00:00 

Hey, welcome to Intentional Living. This is episode number 74, "Money Management." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Alright, hi there, everybody, I'm glad you're with me today. I have to tell you I had kind of a funny experience this week. I decided to go back and listen to some of my first podcasts and kind of just see what I was talking about and what I was doing. That's been about eight months ago that I started that. And when I listened to the first three or four, there were several times where there was one time that music came on in the middle of what I was talking about. And there was another time that my music didn't work at the front and I was just kind of laughing at that, you know, isn't it great that we just learn and we grow because now I feel like, "oh, I've totally got that under control." Now probably the next one I do, I'll make a mistake like that. But I just thought it was great and I loved that I could look at that and I could say, "you know what, I've come a long way just in the logistics of how to do this podcast and what to create." And I'm kind of proud of myself for where I'm at and what I've done, what I've created here. And I really appreciate you being with me. So thank you for joining me on this journey of self-awareness and learning to manage our thoughts and learning how to create what we want in our lives that is going to be amazing. I just love where we are, love what we're doing and I'm glad to have you with me. So thank you. 

01:35 

Alright, so here we go. This is our last, we were doing 10 episodes on mental health and this is the last one on the list that Brooke Castillo gave us, and it is money management. Alright, so there is so much about how money management impacts our mental health and we're only going to scratch the surface today. So I'm currently taking a class on money and how we think about it and how it impacts how much we have, and it's quite fascinating. But I'm not far enough along in this content to talk about that or in the application of it, to really get into it with expertise. So I'm not going to get too deep into all of that today, but I'm just going to focus on why money management is so important to our mental health. 

02:22 

So money management refers to our ability to work with the money we have, whether it be a large amount or a small amount, and to be in a healthy place with it. It really doesn't matter whether we have a large or a small amount. What matters is our relationship with the money that we do have. This is what impacts our mental health. So let's start off with this idea: money is neutral. How much money you have is neutral. What number shows up in your bank account or in your retirement account is neutral. It's just a number. If you don't believe me, let's use this idea to figure out whether it's neutral or not. Would everyone in the world view what you have money-wise the same way that you do? If you look at your retirement account and you see that there's $50,000 in it, you may think, "oh, that's horrible and not near enough." But would everyone in the world think the same as you? Definitely not. If you were to show that number to someone living in a third world country, they would think they had died and gone to heaven or won the lottery, right? Someone else may think that they're doing pretty good. Others may feel a lot behind the curve while others would be terrified at their future prospects. 

03:39 

If all of these people have different ideas about that $50,000, then you can know that your thinking that it's horrible and not enough is a thought and not a fact. The straight fact is that there is $50,000 in your account. Everyone in the world can agree to that because it is a number straight off of your account balance. What you make that number mean is a thought. So putting it in the thought model, the circumstance line would be $50,000. Your thought would be, "that's not enough." Or maybe "I've done pretty well," or even possibly "sweet. I'm in a good place." The point here is that you make that number. What you make that number of $50,000 mean is just a thought. 

04:28 

The same thing goes for debt. Debt is neutral. It's just a number. What you make that number mean is a thought. For example, if you have $20,000 in credit card debt, you could think that you're a loser and so horrible with money. "I just don't know how to work with it. I don't know how to control myself." Or you could think that it's okay. What if you own a business? And that's just how much you put on your card every month and you pay a debt off every month and you think it's a good thing because it's also earning you a certain number of points every month. Do you see how that debt, some people think it's good, some people think it's bad. Debt is neutral, okay, because really sometimes we view debt as good and sometimes we view debt as bad. Most of us who have a mortgage view that debt as good. Without that debt we would be needing to pay rent somewhere. But when it comes down to it, the debt itself is neutral. It's our thoughts about that debt that are what make it positive or negative. 

05:33 

And here's another thought I'd like you to consider about money: our beliefs about money make a huge impact on our relationship with money. Isn't it interesting to consider that we actually have a relationship with money? That implies that we have an emotional connection of some sort to our money and it requires effort and energy to keep that relationship. Okay, so I would like you to take a minute to consider what your relationship with money is. How do you feel about it? How do you interact with it? Do you cherish it or do you dismiss it? Do you invest in it or do you squander it? And where did all of those ideas come from? What created your ideas about money that are continually impacting your relationship with it today? Because just as we have ideas about relationships with people that we developed when we were young and they can impact our relationships with people today, our thoughts about money are the same way because of this emotional connection we have with it, right? 

06:38 

So let's look at it this way. I know I mentioned before that when I was growing up I never saw my parents fight or quarrel at all. They just always seemed to get along really well. So when I got married, my idea of a good marriage was that there wouldn't be any fighting or quarreling. I thought that we should just always get along. But that thought really didn't serve me well as a young married person. It caused me to want to back down from anything I thought would cause contention. And because I didn't stand up for what I really wanted or believed would be best, I started to feel a lot of resentment and anger in that relationship. And of course that resentment and anger broke down opportunities for connection in so many ways. My idea that there shouldn't ever be conflict created a situation that was toxic for both of us in the relationship. It contributed to a relationship that wasn't healthy and that fed into a negative cycle of hurtful thoughts and feelings and behaviors, alright? 

07:42 

So let's think about our relationship with money in a similar way. What thoughts did you learn from your childhood and your years up to now that have created the relationship you have with money today? Alright, in this class that I'm taking on money, one of the first things that we're required to do is to write down everything we can think from our lives that have created what we think about money. So I sat down and began to write and write and write. I wrote down every memory I have about money from when I was a child growing up in my parents' home to when I was a young single adult, to my thoughts about my money in my marriage and during my divorced years. This process took me almost two hours. There was a lot of writing but the discoveries I made about myself and the thoughts I have about money were fascinating. It really helped me to understand how I currently think about money and why my relationship with money is the way that it is today. 

08:49 

Here's some things that I discovered about my thoughts about money. My parents worked and worked to keep our family financially solvent. They both came from parents who worked physically hard through the depression and the following years to scrape out a financially small existence. I saw my dad teaching school all day, high school, and then staying at the school to either coach tennis or to work the concession stands to make extra money. He worked for the school district and the community college teaching driver's ed so that they could support their family. He worked a lot of those during the summer as well. 

09:27 

I saw my mom working as a secretary on and off throughout the years and then as a real estate agent and then starting her own business as a real estate broker to help make ends meet. She was gone a lot at night or on Saturdays showing houses. And then we had a milk cow and chickens and even pigs at one point that required a lot of hard work. And let's not forget the huge garden that they planted every year. My parents would come home from work and then work some more to take  care of the animals and the garden and their kids and the home. My dad had to get up every morning before going to school and go out and milk the cow. And he had to do it every night before dinner. Constant. And then add to that the rental houses that my parents bought over the years that took so much work. We were always having opportunities to clean out what renters had left behind. We were repainting and repairing and it seemed to the young me at that time that my parents were always looking for renters between the three houses they owned and rented. And my dad was always talking about how he would drop by and drop by and drop by to pick up rent and they were never there or they would never answer the door. Or they would only have partial rent and so he'd have to go back later. It was so much work and money just seemed to be scarce for all of us. For my parents and for their renters and for a lot of the people that I knew. And even though my parents. My parents worked, and worked, and worked. There was always just enough to scrape by, but no more. Amazing parents, right? So grateful for them. 

11:04 

But I learned from all of this that money was hard work. You had to work a lot, investing a lot of time and energy just to make enough money to survive. I learned that a steady paycheck from an employer meant safety and security. Then I became a teacher like my father. And one thing about being a teacher is that it doesn't matter how amazing you are or how much value you bring into your school or into the lives of your students, you are only worth a certain amount of money. You see, there's this pay scale in teaching. And it only matters how many years you've been teaching and how much education you have beyond a bachelor's degree as to how much money you make. The value you provide has nothing to do with how much money you make. 

11:56 

One of my biggest ahas from this process of writing all this down was that I came to believe over the years that regardless of how much value I added, I only had access to a certain amount of money. Money was a direct exchange of time and effort and wasn't connected to value. Interesting, right? Thought that was fascinating for me to start discovering about what my thoughts are. I also created the idea that I was only deserving of a smaller amount of money. Enough to get by and pay for my needs and some of my smaller wants but nothing more. And amazingly, that is what I created. 

12:39 

When we look at these thoughts in the thought model, realizing and recognizing that our thoughts eventually create our results, it's easy to see why I created the life that I did. My thoughts that money required hard work, a lot of time and effort, and that the value I added didn't impact it. Those ideas completely created what I was living financially. So I'm still in the process of working through this and creating different thoughts and inserting them into my model so that I can create different results. 

13:14 

So I'm going to stop here because this is just kind of where I am in the process. But at a later date when I'm a little bit farther down the path of working through this, I'll do a follow-up on then changing my thoughts and creating a new model. But for now this is what I have for you on this aspect of our relationship with money. But I'm finding it fascinating to start looking at what I'm doing and I encourage you to do that. 

13:37 

Alright, so let's move on to the other piece here that impacts our mental health. So regardless of where we are in a place with a lot of money or in a place with not so much money, how we relate to it is so important for our mental health. A huge aspect of our mental health is our self-respect. So let's look at our self-respect in relation to our money. Our self-respect comes from our ideas about what we are doing with the money that we have. Are we being good stewards over what we've been given? Do we feel proud of the way that we are engaging with the money that we have? Do you remember hearing over the years a story about the little old lady in her 90s who worked in a laundromat her whole life, she lived in a small apartment, and then in her 90s she donated several million dollars to a college fund. 

14:30 

Okay, so I haven't taken the time to look up the specific details, but the essence of the story was that she took the little money she made, she lived frugally, and she invested wisely and consistently, and she created a huge amount of money. On the other hand, we also hear stories all the time of people, later on in life, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, who have had a life of seemingly lots of money. They've had good paying jobs, lots of toys, and huge houses, and expensive cars, and then they end up in bankruptcy with nothing to show for their years of work. They haven't saved any money, they don't have any retirement beyond social security to count on. Both of these people had very different relationships with money, and their self-respect for themselves regarding this relationship was impacted. 

15:19 

We gain a lot of self-respect by taking the stewardship that we have been given and caring for it in a way that we can be proud of. Remember the Parable of the Talents in the New Testament? The Lord gives five talents to one person, two to another, and one to the last person. When he returns, the one who had five was able to return 10. The Lord praised him and gave him a reward. The one who had two was able to return four. The Lord praised him and gave him a reward as well. The one who had one could only return one, and he was chastised for the Lord for not being a good steward, for not taking care of what he had really been given and making it more. Regardless of where we're on the money scale, whether we make a lot or whether we don't make so much, we need to ask ourselves if we are being good stewards with what the Lord has given us. Are we working within the allotted blessings we have at this time to responsibly care for what we've been given? When we can answer "yes" to this, regardless of whether we've been given five or two, we gain self-respect. We know we are creating abundance in some form, even if only an abundance of self-respect. 

16:38 

I know my parents, even though they didn't have a lot monetarily, had a lot of self-respect for themselves because of what they did with what they were given. They worked hard within their money mindset that they had and the circumstances they had to create an abundant life where they were able to raise eight amazing children, all of whom are productive, functioning adults in their lives today. My parents both had great mental health, I believe, and it is clear to me that part of that good mental health was how they felt about their choices in relation to what they had monetarily and what they did with it. 

17:17 

So this would be a great time to take a self-evaluation of your money mindset and your money relationship, okay? I would highly suggest you do the exercise that I did and write down every bit of history you can remember about your ideas about money up to this point in your life. It's a fascinating exercise and I could clearly see where my ideas about money came from. Then, do an honest inventory of your stewardship over the money you currently do have. You might uncover some shame about your money habits. That's definitely helpful information because that shame will be impacting your mental health. And then you also know a place where you need to work, right? You might uncover guilt, which will also help you to see where your self-respect lies within these ideas that you have about money. You might find that you're pretty impressed with what you've created thus far. You might find areas that you feel you can improve on. 

18:28 

But in all of this, you will be connected with your sense of self-respect in regards to how you take care of the money in your life. You will see where your self-respect lies. Is it high? Is it low in this area? Money is just such a huge part of our lives. We can't continue to push it to the side and not take a good, long look at how our stewardship over it is impacting our mental health. Remember that we have this emotional relationship with money. It requires taking care of it. Is this a process? Definitely, but it's a fascinating one. And I highly, highly encourage you to set aside some time this week to take a good, long, deep look at your beliefs about money and how you are managing what you have. No doubt you will discover where your self-respect lies with regards to money, and that's huge. If we want to greatly impact our mental health, we have to check out the self-respect in this area and make sure we are doing what needs to be done to make a positive impact there. 

19:40 

Okay, isn't growing up great? Learning these lessons and making connections between by mental health and money? Really? Who knew? Who knew that good mental health also is impacted by our money and by what we're creating with what we've been given? Alright, life is good. Life is amazing. If you need some help, give me a call. Well, I guess don't give me a call. Get on my website, tanyahale.com. Go to the "contact me" page and there's a place where you can send me an email and do that and let's get in touch and let's set something up to work through an issue with you to help talk to you about how coaching can help you move into a better place. I am such a fan of coaching, not just because I do coaching for a business, but because the coaching that I have received has helped me to be so much more self-reflective and to see things about myself that are impactful and enlightening and life-changing. Great, great place to be. 

20:42 

So, in conclusion, thank you for being here with me on this podcast. I really appreciate you jumping in and wanting to have a better and a bigger life in regards to your emotional and mental health. Alright, if you haven't subscribed, make sure you do  that so you never miss an episode. Share this with your friends and neighbors and leave me a review. I'd love to get up to 100 reviews. Okay, that's gonna do it for me today. Enjoy, take some time this week to do a thought download on all of your money experiences throughout your life. I think you'll love it. Okay, have a great one. Talk to you next time, bye. 

21:20 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.