Help you understand your financial situation.
but what about...
\ How do people deal with the fear of sharing so much personal information? I was taught not to talk about money.
Yeah. It CAN BE SCARY, And only you can feel for yourself if right now is the time FOR YOU to take that risk. I can tell you there is a prize on the other side of the risk rainbow: confidence, calm, and ease.
I’m not going to ask you to climb up a 20 foot ladder and leap off a platform while gripping a trapeze (although if WANT to, I can hook you up!). But what if you imagine doing that? And living to tell the tale (or change your wet pants).
Can you imagine how empowered you might feel after that? That’s the kind of feeling that’s on the other side of taking a risk like diving into money coaching.
Maybe it's reassuring for you to read that I’ve almost heard it all. For whatever reasons, since I was 14, girls came up to me to teach them how to use tampons, boys came up to me to ask for help in asking out a girl, colleagues asked me to use my mediation skills to hold space while they talked about tough emotional hurts, friends came to me to discuss rough racial truths and discriminations. And money coaching has equal depth of dimension.
As people peel away layers of their relationships to money, they often peel away other blocks in life. In sessions with clients, correlations to their parenting, their own childhoods, their sex lives, any number of areas of their lives come up as they use money as ONE of the tools to look at their lives.
Your sitch is unique, but I will not judge or be shocked by it. It is a brave endeavor to try money coaching.
On a more technical note, with the tool I guide clients through, I do not have access to account numbers or any ability to make changes in any of your finances.
\ What tools do I use in coaching?
On occasion, I direct clients to outside books and resources, but for the most part, our work is centered around an online financial program which I have found to be the best tool for creating total money transformation in personal finances and businesses.
In rare cases, I have worked with clients who already have a system that is working for them and we keep that in place, but for the most part, we will make use of a unique online software tool. Clients communicate with me via email and text, we have a shared Google Doc, and TMT clients have access to me on Voxer.
How long will it take to "be fixed?"
I HEAR you. I so relate to this feeling of “could we please just flick the switch and fix this?” At the same time, I deeply believe you don’t need no fixin’. That the only way we’re going to change your habits and feelings about money is to listen to what got you here over time.
You didn’t get to your current financial situation overnight, and I’m here to tell you a possibly tough truth; you will not feel better overnight. There are some coaches who will set you up with a budget and send you on your way to “just stick to it” after 3 sessions. If that sounds like it’ll work for you, lemme know and I will help you find those folks. If you know in your gut, that you’ve got patterns that you are ready to reframe,
Yeah, but…YOU WANT AN ANSWER! For a timeline, it might help to think of your school days. Money is a language; have you ever learned a new language? Or instrument? Music is a language just like money, just like little leagues. In the first semester you’ll be learning the nouns, the spellings, the simple verbs. That first part of your financial foundation will get you in the groove, training your cells to accept money as something worth your time and attention.
Second semester you’ll start conjugating verbs, but it might be clunky. You won’t be able to say everything you want to, but you figure out a way to make things work: “Yesterday I play basketball 2 hours.” You get it.
In this same vein, in semester 2 of Land in the Net, you’ll be making your months ‘work.’ You’ll know how much money you’ll have at the end of each month, AFTER you’ve accounted for everything you’re going to save (!!! Yay! Yes it’s true!), all the bills, debt repayments, and a few fun things. Your brain won’t feel so dizzy as you stop shuffling money around so much, and instead you direct it where you want it to go.
You’ll have been introduced to concepts (savings, debt reduction plans, transfers, retirement) but they won’t really click in, feel natural, or make total sense yet.
Third semester, you just might be on the accelerated track already. Past participles, practicing dribbles or scales–things that didn’t seem important at all when you started–actually start to feel fun. You get into the depth or meaning of these things. Same idea with your finances.
At this point, you’re feeling the big picture. You’re planning 1 to 2 to 5 years down the line. You might not be making as much money as you want yet, but that no longer terrifies you. Different clients have reached this stage at month 4, 5, 9, 12. Your openness, as well as your available time, are factors that play into that outcome.
As you become fluent, you can look at your numbers not just objectively, but with a feel for what they mean in your life, what they mean to your values. You’re speaking that language and knowing you’ve got that coach to check in with on your accent or your technique.
How much work will this be?
For many money coaching clients, accountability is the strongest initial benefit our work together provides. If you haven't been looking at your finances in a systematic (and CALM) way, it might be enough for the first month for you to just show up. to our meetings.
If you have the guts to practice and sound silly while you speak this new language outside of class, you will quickly make progress. If you sit quietly in class and just follow the rules to write things according to formula, you’ll pass the test, but you won’t become fluent.
As we near the end of the 1st month together, you will reap huge benefits if you put in about 40 minutes of preparation between sessions.
Can't I just do this myself?
Maybe! I truly think that’d be great. You can grab my free gift of books that really will help people who have the motivation (and guts!) to walk this journey on their own. I want to say, though, that if that’s not you, there is no shame in needing a hand to hold while you are making change.
Athletes have brigades of folks helping them manage their energy and technique. Wealthy people have whole teams of professionals that help them manage their money. Heck, even in nature there are not solitary actors. Mushrooms and birds and bees and other animals and plants are in constant co-creation to manage our planet’s resources. I believe THAT’S the truth of our world. That connection is the special sauce, magic ingredient, that the modern world often ignores.