by itself.

So act now

and again, it can be a small, it doesn't have to be anything big today.

And tomorrow do another small step and then find time this weekend to sit down and actually look at your finances.

another reason you might ignore your finances is there's a fear of knowing where you currently sit.

Maybe you have a lot of student loan debt, or [00:12:00] credit card debt, or medical debt. Maybe,

like from the last example, you haven't really looked at what is currently inside of your bank account. And so you're living day to day fearing. that your card might decline at the grocery store, or when you go and get your daily Starbucks. Is today going to be the day that my card declines?

And you guys, I've been there. I've had my card decline. But because I knew where my finances were at that moment, I didn't panic. I was shocked,

but I didn't panic. Because I knew the reason for the decline had nothing to do with me. Something else was happening in the background. And fortunately, I had another method of payment as an option.

[00:13:00] And then I was able to go into the bank the next day, because I think it was on a weekend, and talk to them. And sure enough, it was an issue on the bank side. I've also, my mom was the co signer, or co whatever person on my bank account, and she received a debit card. For my bank account and she also received a debit card for her bank account.

She was accidentally using the debit card for my bank account and I started receiving notices. From the bank of all these overdraft fees and I was like, I haven't used my card and it turned out my mom had been using her card corresponding to my bank account, assuming that she was using the card corresponding to her bank account.

We went in and talked to the [00:14:00] bank. They cleared everything up, they reversed all the overdraft fees because we went and talked to them. But it can be scary when you start to get those overdraft fees or when your card declines or when you have collections chasing after you. I've had credit cards calling me because I forgot to make a payment one month.

It's scary. It does happen. We're all human,

but we own up to our mistakes

and we learn how to make something different, make a different choice. So, instead of living in fear of, is my card going to decline, or

the fear of truly knowing what your financial standing is, it's beneficial to know where your numbers are at, because not only

can you fix something when it happens. And not only can you recognize to yourself in the moment, [00:15:00] Hey, I know I have the money in my bank account, but something else is going on, so let me call and talk to them.

You also have the opportunity with a lot of corporations to ask for forgiveness, to ask them to reverse a penalty fee.

So when you are intimate and understanding and knowing of where your finances stand, You can hold a lot of power and make a lot of beneficial decisions

towards your future, towards your goals.

And I get it. I graduated college with over 100, 000 in student loan debt. It's scary. I started my first job making 50, 000 a year and more than one paycheck went to the different student loans. It was scary. I didn't [00:16:00] want to look at it, but I also told myself

that I need to look at it and not be afraid of it. Because that opens the doors to finding options to make things better. If I know where I'm at,

then I have the power to make the change that I want. The change that will benefit me long term.

So process that fear and take small baby steps to overcome it.

Another reason. That you might be ignoring your finances is because you're not tracking them. Tracking

your finances was the first thing my parents taught me when I started working, when I opened my first bank account.

When I returned home from the bank, my mom pulled up a computer, popped open an Excel spreadsheet, and created [00:17:00] a three column spreadsheet. Date, description, amount. And she said, Everything that you do with your money, track it here.

It was simple, but it was beneficial. And that simple Excel spreadsheet, I used through college. I shared it with friends.

And what it allowed me to do was it allowed me to see in real time the dollar amount that I had to spend.

You can open your bank account and you can see where you're at, but perhaps you wrote a check and the check hadn't cleared. So it's not going to show in your bank account. But if you have a tracker, Then you can see, I'm still waiting for this check to clear, [00:18:00] the money in, in a way has gone out.

And so you might be ignoring your finances because you don't have a full picture of where your money sits. And I know I've kind of mentioned that throughout the other parts of this podcast episode,

but it does lead to a sense of uncertainty. within our bodies

when we don't know where our finances are.

And it's scary

because 

it's scary because we don't know what is going to happen. Will our card decline? Will we get an overdraft fee? Will I forget about a payment that I have to make? We've all been there. We've all done it. It's human. It's error. We're not meant to be perfect.

[00:19:00] We're not meant to go through this world. Being on top of everything, every single moment

and that, that perfectionism, that idea that I have to be doing it right can freeze you and it can, it can make you want to just ignore and push everything away and say, I'm not dealing with you today. You stay over there.

I, I get it. 

We want to ignore.

We want to have everything figured out, have all of the knowledge in our heads of what to do, all of the answers at the tip of our tongue, in our fingertips, in front of us, before we sit down and we look at our finances.

[00:20:00] I am that type of person. I want to have all the knowledge before I look at something. In human design, I'm a 1 3 manifester. The 1 in 3. Educational and investigative. I don't remember if it's educational, but either way, what it means is I want to learn everything and dig into everything before I make a decision.

And that can paralyze us. It can paralyze us and keep us from starting.

Today, I want you to take a small baby step

to opening your eyes, opening your mind up to where your finances currently stand. All I'm asking you to do is 

log in to each of your financial accounts and look at the number. Don't do [00:21:00] anything else today. Look at the numbers, feel the emotions that come up with those numbers, and then let it go for a day. And then tomorrow, look at it again.

Spend every day of the rest of this week Just looking at the numbers. And if you have time this weekend, sit down and look at it deeper. Look at the different transactions. If you have a student loan, look at the interest rate, how many payments are left. Look at the information. Familiarize yourself with that.

And then from there, start asking the questions. Do I understand this? Am I afraid of this? What do I want to know more about? What do I want to change?

Because when we start to make the small progressive steps towards becoming intimate with our finances, we begin to reclaim our power. And we begin to say, you're not going to have control over me anymore. I'm going[00:22:00] you're not going to have control over me anymore. I'm going to have control over you in a healthy, fun, joyful, prosperous manner. Stop

the excuses. Stop saying tomorrow

and choose one small thing to do today to break that fear up and stop ignoring. I believe in you. I believe in your capability of looking at your numbers.

and finding the strength and the power within yourself to make the change and build the financial foundation that you want for your future.

You've got this. Believe in yourself.

Believe

in your capability.

Believe in your ability to [00:23:00] stop ignoring.

Thank you for listening today and I hope that you learned a small nugget to take with you into the rest of the week. Enjoy. [00:24:00]