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Weekly Planning for Financial Growth with Megan Sumrell · Cash Confident with Brie Sodano

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cash Confident podcast.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm Brie Sedano, your fearless host, personal finance expert and the visionary behind the revolutionary Cash Confident community.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Get ready to embark on an electrifying journey where we redefine the rules of money and empower women to harness the immense power to craft the life they truly, truly desire.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: This podcast is the ultimate resource, meticulously crafted, for women who are ready to unleash their financial prowess and embrace a life of abundant success.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: We leave no stone unturned as we delve into the depths of money management, mindset mastery and the undeniable influence of emotions on your financial decisions.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Prepare to rise above the societal limitations and break free from the chains that have held you back, as we equip you with the tools and knowledge to make bold, confident choices with your cash.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: We believe that true financial power begins with knowledge, and that is exactly what we deliver.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So buckle up, my fierce and ambitious friends, as we embark on this transformative journey to becoming Cash Confident together.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I have a special treat for you today.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: This is Brie Sedano, you're here for the Cash Confident podcast, and today we have time management and planning expert for women, megan Somrell.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: So I am super, super excited to have this conversation because in the Cash Confident community, so many women come to see me in a situation that I call busy, broke and exhausted, and so, while I'm working with my clients on the money aspect of getting out of scarcity and really building out systems to manage our money and to, in time, build wealth, megan is a motherfucking genius with the planning and the time management, and that is the thing where so many of us really really can get into that time scarcity.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: So I am thrilled to have her today to just have a conversation with me about the parallels between the money management and the time management and basically how we can streamline our lives, get stuff off of our plate and just feel real good and happy.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love the conversation.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad and happy.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, I love that and everything that you are talking about, things I've learned from you that we have applied here in our household to some finances one I want to talk about in particular that's been a big game changer.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: There are so many parallels to how we plan, manage and control our time that for all the women doing the Cash Confident Society and implementing what we do, I'm hoping today to give them a way of thinking about how they can take some of those same things when it comes to their time, to start getting control back over our calendar again.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: And that's where I get really excited.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Women just men and women are different and we need different tools to plan and manage our time because we are wired differently.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: We tend to carry a lot more of an emotional load and the traditional time management systems and the traditional men teaching time management systems aren't accommodating that and we aren't talking about it, and so that's really where I come in and I take a very different, what I call very feminine approach to planning and managing our time.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I love that because you know what I've noticed too.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: It's like men teaching men about setting goals and men teaching men about time management and men teaching men about business is all real good, like if you're in your masculine and if you're a man, and especially if you're a man with a wife who's taking care of a lot of the other stuff and so much of what I find there just doesn't really apply.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and when I was single and in a corporate setting.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I got married later and I had a very masculine job.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: I very in touch with my masculine energy.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: All of those productivity and time management systems served me very, very well.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And then they stopped when I got married, started a family, became a mom and was suddenly having to really tap into my feminine side more and wishing I'd done it earlier in life.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I felt like I couldn't, but that's a whole other thing.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: I realized all these things don't work anymore because they're not addressing all the other things that I am juggling when it comes to how I'm spending my time, whether it's pragmatic and tactical.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: I'm doing this.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: This is on my list versus the emotional, like I know when I am planning out my days, the difference between my spouse and I and I mean he's a very present member here in this household but he's not going what will I do with school calls because she's sick today, because he knows that's coming my way, like those are things I have to consider and think about when I am saying yes and no to things with my calendar.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: That just makes it different.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so valid.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm 100% with you.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: So the thing that I was thinking about that was so cool is one of the.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: My husband and I have always felt like we've managed our money really well and I know when you were doing a training a while back and you may need to give a refresher so everyone can give the context because I know I'll butcher it in the buckets of the types of bank accounts that people should have for emergency money versus the other.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: And one of the things my husband and I had always done originally was we had a savings account that served two purposes it was our emergency funds and also kind of nest egg, but more liquid nest egg and so we were having a lot of surprises or discrepancies on not agreeing on what number that account should be at, and he'd be stressed when I wasn't, I'd be stressed when he wasn't, because we had one pool of funds that was earmarked for two very different things, and so we ended up, thanks to you, now having another bank account.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: So here is our building wealth versus.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: We went through the exercise of what are all of the expenses that come up over the year that aren't regular recurring bills, they're like the ones a year, all the things that we've chosen to set up.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: That way.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Our homeowners bill comes in once a year and our mortgage insurance and all that kind of stuff, and so we shifted that last year and did the math, and so we have auto drafting going into it and we've managed to open up a high yield savings account at 4% Woohoo, and it's like all that stress is gone.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: We're no longer having those conversations.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: The bill comes in, the money's there, it's getting paid, and then we're both just laser focused on the wealth building side because we've cleaned that up.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, I love it.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: We thought we were being.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's like there's the fine line of being organized and over organizing.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: You don't need 5,000 bank accounts, right.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: You don't want one account for your homeowners, one account for your insurance, one account.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: That would be over the top.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, if you don't have enough, then it's like a completely disorganized mess and you really don't know how much money do I?
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: What is my discretionary income?
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: If it's all lumped into one account, you wouldn't know.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I am with you and I love what you said there, because when I talk about working capital, so if you're a listener of the podcast.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I was like I know I'm not going to remember the right thing.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: The working capital.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all right.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: There's episodes about working capital and working capital in time does get to serve two purposes Like before you can really be saving, to be prepared for opportunities like those wealth building opportunities.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: You have to be prepared for the expenses, like that's really the thing, that's what keeps you out of credit card debt, that's the thing that moves it in the direction of being able to get there.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And then, once you're, working capital is fully funded and you have stronger cash flow than that, then you do get to have liquid wealth building money.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: And I still call it like a being prepared account, because you're just being prepared for opportunity.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the positive yeah, rather than just like emergencies.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: But really a lot of what working capital does is it makes, it moves things into the category of non-emergencies.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: When you have money to be able to buy snow tires or pay your homeowners insurance or whatever, those kind of things aren't a scramble and they're not emergencies, they're just like an inconvenience.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: So I love that you're moving that.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: So how does that translate to what you're teaching?
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: your clients in time.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: So let's think about, like first, just think about a bank account.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Let's say you hadn't met the amazing Bree and you have all your money going into one bank account that's serving everything.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: It's paying your regular weekly bills, it's also your vacation fund, it's your everything.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: If I said, ok, bree, how much discretionary income do you have right now?
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: How are you gonna know?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: If that was a money situation, you would be out of money, you'd be overdrawn and you would have no clarity.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Like I just see that financial, I might make that out.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: When that happens in the finances, if somebody's using one bank account to pay all their bills and all their spending, they're gonna be out of money and quick, exactly cause they might see a huge oh look, yeah, I can buy that thing when they forgot about the upcoming, the big bills or whatever.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Well, the same is true with our time.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Most people start every day just thinking like, let's say, you wake up at six in the morning and you're like, yeah, I kinda wanna be done by eight o'clock at night, and you launch into your day going I've got 14 hours of time.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: No, you don't, unless you literally have nothing on your calendar.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: You're retired, you're empty nester and you have zero commitments.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: I guarantee you you don't have 14 hours of available time in your bank account.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: But this is how people are women in particular are living.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Now maybe you've gone to the next step and you look at your calendar to see what appointments are on there, meaning commitments you've already made.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: So maybe you'd start and go.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, between 6 am and 8 pm I have a one hour meeting and I have a two hour call, and then I've got an hour of toting kids around.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: So now there's four hours taken out.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: So you'd be like all right, I got 10 hours.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: I got 10 hours and I can do all these things in 10 hours.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Guess what?
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: You don't, I promise you you don't.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: You have way less, and so this is where it is really critical, especially for women, for you to have the tools in place and I'll share some tips on how you can do this for you to know exactly how much time and do you really have today to work on the things that are gonna pop up, those long-term projects that you're working towards.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: How much time do you really have in that 14 hour window.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: And so one of the things that I teach people to do with their weekly plan is there's a bit.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: We start with just the basic five step process, and it's the step number two that is a game changer.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: So the first step in the weekly planning process is putting on your calendar what are your current commitments and this is what most people already have, like it's on your Google calendar or your paper planner what have you already said yes to at a set date and time?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: But usually it stops there.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: The second piece is the game changer, and this is when we need to start to understand how much of our day is consumed in.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: I call it either busy being busy time or unavailable time, meaning you're in motion, you're busy doing things, but it's not a set appointment and it's not things that usually show up on your calendar.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: So, for example, I'm at a stage of life right now I get up about quarter to six and between quarter to six and 8.30, I am very busy.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: I'm doing my morning routine, we're getting breakfast for the kid, we're driving the kid to school, packing lunches, dogs, all this stuff I don't like.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: That's not an appointment on my calendar.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: I'm not held accountable to somebody else.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: So people start, but that time I'm not gonna get anything done.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: That would live on a traditional to-do list or be working on those long projects.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Same for me in the afternoon of.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: I'm shutting down at 2.30 to go get in my car and do school pickup and then lessons or homework or this or that.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Again, those don't usually show up on your calendar.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: So when I just layer that in, that is five hours of my day Monday through Friday every day, so that's 25 hours of my week is already withdrawn from my bank account before the week even starts.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: But it's not on the calendar and so people aren't thinking about that.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And just as when you're pulling from one bucket of funds is why people are getting overdrawn and overdrafted.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: When you don't have a realistic look at your realities.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: You get overbooked and over-scheduled and you're staying up late and you're getting up early and you're multitasking and you're run ragged.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I can feel this.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I definitely used to be that person, and then I would like get all sorts of resentful about sometimes my resentment went to go toward my husband because I was taking care of all the mental load and this is I join all the things and sometimes it would be toward other oh so I'm like remembering how many flavors of resentment would be happening.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: But by the time you flip out, it's never about the thing you flipped out about, it's about exhaustion and resentment that had built up.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: So when we think about our monies like if you have the bank account for the emergency fund, maybe you have your vacate right and you've got all those accounts of time or accounts of money.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Now, if I ask you, hey, like, how much money do you have saved up for vacation?
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: What can we plan?
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: You can tell me, knowing that it's not screwing with the rest of your money management system.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: And so when we learn how to identify what are the buckets of our time and, on a consistent basis, what are the recurring withdrawals of our time that we know are gonna happen every week or every month, now we can zero in on how much available time do I?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: What is my discretionary time for real?
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: And when you know that you start making a lot better decisions about what you say yes and no to and your boundaries around your time, all of the same, we always say we're gonna have them right, I'm not gonna get shitted into this or that.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Well, if you think you had 14 hours, you'll say yes In reality, if you know you really only have three hours of discretionary time that day, you're probably gonna say no.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's so true.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: And then I will tell you that I talk to women who never feel productive enough, like I talk to women who are amazing women who've definitely gotten like 6,500 things done in a single day and they're like I didn't even make it done in my to-do list.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it baffles me because it's like that story of being so unproductive is one not true, but then two it's like maybe instead of being unproductive, you were just way over-scheduled and or, and it may be.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: And again, this is where I take a different definition of productivity.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: When I talk about being productive, for me it's getting the most important things done in a stress-free way, and so most people today women today are taught wake up, do your brain, dump right, write down everything that you think of that needs to be done and then start your engines, go as fast as you can all day long trying to check everything off.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Sadly, that's what a lot of people talk.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: It's what I call daily planning.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Wake up that morning, create your plan for the day.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Too late, you're stuck in reaction mode and here's what's happening.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: So list, please listen.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: If you are someone that creates a big list every day and then tries to tackle it, there's brain science behind this.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Let's say you had 14 things on your list not an unreasonable number, probably smaller than a lot of folks listening might have, because it's just a list.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: You're going to look at the list of 14 things and say what should I do right now?
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Every time you are making a decision, you are pulling from your energy stores in your brain.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Decision fatigue is a real thing.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: The more decisions you make all day long, the more exhausted you become and the less you start making crappy decisions.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Wonder why we always, at the end of the night, when we're trying to eat healthy, just go screw it and have the Doritos in the ice cream.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: It's not because you're a bad person.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: It's because your decision making abilities are shocked.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: You've been making choices all day long.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I talk about this exact same concept, especially with grocery shopping and why going to multiple grocery stores doesn't save any money.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Because by the time you're at the third grocery store, your decision fatigue is so like you're making impulse purchases because your brain is like I'm so tired and done with this and I need some crunchies and a chocolate bar, and then you're like I'm like it uses so much time, so much mental energy.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I love that you brought up decision fatigue with time too.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: So you start in the morning, you look at those 14.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Well, the other interesting brain science is the more choices you give your brain to choose from, the harder it has to work.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: So the longer your list, the harder it is for your brain to find the first one.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: So you start in the morning, you look at those 14.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: So you start in the morning, you look at those 14.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: The harder it has to work.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: So the longer your list, the harder it is for your brain to find the first thing.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: And because it's like, oh my God, there's 14 things, or what if there's 22 things on here?
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: What do I do?
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: First it's going to go for a dopamine hit.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: That's what it wants.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Your brain wants to your.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Its job is to make you feel good.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: So usually that dopamine hit is what's an easy win right here.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: 99% of the time it's not the most important thing that's on your list, it's the oh yeah, I'm going to clean out the pantry, right, Not go write the big chapter in the book that I'm working on.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: You're like, oh, that looks heavy.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: So all day long, as you go back to that list, what's next?
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: What's next?
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: What's next?
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Decision fatigue, decision fatigue, decision fatigue.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: And as the day wears on, you're looking for the easiest dopamine hit.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: So at the end of the day you're left feeling like I got nothing done, because the things left on your to-do list 90% of the time were the things that would have made you feel more productive, but we're not creating the system to support us on spending our time in the most productive way.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: So this is why I want people to get out of daily list making mode and get into weekly planning mode, and that you know you're there when, when I wake up in the morning, I'm not saying, okay, what do I need to do today?
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I'm looking at the plan that I created and saying this is what I'm doing today.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: It's telling me what I'm doing.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not making decisions.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: I made those when I sat down, well, rested, calm, cool and collected and not under pressure, mapping out the realities of my week taking, acknowledging the withdrawals of my bank accounts that are already spoken for in mom mode, appointments all of that.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: I know what, what my discretionary time is for the week, and I've proactively made appointments with myself on my calendar for how I'm going to spend those.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Just as setting up auto drafts in your bank accounts, right, Like if you already have it set up that when your paycheck comes in, X percentage goes to your you know, your emergency fund or whatever it's like.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You're not even having to think about it anymore.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: So that's, that is how, when you can wake up every day and not think about what do I need to do today and how am I going to get it done, Because you've set the framework in place.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Now there are days where maybe two things got done, but I feel so good because they're they were the important things and I acknowledged that's all that's going to get done today.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: That's the reality of what time I have available and it's going to be awesome when those two things get completed.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I love this talk because when you're talking to me I get a little delusional with my time.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: We like to do I where I'm like oh yeah, I made a list of 64 things today and I'm obviously going to get all of them done, and then and then, and then I like to really be disappointed with myself when I didn't, when I didn't do which was like a crazy, like I will put a week's worth of things to do on my list and then and then be disappointed with myself when I didn't get it done.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Today it's a, but it's literally a week's worth of stuff and I'm kind of joke, I'm like laughing about this because I see that it's a little bit hilarious, but it's so true that that, like in my calendar I have my appointments but you know, every afternoon between like three and six I'm not available to do work things.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: I'm just not but that's probably not reflected on your calendar.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: So, even though you mentally know that your brain is going look at all that open time, we can get it done.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: No, you can't.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: You can't.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Also, also, I find that I'm really like if I need to get something extra done, I'm better to do it in the morning.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: By the time the afternoon comes, I don't.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I might.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I do not have the capacity for that kind of thinking.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm like really heavy, like lifting for business or for things that really require a lot of thought.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Really, for me, needs to needs to happen before noon, and like if I was to try to go back to work at like 6pm even though I might have the time.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Like I'm not.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I have the time but I don't also have the the capacity of energy that's required to do that.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I do early on in my program with women is we do not only a time audit but we also do an energy audit, because everybody's different.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Everyone hits their stride for different types of work.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Like for me if it's creative work, I need to have it wrapped up by 1130 in the morning.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: If it's tech work, I can do that in the afternoon.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: It's fun.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: For me it's easy.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: I was a technologist for over 20 years and so knowing for yourself what types of things are easy for you at different types of the day enables you to create a plan that's going to support that for you as well.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So what I'm doing, my weekly planning.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: If I know, oh wow, I've got to get this big article written or something that really is pulling from creativity for me, I know I'm better off waiting until maybe Thursday, because that's the one morning I have open that week, instead of trying to get it done Monday, tuesday or Wednesday afternoon and then the beauty of seeing that then I go block my calendar for Thursday morning to protect the time to do it.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Then on Monday or Tuesday, if I start to get panicky like, oh my God, I've got to write that article, I just look at my plan.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: I'm like it's good You're doing that Thursday, megan, you're okay, whereas if it was just sitting there on a to-do list I would be stressing about it Monday.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: I'd be stressing about it Tuesday.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: So again, the decision fatigue is gone and I'm not having these panicked reminders of what I'm not doing.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I know I'm not doing that.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: It didn't plan to do it until Thursday.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I don't even want to see it because I don't need to be stressing about it.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: This sounds so satisfying, like it really quietes your mind down.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: You know, like when I have a, because when you said, oh, when I have my to-do list and I look, and then I feel panicky on Monday, and I know that I don't have time on Monday, but then I feel it, and I feel it again on Tuesday.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: It's like, if I just know, then my mind would probably like be like, oh, all right, cool, this is taken care of.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I don't even need to think about this again.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: But when it's not, oh, I'm just imagining myself because I'm like I'm really typey.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: So a lot of times, sometimes, even when I listen to the things that you say, I don't want to do them, because, even though there's such a good idea, because I love a little chaos- Well, I mean, and it's different and change is hard, just like you know, the same as all of a sudden no one wants to the first time sit down and look at where all their money's going right.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: How do we make the, how do we make the change without having the information in front of us?
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: And so, just as seeing where all your money's going empowers you to implement change in a way that feels good for you because you know why you're doing it, seeing how, seeing where your time is going empowers you to make different choices about your time as well.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I can really imagine, cause, also, time is an investment, so it's like the things that you're investing your time and you're going to get a different.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Whatever the result is, you're going to get a different result.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And so when we don't have any sort of budget and our money's just going a lot of times, we're really investing in creating scarcity.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: We're really investing in scarcity and I'm sure that happens with time, because if I'm spending my time today in a way that's going to have me in a scramble again tomorrow, or scramble tomorrow or scramble again, it's like we're just creating scarcity.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Oh so important and women tend to overbook and over schedule, cause so many women are people pleasers.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I am a I'm not going to say recovered, I'm still recovering people pleaser, I mean.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: But the more clarity I have around here's what's, here's your time this week, megan, this is what you've got the easier it is for me to not respond as a people pleaser and instead to respond as someone saying I have two hours of discretionary time this week.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Is this how I want to spend it?
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: And so, if you are someone that struggles with saying no with your time, the minute you can see what time you have in your bank account, just as dollars in your bank account, right, if you're out shopping and you see I only have $50, that is all I have.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: It empowers you to not buy the things you don't need.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: If you know you only have two hours.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: It's going to support you in the boundaries you want with your time.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, I love this.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I love this so good.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: I'm telling you it's like the better I got at managing and controlling my time, the better I got at managing and controlling my money, and vice versa.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: And it's very interesting because I will meet a lot of women.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: There's kind of like three categories that they feel are out of control and chaotic, money time and then physical stuff clutter.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting cause I know you love Katie Wells as much as I do.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: She's at my go-to for all things decluttering.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: But we've had conversations and it's interesting.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Someone will tend to start in one of those three places either cleaning up and getting control of their finances, cleaning up and getting control of their shit all over their house, or cleaning up and get control of their calendar.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: And once they start seeing the rewards of one, they're going to one of those next two and are like what's next?
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: And then what's next?
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Because the skills you get from one there's always a parallel to the other.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: And so I would just say for your listeners, as you are working with Bree and getting control of your finances and confidence and all of that, now it just opens the door to say the skills you are learning here are 100%.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: There's parallels on how you can now get control of other aspects of your life that might feel chaotic.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, no, because in it scarcity so pervasive.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: So if you're having let's say you're having some time scarcity, you're really feeling some urgency, that like white knuckling feeling about time.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: You're one decision away from that being in your energy, that being where, that being that same thing happening in your money, because it's just like.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: It's like you get short on time and then all of a sudden you're getting takeout.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Or all of a sudden you're buying another pair of soccer cleats because you don't have the energy or time to find the soccer cleats.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: They're pretty sure you already have in a closet somewhere, so you're not even sure if they fit.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: So you just buy another pair Because we have a soccer practice at this time and I know that the store is going to have them, but I'm not sure if we have enough.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if they fit and that's like I think that's because that's just it panics.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting at the thing that has really helped us with impulse purchases.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: That I learned, from you as well, is you may not buy now, like on Amazon.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: It has to sit in our cart for at least, depending upon the category, for at least today before you're allowed to hit purchase Period.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: The only exceptions we've made have been on emergency of we ran out of any of the vitamins or supplements that we're going to go to the store and buy anyway, like if it's in the house and empty and you're replacing it, and this is that's literally our only exception anymore, and it's been.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: It's been interesting to see my husband was the worst with it.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: He was worse than I was with it.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Oh and Amazon.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: You can have literally anything, the stuff that I find in my Amazon cart.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I'm like I love that, because I'll go log and be like okay, now I'm ready for I'm like when did I put in there yesterday?
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I just took a tiny tincture.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I don't let.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not an herbalist, I don't make tinctures, but I had.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I had hundreds of tincture jobs in my Amazon car and I was like I don't have anything to put in these when.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: What do I think I'm doing with a 24 pack?
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just a 124 pack, it was like multiple packages of of tinctured jars and I was like I didn't take the big Amazon gets like.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I don't like the fact that they'll now deliver at 930 at night.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I don't want someone coming up to my front porch and dropping a package off at 10pm.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: But now that's options.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, by us slowing our roll on now we can let it all in one box, have it doorstep at a normal time, so the dogs are freaking out at night.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: That's been something that's been a huge saver for us.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: So I remember when you said that once I was like we need to do that.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: That's not a game changer.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So good, listen, megan.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you another.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I've changed the topic a little bit and I have another question.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: So I've been noticing that you have been talking about a one notebook, a one notebook, one notebook challenge, one notebook challenge.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Much fun, okay, and I'm going to confess.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Listen, I'm in front.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I'm in front of my computer.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I have, I have three notebooks.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Let me just check.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I have three notebooks on my desk.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I have a notebook that I can see, I have another notebook that I can see, so I have five notebooks in this room.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I know that I have multiple notebooks in my bedroom.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I have notebooks in the chair next to the one that I work.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I know that I have two notebooks in my car, one in my one, in every single one of my purses, and I have empty ones that I didn't even get to use yet.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course they're fantastic.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Who doesn't love a good little notebook or journal?
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: But here's what's so cool.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, for those of you listening, this is a free event, so I want you to listen up, because if you, as Bree is talking, if this, you're relating to all the notebooks, or like you're walking down the aisles of staples or target and there they all are, you're like, oh, but it has that saying on it and that's my favorite right now.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, first, reward yourself.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: 99% of the time, your desire to purchase the notebook is to be organized, right.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, I need this notebook because I've just enrolled in this online program and I needed own notebook to take notes in.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Or I need this notebook because I get ideas sometimes when I'm in my bed and I need somewhere to write it down.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Or what if I'm in my car?
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: And so again back to kind of this relationship of our bank accounts.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Right, we start off with a great intention, like maybe you have set up your here's my emergency fund bank account.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Here is the money that is our just constant working capital, or whatever.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Now maybe all of a sudden, you're like, oh, but I want to save for a vacation five years from now.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: So now let me open up a different bank account that takes a portion of our vacation fund from here but over there.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Like we wouldn't do that right.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: We wouldn't want to manage our funds in 17 different bank accounts, but it could slowly start happening that way If every time we thought of a category of where our money needs to go, we went and open a bank account for that what does happen to people and it I'm sure it's chaos.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: It's generally, it's always a good intention, but generally that is a reaction to something happening with scarcity.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: When I see that when I see somebody come see me, they're like oh, I have 12 bank accounts and 14 savings accounts and 34 credit cards.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I'm like she's in crackers man, yeah, okay.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: All right, the intent was good, just as our intent for all the notebooks is good.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: I'll put the.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: I'll take notes from this over here.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: I'll take notes from this over here.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: I'll have this over here for when I'm in carpool.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Have this over here.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Then the problem comes.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Now you want to sit down and plan how you're going to spend your week.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: How long is it going to take you to pull together all the things you've jotted down that are competing for your time, whether it's an action item like a to do list that you remember in carpool line, so you wrote it in that notebook.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Or it's the.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: You were listening to a podcast and you're like, oh my God, I totally want to do that.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: So then you put that in on your notes app on your phone, as you're like listening to the podcast, like, so it can be any and all.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I mean any idea.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: You have the recipe.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: You heard that you want to make the thing.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: You don't want to forget to buy the form you've got to fill out.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: And if you're having to go collect 18 different notebooks and three apps to say here's everything competing for my time, it's overwhelming right.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Or on the flip side, you're like, where did I write that thing down.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I visually remember writing it.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Which of my 17 notebooks is it in?
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: You can't find it.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: There's a zero percent chance that I can go back to any of my notebooks for any sort of reference.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: They are useless for that.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: They are useless.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I cannot do it.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: It is an impossible task and I will just recreate it or do my best to remember it, but there's a zero percent chance that it in my notebooks I know where anything things.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Because we know we're gonna need to go back instead at some point.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: So this is what this one notebook challenge is all about is I come in and teach how to stay completely organized in terms of all the information coming at you with just one notebook.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Now the bad news is you don't get to go buy a notebook every week.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: But the good news is you don't get to go buy a notebook every week.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: So think of the money that you're saving.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Now, if you are a notebook lover, like I am, it doesn't mean you're stuck with one notebook for the rest of your life, because I do the one notebook system.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I typically go through about three a year, two to three a year.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: So I am getting to enjoy fun, pretty notebooks and I'm very intentional and thoughtful about which ones I buy.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Now the notebook in and amongst itself is not going to solve your problems.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: The secret sauce is in how you process the information that goes in there, and that's meat of what I teach inside the one notebook challenge.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: I have a question.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so listen, some of my notebooks I'm gonna call journals.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, and that's a different category.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: So I was like because when you said you go through three of my notebooks a year, I was like I might go like a notebook like this.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: If you're listening and not watching, this it's a little soft journal.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: I got it at Marshall's.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: It's probably got like I don't know, maybe 40 pages in it.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: I might go through something like that in a week.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're like, I go through like 20 notebooks in a year.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a very different story.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: So for me, I'm talking about the place where you're writing down the I gotta remember to do this.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: I'm taking notes in a training I've got to, so, yeah, and we will cover that in the one notebook challenge.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Like, I have basically three, truly three notebooks, one being my physical planner.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, my planner is the calendar and the planner's purpose is one and only thing it tells me what I'm doing and when I'm doing it, period.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: I don't take notes in here, I'm not jotting down ideas, nothing Now I do have.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: I'm not as avid of a journal as you are, but I do have a journal for when I do want to sit down, maybe and do a meditation, or like sometimes I'll get my cards read, like I love doing that, and I'll take notes about like that's different and this is a very personal thing, but almost like a diary kind of thing.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, so those absolutely.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: But I'm talking about the sticky notes, the jotted down things, that the note app, the to do is the Google task list, all of that, all the things where you are jotting down.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I got to remember to do this.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: Let me take notes on this.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: We're going to get you down to one central place for that and then I'm going to teach you how do you get the information that you've put in here put into the right location so that when you go oh my God, I totally want to make that recipe, or now I'm ready to go implement that thing I learned on the podcast you can find it like that You're not looking at 15 notebooks going where the hell is it?
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: And you'll also find, I would say, 80% of what goes into my notebooks never gets stored anywhere, because when I'm going back and reading through my notes for the week, a lot of times you're like, kind of like your Amazon cart, I don't need this Sounded good when I wrote it down, but I'm like I don't need to do that.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: So it's this really powerful one notebook system.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: We've now had over 10,000 women go through this.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: I only do it once a year and it has been like everybody has a really, really good time in it.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: It's 30 minutes or less for three days.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: That's it, you're gonna have everything you will learn, everything you need to know to do it.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: I really like this.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: All right, I will tell you that when I saw your reels and then the one notebook challenge, I was immediately like oh no, definitely not for me, and it's because.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: But separating out, but to me, even when just like listening to talk about that, separating out the, the, the work stuff, the to do it like that sort of stuff that having one notebook actually seems like it would be a drastic improvement, and then I could probably just leave the chaos of my journals so like I'm not always like journaling at the depths of my soul.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I just have to work out an idea, so that way when I'm teaching it it comes out clear.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: So a lot of the times, once I like go through, like once I write down the stuff, I see, I see it and I'm like done and done.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I could throw the pages away right then and there.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: So oh, but I'm, I'm like.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: So when you send me one notebook, I was like I cannot possibly have one notebook.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: We're not talking about journaling here.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: That's the journal is a journal, not a journal is a journal and I like that you have a separate planner because that all that all makes that all makes perfect sense.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: So, but the one notebook for all of the things that you have, you know, all of your ideas, all of your recipes, all of your to-dos, that does seem like one place.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: That doesn't really satisfy.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: All of that's being channeled into.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: And then I'm going to teach you now how do we create, basically, you know, like we have different bank accounts for different things how do we create repositories of the different types of information for easy reference when we actually do need to go back and are ready to take action on it?
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: So now you're not flipping through 25 different notebooks going where did I write that thing down that I'm ready to finally go do?
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: So it's really fun and we kick off February 6.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: So it's a Tuesday.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Thursday Thursday I go live at noon Eastern, but if you can't be there, the recording will sit there for you, so you can.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: You can come in and watch it at your convenience.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Perfect, I will drop a link in the show notes for everybody to sign up.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: So I know that we, we have to go because you have something in your calendar.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: So, megan, tell us, tell the ladies, tell my listeners where they can find you, where they can watch you, where they, where they can find out all the brilliant things that you have to teach them.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I am very easy to find on any of the social platforms.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: You can just search for my name, Megan Sumerl, M-E-G-A-N and then S-S-N-S-M-U-M-R-E-L-L, and I'm out there on Instagram.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: I happily make a fool of myself on Instagram reels.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: I do not take myself seriously, so I love your reels.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I love it when you're silly.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: It makes me, it makes me happy.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I watch them all Beautiful.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here with us and giving these ladies such a wonderful idea on how to manage their time better and how to simplify with one notebook.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: People are going to find so much value in this and I'm so grateful that it's free.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: So everybody check out Megan, and then I will see you next week.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I love you and I appreciate you.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Bye, everybody.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: It was my pleasure and joy to talk with you today.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: If you found value in our conversation, I kindly ask you to share the show with a friend who deserves to unleash her financial power.
• 42:23
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• 42:28
  Speaker 1: We can amplify the message and bring more money into the hands of good women For ongoing guidance and unwavering support on your financial journey.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: I invite you to join the Cash Confident community.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Visit wwwcashconfidentcom slash.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Join to become part of our powerful community of women where we uplift and inspire one another to reach new heights of financial success.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Remember, you possess the power to shape your financial destiny and, with the Cash Confident podcast and the support of our remarkable community, you are unstoppable.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Embrace your financial power, create the life you desire and let's ignite a movement of Cash Confident women who are transforming the world.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: One dollar, one decision at a time.