Financial Follies

Narrator: 00:01:00

Welcome to Money Roots, the podcast where personal finance gets personal. Each week, Amy and her guests dig deep into the world of finance, making it more approachable and understandable for everyone.

No matter where you are on your financial journey, from savings and investments to budgeting and planning, will bring you practical advice, inspiring stories, and expert insights. We believe that everyone has the potential to grow a healthy financial future, and we're here to help you nurture it.

So whether you're a financial guru or just starting to plant the seeds of your financial knowledge, this is the place for you. Get ready to uncover the tools and strategies that can help you thrive financially.

So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode of Money Roots.

Kate Welker: 00:01:50

Welcome to this week's episode of Money Roots. This is Kate Welker back with you again, and I'm joined with Carrie Bean this week.

We're excited to have you listening along, and Carrie and I today are going to talk about some financial follies that we feel women tend to make along the way. And I'll let Carrie say hello, too, even though you've been hearing from her fairly often.

Kerrie Beene: 00:02:13

Hello again.

Kate Welker: 00:02:16

We're back. So, yeah, we were thinking through a topic this week, and something that often we hear people saying, I've made mistakes.

And honestly, who has not made mistakes in life? You know, mistakes are how you learn and how you move and how you grow.

But we thought that since we are talking to a lot of people and seeing things and hearing things, there might be some common patterns we're seeing we could bring up.

So if these are the same things you found you might be struggling with, you can know you're not alone and offer some different perspective on those items as well. So I'm going to jump right in this week because I actually think we have quite a few, quite a bit to share with you, and we're excited to get in.

So the first thing we wanted to talk about is, honestly, it's a mistake. And maybe not in the way that you think it's a mistake, but the mistake, number one, is listening to other people.

Carrie, would you like to elaborate that?

Kerrie Beene: 00:03:13

Yes, sure.

This could go many, many different directions, but I think the first thing that comes to my mind is, you know, chatting with others and thinking about their situation versus your situation.

And people are really good at sharing things with you that they've been successful at, and sometimes those are very helpful and you're very appreciative, but sometimes your situation may be just completely different than someone else's. So if someone's doing something and they share it with you, and you either feel like or you actually do complete the same thing that they did.

I think it's important that we remember our situation may be completely different than someone else's situation.

Kate Welker: 00:04:02

Right.

The same advice that they're using, they have different, different wants, different needs, different family situation, income structure, long term goals. And again, it might be a good basis.

Something else that I warn people to be really careful about is, again, listening to other people can really steal potentially a lot of your joy or appreciation of your successes.

Because so much in our lives growth, whether professionally, financially, just internal growth, is, I think there's some momentum to it, and you kind of get started and you do these things. And when someone else comes like, oh, well, I did it this way, or I did this xYz, this is how you should be doing it.

I think it can kind of sometimes dampen that and pull it back and slow down that momentum or maybe stop some habits you were starting to form that were really good habits, or if maybe you haven't formed them yet, but it just gets overwhelming and discouraging because you just don't see how you could ever do it the way someone else has been doing it.

Kerrie Beene: 00:05:05

Right. I think, too, that's a. I think that example is good. Like, if you're talking to someone that you know, or you know someone in your personal life.

The other thing that comes to my mind is I got a video about a week ago from one of my cousins, and it was a video basically showing how saving for your retirement is a scam. And I was like, oh, goodness, I don't even know how to begin with that comment or that video or how to even reply.

So I think not only should you be cautious of taking advice from people and necessarily in your personal life, that may be in a different situation.

I think sometimes we need to be careful who we're listening to that we may not know, you know, these random things that we receive or see online or hear other people say in passing.

I think that's a really important point, too, is, you know, just because someone says something doesn't necessarily mean that they're an expert on the subject or an expert in your life.

Kate Welker: 00:06:18

If you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time and you've listened to some of Amy's podcasts, there's a phrase that she uses, and other, other people out there use it, too. It comes up a lot. And I like to steal this myself now, but it's don't should on yourself.

When people come to me and they're like, hey, I should have done this, or I should have done that, or I shouldn't have done that, don't stop. Just stop shooting on yourself. It's in the past, and maybe there's different ways you could have approached it, but everyone has their own path.

And to that video, I think I've seen, if I haven't seen that video, I've seen a similar one as well. And I also think it's important to think about what is that person's experience? What are their credentials. Great advice out there.

I want people to follow the good advice, but there's many platforms for an opinion. And remember, sometimes opinions are opinions, not indeed fact. Or what might be the right advice for you.

So really making sure you're finding advice that is tailored to you and your needs and how you are able and want to be saving, investing, moving forward, spending your money.

Kerrie Beene: 00:07:24

I agree.

We want to segue to our second point, which is, I think, ignoring your finances or maybe even another way to say it is maybe just keeping your head in the sand about things. And this is something that I think everyone's probably really guilty of.

And as a financial planner, people probably think that we never ignore our own, ignore our own finances. And that, for me, it means, you know, a lot of things are set up on automatic. So most of the important things are really taken care of.

And I'm not necessarily losing any sleep on, on any of it, but it, it's the little things that we sometimes forget about. And I think so much is coming at us. I have one.

I have, I don't know, three or four different email accounts, which is a little frustrating and unorganized, and I should probably squash that.

But I have one email that ends up just being mostly full of junk, but there are a few important things that come in it, and one of them recently was just like, our pack, our pike pass, which is like the thing that we have on our car for the turnpike. And, you know, they'll send you an email kind of stating, hey, you've used up all of the money on your pack pass. You need to add to it.

It's just something easy to forget about. And there's not a way to set up an automatic payment, and it's in my junk email.

So it's not really that I was necessarily ignoring any one particular thing. It's just, it got pushed to the back, and there it was sitting, and I was like, oh, shoot, I. Mm hmm, mm hmm.

Kate Welker: 00:09:14

Yeah, similar to you, I have most things now set up on auto pay, and I don't have to think about it a lot. But then sometimes that also stresses me out that I'm not thinking about it or involved.

And for me, it's that anxiety piece of, I think everything's okay, but I want to be busy. And I've had to work really hard to set up systems for myself that work really well.

And we like, when I'm working with clients, I'm constantly using the phrase, it's about finding a system that works for you, usually around budgeting, but there can be other things too, because everybody works different, your brain works different. You're just processing the way you think. Looks different, but this is something that, for me, I would maybe ignore for a while.

Then I get really anxious and then spend a lot of time on it. And again, it was okay. But I found that for me, and coming from the financial planner side, I like when things are planned out, they're intentional.

I know what I'm doing or where things are going, and I'm being, like, proactive versus reactive. And I think when life gets really busy, and I think as you know, busy professional women, like we coffin use that phrase, they happen.

So you're in a spell. You're just, you're literally running from sunup to sundown. You're going somewhere, and it's the last thing that you are paying attention to.

And maybe the best advice here is to set as much up on automate as much as you can so that it's not getting behind. So that even if you feel like you're not paying attention to it, there is a plan and it's set aside.

Some other things would be maybe putting a reminder on your calendar. There's a certain trigger I have every couple weeks that I sit down.

I actually spend some time just reviewing, making sure, like, how much, how much was charged on these cards, you know, where did we spend the money on? And high level, like, I have time to do in depth, but just high level, real quick review, make sure everything's legitimate.

Verify, like, all right, what's coming up? All right, I see that. I see what bills are coming, gonna be coming out in the next couple weeks.

Understanding what that looks like as well, so that they don't fall behind.

Because if you're not, if you don't have a system yet, that is something that I've seen time and again is that kind of putting on the blinders or digging your head down in the sand and it just can compile and get worse. And worse, and then you get late fees, credit score implications. That's really. And it's not. I often.

I think it's not because people don't have the resources, it's just they don't have the. It's like the mental bandwidth. Um, you're busy, you're not making it a priority. You're not.

You didn't put a system in place, and so now you just don't have the bandwidth to handle it, and you're making a potentially bad financial situation worse.

Kerrie Beene: 00:11:42

Yeah. I think as you were talking, it made me think about, you know, like, your system versus my system versus someone else's system.

And I think the big key point is it's super important for you to figure out what makes you sleep good and what system feels right to you, because I think over the years, mine, there's one thing that has never changed about how I keep up with our finances. And I'm the response, like, you know, in my marriage, I'm the one that has taken on that role.

And it's just kind of predominantly always been that way. Probably because it's my personality a little bit. But there's one thing that feels almost old school or maybe not the norm. I'm not.

Who knows what the norm is, but I still sit down, balance my checkbook, and I write down every single transaction. And it's a little bit time consuming and overwhelming if I don't do it for two weeks.

But if I do it every couple of days, that's when I feel really good and really in control. So if I log into my checking account, I write down the few things we've bought in the last couple of days. This is my balance.

My balance might be $200, it might be $2,000. Whatever it is, it makes me feel really good about where I am today. Where am I at right now?

So that is something that I've learned is a system for me that works, that's not necessarily budgeting, it's just knowing what's in my checking account, and that's a non negotiable for me. So I have to know how much money is in my checking account.

And when I don't do it for a couple of weeks or I get really behind, it causes me so much anxiety, even if I know there's money in there.

So I've learned that about myself, and I've just learned, hey, if you don't have time to do anything else, do this one thing, you know, and then you'll know, okay, I'm okay.

And so it may be something as simple or as silly as that, and most people probably don't want to do that, but for whatever reason, that's what makes me feel good.

Kate Welker: 00:14:05

Yeah, I think, like we said, all different systems, and for our listeners, I know there's some people that are going to relate to that so well, as in, oh, that makes me feel good. That does not make me feel good. Um, it gives me, like, oh, I gotta keep on top of it. It's more like, more work, and it stresses me out.

And, like, again, I have more like a spreadsheet system that, like, this is what's coming up. But I also, for me, it's having eyes on that, um, eyes on that every. Every couple days. Honestly, I'm looking at it just maybe. Maybe 60 seconds tops.

But I just kind of am. All right, here's what came out. Here's what's coming up. And. Yeah, I know.

So finding, and I think maybe the biggest takeaway from this is just finding a system, finding whatever your system is to just get some control on that so that when you're busy and maybe everything else feels like it's not in control, that is something that can run itself.

Kerrie Beene: 00:14:53

Yeah, I think so.

And the only point, I will say, the one, one thing that has changed for us recently that didn't used to be this way, and this is just a suggestion or a tip. If you are similar to me and you, you know, you have the one checking account and all your bills, and, like, everything.

We live out of one account, our bills come out of one account. One thing that we used to do that I actually don't know why we stopped.

We changed banks, actually, and it actually made life easier is we had two checking accounts. We had one that we just used for bills and one that we lived out of.

So that actually made it really easy to, like, you can just log into the one checking account and know, like, oh, you know, you don't have to sit down and write down every transaction because, you know, hey, this is what it is, and there's no bills coming out of it, so. But anyway, I just, I thought about that while you're talking. You know, that's one way to help, I think. Stay organized sometimes that I used to do.

Kate Welker: 00:15:55

Yeah.

Well, leading into, I think this ties well into the next thing we want to talk about, which is overextending yourself and interestingly enough, with both time and with your money, overextending what those, what those things could be in your priorities. And this topic came up sort of naturally, because we hear it a lot.

And I, both Carrie and I this year were on journeys to sort of try to stop overextending ourselves as much as we could. It's really hard. Really, really.

For me, it's very hard to pay attention to that, but making sure that you are prioritizing yourself so that you're not falling into bad habits again, too. So I'll start with time a little bit. And I hate sometimes to use, like, cliche terms, but I think it's important.

And I just, I saw a post yesterday of someone that was working out and had used the phrase like, hey, filling, filling up my cup, going back to that saying of, you can't fill from an empty cup. And it's overused a lot, but it's very valid and I think very true.

So if you are prioritizing everybody else and you're overextending yourself, it's going to really have some impacts to you and your time and where you can focus and be intentional with the things that you want to be intentional with.

Kerrie Beene: 00:17:14

Yeah, for sure.

I think when we think about, you know, ignoring our finances, the reason we're ignoring them probably is there's a good chance we've overextended ourselves with our time. I think I'm extremely guilty of it. And I realized, you know, Kate mentioned we're both on the journey to stop overextending ourselves.

It's really easy to say. It's another thing to do. At the beginning of this year, I said, I will not say yes to everything. And so that's been a really important thing to me.

It's so important that I'm thinking very hardly about every request I have. And what effect does it have if I say yes?

So, like, for example, I was just asked to be on a committee, and previously, I would not have even thought about it. I would have just said yes. I just would have said yes. And it's a great committee and it's a great cause and it's for great people.

But I have some other things that are really important to me that are also great that I've already committed to.

And so it's just making that decision and actually thinking about your yes or no and how your time needs to be utilized, I think is most important not only to you, but who you're committing to also.

Kate Welker: 00:18:37

And to loop it back a little bit on the financial side of, you know, why are on a financial podcast? Are you talking about extending yourself in time?

But when kind of the point of our finances and our money is building that lifestyle that we all what you really want to live. What are your key values? What does your ideal future look like? And making sure money is lining up with those values.

And on the time side, if you don't have the time to enjoy it or you are filling your time with things that aren't, I want to say, necessarily always lead to that vision because there's things we're going to do because we just enjoy it as a, as a person. It's part of our society and what we need to do.

But again, really thinking about really being intentional with what you're doing so that you have the ability to maximize your earning potential, maximize where you want to save, and also just kind of maximize how you want to be spending your time. Again, so you're just not leaning back into stress and anxiety and bad patterns. And then on the money side, overextending yourself.

If you are prone to overextending yourself or saying yes, a lot to time, that can start to lead into monetary issues. If it's work wise, there may be monetary rewards, but if it's just an organization's, this is where we can start to see that slip a little bit.

And you may not be as productive in your work life because now you're, you're spending all your extra time on things that don't fulfill you. I mean, I'm all about volunteering for organizations that build you up and bring you a lot of joy.

I think what we're getting to are just other, other things. All the other things that come in that we feel obligated to say yes to. And when we're drained, we don't bring as much to the table.

And that can start having a financial impact or it can lead back to the last point, and I said, they tie together, is you're just exhausted. You're exhausted, you're overwhelmed, you're putting on the blinders.

And you're not necessarily being as intentional as you want to be with what you're doing with your money or your resources, your time.

Kerrie Beene: 00:20:28

Right. And that's kind of, again, what we're talking about, you know, mistakes.

So if we're overextended, listening to other people ignoring our finances, and we're not really focusing on what's important to us, there's a good chance, while we may be doing things with our money, for example. Okay, yeah, you, you have some money taken out of your paycheck each week and it's going to your retirement account.

But is it enough or should it be more, what is it going into? Should you also be saving for college? Do you have a child that you want to help pay for college? Should money be going to a 529 account?

Or are you saving for college? And you should be, you know, you're ignoring yourself. Are you, you know, spending more on things you shouldn't be and not saving for your own future.

So I think when we overextend, we affects us in that way from a financial standpoint, too.

Kate Welker: 00:21:25

Yeah, absolutely. Filling, prioritizing. Prioritizing what's really important. And is it, again, a feeling or what you need to do?

Kerrie Beene: 00:21:33

Yeah, we talk about conflicting goals a lot in meetings, too. So that's really something to think about, too. If you're saving for multiple things, you have all these conflicting goals.

It's really important not to ignore them and making sure your resources are put to the goals that are most important to you.

And when I say conflicting, I just mean sometimes we're time constraint, you know, for me, I have one that's a senior in high school and one that's working on our masters. So it's just a juggle of where does the money need to go? And there's all these goals and all these things to do.

So not taking, overextending ourselves in other areas may be causing us to not focus on putting the resources, you know, in this particular situation. Financial. Yeah. To what's important.

Kate Welker: 00:22:21

Well, and not putting yourself first kind of along overextending, if. If you are. So, I think often a lot of us are giving and want to bring a lot to our families or friends, you know, in different situations.

That priority maybe is your own financial security in the future, it's retirement or just emergency savings.

And if we're constantly extending ourselves and giving to others, we're not, again, taking care of ourselves in kind of segueing into taking care of ourselves. The next sort of folly, so to speak, is our probably strongest going to flash out to you as an actual direct financial tie in.

And that is not investing. So a mistake that is seen quite often with women is just not investing.

And I'm sure we could really dig into that psychologically about why women don't feel like they can invest or should invest. Unfortunately, there's a lot of noise coming at us.

And Carrie, you mentioned in a video earlier, and I think if you don't necessarily feel like you know enough, you shouldn't do it. And we have a saying that you should not make an investment in something you don't understand.

I do firmly believe in that, but there's some really good information out there. But I think this, and I'll say it, the finance bro mentality does prevent some people from taking that opportunity and getting in the market.

And historically, if you're invested in a rounded, well diversified portfolio, you are going to reap rewards and really lead to success. And interestingly enough, one of my favorite statistics and research proves this is women are actually better investors.

They tend to, once they get into the market, get into more well balanced funds and then leave it, build a good portfolio and just leave it and let it work.

And not spending a lot of time trying to, you know, know better than somebody or beat the market or show off maybe a higher rate of return, they just let it ride. And also, in ups and downs, let it ride is what some of the research shows us.

So it's really exciting to see that women can be these really wonderful investors over time. But unfortunately, there's a group that have just been timid.

And I think my suspicion is it comes from just not understanding the ins and outs of investing.

Kerrie Beene: 00:24:39

I agree.

I think, and I don't think there should be any guilt around that, because one of my pet peeves with the finance industry is the overcomplication of things. Sometimes I think sometimes we use terminology and all these other words that can be confusing.

And I think that may keep people from really digging to their own, even their own retirement account or whatever their employer offers.

And so I think it's really important that you educate yourself, you know, make sure what you are educating yourself with is a good resource and getting through the fluff of some of those words.

You know, I say it all the time, but like, one of my least favorite, favorite words, and I have to use it all the time because I do investments, is, and I guess it's technically two words, is asset allocation. And I think that the average person walking down the road is probably like, yeah, let's talk about asset allocation.

But I think it is really important to understand what that means and, yeah, just to make sure, I think Kate said while ago, do not invest in anything that you do not understand.

And if someone makes you feel like, you know, either in a, in a situation, whether it's their intent or not, but they make you feel dumb, you know, you, it's, it's your money. So at the end of the day, you can make a decision later before you invest in something that you don't fully understand.

We think it's super important to educate yourselves and we, that's one of our number one things that we do with clients is educate our clients and not only what are we investing in, but why. So I think, yeah, that's, I could go on and on. I could get on a bandwagon, but I'll.

Kate Welker: 00:26:39

Refresher term.

And Kerry's just saying that maybe that's a really good podcast topic to come up is I know we've done it before, but a refresher on terms and maybe you're listening to this and you're like, okay, I am. I am someone that's a little bit hesitant to invest or I don't understand it. Where can I go here? You mentioned look for some really good stories.

And when it comes to terms, you know, I think you can start by googling a term. It feels like the easy answer. But I also would do a little research on what does that mean?

There's things out there like Morningstar, investopedia and you'll see other news sources. So just type in what's a mutual fund?

Maybe you don't understand what a mutual fund is and it's going to tell you what's a stock, I mean, really basic stock. You're owning a piece of a company, a bond, you're borrowing something. That's a very, very simple definition.

But starting, starting small and adding to that and slowly building up your education or asking a trusted resource, hey, could you explain this to me? Maybe finding a very basic class for beginners. Just again, educate yourself and give yourself that information.

And I'm going to reiterate again, something Carrie just said a moment ago. If someone is making you feel like you are dumb or unintelligent because you're not doing something, do your own research first. I would concur.

Kerry and I are specialists in our field and people come to us and try to convince us that there's investments we're not in and that maybe we don't know anything because they've been reading about it or watching it. And there's been times I used to initially doubt myself, like, well, should we be looking at this in our portfolio?

And I go back and look at it and do the research like, no, no, there's a reason and there are investments out there. I'll tell you, there's still parts of it I don't understand every little piece of it because I think they intentionally make it confusing.

And to me, that is a red flag to kind of pause and look through and see where it's at. So if you're hearing this, you are not alone. There's a lot of a lot of noise, a lot of sound.

Don't let anyone make you doubt your own intelligence and your own gut factor. Because again, as I just said, people tend to be can be good investors when they just trust their gut.

Pick a really good portfolio and stick with it over time. But again, educate yourself. If you have specific questions, please always feel free to reach out to us and we can share some resources with you, too.

We're happy to do that. Education is really important, and the overall takeaway is people make mistakes. There's some follies.

They might not feel directly like they're financial, but they can lead back to our financial lives if we're, you know, anxious or nervous or just exhausted and don't want to deal with one more thing in our mental load. So really thinking that through and setting yourself up for success.

Narrator: 00:29:23

You'Ve been listening to money roots, your go to podcast for making personal finance accessible and approachable. Thanks for joining us today. Amy and her guests have enjoyed guiding you through the roots of your financial journey.

Remember, whether you're planting new seeds of financial knowledge or nurturing the growth of your existing financial plans, money Roots is here to support you every step of the way. Be sure to follow them on Facebook, x, LinkedIn, and Instagram for more resources.

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At rooted planning group, they're committed to helping you cultivate a thriving financial future. Until next time, keep growing your money roots.