Starting your life is expensive, and so is starting a business. Canvas and Hyde Founder Lisa Pongrass quickly learned that not having insurance, or ordering in bulk to save money can come back to hit your bottom line before you even have a top line.
Lisa’s Money Story:
Lisa Pongrass:
So interestingly, I'm self-funded and when I started the business I had to go out and source all of the materials. And having never worked in this field before, I went door to door, found the great leathers. In fact, I flew to Miami to get the hides hat I was using initially for the bags. What I found, and because I guess when there's skin in the game, your own skin in the game, so much of it you really want to get the best prices for everything. And I found that people offered me greater discounts when I bought volume, which is pretty much standard in the industry. So of course what did I do? I bought volume in the assumption that I would be making certain amount of inventory.
Bobbi Rebell:
Did you have any presales at this point?
Lisa Pongrass:
None.
Bobbi Rebell:
You had no orders. Okay.
Lisa Pongrass:
No orders at this point. I'm a brand new brand. Never made a bag before. And I guess someone had said to me once that one of the single biggest contributing factors to small business failure is a lack of cashflow. And it obviously didn't resonate enough because I found quite quickly that I had all this great material but not the cashflow to use it to go into production with all the bags. So had I had my time again, I definitely would have done that a little bit differently.
Bobbi Rebell:
So what happened? How'd you get out of this mess?
Lisa Pongrass:
How did I get out of the mess? Well, I didn't use all my capital and I did start selling the bags quite quickly. I got into 23 stores and that was then able to bring money back into the business. There were a few sleepless nights in there. In this industry, in the fashion industry, you make things and you, unless everything is for order, you never know if it's going to work or not. There's a little bit of a risk and a lot of luck. Fear is a little bit paralyzing. So I tried to not come from a place of fear. I had to have confidence and I did have confidence in what I was creating. I was just very lucky to be around women friends who empowered me and kept me going. For example, when you're buying the skins, you get a better price to buy more. But when you buy the hardware, I use the very best nickel plated brass, the best hardware, and it's expensive.
Lisa Pongrass:
But if you buy a thousand of something, it's not as expensive. So I was buying in the thousands of these pieces of hardware. I use them all in the end. I mean, it's three years in, so I've actually had a chance to use them all, thank goodness. I've still got some skins sitting in storage, but how did I get out of it? I think just then the cash flow started to change the sales. So I would be getting checks from my retailers and I was able to get myself out of it. You know, looking back, if someone had said to me, "Pay a little extra but get less so you're not in the hole for that amount of money." I probably would have listened and that would've been a more prudent way to go about it.
Bobbi Rebell:
Did it motivate you in a way because you suddenly had a clock ticking, even though you had a little extra cash? There's something to be said for that pressure, whether it's welcome or not, it was there.
Lisa Pongrass:
Absolutely. Look, it's a catch 22, because by getting a better price when you're doing your costings, you're able to use that better price to put together what it actually costs you to make. However, if the money is tied up on developed or manufactured bags, then it's dead money.
Bobbi Rebell:
Did you have any business background? I mean, what were you basing all these ideas on?
Lisa Pongrass:
So I'd worked in PR and Marketing. I'd worked for a magazine as a Deputy Editor of a fashion mag, and I'd also worked as an agent, a fashion agent. So I'd been in sales, but I'd never been in the business side of production before. The logistics of just going into production, of sourcing materials, of getting the best prices for things. I'd never done any of that and I had zero experience. Luckily I was very naive, because I look back now and had I known what I know now, I think I would have been too fearful to go into it. But I was ... ignorance is bliss in a bit of a way, and I thought, "How hard can it be? It's not brain surgery."
Bobbi Rebell:
How did you educate yourself?
Lisa Pongrass:
Trial and error. I've made some mistakes that were very costly. One mistake that cost me $8,000, that I'll never see is my manufacturer delivered my first order from overseas. So now I've diversified manufacturing. It's New York and Italy, and they just sent the order and they didn't insure it. I didn't know, I just assumed that that was part of the shipment. They didn't insure it and FedEx lost one of my boxes. So they didn't cover it. My manufacturer didn't cover it and I had to wear it.
“Slow down and don’t rush into committing to things you don’t need.”
Lisa’s Money Lesson:
Lisa Pongrass:
You know, one of the ones that I've learned is there are lots of hidden costs that you don't see day to day. For example, when you have a website and you're with Square, there's a monthly fee. When you sell something, there is a vendor's fee, which is I think three or 4% transaction fee. Google Drive. There's a monthly fee. QuickBooks, there's a monthly fee. There are so many fees that you sign up for at the beginning and then after a while you're thinking, "Wow, why is the bank balance diminishing so rapidly?" And then when you go back in and you check it out, you think, "Well, I don't really need that anymore. I don't need QuickBooks yet." Certain businesses, every business is different, but I certainly learnt that I signed up for things like Yelp or certain social media things that I really didn't need to do and I thought I did.
Bobbi Rebell:
So it sounds like basically when you started your business you had costs, whether it be from buying too much inventory initially, too much supplies, and also maybe signing up for so many things that are ongoing subscriptions that maybe you found out you didn't necessarily need, they weren't quite right. What is the lesson from all of this for our listeners?
Lisa Pongrass:
I think take it slow. I think probably slow down and don't rush into committing to things that you don't really need. At the time, you think that you do need them. And then maybe revise it more regularly than I did. I certainly know that for the first year I worked out of my home, which was a good thing to do. I had that advice from people, don't go and get an office or a showroom too quickly, which I didn't do. And I'm very glad I have an office and a showroom now and I don't think I could ever work from home again, because I've just grown too much. But take it slow, take it slow.
“Unless everything is for order, you never know if it’s going to work or not. It’s a little risk and a lot of luck.”
Lisa’s Money Tip:
Lisa Pongrass:
I recently was going through my finances and I saw that one of the biggest expenses I had monthly was my dry cleaning bill.
Bobbi Rebell:
We can all relate.
Lisa Pongrass:
I do buy quality, so I'm wearing things that are from 10 years ago, [inaudible 00:10:49] beautiful quality. So I bought a steamer and I realized that you can have something that's beautiful that says dry clean only, but it doesn't literally mean that you have to dry clean it. You can steam it yourself. So I'm hoping that that's going to really reduce my cost.
Bobbi Rebell:
Well, you also, and I'm going to force you to throw in another one that you mentioned to me before we started recording, about your dog, which is another fun, easy way to save money. Maybe not always fun.
Lisa Pongrass:
My baby. Well, grooming is so expensive. So, now I obviously I can't cut him myself, but I wash him myself and it's a really nice bonding experience for my baby and I, but it also saves me between 80 and $100 for a wash. So I do that. We do that every three or four weeks and he loves it and I love it.
Bobbi Rebell:
And it's so cute. It's so cute. And that's significant money. That's for real. I mean, if you're saving a hundred bucks a month, that's $1,200 a year. That is a lot of money.
Lisa Pongrass:
Yeah. Not only am I saving money, but he and I are having a fun time. In fact, it always seems like one of those things, "Oh, I've got to wash the dog." And then the minute you started, it's so much fun.
Bobbi Rebell:
It is. We actually, we wash our dog. My listeners know my dog is Waffles, she's a Morkie and my husband's really primarily in charge of the washing. I am in charge of the drying. And she loves it, she loves it.
Lisa Pongrass:
Does she love it?
Bobbi Rebell:
She goes into the shower? Yes, and she's super cute and she always looks so good when she comes out all clean.
Lisa Pongrass:
Does your dog run around the house crazy when she's wet?
Bobbi Rebell:
No, she does not. She stands nicely and waits for us to dry her. She's a very well behaved dog, so I take it yours does.
Lisa Pongrass:
When he's wet. He can't wait to get out of the towel and then he just zooms around the house and rubs up against the sofa. It's very funny.
“Luckily I was very naive, because I look back now and had I known what I know now, I think I would have been too fearful to go into it.”
Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:
Financial Grownup Tip #1:
Lisa went through her business expenses and realized that all the little things were really adding up to big things. This applies to apps, subscriptions, and probably a lot of things that I'm not even thinking of right now. Some of them may be worth it, but sometimes you realize maybe you don't need the premium version of everything. Maybe you can step it down a notch. Do an inventory of all the little things, cut as many as you possibly can, maybe cut all of them even and then just add them back in one by one, the ones that you feel you really need or you miss.
Financial Grownup Tip #2:
Lisa talks about buying a steamer and slashing her dry cleaning bill. She also washes her dog at home. The truth is we can all do a lot more at home. If you're into facials, maybe go sometimes, but do some at home for example, or find ways to make things last longer. Take your shoes and have new soles put on them instead of going out and purchasing new ones. It's also a lot more sustainable, better for the environment.
Episode Links:
Lisa's website - www.canvasandhyde.com
Follow Lisa + Canvas & Hyde!
Instagram - @canvasandhyde
Facebook - @canvasandhyde
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, authors of "The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries And Our Lives" join Bobbi with a preview of their latest book, and specific ways money-related changes will impact us in the coming years.
8 Ways Money Will Change the Future
1. We’re going to live longer—we’ll need to approach retirement very differently
2. Demonetization is going to radically alter education, travel etc.
3. Convergence means that future financial investment opportunities can lie between industries and in mash-up markets
4. New players in Finance (Google, for example, just went into banking)
5. Insurance is going to radically change and whole categories will vanish
6. Your AI is going to be making a lot of your buying decisions for you.
7 You also say we are moving to a cashless future
8 -Blockchain will continue to disrupt traditional banking, spreading widely into the developed world much like it’s already transformed financial systems in developing countries.
Episode Links:
Peter's website - www.diamandis.com
Steven’s website - www.stevenkotler.com
Follow Peter!
Twitter - @PeterDiamandis
Facebook - @PeterDiamandis
LinkedIn - @peterdiamandis
Follow Steven!
Instagram - @kotler.steven
Twitter - @steven_kotler
Facebook - @KotlerSteven
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Transcription
Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us a little bit about the book, just quickly before we get into some really cool stuff you're going to share with us.
Steven Kotler:
The future we talk about in the book, for some people is scary, because people are not used to this rapid rate of change. The best solution for that fear is really having an understanding of where the world is going. Part of the mission of the book is to give people a clear vision of the future that these converging technologies are enabling. For most of the case, this is an incredible win for consumers, an uplifting of abundance in the world, where ultimately these exponential converging technologies are helping to meet the need of every man, woman, and child on the planet. That makes for a world that is, in my ... in our mind, I would say safer and better for humanity, so this is a hopeful book that builds the case for creating a better world for tomorrow.
Bobbi Rebell:
It's really a roadmap into how money is going to change in the future and, most importantly, how we can and frankly need to be ready. A lot of this is not just you guys talking. There's a lot of scientific research here and a lot tying in technology to money and how it's going to specifically impact our lives. You're going to give us a preview, and you brought with you a list of different ways that all these things are going to affect money and our lives. Let's start with the first thing on your list. This is about our approach to retirement and longevity.
Peter Diamandis:
Sure, let me jump in there, because it's an area that I spend a lot of time investing in and time building companies around, and it's the notion that we're going to be heading to a world in which we're not dying at age 70 or 80, that we're living a healthy lifespan to 90, to 100, to 110, eventually 120. In our book, The Future is Faster Than You Think, we have an entire chapter on healthcare and a chapter on longevity that tracks these different technologies, billions of dollars flowing into them. If you think about it, there's no larger business opportunity than extending the healthy human lifespan. So, I think this is a reality and I think people need to start thinking about, "Do I have to save enough money to live to be 100 years old or 110 years old?" Because if you can have the aesthetics, the cognition and mobility at 100 that you had at 60, why wouldn't you want to? It's not about living in a wheelchair, it's about living a vibrant life. So, that's the first thing. We're going to live longer. We're going to live healthier, and we have to prepare for that.
Bobbi Rebell:
Such a great point. Let's move onto the second point. This is fascinating, demonetization, because this goes into things that we love, like travel, right, Steven?
Steven Kotler:
Yeah, so demonetization is essentially the removal of money from the equation. The simple example that we're all familiar with is the smartphone. So when Peter and I wrote the first book in the trilogy, [inaudible 00:05:30], we're calling the Exponential Mindset trilogy, with our latest book, The Future is Faster Than You Think is the third installment in. In Abundance, back when we started, we looked at all the technology that shows up for free, demonetized completely, in your smartphone. In 1980s prices, it was over a million dollars-
Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh.
Steven Kotler:
In music players, in Encyclopedias, in GPS, and on and on and on. So, this is a million dollars worth of stuff that has been dematerialized. It doesn't exist anymore. It comes for free in your phone. This is ... Whenever technologies go exponential, one of the things that starts to happen almost automatically is they begin to demonetize, and this is going into every industry. Travel is a really radical example, both because we're seeing ... over the next 10 years, we're going to see technology such as the Hyperloop, which is high speed trains, maglev trains, 750 miles an hour, so suddenly San Francisco to LA is a 20-minute commute or Las Vegas to San Francisco is a 20-minute commute, which, by the way, totally changes the real estate picture and your local school metric and your dating pool and all that stuff, besides the point, but you've got five or six other technologies, autonomous cars, flying cars, rockets, et cetera.
Steven Kotler:
Then, you have avatars and virtual reality, which completely demonetizes travel. Now we already have avatars and virtual worlds, but if you can put on VR goggles and have an avatar attend a meeting that you need to attend and you've got haptic technology so you can shake hands with other people and be there, or you can have telepresence robots waiting for you that you sort of rent by the hour in your destination city and you can port your senses using VR into the robot and then send the robot onto stage to give a speech for you or whatnot. This sounds crazy far future, but Peter's company, the X Prize, it's [nepon 00:07:29], right, Peter?
Peter Diamandis:
It's all Nepon Airways, ANA Airlines, has basically said, "How do we displace the need for airplanes? How do you not put yourself in an aluminum tube and fly someplace?" They launched a $10 million dollar avatar X Prize. Can we build the avatars, like Steven was saying, then I can transport my consciousness, my senses, and my actions hundreds or thousands of miles away instead of flying in an airplane.
Bobbi Rebell:
Wow, so cool. Let's talk about the investment opportunities angle here, because you say convergence means that future of financial investment opportunities can lie between industries and mashup markets. What does that mean?
Peter Diamandis:
It means that we have pure play investments before in a computer company or communications company or a healthcare company, but all of these things are beginning to blur, right? We're seeing Amazon all of a sudden going from a bookseller to a food company when it buys Whole Foods and it's now moving into healthcare and into finance. So, we're going to start to see companies that are blurring the lines between what have been traditional areas. A lot of the companies that are going to be crushing it are data-driven companies. Google and Amazon and Apple are in our home and they're going to start to play increasingly different roles. It was interesting that Tim Cook, we talk about this in The Future is Faster Than You Think. Tim Cook makes a statement like, "In the future, Apple is going to be best known for its impact on healthcare." Wow. So, we're going to start to see a lot of these blurred lines. So, when you are excited about investing in a particular industry or particular area, it's not going to be the traditional players. It's going to be a new set of players coming in from unpredictable adjacencies.
Bobbi Rebell:
Which dovetails to your point that there's going to be a lot of new players in finance.
Steven Kotler:
There are going to be a lot of new players in finance and finance as a whole is going to radically change. We've seen this already. We've seen what AI did to finance. At this point, when there's height rating volume, for example, 90% of the trades on Wall Street are being made by computers at this point. That's just today and where we are, but to Peter's point, the advantage you get is data, right? The more data you have, the bigger understanding you have of markets. We'll see this in traditional finance. We're going to see this playing huge roles in insurance. We're going to see this show up in real estate. It's really going to transform the financial landscape. The first inklings of it, companies like IBM, lots in doing wealth management services, right? It's going to mean that people working in the finance space, creativity is going to become the most important skill going forward. This was not a skill 20 years ago you would have really associated with finance and now it's the key skill because everything else that can be automatized will probably be automatized.
Bobbi Rebell:
Insurance, it is going to radically change.
Peter Diamandis:
Insurance is going to change dramatically and we are going to go away from what was the old actuarial tables of, statistically, over a population of 100,000 people, here's the probability. That's not going to be the case. Now it's like, okay, this is specifically the probability for you, given the technology you're enabling, given the way you eat, exercise, and so forth, your genetics and such. We're going to insure you personally and we're going to work to keep you healthier longer, alive longer, fire free, theft free, and that's our job now. So, interesting change, which makes the world a better place, and people will want that kind of insurance over the "We'll pay you after the disaster occurred."
Steven Kotler:
The other thing I want to add to that is, of course with autonomous cars, car insurance as a category goes away. Right? If the cars are driving themselves and they don't crash, car insurance goes away or at least the risk, it shifts from the consumer, right? Google, with Waymo, [inaudible 00:11:33] with Waymo, they provide ... everybody who gets in the car automatically gets insurance because they're the one who controls the autonomous car, so that's another category that's going to disappear.
Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about artificial intelligence. How will this affect, for example, the everyday consumer, people buying stuff?
Peter Diamandis:
So, interestingly enough, we're all going to have a version of Jarvis from Iron Man. If you remember Jarvis, Tony Stark had this AI that was in his suit and in his home. He would talk to it and Jarvis would be like a personal, intelligent butler or assistant in this regard. We have the early versions of this with Amazon Echo. We have the early versions of that with Google Home and such, but one thing that's going to happen in the consumer world is that your AI's going to do your buying for you. If your AI is doing your buying for you of foods or consumer products in general, what's that do to advertising, right? If I'm not making the decisions anymore, you can throw all the ads at me you want, but my AI is actually looking at my genetics and the molecular makeup of the toothpaste and saying, "This toothpaste is better for you than this one. Everyone in your peer group, Peter, is buying this and enjoying it and it's cheaper, so I'm buying that for you." You get a new toothpaste and go, "Oh, I like this one better." Right? So the world becomes auto-magical.
Bobbi Rebell:
I love it, because it can save a lot of money for consumers, and time and energy, to not have that decision making stress, because every decision is stress.
Steven Kotler:
Absolutely. These are parts of where the world is going, and not in 30 years or 20 years, this next decade, which is what we outlined in the book.
Bobbi Rebell:
Last thing I want to go through is you say we're moving to a cashless future, to the surprise of, really, no one, I think. I think everyone kind of sees the writing on the wall with this one.
Steven Kotler:
Where it starts to get really interesting is, for example, Amazon Go. This is a cashierless checkout where you scan a QR code on your way into the store on your phone, you take the items off the shelf, sensors in the items notice that you've taken it, the AI cameras pick it up, and it's automatically deducted from your account, which is linked, too, in your cellphone and there's no more cash in the equation. This is ... Those stores are here. They're rolling out at scale over the next couple of years. I'm sure there are probably always going to be craft retail stores, like throwback stores. We still have [inaudible 00:13:50] and the chain here, but at convenience stores, at gas stations, at grocery stores, places we're already seeing automated checkout anyways, right? We're checking ourselves out and it's a pain in the butt, but now the hassle is gone. Obviously the savings for retail is enormous. There's no way to compete.
Bobbi Rebell:
What can the average person be doing to get ready for this future?
Peter Diamandis:
We put out something called Abundance Insider, which is a weekly email of how the world is getting more abundant and how to see this positive news. There are amazing books that Steven have written. Please read Abundance and Bold, which are the first two books in the Exponential Mindset series.
Steven Kotler:
Yeah, the only other thing I would add is, there's a human performance side of this, which I tend to work on the Flow Research Collective, so if you want to know what you can do in your own life to keep up in an accelerating world, the website for the flowresearchcollective.com will give you tons and tons of information there.
Music entrepreneur, author, coach and podcast host Cathy Heller was crushed early in her career when her record label dropped her. But she discovered another way to make money from her music and staged the ultimate multi-million dollar comeback.
Cathy’s Money Story:
Cathy Heller:
Yeah. My money story. I came out to LA wanting to write music. That was all I knew I loved doing as a kid. I thought, all right, I'm going to do that thing that you see them do in movies. I'm going to go out to LA. I grew up on the East Coast. I was going to figure it out and I had to get a job and pay the bills. I got a job as an assistant in an office and I had a roommate and she was an actress and I was doing my thing. And eventually I started writing music and I wrote some mediocre songs and they got better. And I finally got a record deal. I actually did. I remember sitting with Ron Fair at Interscope, I had just signed and Lady Gaga was there recording Paparazzi and I was like, oh my God, I'm sitting in this room. It's amazing.
Bobbi Rebell:
That must've been so surreal.
Cathy Heller:
It was really surreal. And by the way, hearing Paparazzi recorded is really cool because if you go back now and listen, you'll hear what I'm referring to. There's all these strings on the recording and it makes the pop music just sound like some other dimension is going on and it's beautiful. It was just amazing. But I got dropped from the label a few months later. While I was actually sitting there in the studio, Ron Fair, my producer at the time, he said to me, "You know Cathy, when I first came out to LA, I met with Bill Conti." Bill Conti is the guy who did the music for Rocky and so many other iconic movies and he said to him, "You know Ron, you're a really good songwriter but you're an amazing producer." And he said, "And I wound up making a living really as one of the best producers in the industry."
Cathy Heller:
And I remember that story and I didn't know three, four months later that I'd get dropped from the label, but I did and I wound up going and getting a quote unquote real job and I did so many things. I worked in a floral design studio. I thought, oh, if I can't do the thing I love that's creative, I'll do something else creative. As if it's going to scratch that same itch and it doesn't. I think we all have tried that. And then a friend of mine said, "If you're not going to do what you love, just make money." And I said, "Well how do you do that?" She said, "You do real estate." She said, "I know a guy who works in commercial real estate, he lives in Brentwood. You should go work for him."
Cathy Heller:
She introduces me and I start working in commercial real estate. I don't know the first thing about cap rates or mortgages and he says, "All you have to do is pick up the phone, call about 20 to 30 people a day and set some meetings for me and I'll give you good money if you can set meetings." And I wound up being pretty good at it and then I was there for two years and it was really like golden handcuffs because he was paying me a 150 grand to sit at this desk and make phone calls for him.
Bobbi Rebell:
Life is going by and you're not in the music business.
Cathy Heller:
No, I wasn't doing anything I loved. And I remember one day I was driving and I was crying so hard, I had to pull over to the side of the road and I thought to myself, I just, I don't know where I went, but I don't recognize myself. I am not this girl. I don't wear pantsuits. I don't blow my hair out. I don't talk this way. And I thought, gosh, we were talking about Tony Robbins before because he wrote the forward to your book and he always says, "Success without fulfillment is like the ultimate failure." And I felt like I couldn't breathe. I was like, I don't care that I'm driving a cute little Mercedes convertible. I don't care that I can eat sushi whenever I want. I don't feel like myself. I am so not me.
Cathy Heller:
And I decided I was going to quit and I quit my job, which I don't recommend to people. What I recommend to people now is that you build a runway and build a side hustle and validate your idea. And there's so many great tools and ways to do that so that you don't have to just jump. But I did. I couldn't take it. I just jumped.
Bobbi Rebell:
What was that like when you went in? You just went in one day and quit. Did you have overhead? Rent? You didn't have a family at the time, I assume.
Cathy Heller:
No, I was only 26. I quit and I thought to myself, oh by the time I run out of whatever tiny amount of savings I have from this job, I'm sure I'll be making money in music. And I saw that there was a whole world of musicians who were licensing their songs to TV shows, like Grey's Anatomy in One Tree Hill at the time and ads for McDonald's and Pepsi and Walmart. And I was like, what is this whole road? I wish I would've known about it.
Bobbi Rebell:
I'm thinking that now. I never even thought about that whole world. And you're just observing it and there's a business behind that.
Cathy Heller:
Oh, it's a huge business. And this article, this article was really opening my eyes. It was telling me that people in this field were making hundreds of thousands of dollars because ad agencies were paying the artists 50, 60, $70,000 a pop for just the use, just the license, not the ownership to use the song in an ad. And television shows were spending something like five or $10,000 per song in an episode. Of course it's more for an ad because there might be one retail ad for a campaign versus 22 episodes and six songs an episode, but still five or 10 grand to have your song used in a show or $50,000 to have your song used in a Walmart spot.
Cathy Heller:
I was getting pretty excited about that and so I made that decision that I would do everything I could to figure out who were the clients, who were the people choosing songs at Paramount and NBC and Lion's Gate and ad agencies like Ogilvy and Deutsche and McCann. Who were those people? And what did they need? And I had never asked myself that question before. Up until that moment, I thought that you either did something you loved that came completely from your heart or you built someone else's dream and you sold out. I never really understood that you could marry the two things, that you could be who you were and feel authentic and at the same time you could know that someone else has a need and a want and that you could answer that with your gifts. And then that's really how you make a living.
Cathy Heller:
And it made so much sense. All of a sudden it's like the lights went on and I thought, wow. And I started telling songwriter friends of mine who were starving and working jobs that they hated, barista jobs and insurance jobs, and I said to them, "Look, have you ever looked at this this way?" And they said, "Oh my gosh, you're going to be such a sell out. You're going to hate the music you write." And I said, "Oh my God."
Bobbi Rebell:
They said that?
Cathy Heller:
Oh, they had so much resistance.
Bobbi Rebell:
Really?
Cathy Heller:
Because people, especially artists believe that if you're really an artist, then you're probably starving because you're so authentic. And that definitely doesn't account for people like Michelangelo who died with $50 million to his name before inflation. He would be a billionaire today. It doesn't account for people like John Williams who's written all the scores to Star Wars and Jaws and all of these movies. It doesn't account for any of the people you've ever supported. Whether it's somebody concert, you go to a piece of art. Why? Because all of the people that I just mentioned are people who absolutely care what their customer, what their audience needs and wants.
Cathy Heller:
And I realize that the difference between a hobby and a business is that a hobby is something you do for you. But a business has to have at its core, radical, radical, radical empathy because it means that something that I'm doing in this world, someone else is going to value and they're going to pay me for it. I got that. And so I got excited. I actually got excited to find out how I could serve and I started to do the next thing which I tell people to do, which is I think everybody has Michael Jordan talent at something. But we're really missing momentum. And what we need to do is validate our ideas and we need to get feedback by going out and talking to human beings about what they need.
Cathy Heller:
And so I started to do that really scary, scary thing, which was pick up the phone and call Warner Brothers and call all these ad agencies and call Disney and call brands and ask questions about what kinds of campaigns, what kinds of stories they were telling, what kinds of things they needed musically. What kinds of sonic palettes. Did they like strings? Did they like ukuleles? Is the story this year about sisters? Is it about female empowerment? Is it about being there for someone? And people I am telling you, they were so happy to tell me what they needed. They were so happy that for the first time in a long time somebody reached out and it was refreshing to them that I wasn't calling to pitch myself and to read a script and try to be impressive.
Cathy Heller:
I was calling to ask what I could do to use my talent to help and long story short, within 18 months I started making $100,000 writing songs for film and TV and then that grew second and third year I started making $300,000 a year and then I got written about in Variety and Billboard and the LA Weekly and when I say written about, it wasn't a two line blurb about this girl who was writing music for film and TV. It was a full page story, not just digitally but in print magazines with a picture of me telling the story about how I was taking matters into my own hands and I was really successful.
“A hobby is something you do for you. But a business has to have at it’s core radical empathy. Because it means that something that I am doing in this world someone else is going to value and they are going to pay me for it.”
Cathy’s Money Lesson:
Cathy Heller:
You've got to validate your idea and I think what most people do is they think about businesses backwards where they think to themselves, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to sit in my little cave and I'm going to come up with this line of cupcakes or this jewelry I'm going to do or I'm going to write the whole book before they ever test it. Before they ever figure out who would buy this jewelry? Who would eat these cupcakes? And maybe I should go and in tandem with this person who I'm making it for, maybe I should be getting their input, getting feedback and then weaving that feedback into my process. I think that people just don't realize that we make it harder than it needs to be and if you look at any successful company, they are testing ideas all the time. They are paying for your feedback. They are doing focus groups because it works.
Cathy Heller:
And then this sounds really simple but it's usually really hard. You have to go out and tell people about your idea. You have to make sure that you're going out in the world and you are letting people know about it and instead of saying, "Well, I'm going to think about this and noodle around on my about page for 40 hours." No, it's pick up the phone and make the call. Let them know what's so awesome about what you're doing as opposed to telling them, how you do what you do. People forget that we don't buy things, we buy feelings, we buy results. And so often when you ask someone, "Tell me about the thing that you're creating or service you're offering." People sort of get tongue tied.
Bobbi Rebell:
How many people do you think you called for every time you place a song in the early years before you were known?
Cathy Heller:
It's hundreds.
Bobbi Rebell:
Hundreds?
Cathy Heller:
Yeah. And when people would say no to me, and there were times that people not only said no, but said, "Don't ever send music like this. It's so mediocre." And instead of me being completely devastated, because obviously I wasn't completely devastated. I felt bad, I felt gross, I felt stupid sometimes. But I would take the feedback and I knew that I would give myself the grace to get better at it.
“I would take the feedback. And I would give myself the grace to get better at it.”
Cathy’s Money Tip:
Cathy Heller:
Yeah. My everyday money tip is something that I learned from Jen Sincero who wrote, You are a Badass. When she was on my podcast, she was living at 40 years old in a, she was living in a garage eating cans of tuna fish and she's like, something's got to change. And she did a bunch of self help stuff. And finally somebody said to her, why don't you write a letter to money? And she's like, what does that mean? And she wrote a letter to money and she was like, money, I hate you. Money, you're the reason for everyone's problems. And she realized at the end of the letter that she was carrying around feeling so much resistance to money because deep down money is something that she felt would make her less of a kind person. And that was a choice she didn't want to make. She didn't want to either have money and be a jerk or not have money, but she chose not having money if it meant she would have her integrity.
Cathy Heller:
And so I often tell people, "Why don't you write a letter to money?" Because sometimes what we find out is that at the root of it we might be sabotaging ourself because we might believe that money is something we feel shame around. If it's not shame for having it and being a jerk, sometimes it's shame like who am I to deserve to have good things? And when we can get to the root of that, it's very important because ultimately in life the results of our life, it has to do with what we really deep down want.
Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us more about where people can follow up and learn more about you and your podcast and your book and all things Cathy Heller.
“We don’t buy things. We buy feelings. We buy results.”
Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:
Financial Grownup Tip #1:
Some of Cathy's best clients were the very ones who rejected her earlier in her career. When I asked Cathy about this after the interview, she explained that if she was being honest with herself, her work just was not that good initially when she pitched them. She had to get better at her craft. It's business. It's not personal. Early rejection is not forever rejection. Try to find out why your work wasn't accepted and then work on the work.
Financial Grownup Tip #2:
Cathy talked about how some of her musician friends called her a sellout. Look guys, making an honest living is not selling out. There is no glory in being a starving artist. It doesn't make you a better artist to not earn money. Nor by the way, is there any historical precedent for this over romanticized idea. Professional artists, Michelangelo, for example, died in 1564 at the age of 88. His net worth by many reports in the ballpark of $7 million.
Episode Links:
Cathy's website - CathyHeller.com
Cathy’s podcast Don’t Keep Your Day Job
Cathy’s book Don’t Keep Your Day Job
Follow Cathy!
Instagram - @cathy.heller
Twitter - @NoDayJobs
Facebook - @dontkeepyourdayjob
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
When Hint CEO Kara Goldin started getting calls from celebrities about investing in her company, she quickly learned to make sure she only partnered with those who were authentically aligned with her brand values. Kara shares the story of why she said yes to John Legend, but took a pass on another big pop star.
Kara'’s Money Story:
Kara Goldin:
Well one of our investors, probably the most famous of our investors is John Legend. I mean, John Legend, every time he's playing he a bottle of Hint on stage with him. And people always say, "How do you get John to do that?" I'm like, "I don't." I mean, John does it on his own. John just brings it up there because he loves drinking our product.
Bobbi Rebell:
So I have to ask you, how did John Legend become an investor?
Kara Goldin:
So John, actually, it was almost 10 years ago now that he reached out to us. He had been drinking Hint, actually in Starbucks. We were in all 11,000 Starbucks stores nationwide, and he had picked up a bottle and really enjoyed it. Then reached out to us, and I have to be honest, I didn't know who John was, and you know he's grown a lot in the last 10 years.
Kara Goldin:
He called just trying to understand if this was a product of Coke or Pepsi. He was surprised to hear that it wasn't, and that he was like, "Gosh, this is really good. You're not using sweeteners of any kind. You're not using preservatives of any kind. I think that you guys have an incredible mission that is sitting in front of you to really help people get healthy."
Kara Goldin:
And he's said, "I am super curious if you guys are taking on investments, I'd be really interested." So when we did our next round, I reached back out to him and I said, "I'm not sure if you're interested, but you know, in addition I really want to meet you," because that's a whole other piece that I wanted to meet everybody who's invested in our company as well.
Kara Goldin:
And so, I might not meet them on a monthly basis, but I think it's also a very important thing to really understand where these people are coming from and do they buy into your mission. I think that's really important.
Kara Goldin:
So yeah, so that was how John came on, and he's just been a huge advocate, and has been, even called by people who were thinking of investing in the brand that knew him as well, even before when they found out that he was an investor. He's just a great advocate and good reference too for what we're doing.
Bobbi Rebell:
We talk about different stakeholders and different investors and what they bring to the table. So with a celebrity investor like John Legend, what does that bring to the mix that is complimentary, that's different from just your average investor?
Kara Goldin:
It's interesting. I think the key thing that I share with other entrepreneurs who are raising money, about celebrities, whether that's a sports figure or an actor, or performer, is that, do they actually believe in your product? Do they drink your product? Right?
Kara Goldin:
Because I think that if they don't actually understand what you're doing, and if they aren't a fan already, it's very confusing to the consumer, and it looks phony. And so, gone are the days where you can pay a celebrity to do an endorsement and throw it up on a billboard and people actually believe it.
Kara Goldin:
And so, I think that there has been a shift in, "Let's go invest in these companies." But I still think there's a lot of these celebrities that are really just doing it and then they're not actually ... They don't believe in it, and they'll be walking down the street and drinking something that is totally counter, in the case of a beverage company, to sort of what you're doing.
Kara Goldin:
If you end up on TMZ and you're not really living the brand, then I think it's just really phony. So I think there's confusion to so many, like, "Do I take the money from these celebrities or not?" The sniff test, as I call it is, do they love the product already?
Kara Goldin:
I mean, we've had calls over the years from a lot of celebrities, and I'm always willing to send them a case if they haven't had Hint, and just see what their response is. If the response is, "Yeah. You know, they liked it okay." Then I'm like, "You have to love it. You have to really understand why we're doing this." Because for me, again, it's not just about having a great tasting product, it really is about a mission to really help people drink better tasting water. That's like a huge thing.
Kara Goldin:
I mean, I also just don't want people involved in the company who are going to ultimately do something to tarnish the brand, and that's really the challenge I think with celebrities overall. So that's the key thing.
Kara Goldin:
I think another piece that comes up for a lot of entrepreneurs, and we've never done it this way, but I've heard that there are celebrities out there that just want equity in the company and they don't put any money into the company because they believe they can help the brand in some way. I don't know, I think you really have to have skin in the game and put some kind of money into the company too, because if you're just getting equity in the company, it's probably a deal that you ultimately want to pass on.
Bobbi Rebell:
I think it's interesting because a lot of celebrities ... I mean I think about Ashton Kutcher and Bono, and they've done real investing for real ... The ones that from what I know, have been most successful, are the ones that really are putting their money into it and their time and their attention, and they believe in it. And it sounds like that's something in your case that Mr. Legend does do.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, and I think, I mean, very similar to successful entrepreneurs today, I think that if you have an investor who doesn't know why they're investing, then you should not have them investing in your company. It's such a key thing. Like, if they're just investing because they've seen that John Legend invested and they want to ride the coattails of John. I don't know, I just think that that's like, they're too high profile and they will be asked along the way and they will be watched along the way.
Kara Goldin:
So again, I don't want to do anything for them that's going to tarnish their image either. So I think that's such a key piece. I feel like just because you're saying, "I don't want your money," it doesn't mean that you can't have them, in the case of Hint, drinking the product. Right?
Kara Goldin:
I think basically having the conversation with these people like "Look, we want to create a win-win here for you too, and if this is going to be uncomfortable for you."
Kara Goldin:
I'll never forget this one quick story. We had a celebrity approach us, actually an agent approached us, and he said, this individual singer loved Hint, and called me, and he said, "He loved it, he thinks it's really great."
Kara Goldin:
And I remember going home to my daughter and I said, "Gosh," like the singer you know, who will remain nameless, "just loved our product and thought it was really great." And I said, "We might actually do something with him he wants to invest," et cetera. And my daughter, who is a teenager, she knew exactly who he was, but she said, "Oh, that's really interesting." And she said, "Well, last year he did a deal," an endorsement deal, not an investment, but, "an endorsement deal with 7 Up."
Bobbi Rebell:
Which has a lot of sugar.
Kara Goldin:
Which has a lot of sugar in it. And I said, "Huh," I googled it and saw it was true. And unless he was willing to actually say like, "I've seen the light and I don't want to have sugar anymore and I found Hint," and he's able to tell us why and speak to it, then I just think it's affecting your own brand ultimately, and it will be like he could be ridiculed.
Kara Goldin:
Here a 14-year-old was telling me this, and I went back to this guy's agent and I said, "I have to tell you the story." And I told him what my daughter had said and he said, "Well, no matter where this conversation goes, could I please hire your daughter because she really understands this stuff?" So being careful about where you're taking an investment.
“Gone are the days where you can pay a celebrity to do an endorsement and throw it up on a billboard and people actually believe it”
Kara’s Money Lesson:
Kara Goldin:
I think the big takeaway is know where your money is coming from and how it could ultimately affect you down the road.
“Know where your money is coming from and how it could ultimately affect you down the road”
Kara’s Money Tip:
Bobbi Rebell:
So for your everyday money tip, you have some advice of some basically free or almost free things that people can do and get discounts on right at their own company that many people don't even pay attention to.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah. So it's the beginning of the year and, maybe you're looking at a new job opportunity. Definitely look for jobs that have equity potential because that's ownership in a company, that's almost free money to have in addition to your salary. So definitely look for opportunities like that. But if you're also in a company that does not offer equity, there's often stock incentive plans at discounted rates that you can join onto and participate in.
Kara Goldin:
And then in addition to that, there's all kinds of benefits internally, that just makes sure that you know about those things at the beginning of the year so that you're not stuck at the end of the year realizing that you left a bunch of money on the table.
“John Legend, every time he is playing, he has a bottle of Hint on stage with him and people always say, How do you get John to do that? I’m like, I don’t. John just bring it up there because he loves our product. ”
Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:
Financial grownup tip number one:
Has to do with taking money from investors or for just any reason from somebody where you need cash. Money has strings. That's why you pay interest to banks. They want something which they should get because they're lending you or giving you the money.
When you take money from someone or an entity, think about their angle. Are they giving you money to help you and/or what you are building, or do they have maybe an ulterior motive that you may not be in alignment with? Could they become a liability because you're affiliating with them, and depending on the terms, they could have a lot to say about the future of wherever that money is going.
Financial grownup tip number two:
There's a lot more to compensation than just the cash in your paycheck or from a client paying their bill. As Kara recommended, don't leave money on the table or wherever. Go read your HR website in full. It may not be boring and maybe kind of interesting.
Maybe take notes if you aren't going to do the things now, or if you are self-employed or a freelancer, read up on the tax code. Yeah, the tax code and what you can do to maximize benefits you may not even realize you were entitled to.
Look into groups that you can align with to get benefits. As an example, here in New York City, we have TDF, that stands for Theater Development Fund, and you can join if you fit a number of categories, one of which is freelancer, and that means you can get tickets for Broadway shows for as much as 70% off. That's a benefit, much like you would get when you work for a company. You also can get free membership, for example, to cultural institutions like museums by getting a New York City ID. So check what's available in your city.
Episode Links:
Kara's website - www.drinkhint.com
Follow Kara!
Instagram - @hint
Twitter - @hint
Facebook - @hint
Pinterest - @hintwater
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
New Year, New Grownup attitude towards your money. We chat with Tina Hay, author of the new book Napkin Finance: Build Wealth in 30 seconds or less, about how grownups can approach savings, investing, retirement strategies and philanthropy in 2020.
4 Simple and fun ways to be a financial grownup for the New Year
Savings
Investing
Retirement
Philanthropy
Episode Links:
Tina's website www.napkinfinance.com
Tina’s book Napkin Finance
Follow Tina + Napkin Finance!
Instagram - @napkinfinance
Twitter - @napkinfinance
Facebook - @napkinfinance
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Sadie Kurzban won $25,000 in a college contest for entrepreneurs by using a strategy that has continued to drive the growth of her boutique dance fitness chain. The millennial entrepreneur shares her secrets to building a business on a low budget, along with her personal tips on how she manages healthy meals on a budget with her relentless schedule.
Sadie’s Money Story:
Bobbi Rebell:
For your money story, you're going to actually talk to us about how you got the funding to start this, because you were just in college.
Sadie Kurzban:
I was, yes. I started teaching aerobics classes really for fun in college because I was passionate about it. I had always loved group fitness and I thought, well let me take my hand at giving this a try. So I was teaching it for fun and when I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my career around graduation, that my senior year my friend turned to me and she was like, "Girl, like this is your passion, you need to do this" and I was like, "What? I'm not going to graduate college and go be a fitness instructor".
Bobbi Rebell:
You were at Brown University by the way.
Sadie Kurzban:
Yes, I graduated top of my class. Everyone around me was getting a job in consulting. They were going to medical school, going to law school and I was like, "I think I should go do something like that". So I was like, "How am I going to go?" I even, I remember I looked up in Brown alumni who's in fitness, even just as a category and there was like one alumni from the 70's like it's just not a very popular thing to do. So, I was like, "God, I'm not going to go. Yeah, I have bigger ambitions than being a trainer". So she said, "Why don't you just start a business?" I was like, "What?" I had never even thought about starting a business, truly. This was right before senior year.
Sadie Kurzban:
We started looking up in the course curriculum, entrepreneurship, accounting, really we were kind of scrambling and I ended up majoring in economics, which was really funny and unexpected. But I took every entrepreneurship related, business related, accounting related. It was my entire senior year I was filled with these courses, studying my tail off and I entered the big annual business plan pitch competition. So it's a 10 minute pitch. It's all students, almost all the teams were all male. A lot of the teams were graduate students who had invented like incredible things like medical devices, like really impressive businesses and here I was, I was like, "I'm going to start this dance cardio workout. It has a DJ. It's really fun. This is why I should win". It was really surprising at the end of the day that I won, but it really was the sign from the universe that I needed to move to New York and make this happen.
Bobbi Rebell:
Why do you think you won? What was the differentiator?
Sadie Kurzban:
Yeah, I'll tell you why I think I won was that it's held in the school auditorium and it's a pretty nerdy competition. A lot of business majors, a lot of masters students that I got hundreds of kids who would come take my class every week. I said, "I'm entering this pitch competition. If you love these fitness classes I've been teaching, please come and cheer me on". So I packed the room. I mean, honestly, with 300, 400 students that were screaming their heads off for me. So I think the judges, while they thought, well maybe, I don't know if they felt this was the most impressive business, but what they definitely saw was I had proven the concept and I had really gotten a handful of ... More than a handful of really passionate evangelists. So they knew I was onto something and getting people super passionate about this early on has been the biggest gift and the biggest way that we've grown so quickly, as you know with limited resources, getting customers to really evangelize us and tell their friends.
Bobbi Rebell:
Right, and then you got the $25,000 to get going.
Sadie Kurzban:
Yeah, it was enough to at least give me the confidence to move to New York and give myself nine months to try and make it happen.
Sadie’s Money Lesson:
Sadie Kurzban:
I think the biggest lesson there is, I didn't worry so much about all of the 'what if's' and the house and even moving to New York and all of these things and renting space. I just thought about how can I get every customer who walks in to really go back to their next dinner, to work the next day and talk about this like it's nobody's business, right? So with pretty limited resources, $25,000 in New York City is not a lot of money at all. I knew I didn't have a lot of room for error, but what I did have was customers in front of me every day and if I could get one person super jazzed about this, telling 10 people, that was free marketing for me. So I had to really deliver on the experience and most importantly stop worrying about all the 'what if's' and what could happen. Really think about that person in front of me and look at them as a real opportunity to keep just running through the doors that have been opened for me and breaking the glass ceiling.
Bobbi Rebell:
Your instructors are really brand ambassadors.
Sadie Kurzban:
They are, yes. We all live in Brea, 305 and we know how important that client in front of us is.
Sadie’s Money Tip:
Sadie Kurzban:
So yeah, I was thinking a little bit about this because they listened to your show and I have to admit I'm not great at saving. I'm a little bit better at just creating things and I tend to kind of close my eyes and drive at the same time when it comes to money. But the one way that I really do, I think successfully saved is again, in a city like New York where it's really tempting to do seamless every night or go to dinner, that can really add up big time, like $30, $40 every night. So instead what I do is, I cook and I eat a lot of homemade meals or I'll pack it to the office. But the best thing that I found is really, instead of, it would just be so daunting to get home late at night and cook for myself every night this [inaudible 00:07:48] meal.
Sadie Kurzban:
So what I do is I cook a whole bunch on Sundays, like a bunch, as much as I can. I refrigerate enough for three days and then everything left over I freeze. So by the time the weekend rolls around, unfolding and I'm cooking again. So it's enough what I make on Sunday to really carry me through the week and within that what I've found is another tip within that is, that if I put all this pressure on myself to make these gourmet meals and I'm chopping onions and all these things, I'm just not going to do it. I'm going to wake up on Sunday and I'm going to think no way, no way. So instead I'll splurge a bit on the pain in the butt stuff like chopping onions, chopping garlic. This stuff that I know is going to come up in every recipe, I'll get those precut so I'll spend the extra dollar at trader Joe's knowing that someone else's has cut or a machine has cut the onions for me and that way I know I can make the meal in five minutes instead of taking me 15 minutes to make everyone.
Bobbi Rebell:
Love it. That's so practical and it's also important because you aren't just sitting in an office, you actually go and teach these classes.
Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:
Financial grownup tip number one:
Sadie won that first $25,000 in college by doing something no one else did. She literally brought her own cheering section of happy clients. They were there to cheer for her, but they were also there with her. None of us can do everything alone. Sadie doesn't, she brings others along for the ride. If you do that in your life with anything, not just business, but anything that matters to you, include others, make them stakeholders in your success and also you can hear it in her voice, it just made it so much fun.
Financial grownup tip number two:
I love Sadie's hybrid approach to cooking at home. You will not get a prize if you chop every single onion. It is more than okay to splurge and pay a little more to have some ingredients prepped for you so you're more likely to not only eat healthy but also not waste money ordering out and having food delivered. The key thing, and I'm still working on this myself, is the organizational element and the planning.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
305 Fitness career opportunities
Money with Friends podcast
Sadie’s website - 305 Fitness
Follow Sadie!
Instagram - @305fitness
Twitter - @305fitness
Facebook - @305fitness
Pinterest - @305fitness
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Sarah Larson Levey is becoming a familiar example of millennial entrepreneur success, recently being featured on the cover of Inc magazine and her company Y7 studio being named one of the magazine’s most inspiring companies last year. Keeping her costs at extreme minimal levels helped entrepreneur Sara Larson Levey grow her side hustle yoga startup while still working her full time job for two years.
Sarah's money story:
I actually was really unsatisfied with the yoga experiences that I was having throughout the city. It left me feeling really frustrated and lacking in what I was looking for. I wanted something where I could still move and sweat and get a really great workout in, but at the same time get that mental clarity that is touted for yoga. I just really couldn't find that so I decided to start my own place to practice.
Bobbi Rebell:
Let's take it back a little. You're working in the fashion industry, you're married, you're in Brooklyn, you've got a job, you're busy, you're living your life. Most people, if they're not happy, they're going to fill out a form, a feedback form. You instead start a pop up. How does this happen and where does the money come from? Because you're 20 something, how old are you now?
Sarah L. Levey:
I'm 32 now. I was 26 at the time.
Bobbi Rebell:
Most 26 year olds are dealing with other financial things. How did you literally start this? Where did the money come from? What did you do?
Sarah L. Levey:
The money came from my job. I have always been really good at saving. It was really just supposed to be a pop up at first, right? We found a super, super cheap space. We hired teachers off of Craigslist who are willing to work just to get the teaching experience and that was kind of it. As soon as we realized that this was going to be a thing that there were other people who resonated with the kind of yoga that we are providing, that's when I started looking for a little bit more of a permanent space.
Bobbi Rebell:
One of the things, and I know this as a student, the space is unique. Can you talk a little bit about that and also how do you pay for that? Especially in a pop up because there's a heat element to it. The studios are darkened. It's a very different atmosphere, so there's definitely some investing that has to go on when you set up a space.
Sarah L. Levey:
Yeah, I think for us, we really knew what we wanted and we were lucky enough to find a space that already didn't have windows. We brought in our own heaters and we rented it out by the hour. This space was actually a very large recording studio that was not used during morning hours on the weekends, and that's where we went in.
Bobbi Rebell:
I think that's interesting because a lot of people don't think about that option to rent by the hour when you're starting a business. They might think you have to sign a lease for a longer period of time or come into a space. You were able to manage your cost that way.
Sarah L. Levey:
Absolutely.
Bobbi Rebell:
Then how does it go? You have this pop up, how are you getting the word out and how do you start expanding and funding that expansion?
Sarah L. Levey:
It was all word of mouth. We would go out at like 4, 5:00 AM and just flier all over Williamsburg and Brooklyn where the first location was and that's how people came in. That was really all we did. It was all Instagram, Facebook and flyering around the neighborhood. We didn't have budget for anything. There was no budget to spare. Everything was being funded by my job and my husband's job at the time.
Bobbi Rebell:
How did you get it to the next level? When do you feel you reached a critical point where you started thinking, this is really a thing and I might leave my job to do it? Because a side hustle doesn't always evolve.
Sarah L. Levey:
Right. It took a while. What's so great about New York is it is one of the few places where you can find a space that's willing to do a month to month or maybe do a split tenant kind of thing. We found a small 300 square foot space in an artist loft. All of the little suites were around 300 square feet. We paid a very, very small amount. Everything was included and we started out that way. The studio room could only fit 10 people maximum, and that's how we ran classes. We ran classes four a day before work and after work. I worked the front desk morning and night. My husband and I would switch off. The teachers were paid per student, so it was all dependent on them really getting the word out about their classes and bringing people in. We operated like that for a good nine months before we grew out of that space. Then we were fortunate enough to find another month to month space where we didn't really need to lay all this money out for security.
We were fortunate enough where the business was starting to generate enough cash that we could continue to float the business but that was it which is the reason that I continued working up until the spring of 2015. A good two years after we opened the studio.
Bobbi Rebell:
What kind of conversations were you and your husband having about money while this is going on? What was it like?
Sarah L. Levey:
It was interesting, it was the first time either of us had operated a business on a retail level. We didn't really know what we're doing, but I felt really confident that I didn't want to put classes on the schedule or do things around the studio that would put the vision of the experience in jeopardy. I wanted to always make sure we could pay rent, pay the teachers and also continue not to put pressure on ourselves so we could still do the things we wanted, have both really.
Bobbi Rebell:
Looking back, what is the best thing you did in terms of financial decisions with the business and what's something that maybe you would do differently?
Sarah L. Levey:
That's a tough one because I love our journey so much. I think it's super interesting and an ode to really the fact that you can self-fund a business. We didn't take on private equity funding until we were six studios in and that was a choice on our part. It was definitely a little bit stressful but it was a choice we made so we could really hone the experience and not bring on partners who just had ideas to make more money, have a better cashflow. We were able to preserve the experience of the business. We included mat and towel at first and our laundry expenses were really, really high. I would have started charging for those immediately because we always felt the pinch around that. Other than that, I can't really see doing in another way.
Bobbi Rebell:
How did things change when you did take outside funding?
Sarah L. Levey:
We decided to take on outside funding to really be able to sign nicer spaces. If anyone has ever been to the Flatiron studio or the Union Square studio, those were studios that I painted the walls. I was the one on Craigslist finding people who could throw up a devising wall. We did all the electrical. We commissioned people to build the front desk or things like that. It was super, super bootstrapped. The more people that were coming in and out of the studio, we really wanted to have a little bit nicer amenities because it is hot yoga. We wanted to be able to have showers if we needed to and those things were really, really expensive. Taking on capital for us was a way to really open the doors to higher end retail spaces and have the money to invest in the build-outs.
Sarah’s money lesson:
I would say be realistic. It is totally okay to do two things at once and it's important, that way you don't lose sight of what your actual vision is. I think that if you're stressed about your personal finances, you're always going to be looking for ways to have your business make more money, right? Because you're feeling the pressure personally of like, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? How am I going to do that? I think that's when people tend to lose the passion for their business because it becomes more of like, it's not growing fast enough, it's not doing what I want to do fast enough. A lot of good concepts take time and they take consistency to work. I would say just be really realistic and don't assume anything when you're planning. Don't assume things are going to work out exactly the way you want. There's always going to be hiccups and you have to be ready to combat that.
Bobbi Rebell:
Is there an example of a hiccup that you can share?
Sarah L. Levey:
Oh yeah, of course. Our first Williamsburg studio was in the basement and there was a spring where we had a ton of snowstorms and then all of it melted and then it rained for like a week straight, the entire studio flooded. It cost us $20,000 which was a huge amount of money to us at the time. We had to replace all the floors, all the electrical. We had to redo basically the entire studio because of a flood. That's something that I never, I don't know, I'd never lived anywhere with a base. I don't know, it just didn't occur. It didn't occur to me and I was like, oh. I was like, I guess we have to close and do all this stuff. Then we had to get a mold check and just all of these things that you don't even think of. That was something that I was like, oh, okay, cool.
Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh. Did you have insurance? Did you have insurance?
Sarah L. Levey:
Not at the time.
Bobbi Rebell:
Okay, but now you do.
Sarah L. Levey:
That is right. Lesson learned.
Sarah's everyday money tip:
Well, I used to all the time, purely out of convenience. I'm a big Postmates girl, I'm Postmating everything and then all of a sudden I was looking at my credit card bill. I was like, what am I spending so much money on? Everything was adding up. Once you do the delivery fee, you add the tip. I'm spending $30 on lunch every single day and it just adds up. Now I make a point where every Monday, I'm very lucky Whole Foods is directly across the street from our office. I stop at Whole Foods every Monday. I'll grab lettuce, vegetables, chicken, whatever it is so I have enough and I bring it to the office and I stick it in the fridge and it's basically like I have enough at the office to make lunch for myself every day. It takes so much pressure off of like making sure I order with enough time before I have to go to a meeting, being really stressed about it. It's here. I can make it when I need it and I'm set for the week.
Bobbi’s Financial Grownup tips
1.Create additional stakeholders in your projects. Sarah empowered her initial round of teachers by paying them per students. The first win is that it saved Sarah on her cost, but the even more important thing it did was it rewarded the teachers for the impact that they made on the business. The more students they could bring, the more they made.
2.Buy insurance if you need it. Sarah blew it at first on this one. The flood sounds like it was a nightmare. Insurance would have cushioned the blow.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Sarah’s website - www.y7-studio.com
Follow Sarah and Y7!
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Author, Podcast host and Entrepreneur magazine’s Editor in Chief Jason Feifer shares specifically how he raised his speaking fees, and confesses to a massive and very un-grownup recent financial blunder.
Jason’s Money Story:
Jason Feifer:
So I had done a lot of unpaid public speaking and then felt like it was time to actually start charging for this. And I didn't know how to because I was genuinely uncomfortable saying you should pay me for this. Actually, I just hadn't really done that. It's weird. I have been very successful in my career. I have a high profile job, but the ways that I've been paid have largely been these very established methods. I get a salary and that is it.
Jason Feifer:
And now here, I am telling someone, you have asked me to do a thing, I know that I could do it for free because I've done it before, and you probably know that too. But instead I'm going to set a very high fee and expect that you pay me that. And I was so uncomfortable doing that that I kept undervaluing myself. I had a friend who's in this industry who had told me what my value would be and I just literally couldn't say it to people. And so I was telling them half or a quarter of it.
Bobbi Rebell:
How did this evolve? So someone reaches out and says, Jason, we want you to speak at our events. What happens next?
Jason Feifer:
So here's how the conversation would start at the beginning of this. Somebody would invite me to their event and I would gush over the event. And I would tell them how excited I could be, and we would talk about literally everything except for money. And then, they would bring up the money, and then I would have a number in my head that I was supposed to say and that I couldn't say it, and I said something lower. And that is not what happens now. What happens now is that, very upfront, as soon as somebody reaches out to me, I say, do you have a speaker budget for this?
Jason Feifer:
And sometimes I will also say, do you ever speak your budget for this? I would do this for free if I could, but I have two kids and a very busy job and I can only do these kinds of things if there's compensation. Sometimes they don't. But oftentimes, they do. They say they have a budget and then they'll ask me what the budget is, or what my fee is, and I'll tell them. And I'm just really upfront about it because that is my worth, and I have over time taught myself that I am worth something and that there's no shame in being worth something. But it took a long time to get there.
Bobbi Rebell:
What was the tipping point?
Jason Feifer:
The tipping point was actually my wife getting extremely annoyed that I was leaving New York to go speak at these things and not getting as much as she thought I probably could get. But honestly, it was talking to other people and seeing what they were being paid and realizing that I was doing the same work, and I was I think better than a lot of them, and yet I was getting paid less. And that told me, most importantly, that I could stand up for my own value and I wouldn't put other people off.
Jason Feifer:
The thing is you don't know what the marketplace is and so you don't know what people are willing to pay and you are afraid. Everybody's afraid, I think, of showing themselves to be too full of hubris, and say I'm worth this crazy amount of money, and that people will look at you. It'd be like, no, you're actually just a jerk. But once you understand the marketplace and you get a sense of what people actually will pay, then you realize, Oh no, wait a second, I am valuable and I'm not being obnoxious in my value. I'm just being straightforward in my value.
Bobbi Rebell:
But how do you know what the marketplace is? And for example, in the market that you're talking about, which is speaking, which is very often doing keynote speeches, moderating panels, emceeing events. There's no database where everyone says what they make. How do you know?
Jason Feifer:
No, there's no database. I wish there was a database, but there are a lot of people who do it, or there are a lot of people who work with people who do it. And so, I just started asking everybody. Every single person who I interacted with at any event or just in the course of my work, we would start talking about speaking and I would just start asking them either, are you willing to share what you make or are you willing to share what the ballpark is for people in our range or whatever.
Jason Feifer:
Because the thing is that people do not volunteer this information upfront because I think oftentimes people are uncomfortable sharing numbers and being the one to broach that subject. But if you open up the door to it, a lot of people actually are fine sharing information because they understand that information is power for everybody. And if they share something with you, you'll share something with them. And just starting that conversation and having so many of those conversations, you start to triangulate what your value is or what other people did to get more valuable, which is also so important.
Bobbi Rebell:
So what was that? What did people do to get more valuable?
Jason Feifer:
Well, one of the things that they did is that they did a lot of add ons. That was not something that was intuitive to me. So you would go to an event and you'd find some fee, but then you would start upselling people. You'd be like, I'd be happy to come in the evening before and have a dinner with your sponsors or whatever. I'm around. Is that something you'd be interested in because we could just throw on an additional fee for that? And people are happy to do it. And that's how I've upped my fee often for taking time that I would be... What would else would I be doing? I might as well be having dinner with somebody and making a little extra money.
Jason Feifer:
But yeah, it was a lot of add ons. I found that the key to the add ons is not just that you're willing to do stuff, but that you're showing them that you're invested in them and invested in helping their whatever it is be as successful as possible. And so, here they have an asset. The asset is you, and there are two ways that asset could be, it could either somebody who just blows through and doesn't really care and just collects the check or, someone who says, hey, I've invested, I care, I want to do what's great for you. It's going to cost a little bit more, but I'm there and I want to do it. And I think that they also want to pay me just because they like me and that matters.
Bobbi Rebell:
How do you handle it when someone says, I don't have the budget that you're asking for it.
Jason Feifer:
So I take it on a case by case. Is it something that I really want to do? Is there some other value that I can extract from them? Because sometimes, there is. I could, for example say, Oh, I'll do it for this lesser fee that you're offering, but can you buy copies of my book? Can you buy some subscriptions to the magazine for people who are attending? Can you give me the email addresses of everyone in attendance so that I can follow up with them and maybe get them to sign up for my newsletter or whatever. If there's something that makes sense for me for other reasons and it doesn't really put me out, I'll do it for a little less.
Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners from your story?
“I have over time taught myself that I am worth something and there is no shame in being worth something but it took a long time to get there.”
Jason’s Money Lesson:
Jason Feifer:
The lesson is lead with value and be confident in your value. I hear from people a lot, if I could just turn it around as me as a recipient of people pitching, I hear from people a lot who want a lot of things from me. They're pitching me because they want me to write about their company or they're pitching me because they want me to assign them a story or whatever. And a phrase that they use all the time, I literally just read about this in the magazine, a phrase they use all the time when they write to me is, let me know if you ever need a dot dot dot. Let me know if you ever need a writer. Let me know if you ever need a good story. Let me know if you ever need a customer service solution or whatever it is.
Jason Feifer:
And that is a terrible, terrible way to pitch yourself because it actually puts the sales onus on me, the person who's supposed to be sold to. Now, I have to research them and go back to them and say, Oh, you know what I actually do. Here's the thing; nobody ever just needs a blah, blah, blah. They never do. I am full of writers. I am full of stories. I don't need any more of them. So why would I take any more of them? Because if somebody comes to me and isn't shy about their value and is instead value forward, if they understand what I'm looking for and what kind of value they can provide to me, if they're upfront about that and good at communicating that, then I see the value and I want the value.
Bobbi Rebell:
Such great advice. Let's move on to your everyday money tip because, Jason, you're being very brave. You're going to admit to having done something that you're no longer doing, right?
“I was doing the same work and I think better than they were and I was being paid less. And that told me that I could stand up for my own value and I wouldn’t put other people off.”
Jason’s Money Tip:
Bobbi Rebell:
Let's move on to your everyday money tip because, Jason, you're being very brave. You're going to admit to having done something that you're no longer doing, right?
Jason Feifer:
Right.
Bobbi Rebell:
... that costs you thousands of dollars. Tell us your everyday money. Thousands of dollars. Oh my goodness.
Jason Feifer:
I know. I'm so embarrassed and annoyed that I have done this. It is the most basic piece of advice. Look at your statements... Go through them line by line, your credit card statements. There were some services that I had signed up for that I either forgot about or in one case it was a fairly expensive service that I thought I had signed up for a month of, but it turns out it was a recurring fee.
Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh, that's your worst nightmare. And can you get them to refund a few months back at least? Is there any recourse at that point? because you clearly weren't using it. Do you want to tell us what kind of thing it was? Was it a really expensive magazine, Jason?
Jason Feifer:
No, it was a social media management thing. It was $400 a month.
Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my God. Oh my God. How many months did this go on, Jason?
Jason Feifer:
Ten.
Bobbi Rebell:
You didn't catch a $400 charge for ten months?
Jason Feifer:
No, I didn't.
Bobbi Rebell:
Jason.
Jason Feifer:
I know, it's awful. It's awful. And now you're like, what kind of completely irresponsible financial person is this? And the answer is that I do too many things myself and I have a number of different income streams from speaking and podcasting and I'm just throwing it all into the same account and I just wasn't being mindful of where the number was. And so there was this giant hole being poked in my finances, and it was just pouring out $400 a month.
Jason Feifer:
I contacted the company and they were not really willing to be helpful, and I've gotten in touch with the head guy. And he just kept putting me off and putting me off, and I can tell what's happening, which is that he's hoping that he is going to wait me out, and that I'm going to just give up on this and forget about it. And so, I literally have on my reminders app that tells me all the things that I should be doing. One of them is to keep texting this guy.
Bobbi Rebell:
So this is unresolved right now. So you're not paying ongoing, but you've now paid 10 months, you paid $4,000 to this company?
Jason Feifer:
That's right, and I proposed a deal to them too, and I just haven't gotten the money back. I'm a little resolved to just eat it as a very, very expensive lesson in keeping tabs on your credit card forms. But I am also going to text this dude for the rest of my life demanding my money back.
Bobbi Rebell:
I think you can automate that. So Jason's going to un-automate his bill paying and he's going to automate, I'm sure there's an app you can download that can charge you another monthly fee to automatically text this guy. I'm going to text him for you, too.
“If you open up the door to it, a lot of people actually are fine sharing information because they understand that information is power for everybody. ”
Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:
Financial grownup tip number one:
Like Jason did, work up the courage to ask, but also, as he did, keep it reasonable so you can get to the yes. People ask how I got such high profile people to be in my book, How To Be A Financial Grownup; those included Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, designer Cynthia Rowley, and even Tony Robbins. A lot of it was simply working up the courage to ask, but I also kept the ask really simple. It was two questions, similar format to this podcast. You'll have more success if you ask for something that's easier for them to do.
Financial grownup tip number two:
Jason talks about add ons and up-selling. Not only does this bring in more money, it also provides more value for clients. Most important, it often strengthens the bond and creates a relationship where you're probably going to have a better shot at getting hired again. Play the long game.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Jason’s website - www.jasonfeifer.com
Follow Jason!
Instagram - @heyfeifer
Facebook - @jasonfeifer
Twitter - @heyfeifer
LinkedIn
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Journalist Jeanne Pinder, founder of ClearHeathCosts reveals how medical costs can vary widely for the same products and procedures- and how we can find out- and negotiate- to get the best price.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Jeanne’s website - clearhealthcosts.com
GOODRX.com
Negotiating Bills
wnyc.org/healthcosts
Follow Jeanne + Clear Health Costs!
Facebook - @ClearHealthCosts
Twitter - @chcosts
LinkedIn - @jeannepinder
Pinterest - @chcosts
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Transcription
Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup Guide, how to pay less for healthcare. Like a Financial Grownup with Clear Health Costs, Jeanne Pinder. You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, Certified Financial Planner, Bobbi Rebell. Author of How to Be a Financial Grownup. And you know what? Being a grownup is really hard, especially when it comes to money. But it's okay. We're going to get there together. We've got this.
Bobbi Rebell:
No secret. Our healthcare costs are ridiculous. What makes matters even worse is that it is one of the few things that we buy where we don't even know what it costs. In fact, we don't even ask ahead of time. Very often we don't negotiate. We don't know what the competition is charging and there is often zero transparency. The costs are all over the place. For example, a simple blood test could be $500 in one place, $7 nearby. An MRI routine procedure can cost $300 to $6,000 in another location just a few blocks away. Very few of us even think to compare costs and shop around the way we do almost obsessively sometimes for everyday items.
Bobbi Rebell:
This is an urgent episode. I worked to bring it to you for a very long time. I am really excited about it. As you can tell as a journalist, I can tell you I really appreciate the work that goes in to getting the data that I just shared. Before my New York Times reporter, Jeanne Pinder is nailing it with the company that she founded, Clear Health Costs. Their work in bringing transparency to the healthcare marketplace by telling people simply what stuff costs is amazing. She has been called a benevolent genius for good reason.
Bobbi Rebell:
Listened to the end of the episode. It's not that long. Take notes or listen again, or go to the show notes at bobbirebell.com for a transcript. And by the way all the episodes are there. Use the search bar in the top right corner to get more info about our guests, or more info about the content of any of the episodes. But first, listen to this one. Here is Clear Health Costs founder and CEO, Jeanne Pinder. Jeanne Pinder, I'm so excited you're here with us. I've been trying to get you on the show for quite a while, but you're a busy lady. You are the founder and CEO of Clear Health Costs, and you are here to basically give us the lowdown on how we can be better financial grownups when it comes to what we pay for our healthcare. Tell us first about Clear Health Costs, and how it came about and what it does.
Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. We're a New York City journalism company, no longer startup, bringing transparency to healthcare by telling people what stuff costs. We do this not only on our home site, but also in partnership with other news organizations in long running consumer friendly investigations. We're partnering now with CBS national news and WNYC public radio, and Gothamist here in New York, telling people what stuff costs.
Bobbi Rebell:
How do we even know where to begin with controlling our healthcare costs, because obviously, we often don't have that much choice when it comes to insurance, and we all feel like we're overpaying for insurance, and then we still do pay for this stuff.
Jeanne Pinder:
Right. Yeah, so we recommend that people just, whenever it's feasible, ask what stuff is going to cost you. We know that not everything is shoppable. Like we wouldn't expect you to shop your emergency up, inducted me or your cancer treatment, but if you think about it, somewhere around 80% of our healthcare system interactions are shoppable, where are you going to get that sore throat looked at, where are you going to get that MRI. Do you have choice in scheduling your surgery? So once you've ascertain that it is shoppable in some sense, you can start out by asking simple questions. Ask the insurance company if applicable and the hospital or doctor, how much will this cost me on my insurance?
Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. Meaning what's the net cost to you?
Jeanne Pinder:
Yes, and what's the cash price? Quite often they'll say, "Well, we don't know or we can't tell you," but our view is that if we make that behavior a normal behavior if everybody's asking. And increasingly, we hear that people are able, doctors, hospitals, labs, clinics are able to come up with a number.
Bobbi Rebell:
And then how do you even know where to go to start comparing? Because sometimes to go to get a second opinion, I would think you maybe have to go get a second appointment with another doctor, which is not only money but also time. Should you be going to second appointments just for the cost of it? How does that actually work in practice?
Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah, we usually suggest something simple like an MRI. You can call three separate providers, and ask them those questions. How much will that cost me on my insurance? What's your cash price? Very important, ask for the cash price.
Bobbi Rebell:
Can you explain that?
Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah. So we're hearing increasingly that people are finding if they put away their insurance card and pay cash. They can get a better rate. It doesn't necessarily fall against your deductible. Although, you should be able to take something like that from your HSA if you have one. But increasingly, we're hearing that people who are choosing to put away their insurance carrier didn't pay cash, do better. Not in every case.
Bobbi Rebell:
What is the thinking behind that? Because my gut instinct, which is clearly wrong, is that it's better to have insurance, right?
Jeanne Pinder:
Well, you have to ask every time. All bets are off. There are no rules. Everything we thought we knew about healthcare, we don't really know that anymore. So for example, we all grew up thinking that our insurance premiums gave us access to the lowest price. That is no longer true necessarily in every case.
Bobbi Rebell:
How do you even know?
Jeanne Pinder:
In most cases, making three phone calls to ask the price, it might take you half an hour. It might take you an hour in advance of a procedure that you'd be surprised what you find out. Yes, in fact, we've heard that a simple blood test could be $500 one place in $7 another place. And if you haven't met your deductible, it really makes a difference. A simple MRI could be $300 one place and 6,000 in another, a few blocks away in the same city.
Bobbi Rebell:
So explain why there's such a cost differential? Does one person pay higher rent? Is one place subsidized by the government, one isn't? Why such a big differential?
Jeanne Pinder:
Well, the biggest reason why is that there is no transparency in healthcare. So people aren't used to publishing prices, and people aren't used to asking for prices. A few rules of thumb. We generally think that any procedure in a hospital is going to be much more expensive. So let's say that lab test, if you get it at LabCorp on cash can be dramatically cheaper than if you get it in a hospital lab.
Bobbi Rebell:
With that, can you negotiate? Let's say for some reason you want to have it at the hospital, can you tell the hospital, "Well, if I go to a lab it's going to be less." Can you match that price? Is that something that people do yet?
Jeanne Pinder:
Yes. People are doing that increasingly. I did it myself actually. I needed an MRI for a member of my family. The orthopedist in question gave us a list of three radiology providers that he uses. And because I know how to do this, so I called the first one and said, "I'm a cash customer. I'm not using my insurance. What's your price for the MRI, the particular code number?" And she said, "$900." I called the second one and had the same conversation. She said, "$600." And then the first one called me back and said, "If you can be here at seven o'clock tonight, it'll be 450." Right. So it's like surge pricing on Uber. Right?
Bobbi Rebell:
Jeannie's reacting to seeing my face. I have a look of surprise for our listeners that obviously can't see me. I was like, "You got to be kidding." Oh my gosh. It's like, are they going to have Black Friday sales one day? I don't know.
Jeanne Pinder:
It is. You never.
Bobbi Rebell:
So you can definitely negotiate. And is it the thing where you can say, "I'm willing to come in last minute and fill an empty slot." Because they're trying to manage their business. That's crazy.
Jeanne Pinder:
And you can say anything that you feel comfortable with. Not everybody is. Well, like for example, my friend Cindy, she was going to a doctor, and she had to get slightly gross. She had to get wax removed from her ear. So she went in and the first thing they said at the billing office was, "Give us your credit card." And she said, "How much is it going to cost?" And they said, "We don't know." And she said, "Well then, why should I give you my credit card?" And she left.
Bobbi Rebell:
I love that.
Jeanne Pinder:
Well, not everybody wants to do that. And again, we don't expect you to behave like that when you're on the gurney waiting to have your appendix removed. But increasingly, people are asking because people are getting these terrifying bills, making decisions not to go to the doctor because they get a terrifying bill.
Bobbi Rebell:
So what is some of the language that people could use when you want to negotiate beyond saying, "Well, your competitor offers this price." Can you make a hardship argument, especially if you have insurance but then the insurance isn't going to cover it that well? What are the kinds of techniques that are most successful in negotiating a healthcare bill both before and after you get the bill?
Jeanne Pinder:
Right. Generally, we say just those simple questions, how much is this going to cost me on my insurance? What's the cash price? Yes, I'm shopping around. We don't hear a lot of people who are having a lot of success they're saying, "Well, your competitor up the streets charging 6,000 and we'd rather have it for 4,000." But we do hear a lot of people who are asking that question very specifically, and asking it of several providers because quite often the providers do know what their competitors are charging and they do want your business.
Bobbi Rebell:
We'll talk a little bit about that because I think people don't always understand that there's the other side to this, that they also in some cases are not necessarily getting rich off of us. They have their own business issues going on.
Jeanne Pinder:
Right. And one of the issues that they do have going on is that there are people who are not paying their co-insurance and their deductibles. There's a huge conversation in healthcare finance these days about people who are just not paying. So as a reaction to that, we think these cash prices are coming to the fore. Not every time, not every place, but quite often.
Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about prescriptions. What can people do to lower their prescription costs? Because we were joking before we started taping that I have a prescription that would be very, very expensive, but my doctor gave me this kind of coupon that goes directly to the manufacturer, and that made it only $25, and it's a monthly thing, which is great, but what if you didn't get that coupon? How would you even know what you don't know what to ask for?
Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah. So we say ask that same question at the pharmacy. How much is this going to cost me on my insurance and what's your cash price? You can also go online to goodrx.com and get an idea of what the prices are going to be there. They have coupons that the issue. In general, we hear a lot of people who are saying that they are finding that their copay, like they might have a $35 copay for a common medication, but they can buy it on cash for $4. It's crazy.
Bobbi Rebell:
That makes no sense though.
Jeanne Pinder:
It makes no sense. Right. Again, you think that your insurance policy gives you access to a lower price. That's no longer true.
Bobbi Rebell:
What tips do you have for getting the right amount of money back from your insurance provider? Because I find, how do you know if your doctor even coded it correctly? Are there certain ways you can research that yourself, and make sure when they submitted it's submitted in the best possible way for you? Because I find, a lot of times they're not necessarily paying attention.
Jeanne Pinder:
I think you're right about that. We generally suggest, and again, I'm not saying that this is right because they feel like when people are not healthy, they're not at their best. They would rather not be arguing over nickels and dimes, but we do recommend that people ask on the front end, how much is this going to cost me, and then scrutinize the bill on the backend, like is this what they said they were going to do, and does everything look kosher here? We have a little handbook on how to argue bills on our website.
Bobbi Rebell:
I love that. We'll leave a link in the show notes. Make sure to send that to us.
Jeanne Pinder:
Okay.
Bobbi Rebell:
But in short, go ahead. How do you argue the bills?
Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah, so I have argued many a bill over the years.
Bobbi Rebell:
I'm not surprised. And probably very successfully.
Jeanne Pinder:
Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no, but you should document everything. Do it in writing. Don't do it on the phone because doing it on the phone, you're not going to have any record of stuff. I have sent stacks and stacks of copies to CEOs of hospitals and of insurance companies complaining about my treatment. I can get a little bit enthusiastic about arguing bills, but it's worked out for me in many cases. And I think if everybody was reading their bills and challenging them, I think we would be able to reduce the amount of shenanigans that goes on in hospital and doctor billing.
Bobbi Rebell:
Do you think there's a lot of... we just calling it shenanigans? I would call it fraud over-billing.
Jeanne Pinder:
Well, In some places I think it is fraud. In some places that shenanigans. In some places it's just so complicated. The doctor submits one code and the insurance company says, "Well, we don't code it that way. We code it another way." The sum total is that the patient gets stuck in the middle.
Bobbi Rebell:
What are the things we can control it? So for example, I noticed that one doctor, they have multiple labs. They can send a test out to, not all the labs, maybe on your insurance. Can you tell the doctor, "Please send it to this lab, not the other lab."
Jeanne Pinder:
Yes. And try to in every case. Again, it's really hard to place that burden on you as the patient. They should be doing it automatically, but you can remind them. And also when you're doing this prep work, I always recommend that people take notes, take names and take numbers. You can ask for something in writing, for example, a hospital estimate in writing, which will then make it easier for you to argue on the back end should you want to. For many of us, we're a little bit squeamish about talking about body parts and money because it feels like, "Ooh, well, maybe my doctor's going to think that I'm like a cheapskate or something." But I really think it's time for this to come out into the open, and for all of us to get comfortable with the fact that asking that question is going to make us, and our doctors frankly feel a lot better.
Bobbi Rebell:
Well, you are a tremendous resource. One more question. We're talking in general about medical procedures that are not necessarily elective. Do you have any negotiability when it comes to things that are elective?
Jeanne Pinder:
The elective procedures that we price on in our database are pretty much already negotiable. They're basically a cash marketplace. So we do pricing on Botox, LASIK and teeth whitening, and they really are pretty much an open marketplace.
Bobbi Rebell:
Fascinating. So they're probably more negotiable because they're really running purely as a business where you can truly take your business somewhere else?
Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah, they'll have specials, special on the LASIK, special on teeth whitening.
Bobbi Rebell:
All good to note. Jeanne, where can people find out more about you and Clear Health Costs?
Jeanne Pinder:
Yeah, clearhealthcosts.com. You can also find us on cbsnews.com/healthcosts, wnyc.org/healthcosts, and gothamist.com/healthcosts.
Bobbi Rebell:
Tremendous resources. We are so grateful to you. Thank you so much and happy holidays.
Jeanne Pinder:
Thank you Bobbi. Thank you. Happy holidays to you too.
Bobbi Rebell:
That was awesome. Big things to Jeanne Pinder. Be sure to check out Clear Health Costs as Jeanne said in all the places, including their partnership with WNYC public radio and Gothamist. That's wnyc.org/health costs. You can also check out their partnership with CBS national news at cbsnews.com/health costs. This is one of those episodes you definitely want to go to the show notes. You could do that at bobbirebell.com/podcast/jeannepinder.
Bobbi Rebell:
You can also just search for her name, J-E-A-N-N-E P-I-N-D-E-R in the search box. That also goes for all the episodes of Financial Grownup. You can get show notes and resources for all of them. And if you like this podcast, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review. And if you have other ways to save on healthcare DM, so that I can share it with the whole community. On Instagram, I am @bobbirebell1, and on Twitter @bobbirebell. And of course, check out Money With Friends. My other podcast with my friend Joe Saul-Sehy. You may know him from Stacking Benjamins. Be sure to follow Money With Friends also. On all the socials, it's at moneyfriendspod. Thank you everyone. Infinite things to Clear Health Costs, Jeanne Pinder for helping us all get our healthcare costs under control. Like the financial grownups, we are. By everyone. Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.
When all her friends seemed to be buying houses, sculptor and novelist Georgia Lee Hussey took the plunge. She quickly realized how much she didn’t know about home ownership, credit scores, and adjustable mortgages- and how much it was going to cost her. But the way out of the debacle was also the way in to the career she never knew she always wanted.
Georgia’s Money Story:
Georgia Lee Hussey:
Well, thank you so much. It's fun to be able to talk about money stories, my favorite topic.
Bobbi Rebell:
let's get into that now. It has to do with your first real estate purchase, you were just 27 years old. Tell us your money story.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
Sure. So, when I moved back to Portland from New York, I thought, well, I want to move back and I want to buy a house because everybody I know is buying houses. And they were telling me how it easy it was and how great it was and how much the values of the houses were going up. And it seemed too good to be true, and as we know, things that are too good to be true often are.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
And so I qualified for a mortgage ... You'll love this. I had a five 50 credit score, I had no money down and I had two loans. So I had one loan that I had a seven and a half percent fixed rate and then a second loan at an 11 and a half percent adjustable rate. And I literally did not know what any of that meant. So the process of buying this home as a single person and trying to figure out how to make the cash flow for that work when I was working basically a high-end sales job with irregular income, was quite an awakening to what it meant to be a financial grownup.
Bobbi Rebell:
When you were getting this loan, did the loan salesperson, for lack of a better word, did they explain any of this to you?
Georgia Lee Hussey:
You know, they may have, but it was such a blur because everything was new. I didn't know what any of the terms really meant. I'd never been around somebody who bought a house before. And I'm a pretty smart person and savvy, but not in the world of finance. So they may have explained it to me, but I was surprised two years later when I was trying to figure out what to do with the house and that I was going to have an adjustable rate. I literally didn't understand that about-
Bobbi Rebell:
How long was it before it adjusted?
Georgia Lee Hussey:
I think I had ... It was a three year ARM.
Bobbi Rebell:
That's short. Wow.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
Ugh, God. As a CFP it just makes me cringe inside to think about that. Although I was very lucky, thanks to a lot of privilege to be able to get out of that house.
Bobbi Rebell:
So how did it play out? So you're in this house, it becomes pretty clear that with your irregular income from a sales job, this is not sustainable. What happens?
Georgia Lee Hussey:
Sure. So I did all the scrappy, punk rock, arty things that I had always done. I got renters, I rented my garage, I rented the extra bedrooms, I did work trade with people to paint it. And I was working in modern interior design, that's how I leveraged my sculpture background. And so I can make it look really good. So I was really leveraging the resources in my community, in my friend group to be able to do that.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
But as I was realizing the extent of the problem of not understanding how to budget really, because nobody I'd ever been around had budgeted. I started learning everything I could from basically personal finance blogs, which were the equivalent of personal finance podcasts in the early [inaudible 00:06:11]. And I realized how much structural ignorance I had about how money operated and how mortgages worked and how taxes worked. And so I just started teaching myself everything I could. And talking to my friends about it, because I was really surprised by how little I understood. And then I started talking with my friends and they were really ashamed that they didn't know either.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
And that's really what struck me, was that these incredibly intelligent, successful creatives were as dumbfounded as I was by money. And I realized that nobody had taught us anything about money. And I think that's pretty intersectional. A lot of my friends were female, a lot of my friends were queer, a lot of my friends were creatives or artists of one kind or another. And all of us in our individual groups, has been disenfranchised from the world of wealth and wealth accumulation for a variety of reasons and a variety of money stories.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
And so that really is what lit the fire under me to become a CFP, because I realized there were so many people who were being excluded from the financial world of stability and safety. And so I realized there had to be some job that did this. I was looking for a career change anyway, and I really loved the analytical element of money and the creativity of problem solving, which ... It's basically, my joke is that financial planning is exactly the same as installation sculpture, but it's just instead of using money, you're using clementines or glass or whatever your medium of choices.
Bobbi Rebell:
So wait, what happened with the house?
Georgia Lee Hussey:
So, I had the house for three years, that was when I was starting to learn about the personal residency exclusion.
Bobbi Rebell:
What does that mean?
Georgia Lee Hussey:
Yeah, so if you own a house and it's your personal residence and you sell it and you've lived in it, you are able to not have to take the gains on the sale. So there's a $250,000 exclusion. That was not going to be a problem that I had, I think I had a $10,000 gain on the house. It wasn't going to be a big deal. But if you don't live in the house at the sale, you have a certain period of time that the IRS can look back and tax you on the gain.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
So I was renting the house, because I had moved in with my partner at that point and I realized that I sort of had a ... I had a moment where I had to either sell it or commit to renting it for the longterm. And I think that was really my first opportunity to analyze an investment and make a decision on whether this was a good choice to sell or hold. I ultimately decided that I wanted to sell because I did not like owning real estate, too much time and energy required to maintain it.
Bobbi Rebell:
And you sold it at a slight profit?
Georgia Lee Hussey:
A tiny profit. But really if you look at how much money and energy I put into that house, it was basically a forced savings account with a very high rent.
“I realized how much structural ignorance I had about how money operated and how mortgages worked and how taxes worked and so I just started teaching myself everything I could.”
Georgia’s Money Lesson:
Georgia Lee Hussey:
Well, I think there's a couple. One is that self-efficacy is a skill that we built. I didn't know anything about money, but I was able to access information about money and how to build my own self-efficacy around this new skill set. So that's one thing. I would also say that identifying your money story is essential. Because when I was at the beginning of my journey, I was learning a lot of new skills around budgeting and money management. But until I paired that with the work I was doing in therapy around behavior change and personal awareness, I couldn't utilize those tools and structures very well. I wasn't utilizing them. I knew them, but I couldn't implement it. It's like a doctor saying, "You need to lose weight." And that's the only tool that we're given.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
And money is so emotional now, there's plenty of research now showing that all of our decisions are emotional and we just make them seem rational and logical. So once I understood that I had been told I couldn't be good with money as a creative and as a woman, I had been told that budgeting was dumb or not cool, that there were all these layers of money stories. Once I identified those and could pick them apart a bit, it was much easier for me to step into these structures with a sense of personal awareness and clarity about how they were going to serve me, and how they were going to help me change that story going forward.
“What struck me was that these incredibly intelligent successful creatives were as dumbfounded as I was by money. And I realized that nobody had taught us anything about money.”
Georgia’s Money Tip:
Georgia Lee Hussey:
There's a series of questions we ask our clients, and I would highly recommend asking your friends and family because we're heading into the holiday season. It's a great opportunity to have some more substantial conversations about what's important to us and what we value in the various relationship circles we live in.
Georgia Lee Hussey:
So one thing that I think is an interesting question is, what did your mother teach you about money? What did your father teach you about money? Often there are not explicit lessons, like sitting down and having the talk. But there are usually things we gather from watching the world around us, and they're usually different for each parent or guardian that we have in our life. And then I think it's really interesting to ask our parents, "What did your mom and your dad teach you?" And what do you think their moms and dads taught them.
Bobbi Rebell:
I love that part of it, because we often just relate to our own generation and one up, but if we have the opportunity, if we are with our parents and the older generations, ask them what they learned from their ancestors. Because we rarely get that and I know we don't have time to get into it now, but people can follow up and read in all the places you're interviewed, and I'll leave some links in our show notes, but you have a very interesting multigenerational story about money that really formed who you are today.
“Identifying your money story is essential.”
Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:
Financial grownup tip number one:
Don't sign anything you don't understand, even if all the cool kids are doing it. Georgia's friends were buying homes and I'll bet most of them were just as clueless about what they were signing. No excuses, ask questions, read the documents. For those of you guys who have not been at a real estate closing, you write checks and everyone else leaves with checks that they cash. You are paying these people, make them explain everything. Don't let them rush you. You're the one who is paying, you are the one who is on the hook. I have not done this all the time, I have signed documents I have not known. You know what? I now know better, so I'm passing that knowledge onto you. Take the time, no matter how long it takes.
Financial grownup tip number two:
Speaking of friends, Georgia's decision to buy a home was influenced by her friends, who truly meant well. But beware of well-intentioned, pure influence, kind of a cousin to peer pressure. Your friends most likely don't know your actual full financial picture, including your goals, and you don't have to share it with them. When they encourage you to, for example, treat yourself to whatever, especially this holiday season, they mean well but they aren't paying. Thank them for their advice and support and just say you'll think about it to deflect any persistence.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Georgia’s website - modernistfinancial.com
Follow Georgia + Modernist Financial!
Instagram - @modernistfinancial
Facebook
LinkedIn - @georgialeehussey
LinkedIn - @modernist-financial
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Black Friday can be a great time to kick off your holiday shopping and maximize your budget. Family Finance expert Andrea Woroch joins us with her best tips and favorite apps to get it down like a grownup.
11 tips and tricks for Black Friday shopping
1. Derivative goods.
2. Misleading discount claims.
3. Sale price isn’t always the best price.
4. Save more with discount gift cards.
5. Some retailers promising best deals on Black Friday.
6. Beware of bundle deals and rebates.
7. Think about your impulse purchasing triggers.
8. Avoid extended warranty.
9. Watch out for fees.
10. What to buy, what to skip.
11. How to shop safely.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Andrea’s website - andreaworoch.com
Parabis - The website where you can find out if stores owe you a refund - https://paribus.co
Follow Andrea!
Instagram - @andreaworoch
Facebook - @AndreaWoroch
Twitter - @andreaworoch
LinkedIn - @andreaworoch
Pinterest - @andreaworoch
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Bobbi reveals her favorite new money related books for financial grownups, and how to decide if they are right for you. This month’s picks include Becoming Super Woman: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Go from Burnout to Balance by Nicole Lapin. Money for the Rest of Us: 10 Questions to Master Successful Investing by David Stein, and Pay off Your Debt for Good: 21 Days to Change Your Relationship with Money & Improve Your Sending Habits So You Can Get Out of Debt Fast by Jen Smith.
Book #1: Becoming Super Woman: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Go from Burnout to Balance by Nicole Lapin
Here’s what I liked about it:
-If you look at Nicole’s social media and the content she puts out- she looks like the total perfect person you and I will never be. This book gets real about what’s going on behind the scenes. It's a book about burnout from someone who not only has been totally burned out, but who admitted to being so burned out while writing the book about burnout that she delayed the books release.
-while there is definitely the familiar take care of yourself vibe, Nicole gives extremely specific things you can do - including worksheets and exercises, to actually fix the problems and streamline your life. And some are super easy to do - but we just don’t seem to think of doing them- at least I don’t. Things as simple as deleting apps that waste time. Why not, It’s not like they won’t have you back. Remove the temptation. There’s a ton of simple obvious but not obvious stuff that will literally make you feel a weight off your shoulders.
-She flips the switch on a lot of things we buy into. For example: don’t just have a to do list- have a done list so you can appreciate your progress. And I loved this Mark Twain quote she included- “never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Because seriously, the world will not end if you don’t do it all.
Who is this book for?
Besides this being an excellent book for you if you are feeling burned out- It’s also a book that your hyper over achievers friends could probably use- on the outside, but who you worry don’t know when to stop themselves. Rather than a direct intervention- gifting a book can be a subtle hint that you are worried they aren’t taking enough care of themselves. So on that note a great holiday gift book.
Book #2: Money for the Rest of Us: 10 Questions to Master Successful Investing by David Stein
Here’s what I liked about the book:
-David is a natural teacher but his style is inviting and accepting. He doesn’t keep it super simple- but he invites you to re-read chapters when the material is dense. This is not a page turner, and not a book you can read while multi-tasking- and because of that you will learn a lot from it. Stein will literally make you smarter.
-The book speaks to all levels of investing- it is simple enough for beginners- who are willing to really focus. But the concepts are sometimes sophisticated which is something many mainstream books are lacking.
-David makes great use of storytelling, which can help bring complicated concepts to life and resonate with readers.
Who is this book for?
The book largely summarizes a lot of the concepts that fans of his podcast are already familiar with- but the written format and the way it is organized adds a new dimension.
David is just really good at taking complicated topics and making making them accessible. A lot of books out there rehash the same lessons we’ve all heard- this book simply operates at a higher level, and the reader will literally know more about investing and be able to apply those lessons to their long term financial plans.
Book #3: Pay off Your Debt for Good: 21 Days to Change Your Relationship with Money & Improve Your Sending Habits So You Can Get Out of Debt Fast by Jen Smith.
Here’s what I liked about it:
-The focus of the book is on habits. There’s no quick fix here but there are proven strategies that are realistic.
-Jen is sunshine on a cloudy day. Jen has a positivity about her that shines in her writing and can really motivate people in what is really an often depressing situation. Jen has herself paid off a mountain of debt 78-thousand dollars in jus 23 months- so she doesn’t judge- and her experience and empathy come through
-This book is part of an ecosystem so there is complimentary support everywhere you turn, from the blog, to the email newsletter you can sign up for and of course the podcast. You feel like you are part of a community with a great cheerleader.
Who is this book right for:
This is a book that is designed to solve a problem: debt. So if you have debt, this is for you.
If you are part of the debt free community- or are working on what has come to be known as the FIRE movement- that stands for Financial Independence Retire Early- you are 100% the target audience here and you will love this book. That said, who can’t benefit from some no bs talk about getting rid of debt- or making sure you don’t get into debt.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Nicole Lapin’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Becoming Super Woman: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Go from Burnout to Balance
David Stein’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Money for the Rest of Us: 10 Questions to Master Successful Investing
Jen Smith’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Pay off Your Debt for Good: 21 Days to Change Your Relationship with Money & Improve Your Sending Habits So You Can Get Out of Debt Fast
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Sometimes the best career role models are your first ones. For Ellevate Network CEO Kristy Wallace unfiltered advice from waitresses at a summer job she started as a teen still ring true. Plus her money tip that will instantly save us all cash and extra pounds this holiday season.
Kristy’s Money Story:
Kristy Wallace:
Yeah, it was really interesting. I grew up in this tiny town in New Jersey, called Sea Isle City, and my sister and I worked at this Italian restaurant Bono's and we were teenagers when we did this. We worked there for years every summer, but all of the other waitresses were older. They were oftentimes already in college or many of them were teachers and this was their summer job when school was out. And they really helped instill in us values and perspective when it came to the work we were doing. Waitressing is so interesting because you get tips, you walk out of the door with cash every night and you can easily, especially if you're a young teenager want to go spend that money. But we saw from the teachers how much they saved that money. They worked really hard to get the tips. To keep track of that money and then saved it because that was what was helping to pay their bills and helping them during the school year.
Bobbi Rebell:
Were you tempted when you first started waitressing to just go out and spend the money?
Kristy Wallace:
Of course, of course. And especially I think when new have new driving cars. And so we wanted to go to the mall and buy things and just always going to Wawa, which was this convenience store there and buying drinks and sandwiches. I mean, it's so easy to just throw money away. And the advice that these other waitresses gave us around saving that money and using it more meaningfully. It really stood out. It stood out to me and it continues to stand out to me today because I think oftentimes it's, particularly now with credit cards and you just put your card down and buy, buy, buy and then suddenly you get the bill and it's wide eyes, sticker shock.
Bobbi Rebell:
How did the conversations start? I mean you guys were the new kids there, did they just see what was going on that you were spending your money? What happened?
Kristy Wallace:
I think the conversation started earlier in the season when things were a little bit slower and they would be talking about, how much money did you make last night or tonight, things are a bit slow. Here's how much I'm hoping to make this summer. This is why it's important to make X amount of dollars a summer and how it helps with rent or helps pay my bills during these months and into the winter. So they were just with each other very honest and transparent about their expectations for how much money they wanted to make or needed to make, how they were going to use it and spend it. And we're very inclusive of my sister and I in those conversations. So clearly we didn't, we were still living at home, we were younger, we didn't have that perspective. And we I'm sure would say in this kind of some flippant comments like, Oh, we just go out and buy a bunch of stuff.
Kristy Wallace:
That's great. We have cash. And so they definitely sat us down and said, "Listen, waitressing is a great job but you end up with a lot of cash and it can be easy to not keep track of how much you're making and to put it in the bank and to manage it wisely. And you know, just for now, and especially when you're going to college in a few years and you're older, it's really important that you understand how you spend your money and you spend it wisely." A few years later when I was going to college and using the money I made in the summer to pay for my bills and expenses once I was in school, I came out of the gate just, with all the insights I needed to be successful in that budgeting and in that planning.
“Take the extra shifts.. Put in 110%. Understand how your work relates to the money you are making.”
Kristy’s Money Lesson:
Kristy Wallace:
Be mindful of how you spend your money. You really want to understand ways you can save how you spend the money, but then also the impact you personally can have on driving that income, right? And when I was waitressing, something that I learned from the other waitresses was tips are relational to service. So if you have good service and you work hard to be the best at your job, then you get some money or take the extra shifts. There were a number of summers, particularly once I was in college then I didn't take a single day off the entire summer. I worked every day and I loved it because that meant I was making money and I had my little book where I was keeping track of how much I was making and how much I wanted to make.
Kristy Wallace:
So the lesson is just put in 110%, understand how your work relates to the money that you're making, particularly as you get into the workforce into a corporate environment. Really looking at the work that you do, how that ties to the business and the business success, and using that as a motivator for you to do great work, but then also make that extra money and ask for it.
Bobbi Rebell:
Speaking of extra money, you have extra money because of the everyday money tip that you're going to share. Tell us your everyday money tip.
“Do great work but also make that extra money. Ask for it. ”
Kristy’s Money Tip:
Kristy Wallace:
I have three kids at home. They are little kids and every month or week the grocery bills were astronomical. And at the same time I was finding that I was spending a lot of cash every week and I couldn't quite understand why. So I spent a lot of time, I looked at all my budgets, my numbers, and where I was spending money and how I was spending it. I love Excel spreadsheets, so I categorized everything. And realized it was spending not just a lot of money at the grocery store, but a lot of money eating out just during the week. Getting coffee, grabbing breakfast, lunch could easily add up to $20, $30 a day. And when you think about that over five days a week, plus the grocery bills, it really adds up. So I stopped doing that. I stopped eating out. I would bring my breakfast and lunch. My husband and I would make these little egg muffins.
Kristy Wallace:
You make eggs in a muffin tin, so they're easy to just grab and go and make coffee at home. A pound of coffee is $12 versus a $4 cup of coffee when you're out. I love making soups and stews. They're relatively inexpensive to make and they freeze and they last a long time, so I make a big pot every weekend of something and just found it to be not only easy but financially healthy. And healthy for me in terms of the food I was eating.
Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, and I think the everyday money tip there is actually look at the numbers because this is not something new. It's not something that we haven't all thought of. We all know that we shouldn't be spending so much money out, but it takes a lot to actually sit down and say, "Wait, look at what I'm actually spending," to actually add up the receipts.
Bobbi Rebell:
Especially when your grocery bill was high as well, so you might've thought, well I don't want to spend more money on groceries and if you eat at home in theory you'd be spending more on groceries so it's all going to work out. Not so much. I think you have a great example and making things like soups and stews in batches. I think that's a key thing that you have it ready in advance. It's something that I need to work on more is to actually plan in advance what you're going to be bringing with you when you go out so you're not left scrounging for coffee because you didn't have the coffee machine set the night before. And also maybe have a coffee cup that's portable that you can bring with you because you don't have something to bring in the coffee with you and it's time to go. You're kind of stuck and you're going to buy that coffee on the run.
Kristy Wallace:
Plan ahead, be creative. There's lots of great sites and recipes out there.
Bobbi Rebell:
What's your favorite site?
Kristy Wallace:
I like all recipes actually because it's crowdsourced and so there's kind of some fun things and the comments are really interesting. Food 52 is always great. There's some great bloggers out there. We will sometimes try to eat Paleo or maybe Whole 30, so some really great sites out there with some good modifications to recipes that are really healthy and delicious.
“Plan ahead. Be creative. There’s lot of great sites and recipes out there.”
Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:
Financial grownup tip number one:
Let's talk about work ethic and the fact that while it's nice to enjoy your work, we all should. It is also about the money. In fact, if we're being honest, there is nothing wrong with admitting you are showing up because they are paying you money. I love that we're paying attention more these days to things like self-care and "work life" balance and it's about time that matters, but let's not forget Kristy's advice. Take the extra shifts because work is about making money. Not saying we can't all benefit from a little yoga. All that stuff matters too, but paying bills is also a form of wellness. Think of all the reduced stress by having extra cash in the bank. Don't lose sight of that.
Financial grownup tip number two:
Christie talks a lot about meal planning.With the holidays coming up maybe also do some shopping planning. We're just a smidge ahead of black Friday and there's nothing wrong with shopping, but if you plan out ahead of time what you're going to buy, those plans will go a long way to keeping you from buying something not on your list because it's on sale. That's not a good reason. I've fallen into that trap. Trust me, and also don't forget if you do fall into that trap and buy something and you regret it. As I've said before, don't be afraid to return it. You usually can. Problem solved.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Kristy’s website - www.ellevatenetwork.com
Ellevate’s new peer networking circle Squads
www.allrecipes.com
food52.com
Follow Kristy!
Instagram - @kristyawallace
Twitter - @kristyawallace
LinkedIn
Follow Ellevate Network!
Instagram - @Ellevate_Ntwk
Facebook - @EllevateNetwork
Twitter - @EllevateNtwk
Pinterest - @ellevatenetwork
LinkedIn
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Just in time for the holidays, Jen Smith, co-host of the Frugal Friends podcast and the author of the new book "Pay Off Your Debt For Good" joins us with her spending strategies so we can all shop like Financial Grownups.
3 strategies to spend money like a Financial Grownup
Focus on your habits
Figure out what you value
Let go of guilt and shame
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Jen’s Website - www.modernfrugality.com
Jen’s podcast The Frugal Friends Podcast
Jen’s new book - Pay Off Your Debt For Good
Follow Jen!
Instagram - @modernfrugality
Facebook - @modernfrugality
Twitter - @modernfrugality
Pinterest - @modernfrugality
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Money coach Whitney Hansen, who hosts the Money Nerds podcast, reveals how the pain of poverty and family instability almost led her to a tragic decision as a teenager. We also discuss how the challenges of true financial struggle can impact a family and inform priorities as an adult.
Whitney’s Money Story:
Whitney Hansen:
I still get choked up about this too, even to this day. But it was a really tough time in my life because my parents were going through this divorce and they were married for a long time, six kids, so they had a really great life together. But my dad started a business and that business led to unhealthy habits. So he had really, I guess some issues with boundaries. It was a 365, 24/7 business. And so he turned to-
Bobbi Rebell:
What was the business?
Whitney Hansen:
Pallet distributing.
Bobbi Rebell:
What's that?
Whitney Hansen:
Pallets, you always see him on Pinterest when people make like coffee tables and furniture and stuff from them, but it's what carries goods across the country in semi-trucks. So it's the wooden like crates almost. That's what his business was, was fixing those up and selling them.
Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. And so had he had that business before your parents got divorced or was it a new thing, so that was another change?
Whitney Hansen:
So it was before they officially got divorced. He started the business probably about 10 years before they officially divorced. And so it was just a really consuming business. He was terrible at delegating, could not find the right type of help. So instead of trusting people, he put all of that pressure on himself. And that led to having to take pallet calls at like two in the morning sometimes. It was just a nightmare. It really was.
Bobbi Rebell:
So then something happened with a mattress?
Whitney Hansen:
Yeah, so with the mattress, after they divorced, my mom moved up to Boise and truly she left that relationship for her life. The abuse was getting so bad and it was just a terrible situation. And so she moved up to Boise making $7.25 an hour at a hobby and craft store and trying to support six kids in this little two bedroom apartment. And we were so broke, Bobbi, like we were broke. We didn't have any money at all, so we were sleeping on the floor.
Whitney Hansen:
My mom and I, one day we were walking and we found a mattress in the garbage can. So we went home, we grabbed her car, threw this on the top of the car. It's really that ridiculous. We both like had our hands out the window holding the mattress down and we took it home. But we were so freaking excited because for our family, that meant we didn't have to sleep on the floor. And it was such a sad moment, but such a powerful one. I was 16 and I will never forget that. It taught me my first personal finance lesson.
Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us more about that.
Whitney Hansen:
Well, I started to really reflect on that and what I learned is that there's really a difference between a want and a need. A lot of times we say that we need something. Oh I need to get this new shirt, I need to get this new mattress, I need to get whatever it is.
Whitney Hansen:
But there's a huge difference between what we truly want and what we truly need. So I always carried that with me throughout my entire adulthood and my being a grownup. I mean that's something that I've always looked at, is this truly a want, Whitney, or is this a need? Of course it's like giving yourself permission to buy what you want on occasion, but always putting that in that perspective.
Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us more about that time of your life. I mean, how did you survive? How did you get other things? Were you able to get it through people that were helpful to you? You were you working as a 16 year old?
Whitney Hansen:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, so that's the sad thing. When you come from a really poor, poverty type situation, the families all working together to support everybody. So I had my own job. I had a job when I was actually 14 is when I officially started working. But I bought the family car when I was 16. My mom took out a loan, I made the payment, and I paid for the car insurance. That's just the way we did it.
Whitney Hansen:
We had a ton of help. Our church was super great. They were really helpful from that perspective as well. But I didn't deal with it well. I've actually never shared this publicly, but when I was 16 I was hospitalized for suicide.
Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my goodness.
Whitney Hansen:
Yeah, it was a terrible time. It really was not great. But what I started learning from all of this stuff was that when you have control over your money, you have options, and that's what I decided when I was 16, I was never going to be stuck in a really crappy situation because of money. I knew that was something I always wanted to have control over.
Bobbi Rebell:
What kind of conversations were you having with your mom? Because at 16 you're not that young. You know what's up.
Whitney Hansen:
Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely did know what was up. One of the biggest conversations that she shared with me was the importance of education. That was the one thing she had regretted her entire life. Her family did pretty well. Her parents died when she was really young. They did well enough that they left her some money for college, but she blew through it all with my dad. They just were very financially irresponsible. So that was one of the big conversations was Whitney, you need to get an education. You need to make sure you can take care of yourself no matter what. So that was always the focus of the conversation when I was a kid.
Bobbi Rebell:
Where were you in the sibling order? What were your other siblings doing at this time in your life?
Whitney Hansen:
Second oldest. My oldest sister, she had quite a rough childhood herself, of course. She ended up moving out of the house officially when she was 16. She moved in with her boyfriend at that time. She has four kids now, so she's doing super great. But she was running her own family. She got pregnant when she was 17 in high school.
“When you have control over your money you have options. ”
Whitney’s Money Lesson:
Whitney Hansen:
I think the biggest lesson is how much control you have when you have money. When you have that money instead of just immediately blowing it on stuff that we don't really need, if you start to prioritize your own financial responsibility, and as a woman especially, you have to be able to take care of yourself in some capacity.
Whitney Hansen:
Now that's not saying don't be a stay at home mom if that's your dream, do it. But make sure that you have some skills that you can fall back on. I think that's one of the biggest lessons I can impart for people is just make sure you can take care of yourself, whether it's divorce or death or disease, we don't know what's going to happen in life with our partners, so you have to be able to really financially take care of yourself and be a grownup.
Bobbi Rebell:
That's so impactful what you're saying and really hits home with so many people because we don't know it. It may be something like a divorce, but also sometimes people become injured. Your partner may lose their job. There can be a lot of unintended things that happen and things that you can't possibly plan for, but you have to always be able to have an income stream, even if you take it up and down at different points in your life. Having that ability and the education to do that is really important.
“Make sure you can take care of yourself..we don’t know what is going in life with our partners so you have to really be able to take care of yourself financially and really be a grownup.”
Whitney’s Money Tip:
Whitney Hansen:
Oh, I love this. This is such a nerdy one, but it works wonders. My favorite tip in the world is for any person that's trying to better their financial life and doesn't quite know where their money's going, to print off your past 30 days of your bank statement and or your credit card statement anymore, we have Venmo as well, that all counts. Print those off, have those sitting in front of you and then assign three different categories that you tend to overspend on. So for me it's eating out, it's coffee, and it's Amazon. Amazon's the worst for me. So I will print off those statements, I'll write those at the top, and I will literally go line by line and highlight each of the different transactions as a specific color to make sure that I am looking at every single transaction.
Whitney Hansen:
It works like crazy because you have to highlight those transactions and you have to remember I'm the one that swiped my card this many times. This is on me. I think it's so much more personal than just like a roll up thing. I love apps and software. I think they're amazing, but when it's just a roll up number, it's not the same as when you actually have to physically highlight those things. It really does trigger a lot of changes in your financial life.
Bobbi Rebell:
Give us an example of something, especially when you first started doing this, that you noticed that you were surprised by.
Whitney Hansen:
For me, I've always been pretty frugal because of my background, but what I can tell you is I did this in a group with a bunch of college students, actually. We were doing this exercise and one guy kind of looked up and he had this deer in the headlights look. He was all white, and I'm not a nurse, but I'm like "Dude, are you all right? Do you need to get out of here? What's going on?" And he's like "Well, I just finally realized how much I spent on eating out." I'm like "Okay, cool. Well, how much should you spend?"
Whitney Hansen:
"I spent $400."
Whitney Hansen:
Now I think you and I get that that's not necessarily good or bad, it's all a proportion of your income. But he told me his income was $800 per month.
Bobbi Rebell:
Oh no.
Whitney Hansen:
I was like "Well, homie, I think 50% going directly towards eating out is probably not great." But he had no idea because he was just mindlessly spending and not even paying attention. I think it's really normal.
Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, a lot of us don't know. What about for you personally, what have you noticed?
Whitney Hansen:
For what I've noticed, this is really interesting, whenever I feel insecure or not so great about myself or I'm like dealing with some self esteem issues or whatever it might be, I'm not feeling as confident, I tend to spend more money on clothes and things that I don't need. I see this in my spending. If I'm having a crap week where I'm just not feeling great about myself, I don't feel like I'm cute enough. I don't feel like I'm skinny enough, whatever the heck it might be, I see that in my spending. So for me, I have to really pay attention to that and just monitor my spending to make sure if I do have a bad week, I'm not actually just blowing money because I'm not feeling super great about myself.
Bobbi Rebell:
Well, and what's good about that is with things like clothing, everybody, you can return it.
Whitney Hansen:
Yes, you can.
Bobbi Rebell:
If you haven't taken the tags off or anything.
Whitney Hansen:
That's right.
Bobbi Rebell:
So don't wear it. So versus like going out and eating, like the gentleman you were talking about, that can be at least corrected, right?
Whitney Hansen:
Absolutely. I think that awareness is key. So when you do this exercise, you're going to get that awareness. Then you can start to say, am I okay with these charges? Or if you want to fix it, you can. I think that's the beautiful thing.
Bobbi Rebell:
I love that. Let's talk more about The Money Nerds Podcast, because this is one of my go to's. I love it that it's three days a week and you do different things. So you do Mondays, you talk about just kind of what you like. Then another day you have your sort of normal format where you do interviews, and then Fridays are always these five tips that are things you can really do in your life right away.
“Whenever I feel insecure.. I tend to spend more money on clothes and things I don’t need.”
Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:
Financial grownup tip number one:
If your financial problems are weighing on you mentally, you must get help. Please find the right professional. You are not alone. We've all been there and there are many organizations out there that can work with your budget, even if that budget is zero. Many employers also offer mental health counseling that is often a free benefits.
Financial grownup tip number two:
We talk a lot about apps and online resources for your finances on this show, and yes, there are a lot of resources also for mental health online. I'm going to give you links to some articles in the show notes that list options, but here are some that stand out that are pretty popular. One is Talkspace. Another one is BetterHelp, and then 7 Cups of Tea, which is more of a peer to peer resource where someone, maybe like you, can just be someone to listen to you and hear what's going on in your life. I want to caution you guys. I have no affiliation with any of these and I have not vetted them directly myself, but they are places to start and do your own homework.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Whitney’s website - www.whitneyhansen.com/
Whitney’s podcast - The Money Nerds
Follow Whitney!
Instagram - @whitney_hansen_co
Facebook - @WhitneyHansenCo
Twitter - @whitneyhansenco
YouTube - @thewhitneyhansen
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
The gig economy is not going away anytime soon and that means we have a big challenge because a lot of us dong’ get steady paychecks. Freelance writer and personal finance expert Zina Kumok of ConsciousCoins.com shares her success strategies and more.
5 Ways to Manage Unsteady Income
Make sure to have an Emergency Fund
Find the minimum amount you need to earn a month
Having extra money
Diversification
Increase your rates on a regular basis
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Zina’s Website - www.consciouscoins.com
Follow Zina!
Instagram - @zinakumok
Facebook - @consciouscoins
Twitter - @zinakumok
Pinterest - @zinakumok
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Journalist and author Nicole Lapin shares a hilarious story of how a lack of preparation almost led to total humiliation. Plus why procrastination can be a good thing for financial grownups.
Nicole’s Money Story:
Nicole Lapin:
Yeah. I started as a business reporter on the floor of the Chicago Merc when I was 18 years old, and when I was asked if I knew anything about money news or business news, I totally lied, and I faked it till I made it. And then I had to become real, because I found that money is just a language like anything else, and I could not speak that language. So I was going to interview the founders of a tech company at the time and my boss, who was awesome, said to me as I ran out the door, and I would always carry like a big diaper bag, almost combat ready with all sorts of stuff, like a poncho just in case, from my time in actual general news, I didn't know what would happen. I was combat ready. And he was like, "Do you have the P&L?" You know, a lot of people call me NL or Lapin for short.
Nicole Lapin:
And I was like, "No dude, I'm good. I don't need to pee." And I get to the interview and the PR person was like, "Do you have the P&L?" And I'm like, okay, think, Lapin, think. She is not asking you if you need to pee, this must be a money term. I sit down with the founders, and they're like, our profits, as you can see from our P&L, you know, blah blah blah blah. And I'm like, okay, okay, has to do with profits, think, think, think. Profits. L, losses. And I kept saying PnL, like Kibbles 'n Bits, and I didn't even know it was an and. Like, I just was so clueless, and that was a great example of how I had to think about this right on the spot and definitely was not prepared.
Bobbi Rebell:
Wait, so what happened? How did this play out? Did you have an aha moment in the middle of the interview?
Nicole Lapin:
I had the aha moment, and I knew enough that it had to do with their balance sheet, and so I could sort of dance around it and get through the interview. Then after that I wrote down PnL, like N for Nicole, and then it took me another hot minute to realize there was an and sign. It was like profits and losses.
Bobbi Rebell:
At the time, did you confess to anyone? Did you tell your boss, "I didn't know what that meant," or did you just keep going?
Nicole Lapin:
No, no, no, no, no. I just had super intense imposter syndrome, and I just thought everyone was going to figure out that I didn't know what I was talking about, and I would have never, ever admitted at the time that I couldn't speak this language. I only now can talk about this, very gladly in hindsight. I love making fun of myself with the most embarrassing money stories, but no, definitely not at the time.
“Money is an intimidating language. It’s ok if you can’t speak the language. Just ask what something means.”
Nicole’s Money Lesson:
Nicole Lapin:
I think realizing that money is an intimidating language. We just don't have a Rosetta Stone for this growing up. And it's okay if you can't speak the language. Just ask what something means. I've talked to COs of major publicly traded companies who have asked me like what does [inaudible 00:06:00] mean, for example, like right before we went on the air, and I was like, "Dude, it's just the bond buyback program." Like, no big deal. And they were like, "Yeah, I just didn't know the terminology." And so there's lots of terminology that sounds confusing. If you went to China and you didn't speak Chinese, you'd be confused. If you went to Wall Street and you didn't speak the language of money, you would be confused, too.
Bobbi Rebell:
And I love that you're saying that, because so many of us kind of nod and pretend we understand something and maybe make decisions that we shouldn't make, because we don't want to admit that we don't get it.
Nicole Lapin:
Yeah, totally. And you're definitely not alone. I think a lot of people smile and nod and don't join basic money conversations because they're too intimidated and too scared to admit that they don't know what's going on.
Bobbi Rebell:
So true. And by the way, your website and your books are a tremendous resource for understanding a lot of this stuff.
“I aim for progress and not perfection. If I have more good days than bad days then I am totally winning.”
Nicole’s Money Tip:
Nicole Lapin:
I like to rethink conventional financial wisdom, conventional business wisdom. And yes, you're right. I rewrite financial dictionaries and business dictionaries. I did it in the back of Rich (beep) and Boss (beep). This is maybe why I'm single. But at the end of every chapter in every book, I rethink conventional wisdom to hopefully help you think for yourself. And procrastination is often used as a bad word. It's used as something that you should avoid, but I actually think that you can not fully procrastinate, because it's so cathartic to cross out all the things on your to-do list, like, here we go, dry cleaning, you know, pick up this, blah blah blah blah blah. And actually, those things might not move you towards your goals. So if you remind yourself of what you're working toward and what you have to do and almost connect the dots, I came up with a Super Woman journal that's a companion journal along with Becoming Super Woman to help you do that throughout the day, and I create this point system that's almost like a weight loss sort of system that allows you to give yourself points for things you're focusing on and forgive yourself first if you're not focusing on just the then and there. Because I think we can have it all. We just can't do it all, especially not at the same time.
Bobbi Rebell:
So true. And another thing that I love about the book is you have these really compelling quotes. For example, related to what we were just talking about, you have a quote from Mark Twain, "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow," which makes a lot of sense when you really think about the reasoning behind it.
Nicole Lapin:
Yeah. If you have to pick up your dry cleaning or something, and you need to get something done that will move you toward making your side hustle your full time hustle, I would do that and then get your dry cleaning, unless you really have like nothing, nothing to wear. I would do that later on.
Bobbi Rebell:
Another thing in the book that I love is that you have not just a to-do list, but a have done list.
Nicole Lapin:
Yes. Because, you know, we often get into this mode of we've just not accomplished anything, and we're not doing anything compared to everybody else on Instagram. And I think comparison is the thief of joy, and also we tend to compare ourselves to the best version of each aspect of our lives. So we compare our fitness regime to a fitness blogger who works out five hours a day, or our mommy life to that of a mommy YouTuber who bakes bread for her kids and homeschools them. That's not realistic. And so if we get into that cycle and we don't have the definition of what success is to us, we often feel inadequate. We shouldn't.
Bobbi Rebell:
No, we should not feel inadequate. But one thing that you also work through in the book is you have specific plans for people to organize and get towards those goals in a realistic way, not in a way where you're trying to keep up with somebody, like you were just talking about.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
Bobbi’s Financial grownup tips:
Financial grownup tip number one:
We didn't get to this in the interview, but a lot of Nicole's advice focuses on productivity and avoiding distraction and all the stress that that causes, and of course spending time when you didn't mean to on things. For example, she recommends a browser extension called unroll.me. It's free, and I am now using it. I will leave a link in the show notes. You can always find the show notes by going to bobbirebell.com and then going to the Financial Grownup podcast area. There's also a handy search box in the upper right hand corner, where you can always just type in the guest name or any keyword, but definitely check out unroll.me.
Financial grownup tip number two:
Another one from Nicole's book was to keep emails to five sentences. If it has to be longer than five sentences, then it deserves a phone call. I'm going to start trying that in my workflow. We'll see how it goes, but if you do it, too, let me know how it goes.
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Nicole’s website - nicolelapin.com
Nicole’s book Becoming Super Woman
Follow Nicole!
Instagram - @nicolelapin
Facebook - @NicoleLapin
Twitter - @NicoleLapin
YouTube - @NicoleLapin
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Bobbi reveals her favorite new money related books, and how to decide if they are right for you. This month’s picks include The House Hacking Strategy: How to use your Home to Achieve Financial Freedom by Craig Curelop, Your Turn: Careers, Kids and Comebacks by Jennifer Gefsky and Stacey Delo, Retirement Reality Check: How to Spend Your Money and Still Leave an Amazing Legacy by Josh Jalinski and ZenBender: A Decade-Long Enthusiastic Quest to Fix Everything (That was Never Broken) by Stephanie Krikorian.
Book #1: The House Hacking Strategy: How to use your Home to Achieve Financial Freedom by Craig Curelop.
Here’s what I liked about it:
-The book has a ton of very specific case studies- including that of the author.
-The under the radar red flags for choosing tenants. Things you would not think about.
-How to successfully invest in areas that are NOT distressed.
Who is this book for?
Everyone interested in actually house hacking but also those of us who are just curious how it all works. I was extremely skeptical, and honestly, some people over leverage in my opinion. But there is a real formula and method to success and Craig does a great job explaining it. This makes GREAT cocktail party chatter as they say.. I thought it was well worth the time I invested, even though I do not plan on investing in real estate using the house hacking strategy.
Book #2: Your Turn: Careers, Kids and Comebacks by Jennifer Gefsky and Stacey Delo.
Here’s what I liked about the book:
-If we are being honest- it spoke to me, and to most of my friends. This is a book about how to keep that career going- even if you hit pause.
-While there is a positive tone, it is not the usual rah rah blah blah blah you go girl stuff. This is realistic and because of that both empowers and challenges the reader to take ownership of the fact that making it happen has to come from them
-The book doesn’t just speak to the parents wanting to make a career comeback- it also speaks to the employers who want these great resources back at work.
Who is this book for?
The authors have targeted working moms- so that’s clear. This is also a book that men should read- and not just dads who may face similar challenges coming back into full time work. I mean the men who worked with the women earlier in their careers and will get re-introduced to them when they return to their jobs.
Book #3: Josh Jalinksi’s Retirement Reality Check: How to Spend your Money and Still Leave an Amazing Legacy.
What I like about this:
-Josh talks about tools that aren’t always super mainstream these days- including annuities and whole life. Not for everyone- but they are for some people and we all should have a sense of what they are so we can make the decision that is right for us.
-Josh strikes a nice balance between focusing on living the life we want, and also wanting to leave something for those who come after us. Passing wealth on to family members is something many people also care about that isn’t often addressed in books aimed at one’s own retirement.
-Josh’s gregarious personality comes through making this tough topic a lot more pleasant to learn about
Who is this book right for:
Anyone who wants to retire comfortably, and wants a roadmap that wants a fresh perspective - including some controversial options.
Bonus Book: Stephanie Krikorian’s Zenbender: A Decade-Long Enthusiastic Quest to Fix Everything (That was Never Broken).
What I loved about this book:
-So much of the time we think we are the only ones experiencing but in fact many others like Stephanie are having similar life experiences- from insecurity, to weight and career battles, to questions about where you are in life, relationships and of course, adulting.
-This book may be non fiction but it is a page turner as if it were the fiction book you just need to tell someone about asap so they can be in on it too.
-Stephanie has amazing money tips and life insights- from just using one pump of shampoo to save money- to the admission that yes, in her words “I’m built to spa”. Stephanie knows who she is, and she will help you figure out- or admit- you you are too!
Episode Links:
Blinkist - The app I’m loving right now. Please use our link to support the show and get a free trial.
Craig Curelop’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of The House Hacking Strategy: How to use your Home to Achieve Financial Freedom
Jennifer Gefsky and Stacey Delo’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Your Turn: Careers, Kids and Comebacks
Josh Jalinksi’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Retirement Reality Check: How to Spend your Money and Still Leave an Amazing Legacy
Stephanie Krikorian’s Financial Grownup episode + Get your copy of Zenbender: A Decade-Long Enthusiastic Quest to Fix Everything (That was Never Broken)
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.
Chris Browning, host of the Popcorn Finance podcast got a clean bill of health for his wife after a hospital stay a few years ago. But despite having been patients there before, a billing mixup left his credit score needing intensive care.
Chris’ Money Story:
Chris Browning:
Yes so you know, unfortunately my wife, she had to go in for surgery and which is never a good thing. So we went to the hospital, everything got taken care of. She's all well now. We figured we'd just get a bill in the mail, that's how most medical bills come, they just send you something in the mail.
Bobbi Rebell:
Did they do any paperwork while you were at the hospital? Did you give them insurance information? What actually transpired at the hospital? Because you do usually fill out some stuff.
Chris Browning:
Yeah, so leading up, you sit in the finance office and they have you sign a couple of waivers and disclosures. And they say. "Alright, let's see your insurance". They took a copy and they said, "Okay we'll bill you". And that's literally all they told me. No further information other than that.
Bobbi Rebell:
And the hospital was in Network? Do you remember?
Chris Browning:
Yeah, it was an in Network hospital.
Bobbi Rebell:
So you were trying to be in Network, okay.
Chris Browning:
Yes, so we did everything we thought we were supposed to do and we visited the hospital before and the billing seemed to work fine, so you know we didn't even think twice about it. It felt normal.
Bobbi Rebell:
This might be important later on. You were in the system having visited the hospital before?
Chris Browning:
Yeah, it was a local hospital.
Bobbi Rebell:
Okay.
Chris Browning:
So we just thought, we'll get a bill in the mail like we have in the past. We waited around, nothing came after a couple of months and to be honest, I kind of just forgot about it, because it had been so long and it just never showed up.
Bobbi Rebell:
I would totally forget about it.
Chris Browning:
Yeah, after two months, you assume you would receive it. After that, life just goes on. You do other things. You live life. And so, I have this habit of checking my credit score, because one of my credit cards on their app, they allow you to check your credit score for free, and they'll update it like every seven days. And so I was just taking a look at it, and I noticed my credit score had dropped like a crazy amount. It had dropped about 150 points. That was very alarming, to say the least. And so I decided to take a look in my credit report. And I went to freecreditreport.com. I saw this like delinquency mark and I was like, that's strange. I remember paying all my bills.
Bobbi Rebell:
Right.
Chris Browning:
And when I looked into it, it just gave me just a random number. It didn't really give me a lot of details.
Bobbi Rebell:
Like a phone number?
Chris Browning:
Yeah, it was a random phone number from a ... it was an area code I'd never seen before. And so I gave the phone number a call, and then they gave me the details. They said this is from the hospital that we had visited, and they say you didn't pay your bill and it's been turned over to a collection agency. And this was the collection agency that I was speaking with.
Bobbi Rebell:
Wow.
Chris Browning:
I was just shocked and I was like, well how did this happen? And they have limited information.
Bobbi Rebell:
Sure.
Chris Browning:
And all they'd allow me to do at the time was they said, "Would you like to set up a payment plan?". And I was like, well yeah I want to get this cleared up. But I said, "Let me call the hospital first".
Bobbi Rebell:
Well right, and how do you even know they're legit. I mean they're saying they have the debt, but what exactly happened? Because you'd never heard from the hospital.
Chris Browning:
Exactly, so I was a little hesitant. I don't want to give you money just yet. So I called the hospital and got hold of billing department and I asked them. I said, "I see this delinquency on my credit report. They're saying that our bill was into collections, but we never received a bill in the mail". They said, "Well yeah, we mailed it out to you". And I said, "Well we haven't got anything for months". So they checked their system and they said, "Well here's the address we have for you", and it was the wrong address. They had transposed the numbers around, and who knows where the bill actually went.
Bobbi Rebell:
Which is crazy because two things. First of all, you had been to this hospital before, so presumably you were in the system correctly at some point because you had paid previous bills. And number two, any company, any person, we should all do it, but certainly a company, a hospital, should have a return address. So if they were going to the wrong address, you would think that they would return the mail, and the hospital would receive it back.
Chris Browning:
Exactly. You think they'd be some type of notification for them to know that whatever they mailed out just came back.
Bobbi Rebell:
And they never called you.
Chris Browning:
They never called.
Bobbi Rebell:
But presumably your phone number is on there.
Chris Browning:
Exactly, you'd think if they hadn't been paid all this time, they'd have at least called to follow up. But no. I think maybe it's just the sheer volume they deal with. They don't even try, they just immediately send it to collections after the time period had passed.
Bobbi Rebell:
So then what did you do?
Chris Browning:
So after I verified with them what collection agency they actually sent the bill to, and it matched the information they I had received from the number I had called, I called the collection agency back, because at that point, the hospital said there's nothing we can do. It's been sold to collections, you know it's out of our hands. I called the number back, I spoke with them. I said, "Yes, we want to take care of this". And I said, "If we pay this off, is there a way that this could be removed from my credit report, because it's a huge mark on my credit?".
Bobbi Rebell:
And it's also not your fault.
Chris Browning:
Exactly. Because I explained to them, I said we just never received the bill. I didn't know what type of pushback I was going to get. If they were going to say no. But surprisingly they said, Yes. If you set up, if you agree to a payment plan now, they gave me the total amount. It matched what the hospital said it should be. They said, if you pay this off, we will contact the credit bureaus and have the delinquency removed, because you've taken care of this.
Bobbi Rebell:
Of course. That's the least they can do. Did the hospital take any ownership of the fact that they had not followed up?
Chris Browning:
Not at all.
Bobbi Rebell:
That's disappointing.
Chris Browning:
They basically just said, sorry, nothing we can do. It's out of our hands and it was on me to take care of it.
Bobbi Rebell:
And it's foolish on their part because generally, and I assume this was the case when you send something to a collection agency, they're only getting a fraction of what the bill was. So they lost out for not bothering and not having the right systems in place to check with you. Presumably the doctor could follow up with you and your wife, so they had contact information that was correct in some part of the system.
Chris Browning:
You'd think that if they knew they're going to lose money, that it'd be in their best interest to do a little more follow-ups, spend a little more time, but no, they just I guess, just dump it off.
Bobbi Rebell:
Right, they lost money too. So that maybe there isn't the right stakeholder at the hospital that took ownership of the fact that that bill was not being paid for that reason.
Chris Browning:
Exactly.
Chris’ Money Lesson:
Chris Browning:
I would say first of all, make sure that you follow up on all your medical bills. Even if you think that the office is going to take care of it the way they should, you just never know. You could end up in the situation like this. So I do acknowledge that I could have called and followed up after a month of not hearing anything back.
Bobbi Rebell:
But maybe the insurance you were in Network, so if I was doing something in Network, I would have assumed that if I didn't get a bill, the insurance covered it.
Chris Browning:
I made that assumption too, but I think after this now, I'm going to be on the safe side.
Bobbi Rebell:
Of course.
Chris Browning:
I'm going to give them a call just to follow up if it's been like an unusually long amount of time since I haven't got any communication from them. Just to eliminate any issues or this ever happening again.
Chris Browning:
And the second thing I would say, check your credit score. I was really fortunate that that was a habit that I had picked up. You know we had been paying off some debts so I was in the habit of looking at my credit score to see how it was changing. That's the only reason I knew that there was any type of issue is because I saw my credit score had dropped drastically, and that triggered me to look at my credit report, and that's where I found the error, and I was able to finally take care of it.
Chris’ Money Tip:
Chris Browning:
So my money tip would be check with your credit card company, if you do have a credit card. Or even some banks. A lot of them offer access to your credit score and some even your credit report directly through their website or their mobile app. And so it's really simple. It's free a lot of the time and it's just a really convenient tool to have with you, and whether you're looking for errors or you just want to kind of track your progress. I think it's a really great incentive that these banks are offering to let you stay on top of your credit and your finances.
Bobbi Rebell:
And specifically, how often do you do that?
Chris Browning:
I've slowed down. I was a little obsessive. I was checking like every day at one point. Now I'm on a once per month basis. I'll log in, just kind of look and see how things are going, just I want to keep the practice up. I don't want to get too comfortable and let too much time pass, because who knows when an error could pop up.
Bobbi Rebell:
So when people check their credit score, what are the things that they should be looking for that are good and that are bad?
Chris Browning:
So I would say for sure, any type of drastic change. So if you've made this a habit and you're checking on a regular frequency, your credit score's not going to swing wildly. You know it's normal for it to swing 10, 20 points here and there. But if you see any type of drastic change, that would for sure be a trigger point to let you know you need to look into this a little bit more. Whether it's going to some place like freecreditreport.com which is run by Experian and you're getting a copy of your credit report just to see what's going on. Wild changes in any area of your finances is normally a sign of something that's not normal and that's maybe something you should look into a little bit more.
Bobbi’s Financial Grownup Tips:
Financial Grownup Tip Number One:
The only thing Chris did wrong here, he did not follow up in finding out what he owed the hospital. So the tip is to try to stay on top of your medical bills, especially the ones that you know are probably coming. Even if you're hoping they're not. That said, the visit was in Network, so Chris in all fairness could have believed there wasn't much to do except for a co-pay that he probably had already paid at the hospital. But at the end of the day, he himself says he should have checked in and been more on top of it. Mixed feelings about that though.
Financial Grownup Tip Number Two:
Don't assume that corporations or institutions such as hospitals are competent in their billing. Question everything. This especially goes sadly for end of life situations where the family is distracted and just wants to move on. Assuming you do get bills, try hard as it may be to go through them. I know of some instances where the bills were so out of control, literally offensive, that people have gone to the financing offices of the hospital and just negotiated them down on the grounds that no one could possibly go through every charge for an overpriced Bandaid or medication or whatever, and prove that it actually happened, was given and was priced correctly. Fairly, and fairly is pretty broad when it comes to our healthcare system. Hold them accountable. Just because they throw a list of a thousand teeny charges on a bill, doesn't mean you can't question it.
Episode Links
Listen to and learn more about the Popcorn Finance Podcast
Check your credit score!
Follow Chris Browning and Popcorn Finance!
Twitter - @popcornfinance
Instagram - @popcornfinancepodcast
YouTube - Popcorn Finance