What if I Make a Financial Mistake with Monica Kaufman - 193

Welcome Money Buddies to this week's episode of Money Talk. This week we're talking about making mistakes, getting back on the right track and overcoming shame. I'm your host, Skylar Fleming, and let's get talking. Have you ever felt like you made a huge money mistake and now you don't know what to do? Well, I've often said that this podcast is a great way for us to learn from each other's money mistakes and avoid them, but sometimes you don't quite catch how to avoid it in time, and that's okay. Today we're gonna dive deep into what to do when you've made a money mistake and how to overcome them. I am gonna make sure to hit on one of the biggest challenges when it comes to actually overcoming these mistakes, and that's the emotional side of it all. We feel shame and we all do when we make a financial mistake, which we all make. And that's okay. I'm going. Ask today's money buddy, how we can overcome that shame, and I'm excited to have a discussion around that today. We're gonna finally address what to do when you make mistakes, because we're all gonna make one at one time or another. But in today's Skyler's story time, I want to give a shout out to those of you listening to the podcast. I was looking at some of the stats of the podcast, and I noticed there are a few of you listening from some interesting places. So I wanted to give you a shout out and I'd love to get to know you. Please send me a message or an email about where you're from, if you hear your location, and I'd love to hear how this podcast has helped you and how you found it. Some of the coolest places that I saw that we were getting listens from include Frankfurt, Germany. You're at the top, which is actually kind of crazy. Great job. If there are multiple of you listening in Frankfurt, that's awesome, but I want to hear from each of you specifically so that I can learn a little bit about how my finance podcast is helping people from all over the world. Also San Diego. I love San Diego. I got to go a couple months ago, and if you're from that area, let me know. I'd love to get to meet you and learn who you are, and I think it would be awesome to get some names behind the locations of where people are listening to the podcast. Even if you don't have a financial question, just lemme know where you're from and your name. I'd love to kind of build a map of saying, Hey, I'm talking to people in all these different states, all over the United States, or maybe in these different countries all over the world. But let's get back to the episode. Today's money Buddy is Monica Kaufman. Monica is a CFP, and she's the founder of Harmony Wealth Academy. A brain-based financial coaching platform for hiring women ready to build confidence and clarity with money. With over two decades of experience, including roles at Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. Monica Blends technical expertise with real life insight to help clients break free from financial confusion and build systems that work. Her approach centers on honest conversations, mindset shifts, and the belief that financial peace begins with trust in yourself, not just in the stock market. But this week's money talking points are what's a money mistake that you've made? Two, how can a money talk help you with your mistakes? And three, how do you help others with their money mistakes? Quick note here with the Money Talking Points. Next week we're actually gonna have a change with the format of how we do the Money Talking Points. I'm gonna take'em straight to the guests and we're gonna have a quick hitting, easy, simple conversation around the money talking points to show you how you can take these points, share'em with friends and family, and have quick, easy money talks about the episode. So look forward to next week where there's gonna be a slight change in how the money talking points work. I'm really excited for it. I already recorded the interview with those guests for next week and it was fantastic, so make sure to subscribe and share with a friend so that you don't miss any updates or changes or new updates to the show. But let's get into today's conversation and with those money talking points in mind, let's get talking and welcome Monica to the show.

Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

This is gonna be a great one. I'm excited to talk about what do you do if you make a financial mistake so often you gotta do it perfectly with all these podcasts and you have to have the perfect route. But what if you actually make a mistake? Are you now shunned out of this circle of podcasts and listening to all this? What do you do when that mistake happens?

gonna make mistakes.

Mm-hmm.

in anything you do, if you're expecting perfection, you are setting yourself up for failure. that is absolutely not my approach to any of this. I make mistakes. I've made mistakes. The question is own up and say, Hey, I made a mistake. What is the mistake? And then you look at it and say, okay, why did it happen?

Hmm.

happened along the way that I did this? Was I feeling low when I went out and I went shopping? I know plenty of people, especially near where I live, will engage in retail therapy. Does that really make you feel better when you get that bill at the end of the day?

Hmm.

do you really need that stuff or is it just gonna become clutter in your life? it's a question of actually taking emotional ownership. You are going to make mistakes. You are going to fall down. You need to get back up. And if you're in a circle where you can't take ownership like that and then move on, you need a new circle.

that's a great place to put it, especially with your retail therapy. maybe you have this circle of friends that doesn't let you do anything else, and they don't encourage you to. Overcome a bad habit that maybe you're realizing you're having. And that could be a great point. Like you said, find a different circle. you don't have to completely abandon your friends. Like you don't have to write'em all a strongly worded letter or something and kick'em outta your life. You can still have those friends, but maybe what you do with those friends becomes slightly different. how can we maybe adapt our circles when we notice we're making mistakes?

So I have a story. I had a, young advisor that I was mentoring a few years ago, and he came to me This was right before he and his now wife got engaged and he said, we wanna buy a house. We need to get a couple of things in order. We need to get the down payment together. How do we do this? And I said, well, where's the gap? Where's the opportunity? People look at budget and think, constrictions. I look at it and say, don't call it that. I want you to develop your strategic spending plan.

Mm-hmm.

first off, one of the things I'll say to people is most people won't go in and chart it. They just won't do it. It's too

Mm-hmm.

Most banks have a switch that if you toggle it on, it'll tell you by category where

Yep. Mm-hmm.

what I would do is look and find out what those categories are, estimate what percentage of my spending is going to which category, flip the switch and see what's going on. So I had this individual and his. Girlfriend at the time flipped the switch and they realized that they were going out on the weekends with their friends from college and spending a lot of money in restaurants and

Hmm.

together. I said, okay, so stop. You don't have to give up your friends. Tell me about your friends. they were all in the same place that he was in. They were all building lives, and they all wanted to buy houses, so they needed to save money and pay down debt. So if you're all spending time together, maybe make a commitment that once a week, instead of going out to a restaurant, you go to somebody's house and somebody will bring something to drink and some food

Mm-hmm.

a contribution. You will spend less money on that you rotate the houses where it's hosted or the apartments or whatever. spend less money on that, and then maybe at the end of two months or three months, you go to a restaurant instead.

Or when one of you hits that big milestone and you get enough saved for the house down payment. And I think that's something that so many people don't realize is that you're all in the same sort of demographic and stage of life, right? So you probably have similar financial goals that you're all working towards. So if you just bring up the fact that, Hey guys, I'm spending. Six,$700 a month on eating out and I don't really wanna do that. And they say You're spending how much? I must be spending as much because we always go out to eat together and then you can work together to overcome that financial mistake. The same sort of thing happened to me in high school. I did the exact same thing with my friends where we were spending probably the majority of our paychecks at fast food joints and stuff. And I mentioned, here's what I'm spending. And we all just changed overnight and we didn't have to abandon ship and defriend each other, right? most people appreciate the help when you mention it.

Right, and that's the other piece of it. you go through it and you say, all right, I'm gonna use my community to either reinforce my systems and the behaviors I want, or I'm going to have a problem. Like for example, during the shutdown,

Mm-hmm.

people. I'm an extrovert. Okay. And even my kids who claim that they're not extroverts are extroverts and they crave people. So when we were able to go to the mall and walk around I love doing that. But one of the things that I did was I realized, hey, if I wanna go out and let's say I'm in Texas, and you know, summers can be very, very brutal. And if I wanna walk around, I can go into the mall at seven o'clock in the morning, be with all the other people who are walking. The stores are closed, it's beautiful. There's security, it's air conditioned or climate controlled. And I can walk that mall with other people doing the same thing. I know that sounds crazy'cause I'm not really that old. But I can do that.

Mm-hmm.

And so I can get the feeling of being in that space that's beautiful and designed to be appealing without being tempted to spend money.

it's just being aware of your surroundings and your circumstances. maybe there's a place you could go that's a better third space for you and your friends to hang out after work that isn't a store or a restaurant. Maybe it's the library, maybe it's a park. Like there's other places that you can put yourself in an environment to remove yourself from those potential financial mistakes that you're trying not to make. I love that point. And going before stores open, that's the mall walkers. I've always heard about that, but I've never joined in.

Well, it's not something that I would normally have done, but I

Mm-hmm.

during the shutdown because it got me out and around people. At least I could see people. I needed to see faces. One of the things that Stanley, in the book, the Millionaire Next Door demonstrated was that people who are financially successful over the long term recognize that the best things in life really don't cost money.

Mm-hmm.

Spending time with friends, spending time with family, going to events. Being in your community, that doesn't cost a lot. Maybe it does cost some, but it doesn't cost a lot, and you get

Yeah.

social interactions and keeping things connected. We need to be

Mm-hmm.

The other piece is we need to surround ourselves with people who are going to challenge us, but

Mm-hmm.

the overall values.

Mm-hmm.

choose people in your life who see you as capable to what you aspire to be. one of my biggest issues with modern culture is that we choose the wrong role models. one role model in terms of just her financial acumen and her personal business acumen is Oprah Winfrey. Started out with nothing. Got fired from her first job, Realized she had a talent, believed in herself, took the risk, and really built her future. She owned it on a financial basis. Nothing went out. Without her knowing what was going on and what it was for, nothing was approved without her thinking methodically, everything was done to strategically build her business.

Mm-hmm.

the type of thinking, even on a small level that I think is really admirable. We can replicate that.

Mm-hmm.

for role models, if you look around, you look at the people around you and say, who has a story that I haven't heard about? Overcoming adversity, accepting a challenge, building something new, and use those people around you as role models

Yeah, you're speaking to intentionality and it's something that, my wife and I, we, we strive to make sure, like each of our decisions, it's intentional. We shouldn't just be buying stuff just to buy it. that's how you can avoid a lot of mistakes adding a layer of intentionality recently my wife and I put in a Friday Amazon cart day. We won't purchase anything until the next Friday when we can check our cart to see if we really need it.

Yep.

And that's because we noticed our spending. That category thing, like you mentioned, it didn't have to be. Super difficult. It wasn't a whole lot of precise tracking down to the penny. You could just see I spent$300 on Amazon in the last three weeks. Let's fix that with something like this that's a little more intentional.

the other piece is, and this is something that drives me a little bit crazy, is have to learn the system. so many people within our society do not understand the system. Maybe they've learned a little bit about budgeting.

Mm-hmm.

Again, intentional spending. but the financial system is much bigger than that. when you learn the system and take hold of the power, you are going to make mistakes. You're gonna realize, Hey, I could have done better with that. Fine. Learn from it. Understand why you bought it at the time, where it served you, where it didn't look at this and say, okay, I can do better. your mind exists, your brain exists to keep you alive. It doesn't exist for your happiness. It's there to keep you alive. and your mind is gonna be looking for the lowest common denominator that's acceptable. So you have to write affirmations in a way. I call them power affirmations, where you are going to be successful. You are successful. What most people discover when they start doing it is that they are harder on themselves than anybody else would be,

Yep.

themselves than they would be on anybody else. what the science says is that if you want this to work, you have to shift into the second person and coach

Hmm

coach somebody else that you speak or care about.

hmm.

there's a rule that I think is very important. Talk to yourself the way you would speak to anybody else you care about, and most of us don't do that.

Mm-hmm.

we come at things as mistakes, were they, did we make

Hmm. Yeah.

we could at the time based on what we knew? as long as you're committed to learning and doing better each time. Is it really a mistake?

that's a great picture to paint because people on this podcast know, I just finished the CFP exam and I was telling that to you, but throughout that, there's a lot of what you could call mistakes in stuff that I'm learning and questions I'm getting wrong, but. I thankfully through some of the teachers was able to reframe those as learning opportunities. And like you just mentioned, maybe these mistakes, with your spending are learning opportunities that you don't actually value shopping that much and it's really just more of a depressant on you. Or one mistake, so to speak, that I've made and investing is when I started out, I tried single stock picking, Like that was all the advertising in 2020 was. These different stock apps and things like that. And though I don't invest that way anymore, I'm much more index fund focused. That beginning part was an opportunity for me to learn how stocks actually work. I learned about stock splits when a couple of them were happening. there's a lot of things that I picked up. Along that way, that really, I think, crafted why I invest the way I invest now. And that same sort of thing can happen when you're 10 years down the road and you're spending in this new different way because of the stuff you learned. I really, love that reframing.

Here's the thing about investing everything that's on the market is appropriate for at least one type of consumer,

Yeah.

There's an economist named Thomas Sowell who talks about the fact that there are no solutions.

Mm-hmm.

trade-offs. So everything has its risk and potential reward. And what you learn from working with this is how do you make the judgment? How do you feel comfortable? Who do you wanna work with? What actually is something you know and feel comfortable with doing? There's advantages to every single type of way of approaching the market. I do with people. Is I wanna turn the power back onto the client. So when somebody comes into the academy, we're not pitching product. What we're doing is an empowerment program.

Mm-hmm.

with a lot of emotional support and goal setting, it's designed to reinforce change over the long haul. I don't know if you remember this, but a long time ago they used to say, oh, it's seven days, or it's 21 days to get to a new habit. Okay. The reality is they're saying that it's at least 66 days

Hmm.

when you absorb habits, And you absorb behaviors and you live with them, and they're reinforce throughout your entire life. And money has been there since the day you were born, and it has affected your parents and your grandparents. So all of that comes in to the way you see it and experience it throughout your entire life. To expect to change that overnight is almost impossible. that's part of the reason why I will talk about creating that circle of support. And you have to give yourself time and space to do that and to learn that. when you come into our world and into our system, we work with the emotional impacts and the emotional approach towards it. Because what is money? It's just a tool, right?

Yeah.

once we do that, we talk about what risk is. I've heard so many people say, oh, I want a risk free portfolio. First time I saw that in a Bond movie where a villain said that I just, I mean, I, I flinched, my husband's is an economist who's sitting next to me. He's looking at me like, not here. You don't have to get upset about this here. But when you hear people say, oh, I want risk-free, there is no risk-free approach to

Mm.

Okay.

cash.

Not even cash. And so the reality is you're managing risk.

Mm-hmm.

There's different ways of approaching risk. So we work with that. Then we work on creating what I call defenses. So there are shields. You're gonna get knocked down. You're gonna stumble. So the question is, do you stumble and fall down and have to get back up? Or do you stumble a little bit, brace yourself and keep going. The defenses are there to help you get back on track faster.

Mm-hmm.

you learn the defenses, it becomes a question of building out that foundation. the foundation is getting rid of debt or managing debt and having the emergency fund and

Mm-hmm.

And while you're doing that, you're also looking at mastering the system, whether it's the retirement system, the investment system, how taxes are going to affect you. And then, you know, talking about legacy issues or what I call self ownership issues, So really what I'm saying is I want people to start thinking about this in terms of stumbles. How do I get back on

Mm.

how do I learn and acquire more and more skills?

that's a great way to put it because think of'em as stumbles, not this complete failure point that you're done for, or that your financial situation is over none of that is true. You always have the opportunity to change and move forward. even if bankruptcy is on the table, you can still reset and move forward. Now that's a really big one that we're probably not gonna dive into today, but there's other mistakes out there.

Susie Orman

Yeah.

and

Dave Ramsey as well, his whole thing came crumbling down. Like all of these people were able to build it back up.

it is really just a question. People talk about resilience and resilience is not the end all be all, but what is

Mm-hmm.

to you?

Yeah. I would say resilience to me is, recognizing that mistake happened and then staying the course, not letting it beat you all the way back. Maybe 30 steps, but just maybe one or two.

when you think about it, the old joke is resilience. You get knocked down six times, you get back at seven. what I do with people is we talk about a psychological framework and it's grit, gratitude. Gratitude is the ultimate intellectual and emotional reset.

Mm-hmm.

you take on resilience, get back up, instincts and tenacity. the whole point is to become agile, anti-fragile anti-fragile is the idea that the adversity you go through, the challenges you go through, those stumbles make you stronger.

Mm-hmm.

when you were a child, you got up then you fell back down But what did you do? Did you hide in a corner? Did your parents let you hide?

no. You keep going.

Yeah. And so that's the whole thing with all of this. I mean, if you really think about this, the financial world in your financial way of behaving really just a logical extension of everything else you've done up until now.

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

You were born, you learned to master your body, your physical world. You with family and parents and dogs, hopefully, or cats, and you learned to develop that emotional side. And then you develop the social side and the intellectual side where you learned. And then the professional side and the money side is just another piece of it.

Hmm.

from the other pieces.

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be as complicated, and I think it's easier to realize it's not as complicated when you take that view that you mentioned earlier, that money's a tool. It's not this end all be all goal if it's just a tool. It's like your professional tools. It's like your skills with animals like you mentioned, or your skills with children or cousins and family. Like it's just another skill that you add to this repertoire of things that you got going on in your life. I like that view of it because it makes it realize that. it's honestly not such a big deal. it is. If you really screw it up and completely don't, and just ignore it. But that's the thing is if you're just paying any amount attention to it, like listening to this podcast is gonna at least put you on a right track to do okay in your life and you're gonna be fine.

Well, that's the other thing, like no matter what happens, you have to say, okay, tomorrow's another day.

Mm-hmm.

I learned, I felt, I learned. it's either I win or I learn.

Yes. That's a great way to put it.

So yeah, that's what I'm looking for from people. You're not giving up. I mean,

Awesome.

of giving up. I don't know anybody who has the luxury of giving up.

Yeah, right. Like what does that even mean? Like you just, you just gotta keep going forward with it. But I. Wanna bring it back to a topic that we were talking about a little bit earlier with community and the podcast is called Money Talk. My whole goal is to have these sort of conversations where we're able to unlock something in someone's mind, and let's say someone has made one of those financial mistakes that we're talking about, it's a learning opportunity for them. How can talking about this with other people prove beneficial for'em?

Well, the question is who are they gonna talk with? Who's trustworthy? right, so

Hmm.

off with this, you know, one of the things I've had as a challenge is I wanna put people in a community, except I can't control what other people say. And when it comes to money, I'm very, very, very aware that people are somewhat predatory and somewhat abusive. There's an old

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

ev, be careful who you talk to. Not everybody wants you to succeed. So when you look at people, you wanna look at people who and, and be around people who call out to the best in you and who expect you to achieve the best. You don't want

Mm-hmm.

have that limited mindset, that takes time and that takes discernment. Trust has to be earned over time. So if you know, that's one of those pieces where I have to earn your trust and I have to keep earning it day after day after day. you have to be very specific and intentional. There are people that I talk to about issues that mean the world to me, and they have said hard things to me.

And that can happen with money. When you make a money mistake, you might bring up to your friend, Hey, I'm$2,000 in credit card debt. And they might say, that was stupid of you. And you're like, chill out a little bit. Like it's like they might not say the right thing either, and there can be certainly shame around these money mistakes and maybe you bring it up to the wrong person or you don't bring it up to the right professional and maybe they're predatory. There's a lot that we can have to juggle. How do we maybe juggle that? How do we power through? Some of the emotion that comes up, either from people making rude remarks or just the mistake in in general.

I think you have to look at people and you have to say how they treat you is not gonna be any different from how they treat other people. So if people are

Mm-hmm.

unsympathetic, or really unempathetic, you can't trust them, you can't expect them

Yeah.

any better.

Yeah, move on and start the conversation with someone else. Honestly, if, if that happens.

it's really just a question of like, when I look at certain people, my circle as I've gotten older has gotten smaller and it's gotten more intentional. Okay.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

because. One that's a little overwhelming. Two, it's a question of saying, okay, who can I trust with this? But first off, you know, if you make a mistake, sometimes you're gonna look at this and say, okay, I really shouldn't have done that. And I put myself in a difficult position. How do I recover from this? What is it going to take for me to recover? What are my options with it? And you problem solve with it. And if

Mm-hmm.

bring that to somebody else and say, look, I'm problem solving. This is a mistake. I own it. I'm not asking you to fix it. I'm asking you to help me problem solve, and I'm

Mm-hmm.

you to hold me accountable to fixing this.

Yeah.

And finding out those people and figuring out who they are is very hard.

Yeah. And it can be super challenging, but I do like your point there of just brainstorm with people. Bring your ideas to the table and say, Hey, what do you think about these? And then suddenly, maybe you've never heard of the debt snowball before and they mentioned it at Snowball to help you get outta credit card debt and your mind is blown. It completely changes your financial life. But just by having that money talk with your friend, just by bringing up ideas, you're able to figure out these new ideas. And I, that's happened on countless podcast episodes where new ideas will come forward. My wife and I have put'em into our financial life, so. Selfishly, the podcast helps me and my wife with our money, but I'm sure just having conversations with people, eventually you're gonna hit that gold mine and something's gonna click for you.

Right, but it, again, it's not even that. It's really literally stepping forward and sometimes it's looking at somebody and saying, I'm not asking you to solve this problem. This

Mm-hmm.

solve. I'm asking for your input.

Yep. Just a little bit of guidance, like I don't need you to.

Yeah.

rude or criticize me for it. I know it's a problem. I just need, Hey, what would the next step be for you? And that could be a good way to get those conversations started.

that's there and sometimes that isn't. Not everybody knows as much as people want to believe.

Mm-hmm.

there's an old saying for the Chamber of Commerce, you do business with the people you know, like, and trust. So if a certain large percentage of the population is technically financially illiterate. And you, you know, you say, okay, well how do you know that They know? Well, I just know that they're successful. Great. They may make a lot of money. That does not mean that they

Yeah.

how to

Mm-hmm.

it. I had a situation where that brought to mind. I, I remember these stories from The Millionaire Next Door. And I had a situation that brought that to mind. I was a baby advisor. I'd been in Merrill for about a year. I got two referrals. was a middle class couple that came in and they, at the time, this was over 20 years ago, had not earned separately more than about$55,000 each. Okay.

Hmm.

at 100 to one 10 they were in their fifties and they were both being retired early um, they had a tremendous amount of money that rolled in. Why they

Hmm.

off one income and they invested the other. They'd never had flashy cars. They never had flashy clothes. They didn't care. They weren't trying to impress anybody yet. I

Hmm.

another person that came in that was a referral. It was a doctor, he unfortunately had some medical issues and complications they were not as prepared.

Yeah.

it was really significant, the difference. So somebody might have a very nice car, might have a very nice address. But may not have any furniture in the house,

Yeah.

have nice furniture in the house, or may not have money in the bank and may have a tremendous amount of debt. the people that I know of who have been financially successful are not the ones who are walking around wearing designer labels.

Yeah.

70% of all designer goods luxury items are purchased by people in the middle class and below.

Yeah. Which, which always helps you paint the picture of who's actually buying it. Yeah.

and so the question is they're projecting out something that they think is wealth. Really. What is wealth? Wealth is something that pays you.

Mm.

telling me you're buying an investment, tell me how that pays you. Now I understand you have to have your ticket stamped, right?

Mm-hmm.

your podcast, you have to pay for the studio, you have

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

microphone.

The hosting the equipment. Yep.

Correct. Okay, so, but that's an investment and you're doing it for a specific reason. You're building a brand, all of that. I accept that and I understand that, but you, and it's not even that you need my opinion or my

Mm-hmm.

you have to be able to articulate this to yourself and say it out loud, maybe in front of a mirror without feeling ridiculous.

Yeah.

It has

Mm-hmm.

make sense, at

Mm-hmm.

a way where it's building something that will feed you and pay you.

yeah. Then I like the idea of articulated to yourself without feeling ridiculous. Like, you know, deep down if that purchase is true, like there was something I was looking at on Amazon right before this podcast interview. That was literally to your point of could I articulate it to myself that it isn't ridiculous that I was about to hit buy now and get it here by Thursday. I didn't. Thankfully, and here we are. I probably won't ever go look at the item again now that we're done with just this small amount of time after it. So even just some clever pauses and just putting a little bit of time and friction into your financial decisions can help tremendously. And as we're moving towards the end here, I would kind of want to focus this. Really in specifically on my target audience of young adults. And there are so many things, like you said, predatory financial practices coming after them, uh, debt, student loans, all these sort of things swirling. Should I start investing? Should I not? There's so much going on. What are some mistakes that people who are just beginning their career in their early twenties, what are some of those things that they may have to be on the lookout for?

Okay, so let's start off with something else. If you need to work order to pay your bills, if you don't have family, that will take you back in or it would be difficult. Or if

Mm-hmm.

members who have co-signed on your loans, you need to do two things. The first thing you do when you get a job, if they offer, is you buy long-term disability through the group.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Because that will replace your income, or at least most of your income on an after tax basis,

Mm-hmm.

that

Disability is a huge, huge hole that a lot of people leave in their lives.

And people don't understand that if you have that through a group employment, it usually is pennies on the dollar

Mm-hmm.

you can replace your income for, you know, I would say to people, is it worth it for you to forgo one adult beverage every pay period in order to do this?

Mm-hmm.

I

It's an easy decision.

with a young adult at the time who I don't wanna do it. Well, okay, let's say it's not one adult beverage. Let's say it's one Starbucks beverage. Let's

Mm-hmm.

or cut it in a one third. He said, okay, I'll do it. He called me, he said, Hey, I got my statement for what this is going to be for my benefits. And I was a little nervous. He said, Monica, it's one half of the cost of one Starbucks beverage. And I started laughing. He's like, okay, I don't know why I fought you on this. Okay, so that's

Hmm.

one. The second thing that I would say to them is when you get, when you drive and you have to pay for car insurance, and I have this argument with my own kids, car insurance is expensive. No question. I'm going to tell you that your state minimums are inadequate and

Yep. Mm-hmm.

wanna have a judgment against you for the rest of your life to pay. For that. So make sure you actually talk to somebody, not about state minimums, but you're balancing out what your costs are for you to live. And if you're going to drive, you have to make sure that you have adequate insurance.

Mm-hmm.

Health insurance is the other thing that I would say. if you are young and healthy don't spend a lot of money on medical stuff,

Mm-hmm.

you have the opportunity to get an HSA plan.

Yep. Yes. I love that. This is getting brought up. I love the HSA.

Okay. I love the HSA too, because what it does is it becomes your emergency fund for medical

Mm-hmm.

Okay? And as you age, so if you're in your twenties or thirties and you choose to start a family. You have money there to pay for that.

Mm-hmm.

And once you start a family, you wouldn't believe the medical bills that come down. Okay. So it's one of those things where having that money there, and if you don't use it and it's invested, it grows and it becomes that much more powerful over time.

Mm-hmm.

one of those things of using the system and learning the system. Once you learn the keys of the system you can use it to build things out with intention. And it's, it's just a question of, you know, using these little symptoms to do it. And a lot of firms will actually help you and they'll seed your Ss, your HSA, they'll give you money every year

Mm-hmm.

So yeah, it's, it, it pays to do that. You know, when you wind up having a family, you may switch off the HSA plan. I understand that. I know people wanna get out and get their own place, and

Mm-hmm.

who says, wants to discourage that. But when you start, you need to do the debt reduction the, the emergency fund at the same time.

Mm-hmm.

if you just just do debt reduction and something happens. You're, and you don't have enough of an emergency fund, gonna wind up having to take out more debt.

Yeah, and it's a vicious cycle.

It is a vicious cycle, so you need to be able to stand on two legs. The, there's two pillars on that foundation. There's two

Mm-hmm.

foundation, so build that out. People talk about three to six months. It's not a hard and fast rule. There are situations where you want more and there are

Mm-hmm.

you want less. And that's really a question of understanding the system and understanding your numbers. So it really starts with how expensive is it for you to live? How expensive is it for you to move forward? How much room do you have and how intentional you can be. There is nothing here you cannot master.

Yeah, that's a fantastic place to leave it. There's nothing in the personal finance realm that you can't figure out and do on your own, or especially do with the help of so many people around you that whether podcasts, that'll answer your questions, professionals, coaches, there's all sorts of different roles that people can fill.

Well, and the other thing is that I am, we are offering, and we'll be offering soon a program that's just for young adults that are launching to learn the system. And the idea is we're also gonna add in some things that are unique to young adults. So we're gonna do some workshops and things like professional

Awesome.

building out networks, so to help you actually start moving forward and taking ownership. So.

that's fantastic and I love that your. speech there about like, what mistakes can people in their twenties make was all about these holes that you need to make sure to fill because you don't realize their mistakes. Until they're really bad, like it's easy to recognize that, oh, my shopping addiction is a mistake and, and stop it proactively. But these sort of insurance gaps that people leave or not having your emergency fund or getting too far into debt is the kind of thing that is a mistake in three or five years, and it's a lot bigger of a mistake than you realize. Like, I love the insurance pieces. They're minimums for a reason. They're not called. The state recommendations, they're called the state minimums. And that may be a huge hole for people. And same with disability and all these other places is it can leave buried in a financial situation. And I've helped people in my credit union job years ago where you're like, how are they so stuck? And it's because of those holes and gaps that

Right.

left many years ago, and it's just this vicious cycle like we mentioned.

Right, and so that's the whole thing. I've seen too many people get into trouble. I've seen people, young adults, hand their car keys over to somebody else because they

Mm-hmm.

or under the influence. They hand it to somebody else. That person was under the influence. That person gets into an accident, they're liable

Mm-hmm.

was their car. so it's one of those things where you have to understand that the finances reflect what's going on inside of you. So when you take ownership and you start building out your life, you need to start looking at your life choices a little bit differently. And it's,

And

It's hard. It's ugly. It's not fun sometimes,

yeah, you'll make mistakes, you can overcome'em. Mm-hmm.

right? Those are the mistakes that I have the hardest time with it's a question of you need to be honest with yourself and accept that this is not with what you tell me you want in your life.

and you can master it. We'll leave it on that note that you mentioned is that you can figure out all of these things. Money doesn't have to be so scary.

No.

past five or six episodes I've been mentioning, take it one step at a time. Learn one thing at a time. You don't have to master. Uh, options trading at the same time as you're trying to get umbrella insurance is the same time as you're trying to buy a house. Like, you don't have to do all of these things at the exact same time. Take it one step at a time and learn as you go. But Monica, this has been great. I got two final questions for you here as we wrap up. Uh, the first one is gonna be how can people connect with you? And then to give you the second one, to give you a second to think about it is what's one thing you wish you would've known in your twenties about money, mistakes and overcoming them? But first, how can people find you?

Okay, so Harmony wealth academy.com, email, I'm always available, m kaufman harmony am com That is easy if I'm always hoping to start, you know, to have a 30 minute conversation with somebody,

Mm-hmm.

who wants help getting started. The program for young adults will be on the website relatively soon, and that's easy

Awesome.

if they mention your name, they will get a discount on the program.

Cool.

what I want people to do, and I think this is really the big thing, my parents didn't discuss it because they had their own blocks with. Different things. My parents got divorced when I was six. My mother had her own money story as she grew up. She was born 38 during the Great Depression. A whole bunch of stuff went on with that, and that really affected her. So as brilliant as she is, this is not something she could talk about with

Mm-hmm.

there is no reason for shame.

Hmm.

people to understand. It's just a set of tools you can recover. The question is, are you willing to make the shift?

Yeah, that's fantastic. What a great place to leave it on. Nothing's catastrophic. You can master this. There's no such thing as shame. Lots of great quotes outta this one. Monica, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me. I very much appreciate this.

Thank you so much to Monica for coming on the show. I know that was a great conversation. I really hope you enjoyed it as well. Let's get into the money talking points today with the first one being, what's a money mistake that you've made? Well, I've shared this one before, but my biggest money mistake is trying to focus too much on the math. It would drive my wife nuts. There is more to it than math. There's emotion and behavior, and guess what? I actually started to get outta control with our Amazon spending. And I think the labels can kind of be thrown around in my marriage that I'm the saver and my wife's the spender, right? But we realized that I was actually the spender. Online shopping was a problem for me. I would just find something, say, oh yeah, that's a cool thing. Buy now. Easy peasy, right? I was starting to be the one that was getting outta control with our Amazon spending. So guess what? We implemented an Amazon cart day. And what that is is that. Every Friday we have a reminder set to go review our Amazon cart. We're never allowed to click purchase unless we both look at the cart and say, do we really need that? And guess what? It'll probably go away at some point. Right now we just wanna reign in our Amazon spending. So temporarily we've implemented this Amazon cart day. And maybe in the future we'll go back to not caring so much about it, and that'll be okay. And maybe in the future we'll bring our threshold of what amount of money we need to check with each other on down. Maybe we'll push it up at some point. The whole point about this is that this stuff can be flexible and because I realized I was the one buying things on a whi. This Amazon cart day allowed me to pause and put that 24 hour rule in place to think about it more before I even add it to the cart.'cause I know I now have to run it through a parameters of, do we really need this? What is Rebecca gonna say about it? And that's a good thing for us to check and balance each other out like that because it's so easy to just spend money. Is there some sort of little thing that you're doing that just a moment to think about it? Would be super helpful. Maybe it's always driving home on the same route and picking up a soda or a coffee or whatever it might be. Is there some little thing you can do? Is there a slightly different turn you can take on your drive home or your bike ride home? That would save you a lot of money because it would make you think about a different area and you wouldn't be so focused on doing the exact same thing every single time. So consider an Amazon cart day. Consider a Walmart cart day, whatever it may be. If you're trying to reign in your spending, set a specific day where you're okay to spend money in that area. But guess what? Most of your decisions around it and transactions probably don't occur on that cart day, so it makes it a whole lot easier to pause, wait, and think about it. That does it for the first money talking point. Let's move into the second one here, which is, how can a money talk help you with your mistakes? Well, it can give you ideas on how to get out of your mistake or how to overcome it. It can help you realize that you are not the only one making the mistake. It can also help you feel more confident that you can get back on track because guess what? You can. You can overcome whatever financial mistake you have in your life, whether it's bankruptcy, all sorts of debt, credit card debt. Maybe your financial mistake is that you're spending too much money, or maybe it's that you're saving too much money. Any mistake you can overcome. You might also learn that someone else has made the same mistake, and guess what? They might be super wealthy now and that could be super encouraging. Why not talk about money if you have the chance to realize that it's all gonna be okay and that you can overcome whatever money mistake you made? Even like I said, if you go through bankruptcy, you can come out on the other side and make a whole lot of money and be just fine. Dave Ramsey talks about money and teaches people about money he filed for bankruptcy. If that's anything, it's proof that you can overcome these mistakes and that what he's talking about can help. he figured it out and now he passes it on and teaches people about money. That does it for the second Money Talking Point, the third one here, and the final money talking point is how do you help others with their money mistakes? Well, one of the first things to make sure you do when you're helping other people with their money mistakes is do not be rude. Don't tell them they suck or they're terrible with money, don't shame them because that's just not helpful. And frankly, it's mean because if you're doing that sort of thing, then you're probably the person that in other podcast episodes we're talking about that maybe you need to ditch those friends or stop being friends with them or stop bringing up money conversations with them. And if you enjoy talking about money, but you're being rude about it and now you're suddenly no longer having money conversations with your friends, maybe you need to evaluate how you're helping people with money. So hopefully that's not a lot of you that are shaming and hurting people when it comes to talking about money. cause it's all about being motivational and encouraging and helping people. And also another great way that you can help people with their money mistakes is share your own money mistakes. I share my money mistakes on this podcast hopefully to help each and every one of you listening in San Diego or Frankfurt or wherever you might be listening. Then you can understand that other people make financial mistakes. So let's walk through an example here. Let's say someone tells you they are buried up to their eyeballs in credit card debt. Don't start off by saying that you don't understand how people can be in credit card debt because you've never had to deal with it. Whether you understand it or not, people are in credit card debt. So a response like this saying, I don't know how you could possibly get in credit card debt, just pay it off every month. That is nothing but unhelpful and hurtful. Be open to sharing ideas about how to get out of credit card debt. Maybe your friend or family member that's bringing this up has never heard of the debt snowball, so encourage them to try new things like tracking expenses, living below their means, sending some extra payments to their credit card to see what kind of a difference it can make. Showing them how compound interest can work in their favor and how a credit card isn't. Maybe show them some of the math behind it. I've heard a point before that if people come at it with an emotional response or an emotional question, take the math approach. If people come at you with a math question or a math problem, take the emotional or behavioral approach so that they can see both sides. Because if they come at it as a math problem, they probably know how to do the math. If they come at it as a behavioral or emotional problem, they probably know how it's affecting them behaviorally or emotionally. But make sure you're open to listening. Maybe they know how to fix the problem, but they just need someone to hear out their ideas and help bounce ideas off of. Maybe they don't need any advice at all. Don't push your entire financial system on someone else. Believe it or not, it may not work for them. I am a money tracking spreadsheet nerd, and that does not work for everybody, and that is okay. I cannot tell everyone to go out, create a spreadsheet, and magically your credit card debt will go away. Because my system has never dealt with credit card debt. So maybe there's a different way that they need to take an approach. So if you're trying to teach people about money, you gotta learn all these different approaches so that you actually know how to help people. But make sure you're open, honest, and be willing to listen and just give ideas if they want ideas or just listen and encourage them if they've already started a plan. But that's how you can help people with their other money mistakes. That does it for the Three Money Talking Points today. And that's a wrap on today's episode. Today we dove into the messy, sometimes embarrassing world of financial blenders. Remember whether you've splurged on too many Amazon impulse buys like me.'cause who can resist that buy now button when it's practically begging you? Or if you've waited so long to invest that your retirement fund looks like it could use a CPR session. There's always hope. We've learned that realizing you've made a money mistake is the first step. Kind of like admitting you ate the last cookie. Denial won't make it disappear. And while talking about finances can feel awkward as a first date, it's crucial. just don't let shame crash the party. After all, even Dave Ramsey filed for bankruptcy and now he's basically the high top dog of money advice. So what's the takeaway? Don't be too hard on yourself. We've all been. Whether it's drowning in credit card debt or realizing you spent your emergency fund on concert tickets, the key is to learn, adjust, and maybe implement some sort of a cart day or a check-in day so that you can keep your purchases in check. And remember, money mistakes are just stepping stones on the path to financial wisdom, or at least they get you some great stories to tell at your next dinner party. But thank you for listening to today's episode. The best way to stay up to date and connected with All Things Money Talk is to subscribe to this very podcast. And if you want to go sign up for my email list on my website. You can also use the contact page on my website to send me any questions, and of course my email's in the show notes as well. And if you're looking to get started with budgeting, I'm a partner with my budget coach, which is a platform that connects me, your coach, directly to your budget, and I would love to work with you over there and help you with your budgeting. The link for that is in the show notes. Remember, the best way to learn from today's episode is to go and have a money talk about today's topic with a fellow money buddy. Consider using your favorite money Talking point to start the conversation. But thank you for listening to this week's episode of Money Talk. I'm your host, Skylar Fleming. Have a great week.