Invisible Money Roadblocks with Finance for the People author Paco De Leon

 

Episode Description:

There are countless invisible money-related roadblocks that we don't see that are keeping us from reaching our money goals. . Paco De Leon, who heads the Hell Yeah Group financial advisory firm helps us find and fix them. 

A little sneak peek into Paco de Leon’s episode!

Timestamps & Main Points:

  • 00:00 - Introduction

  • 04:42 - Paco’s bio

  • 06:49 - External things that affect our money goals.

  • 09:52 - We are being groomed to consume.

  • 11:05 - Tips to create social media bumpers.

  • 12:20 - Internal things that affect our money goals.

  • 14:42 - Subconscious beliefs

  • 16:32 - We are emotional when it comes to money.


Paco De Leon Bio:

Paco de Leon is an author, illustrator, and musician. She is the founder of The Hell Yeah Group, a financial firm dedicated to inspiring creatives to engage with their personal and business finances, and Hell Yeah, Bookkeeping, a bookkeeping agency for creative businesses. Her career experiences in banking, business consulting, financial planning, and wealth management have informed her financial philosophies. She is a TED speaker and her work has been published or featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg, Vice, TIME, other publications, and on NPR. She lives in Los Angeles with her wife.

 
 

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Full Transcript:

Bobbi Rebell:

Hey, grown up friends. There is something I don't talk about publicly that I have decided to start sharing even though it can be a bit embarrassing. I get digital overload and it stresses me out for good reason because when you have so much junk on your computer because you're not as organized as you should be because you get caught up in all the things that you have to do. If you don't deal with it all that stuff on your computer starts to really slow things down and can become a total drag on your productivity. For me, there is nothing worse than finally motivating to get stuff done, only to be derailed by a sluggish computer that is just not cooperating.

A little while ago, I decided I was going to stop just kind of hoping that things would get better and I was going to deal with it. I downloaded something called CleanMyMac. It's from a company called MacPaw. I was skeptical, but I took a deep breath and I tried it. Long story short, it totally worked. I loved how I could see it work through my files with clear and easy to understand graphics. I could see what was messing things up and CleanMyMac would ask me for my okay before deleting files so that something I did need to keep didn't go bye-bye. That was one of my biggest fears.

I recently reached out to the company and they are offering 10% off to my Financial Grownup listeners who want to also get CleanMyMac. To get that 10% of CleanMyMac, you do need to go to my link, it is BobbiRebell.com/CleanMyMac, B-O-B-B-I-R-E-B-E-L-L.C-O-M/CleanMyMac. And that is all one word. I promise you you'll be so happy. I want you guys to be in touch with me. Let me know how it goes. You deserve to lower the stress of data overload. Trust me. So worth it.

Paco de Leon:

People were constantly not acting in their best interest regardless of how much money they were making. And what I realized was we're all basically just kind of weird about money.

Bobbi Rebell:

You're listening to Money Tips for Financial Grownups with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of Launching Financial Grownups because you know what? Grown up life is really hard, but together we got this.

Do you get frustrated with yourself when you aren't where you want to be when it comes to your personal money situation? I know I do. Well, we all do have a responsibility for ourselves. The truth is, a lot of our financial lives are kind of out of our control. I know it seems strange, right? As unfair as that is, and again, often it's completely not our fault, it's still our problem to fix or to manage, at least for now. So flagging these sort of systemic issues and helping us with solutions is just one of the many things that I adore about today's guest, Paco de Leon they head up The Hell Yeah Group, a financial firm, which is dedicated to inspiring creatives to engage with their personal business and finances. And she is also the author of the book, Finance for the People, which we're going to talk about as well.

So in our conversation, Paco and I discuss how things totally out of our control, like inflation, the cost of healthcare and education as well as social media. Yeah, social media can sabotage our best financial intentions and then also things that are natural to us as humans can be roadblocks, like our desire to connect with each other and if we're being honest, to compare ourselves to each other, that can all impact our money decisions and brace yourself. Paco does not mince words when they roll into a reality check mode. Here is Finance for the People's Paco de Leon.

Paco de Leon, author of Finance for the People and head of The Hell Yeah Group. You are a Financial Grownup, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

Paco de Leon:

Thank you so much for having me, Bobbi.

Bobbi Rebell:

Well, we are excited for our conversation Before we get into our main topic, which is going to be invisible things about money that are easy to miss and you have an incredible list that you've prepared for us of both internal and external things that impact our ability to save and impact our lives. Tell us a little bit about you, the book and your business.

Paco de Leon:

Sure. I studied finance and economics back in college because my time was running out and all these other factors. I have immigrant parents, so I felt like I needed to choose something practical so that I would always have a job. I got my start working as a collections agent at Bank of America, if you could believe it. Don't worry, I was not an evil collector. I did my best to help as many people as I could. And I've had all sorts of different financial services jobs. I've worked as a small business consultant where I basically learned how to do bookkeeping, how to run businesses day to day, and I've worked as a wealth manager. Those really are the jobs that helped me kind of understand how this world of money works.

I got this really interesting perspective on people's psychology and the thing that I kept seeing was that people were constantly not acting in their best interest regardless of how much money they were making. And what I realized was were all basically just kind of weird about money. And when I say weird about money, I mean we all feel a certain way, we all have different beliefs, we have cognitive biases, we have all these stories that we've grown up with. And those stories tend to shape how we behave day to day with our finances. As you know, day to day adds up to week to week, month to month, year to year, all of those actions compound.

Really, I've just been trying to explore and understand how I can have these conversations so that people are aware of all these things impacting their finances. And the thing that I've learned is that so much of what we do in our lives is interconnected. So the way that you are with money is the way you can be with other things in your life. So your relationship with money impacts all the other aspects of your life. And that's really what is so exciting to me is that once people start to find their agency in this area of their life is kind of like an overlay, like a stencil. They can just overlay that on other areas of their life. And I'm hopelessly optimistic, I believe everybody has limitless potential to change.

Bobbi Rebell:

Let's start with the external things that affect our money goals because we often feel ashamed and we blame ourselves for some of the setbacks that we have with money. And there are absolutely, we have to have some responsibility for ourselves, but we also should recognize that some things simply are systemic. So let's talk about some of those. One of the external ones I should say that that is top of mind these days are things like inflation, which we're hearing so much about. Talk to us about that.

Paco de Leon:

Yeah, I mean inflation is definitely in the headlines nonstop right now because it's very real. Even people who are avoiding the media are going to the grocery store and they're realizing that the salmon that they were buying or the wheat bread that they were buying is becoming more expensive and there's nothing that they can do to have a larger impact on the price of things going up. So definitely that, but not just in our day to day items. I mean the cost of healthcare in the United States is continuing to go up and so is the cost of education. So, when you look at all these factors, inflation and the general rising price of things, that is an invisible factor that is impacting how much money you need to spend, which directly impacts how much money you can save and invest.

Bobbi Rebell:

We obviously can't change the fact that the prices are going up, whether healthcare, inflation, the grocery store and so on. What's your advice to people then to push back to mitigate the damage that's being done to our budgets and our financial wellbeing when it comes to these external factors we just talked about?

Paco de Leon:

Right. Personal finance is all about balancing that personal finance equation. It's however much you earn minus how much you're spending and how much you're saving and investing. You really just have to take the time to understand how those three things are interacting with one another. I really hate sometimes to have to give this advice to people, but sometimes you just have to really examine the position that you're in, where you're working, the company that you're working for, what is the possibility for growth. Because different companies have different cultures. If you're working at a warehouse where there's a lot of turnover, you might not have an opportunity for your income to really grow there. Whereas if you're working somewhere else, like a small business and the boss, they really care about your personal development, you might have more opportunity to take on more responsibility.

So I think having your eyes wide open about where you are and your trajectory for earning more is really one way to look at it. And the other way is to really hone in on your expenses, figuring out new ways for you to be creative, figuring out ways to be resourceful and understanding that there are ways that you can make lateral shifts to a different industry and you can earn more or you can take on a second job or as we like to call it these days, a side hustle. I think that there's kind of a layering of things that you can do to combat against inflation.

Bobbi Rebell:

You also talk about the impact of the fact that we're kind of groomed to consume, especially with social media these days. Tell us more about that and what are your tips there to get over that invisible barrier to reaching our money goals

Paco de Leon:

When it comes to social media, what I've noticed is we're being exploited in ways that we might not understand. They're creating this technology that's super, super addictive. They hire psychologists and neurologists to make these things more addictive. And at the end of the day, if they don't have a business model that is selling you a product, you are the product. So the advertisers are the ones selling you things and they're hoping that you'll click and you'll buy, and many of us do.

So I think the first step is just understanding what's going on, understanding that oftentimes this might be a losing battle, one. The other thing that I recommend for people to do is if it's not realistic to get off of social media, find ways to create bumpers. And again, this is a greater societal issue and we're having to create individual ways to protect ourselves. I understand that that sucks and I want to call that out, but this is the reality that we're living in.

Two simple things you can do. One is you can unsubscribe from all of those emails. If you've ever put something in your cart and then abandon the cart and then two days later you get an email and they're like, hey, you left something in your cart, unsubscribe to them. That way you're not tempted.

The other thing that you can do is you can create a buy list. A buy list is exactly what it sounds like. It's a list that you keep. And every time an ad on social media pops up and says, you should buy the sweater because of the person who you will become if you buy the sweater, put that sweater on your buy list and take your time making your buy list cute. Pick out the size, pick out the color. Because as you're doing that, you're tricking your brain into thinking you're actually shopping. Because part of the excitement about shopping, part of that dopamine rush is the anticipation. It's deciding, it's looking around, it's researching, and then create a rule for your buy lists. You will only buy things if it's been on the buy list for at least 24 hours or one week or one month. And over time, I think what you'll recognize is that if you give yourself this kind of cooling off period, this like distance, you probably won't buy it. And if you do buy it, then it means you really want it.

Bobbi Rebell:

Right. And remember, if you have regret, you can also return it.

Paco de Leon:

That's another trick.

Bobbi Rebell:

It's okay to return an item, I mean be ethical, don't like go wear it a lot. But you can return it, that's perfectly okay. Let's also talk about there are internal factors as well as external factors. So you talk about biology, for example our tendency to compare ourselves to others. Tell us about that.

Paco de Leon:

Yeah, I heard about this concept from a psychologist. I took this course called the Trauma of Money, and it was all about understanding how to approach money from a trauma based perspective. And one of the facilitators is a meditation coach and a psychologist. She was talking about how humans have this thing that we have within our minds that it was useful for us, it protected to us, and it's this tendency to compare ourselves to others. And the reason why, this is what she told me, and the disclaimer here is that I'm not a evolutionary biologist, nor am I a psychologist, but how she explained it was like, humans are social creatures. We cannot survive on our own. We need to work together, we need to cooperate, we need to make sure that we are good enough, strong enough, or carrying our own weight in the sense to be part of a group because that group will protect us, that group will make sure that we survive. And so we've developed this ability to compare ourselves to one another.

Now, if you think about social media, it's a perfect little compare machine. It's this little computer in our pockets and it really tickles that part of our brain where we're comparing ourselves to others. So that's one other thing that I hadn't really learned about. I hadn't known about that, that made me realize, wow, yeah, even when I go over to my friend's house and I see a certain lamp, I'm like, oh, I want to be the kind of person that has that lamp, or I want to remain the kind of person that has friends that has that lamp.

I think the most important thing to do is to recognize that this is happening because once you can start seeing these patterns, then at least you have a fighting chance at pausing and making decisions that are a lot more rooted in cognition and not just this reaction.

Bobbi Rebell:

That's so interesting. And that actually flows into something else that we're going to talk about, which is the subconscious beliefs. We sort of almost label ourselves. We think of ourselves as one thing, and that can also be something that's an invisible factor in terms of preventing us from reaching our money goals.

Paco de Leon:

Yeah, I mean, I can give a pretty extreme example, but before I do that, I want to say that subconscious beliefs, we can call them another thing, we can call them a cognitive bias or we can call them a narrative that we have heard over and over and over, and it becomes this mantra, this story that we're repeating in our own minds. Some of us don't even recognize that we're repeating it, we have to take a pause and choose to reflect on our own thoughts to see it.

But a pretty extreme example would be if somebody grew up in a household with abuse, whether that be physical or emotional, or if somebody grew up in a household that was really chaotic or if somebody grew up in a household where they just didn't have a lot of money and they really, really identify with that narrative, they really identify with the story that I'm just the kind of person who I didn't grow up with an emergency fund and I won't be the kind of person to have an emergency fund. I know that sounds kind of silly, that these little beliefs, these narratives, our upbringing kind of gets our hooks into us and we're walking around all day long not really being in control of some of our decisions, but that, it's the truth. It's happening. If you've ever gotten into a car or gone home on your commute and you looked up and you're like, wait, how did I get from the office to my house? Or you wake up and you go through your morning routine, you're like, did I brush my teeth or did I not brush my teeth? There're these instances where we kind of black out and our habits take over.

So the thoughts we think they also become habits, and when a thought becomes habitual, it becomes a belief and then a belief impacts how we think we can act in the world. I think the important thing about this conversation is realizing that how we act with our money it's a big soup. It's all these different factors that come into play and can impact our day to day behavior.

Bobbi Rebell:

And we're emotional when it comes to money. That's another internal factor.

Paco de Leon:

Absolutely. Yeah, we're definitely emotional. The state that we're in has a really big impact on our decisions. The example I always love to tell people because they can relate is like it's six o'clock at night, you need to pick up groceries for dinner. You're already hungry because you had a granola bar and a banana for lunch and you decide to go to the grocery store and you're hungry. I promise you, you're going to make terrible, terrible decisions. You're going to buy things that you normally wouldn't buy and you're going to spend so much money and it's all because of the state that you're in. When it comes to financial decisions that also has a role, the state that you're in. That could be stress, that could be emotional distress, it could be joy even.

Bobbi Rebell:

Thank you so much Paco. Where can people be in touch with you and learn more about you and all of your great work?

Paco de Leon:

I put out a weekly email newsletter every Wednesday called the Nerd Letter and you can sign up for it at thehellyeahgroup.com. I am also offering two free chapters to download of my book Finance for the People, and you could download it at thehellyeahgroup.com/book.

Bobbi Rebell:

Thank you so much.

Paco de Leon:

Thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:

A big thank you to so many of you that have already bought my new book, Launching Financial Grownups: Live Your Richest Life by Helping Your Almost Adult Kids Become Everyday Money Smart. This book was not easy to write because I had to get honest with myself about what was working with my teen and young adult kids and what was not working, and I also had to be prepared to share it with all of you. So first of all, thank you for your support and your wonderful responses to it. There's definitely some things in there that you may not have been expecting to hear. By the way, I got a lot of help from my money expert friends and also financial therapists and parenting experts. I am really happy with how launching Financial Grownups came out, even though it really was hard to be, like I said, that honest and it was a lot of work, but I really love doing it and I'm really happy with how it came out.

On that note, if you have not already, please pick up a copy of Launching Financial Grownups today. After you do, please share it on social media. Please leave a review on Amazon. Those reviews are super important because the algorithm picks up on them and that can make the book a lot more visible to more people, so I truly appreciate it and I really also appreciate all of your support.

My friends, you can see, I wasn't kidding when I said Paco doesn't mince words about the reality we are living in. But Paco also delivered when it comes to solutions. I love the tips on how to save money when we are tempted to shop, especially that social media stuff. Also, it was fascinating to hear what Paco learned from these psychologists about how we compare ourselves to each other and the real impact of that on our money habits.

So what resonated with you? I want to know DME on Instagram. I am at BobbiRebell1, that's B-O-B-B-I-R-E-B-E-L-L and then the number one, and also follow me on my new TikTok channel, that's just under my name, BobbiRebell and sign up for my newsletter. There's a link right in the show notes for that and any other relevant links, by the way, for anything that we talked about on the podcast, that you can just find on my website, bobbirebell.com. And just click on the podcast tab on the top, Big bang to Hell Yeah Group founder and money for the people author Paco de Leon for helping us all be financial grownups.

Money Tips for Financial Grownups is a production of BRK Media LLC. Editing and production by Steve Stewart. Guest coordination, content creation, social media support, and show notes by Ashley Wall. You can find the podcast show notes, which include links to resources mentioned in the show, as well as show transcripts by going to my website, bobbirebell.com. You can also find an incredible library of hundreds of previous episodes to help you on your journey as a financial grownup.

The podcast and tons of complimentary resources associated with the podcast is brought to you for free, but I need to have your support in return. Here's how you can do that. First, connect with me on social media at BobbiRebell1 on Instagram and BobbiRebell on both Twitter and on Clubhouse, where you can join my Money Tips for Grownups Club. Second, share this podcast on social media and tag me so I can thank you. You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts, reading each one means the world to me. You know what? It really motivates others to subscribe. You can also support our merch shop grownupgear.com by picking up fun gifts for your grownup friends and treating yourself as well. And most of all, help your friends on their journey to being financial grownups by encouraging them to subscribe to the podcast. Together we got this.

Thank you for your time and for the kind words so many of you send my way. See you next time. And thank you for supporting Money Tips for Financial Grownups.

 

 
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