New Money Narrative to Achieve Financial Independence (Ep 128)
If you want to get your money organized, learn how to save money, and invest it properly, you are in the right place! Today my guest, Brit Williams Baker of Dow Janes, will be discussing how to achieve financial independence.
My new book, Make Room, talks about how when you get organized you free up Space, Time, Energy, and Money, and when you have more of these four resources, there is so much more you can do with your life and your life’s purpose. I am passionate about this, so I am very excited to discuss the topic of money and organizing money today.
You might be surprised to hear that it all starts with a mindset. When it comes to money, we all have stories. First, you have to rewrite that story so that everything going forward can happen. Otherwise, these old stories will keep you from taking action and nothing is going to change. One way to do this is by looking at your story and thinking about your first memory of money and how that has fixed itself in your mind. Another exercise you can do is to create a money persona. Give yourself a new name, for example, “Bountiful Brit,” and write a story of who that person is with money, how they treat money, and how they interact with money. Then channel that persona when deciding to buy something or when paying the bills.
Another piece is your relationship with money, so if you think of it the same way you would your relationship with a person, the more time you spend with that person, the stronger that relationship is going to be. One of the critical pieces of organizing your money is spending time with your money! You need to have a weekly money ritual, an hour of self-care, pour a glass of tea, light a candle, whatever you need to do to make that experience positive and enjoyable, and then pay attention to your finances, either look at your credit card statements, look at what you’ve been paying, do the research on that 401k that you’ve been holding onto but haven’t invested in yet. Whatever your money chores are, take the time to do them.
I know some of you out there don’t want to organize your money because then you actually have to look at it and be honest with yourself about your spending and where it goes and would rather just avoid it. I was like that too at one point in my life, but over time I have learned to enjoy organizing my finances. Doing this can help you control your money instead of your money controlling you! If you take the “head in the sand” approach, you create so much unnecessary stress because you know in the back of your mind that something’s not right about your financial situation.
There is no shame involved in this process! Whatever has happened is in the past, and what you can do right now is start paying attention and knowing the truth about your financial situation because once you know that you can decide whether to change things or not, but at least you’ll know. Something that helped me was to first find the truth about my money and then find ways to measure growth. I used a spreadsheet to track and show this and that made me feel powerful and have tangible steps to take which gave me back control.
Another important part of organizing your money is spending your money in alignment with your values. Identify your values, what is it you care about? Is your spending tracking against your values? When you align your spending with your values, you are voting with your dollar. You are using your money to say what you care about in the world and as a result, you are bringing a consciousness to your spending that is hard these days with credit cards and online shopping. It can all just happen so quickly and so easily that we don’t bring that second level of not only do I want this but do my values want this? Is this something that exemplifies what I believe about the world?
Where do you start? First, outline your top 5 values and think of one way you could spend more money to align with each value and one thing you could eliminate spending money on to align better with each value. Track your spending then rate it – does it align? Tune in to hear more!
About Guest Britt Williams Baker
Britt Williams Baker (she/her) is a Harvard Business School graduate, an expert investor with 10+ years of experience, and a money mindset coach. She co-founded Dow Janes, to teach women+ how to take control of their finances with a step-by-step education and a community of support.
