Latest / Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design / 104 | Budgeting & Money Mindset Skills Women Entrepreneurs Wish They Knew Sooner

Transcript

104 | Budgeting & Money Mindset Skills Women Entrepreneurs Wish They Knew Sooner · Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design

• 0:01
  Erin Gray: Today we're diving into something so many of us can probably relate to the financial skills that we should have been taught and weren't.
• 0:08
  Erin Gray: If you've ever felt like you're just figuring out money as you go, I want you to know that you are not alone.
• 0:14
  Erin Gray: Most of us were not taught how to manage money, grow our wealth and feel confident in our financial decisions.
• 0:21
  Erin Gray: I want you to know it's never too late to learn, and in this episode we're going to break down the most important financial skills you wish you were taught and how to start mastering them now.
• 0:32
  Erin Gray: Do you want to create a system to stop avoiding your money?
• 0:34
  Erin Gray: Maybe you're feeling guilt and shame when it comes to finances.
• 0:38
  Erin Gray: Welcome to your Money, your Rules.
• 0:41
  Erin Gray: I'm Erin, a former certified financial planner and CFO, and yet I used to avoid my money and had fear, no matter how much we had.
• 0:49
  Erin Gray: I can't wait to teach you how I overcame my money avoidance and started consistently managing my finances in a really simple way.
• 0:56
  Erin Gray: It's time to get comfortable with money.
• 0:59
  Erin Gray: Are you in a place where you have enough money in the bank, yet it still never feels like enough?
• 1:03
  Erin Gray: From the outside, everything may look fine, your net worth is solid and you're on track, and yet you still feel uncertain, anxious and out of control.
• 1:13
  Erin Gray: I want you to know, I used to be in the same exact place as you are.
• 1:16
  Erin Gray: We had plenty, yet I lived in constant fear of losing it all or not saving enough for the future, even though logic and my financial account said otherwise.
• 1:26
  Erin Gray: The truth is, I was really terrified of my own money.
• 1:31
  Erin Gray: I avoided looking at my balances or went into hypervigilance, restricting spending unnecessarily.
• 1:37
  Erin Gray: The fear of making those wrong moves kept me paralyzed, and I was trapped in a mindset of not enough, even when I had more than enough.
• 1:46
  Erin Gray: It wasn't until I realized that the issue wasn't the money itself.
• 1:50
  Erin Gray: It was my mindset around it.
• 1:52
  Erin Gray: That is when everything began to shift.
• 1:55
  Erin Gray: I understood my money on a practical level, but I never had allowed myself to actually feel at peace with it.
• 2:02
  Erin Gray: I had to stop seeing it as something that could slip away at any moment and instead began using it as a tool for empowerment and growth.
• 2:10
  Erin Gray: So if you're ready to stop letting fear control your financial decisions and start using your wealth to create more freedom, opportunity and confidence, I would love to support you.
• 2:19
  Erin Gray: Head over to my website, generatealifewelllivedcom and click the link.
• 2:24
  Erin Gray: Work with me to schedulea call today.
• 2:26
  Erin Gray: I know I've said on previous podcasts that I think that, especially as women, you know us not knowing about money was done on purpose.
• 2:37
  Erin Gray: You know from the school systems, from society at large, and this is something that I'm really passionate about because I think that this was done intentionally.
• 2:48
  Erin Gray: So we didn't, you know, to maintain control.
• 2:51
  Erin Gray: So we didn't know, so we didn't feel empowered.
• 2:54
  Erin Gray: And I know how much financial knowledge I have taken, either through college or just learning, you know, on the job, training and just learning on my own.
• 3:04
  Erin Gray: And and it wasn't probably until about, I don't know, a couple of years ago that how little I knew about actually like feeling wealthy and generating money on my own terms from a place of joy and abundance.
• 3:22
  Erin Gray: You know, I knew, I always knew how to make money, not with ease, um, but I didn't know how to manage it or grow it or feel confident from a place of ease and trust, and I think that this is a skillset that isn't being taught.
• 3:38
  Erin Gray: I think there's lots of strategy, tactics on how to grow your money, but we're not talking how to do it with ease and flow and joy and trust.
• 3:47
  Erin Gray: You know my dad he always instilled in me to work hard to save and invest, especially, you know, like in my 401k.
• 3:55
  Erin Gray: I remember I was working at the hospital when I thought I wanted to go to medical school and I think it was.
• 4:00
  Erin Gray: I was about to hit 21 and at 21, typically most plans 401k plans I know in the hospitals they're called 403Bs same kind of thing, just different in the tax code, let's just call it a 401k that I was able to start investing at 21.
• 4:17
  Erin Gray: That's when I started investing in my 401k.
• 4:19
  Erin Gray: So he taught me to start saving and investing and to keep debt minimal or no debt, and those are skill sets that served me really well.
• 4:30
  Erin Gray: He allowed me to generate my wealth, to be able to, like I said, take time off with my family, but I don't know if he ever sat me down to teach me how to do all of that with ease and joy and trust.
• 4:45
  Erin Gray: And I know in my financial planning classes nobody taught me how to do that.
• 4:49
  Erin Gray: And I have such compassion for him because how could he if he wasn't experiencing that for himself?
• 4:57
  Erin Gray: Right, like we can't teach what we don't embody and know, and so if you're coming from a place of generating money from hustle, working hard, a lot of hours, you know, from lack.
• 5:10
  Erin Gray: How can you teach that to anyone else?
• 5:12
  Erin Gray: Which is why I think we have a duty as women this always makes me cry to master this stuff so that we can teach this to our kids, because the last time I checked, nobody's teaching this stuff in the school system, and I think we have an opportunity as parents moms to shift the entire trajectory of our children's lives by changing how we think and feel with our money.
• 5:43
  Erin Gray: You know nobody's actually talking about.
• 5:45
  Erin Gray: How do we create create, you know, financial freedom beyond just saving for retirement.
• 5:51
  Erin Gray: How do we manage our money without feeling overwhelmed and guilty?
• 5:55
  Erin Gray: How do we make financial decisions that feel empowering instead of stressful?
• 5:59
  Erin Gray: Like this is not stuff that most.
• 6:02
  Erin Gray: Maybe it's coming around because you have more people who are connected and their consciousness has has risen.
• 6:09
  Erin Gray: But I don't think a lot of the financial industry is really talking about how to do, how to do the tactical 3d part, how to build your wealth and marrying the 5d of with ease, with trust, with love and appreciation.
• 6:23
  Erin Gray: And I think one of the biggest ones is how do we actually trust ourselves with our money and our financial decisions?
• 6:30
  Erin Gray: We're taught from a very early age right To outsource our decision-making, ask someone else, ask them what they think right, ask our parents, ask our teachers, ask our friends.
• 6:39
  Erin Gray: But like, how often are we training ourselves?
• 6:42
  Erin Gray: Like, what do we want?
• 6:43
  Erin Gray: We're taught to ask our CPA, our financial planner, bank keeper, bookkeepers, you know, and what their opinion is, and they hold that.
• 6:53
  Erin Gray: That advice is valuable, right, and it has merit.
• 6:58
  Erin Gray: But what we tend to not do is we don't then run it through our filter before our final decision is made, right.
• 7:05
  Erin Gray: There have been times where I've been working with the CPA and I have said they have suggested one way and I'm like well, the tax code said it's this and it's up to interpretation and so challenging, versus just taking verbatim of what they say as like fact.
• 7:28
  Erin Gray: And I want to encourage you that, even though that maybe we weren't taught these skills, that doesn't mean you can't learn them now.
• 7:34
  Erin Gray: You know, I always say if we can figure out how to be a parent, we can definitely figure out how to be with our money.
• 7:39
  Erin Gray: And if you aren't a parent, you know it still applies to you.
• 7:42
  Erin Gray: There are things that you have figured out in your life that you didn't know beforehand, that you know now, and we can totally do this with money.
• 7:49
  Erin Gray: So I'm gonna go through and name the.
• 7:53
  Erin Gray: You know let's just call it top financial skills that I wish that we were taught.
• 7:58
  Erin Gray: And then how do we get to learn them now?
• 8:01
  Erin Gray: So one, how to confidently manage cashflow.
• 8:06
  Erin Gray: You know, a lot of times when I talk to women they will look at their bank balance or not.
• 8:13
  Erin Gray: Actually, they won't look at their bank balance, they just hope for the best, or they'll look at it and then they'll just see what they have in their account.
• 8:19
  Erin Gray: And I think you know true financial confidence comes from knowing exactly what's coming in and going out right, knowing your numbers in your financial life excuse me, in your personal life and also your business.
• 8:32
  Erin Gray: So you can create.
• 8:36
  Erin Gray: I always say I have CEO time on Mondays at 10 AM.
• 8:39
  Erin Gray: I also have weekend check-ins with my personal money.
• 8:44
  Erin Gray: You know, create a CEO money check-in.
• 8:47
  Erin Gray: Create, like, what kind of check-in do you want to create for yourself, for your business and your personal finances, where you review your income and your expenses every month?
• 8:58
  Erin Gray: I always recommend you know for clients that they start here, like I think you should start.
• 9:06
  Erin Gray: If you're not doing it on a consistent basis, I think you need to be doing it on a weekly basis, or maybe even daily, because there's a reason why you're not doing it.
• 9:16
  Erin Gray: And so it gives you the opportunity, like, think about if you were to check it every day.
• 9:20
  Erin Gray: That gives you seven times a week to check in with your body.
• 9:23
  Erin Gray: And what are you feeling?
• 9:24
  Erin Gray: What are those emotions and sensations that you're feeling with your body?
• 9:29
  Erin Gray: That as you're checking your bank account, as you're looking at your numbers, and what we also want to do is get to a place of neutrality, so when you open up your bank account, you aren't feeling that jarring feeling in your body.
• 9:45
  Erin Gray: Okay, so we're building up our capacity with our nervous system to just be with our money, and this is a skillset of being the person who looks and pays attention to her money.
• 9:57
  Erin Gray: Right, who is the woman that pays attention to her money?
• 10:00
  Erin Gray: We always say we want more money, but are we taking care of the money that we have now?
• 10:03
  Erin Gray: Sometimes the answer is no.
• 10:05
  Erin Gray: It's not a place where we need to shame and guilt ourselves if that's the answer, and also we can do differently right?
• 10:12
  Erin Gray: Who's the person that, whatever number you're wanting to have, how is she interacting with her money?
• 10:19
  Erin Gray: She has to start doing that right now.
• 10:21
  Erin Gray: You know we're taught to work for money right, trading our time for dollars versus creating income streams and assets that will fund our lifestyle.
• 10:31
  Erin Gray: You know, I think business is one of our biggest assets because it's our mind right, our mindset, our systems in place, our assets that we're building, that that is a big asset for us.
• 10:49
  Erin Gray: You know there are other types of investments, like the stock market or real estate or whatever else you might be investing in, but I just want to encourage you to get curious, like what types of investments do you actually want to become interested in?
• 11:03
  Erin Gray: I used to invest in the stock market and that is one of the ways that we generated our wealth, and that is one of the ways that we generated our wealth.
• 11:15
  Erin Gray: And then, once I started to kind of diving in more to the stock market, who's actually controlling some of those bigger stocks, how it really works, all the behind the scenes I don't know right now if that's a strategy that I want to continue to use.
• 11:27
  Erin Gray: Moving forward, may I will.
• 11:30
  Erin Gray: I maybe possibly make a different decision in six months or a year, yes, but at the time currently, as I record this, april 2025, we've decided to use our money, I should say, or invest our money a little bit differently, just because of the way that the stock market has been.
• 11:51
  Erin Gray: So start with basic stuff, right?
• 11:59
  Erin Gray: Ask your financial planner questions that you may not understand.
• 12:00
  Erin Gray: Make them explain why they have you in these specific funds.
• 12:03
  Erin Gray: How often are they reallocating for you?
• 12:05
  Erin Gray: What is their plan and your plan for these investments?
• 12:08
  Erin Gray: How are they tax favorable, like?
• 12:10
  Erin Gray: There's so many questions that you get to ask because they are working with you.
• 12:14
  Erin Gray: And if you're like, oh, I don't wanna do that, I don't enjoy that, then I have to ask you, why are you investing that way then?
• 12:21
  Erin Gray: If that doesn't light you up, if you're not excited about it, then what do you wanna invest in that feels really good?
• 12:27
  Erin Gray: Are you investing in the market because someone said that's what you should do, or are you investing in the market because you love it and you're genuinely curious about it and you want to learn more?
• 12:37
  Erin Gray: The third one is just how to break free from scarcity mindset.
• 12:40
  Erin Gray: I know I feel like sometimes I'm like talking like a broken record, but I think that this is so important because if you grew up hearing things like it's so expensive or we can't afford that, then those beliefs you know, basically, between the time that we're born until about age seven or eight, we are just absorbing.
• 12:58
  Erin Gray: So everything from everyone around us, obviously our parents, cause we're with them the most.
• 13:04
  Erin Gray: So those beliefs that just went into our subconscious up until age seven, if we aren't aware of them, that's the program that we're running and that is what will create our financial reality.
• 13:17
  Erin Gray: So, starting now, rewiring your mindset right, questioning those old beliefs, finding evidence of the opposite that is true, replacing them with more sufficient and abundant ways of thinking.
• 13:31
  Erin Gray: Become the watcher of your thoughts, right?
• 13:34
  Erin Gray: We have, we're the only species that has the ability to actually think about what we're thinking about, right?
• 13:42
  Erin Gray: So become that person who thinks about what you're thinking about and what your body is actually feeling when you interact with your money.
• 13:53
  Erin Gray: Start practicing daily new thoughts that are conducive to a woman that not only has the money in her bank account and investments, but truly feels wealthy.
• 14:05
  Erin Gray: What does wealth actually feel like in your body?
• 14:08
  Erin Gray: Not how much you have in your bank account and then I'm wealthy.
• 14:11
  Erin Gray: What does that actually feel like in your body with ease?
• 14:14
  Erin Gray: Number four is you know how do we get to start spending guilt-free, right, and still build our wealth.
• 14:21
  Erin Gray: I think so often we're taught to either save everything or it's like this pendulum swing right Either there are some of us that like spend recklessly or just without awareness I don't want to say recklessly, but we spend without awareness or there's those of us that really save and invest a lot or over save and there's a balance right.
• 14:46
  Erin Gray: Spending with intention is key, creating a values-based spending plan where your money flows towards what matters to you.
• 14:58
  Erin Gray: And I really like to look at it as my money flows.
• 15:01
  Erin Gray: My money flows on things that I care about.
• 15:04
  Erin Gray: Right, and think about that trickle effect of when I use my money.
• 15:08
  Erin Gray: Let's just say, if you go out to eat and you spend time with your family, my money is.
• 15:10
  Erin Gray: Let's just say, if you go out to eat and you spend like time with your family, like my money is getting to circulate because I got to spend time with my family, the server had helped us and that money gets to go to them and then they get to use it in a way that feels fun for them.
• 15:26
  Erin Gray: So really starting to spend your money in ways that you find value and they're going to look different, you know, than someone else's, or even your, even your spouses, and that's okay, I think, allowing yourself, each of you, to have your own spending plan on things that you value.
• 15:47
  Erin Gray: So maybe it's starting small If you're someone who never spends money on themselves.
• 15:51
  Erin Gray: I was talking to a girlfriend and she's like I don't know if she said she'd never gotten a pedicure or she just hasn't gotten one in years.
• 15:57
  Erin Gray: But if that's something that's important to you and you're not doing, starting to do that on a consistent basis, allocating funds so that you can spend that money guilt-free.
• 16:08
  Erin Gray: So obviously, be kind to your nervous system.
• 16:11
  Erin Gray: If you're not spending any money and then you want to start spending $1,000 a month, that may be too big of a jump, right?
• 16:16
  Erin Gray: But maybe $100 a month for each of you to see how that feels Just start doing it.
• 16:22
  Erin Gray: Start using and allocating some amount of money for you that you get to have just for you, same thing with your spouse, and what this will do is you'll see really quickly what stories you have around spending on yourself and not your kids, right?
• 16:37
  Erin Gray: I think a lot of times we have mom guilt, which is a social construct completely made up, but we have mom guilt around spending on ourselves and not our kids, and that's going to bring up those feelings, those lower vibration emotions of feeling shame or guilt, and that is coming up to be healed, to be transcended and worked through right.
• 16:59
  Erin Gray: It's an invitation for you to go deeper and to see what stories and beliefs here that are creating this feeling of shame and guilt.
• 17:08
  Erin Gray: And the last one is how to build financial freedom on your own terms.
• 17:12
  Erin Gray: I have mentioned in previous episodes I don't believe financial freedom is a number.
• 17:18
  Erin Gray: It's not just about saving for retirement.
• 17:21
  Erin Gray: It's about creating options and flexibility and choice, and I think the financial industry has been conditioned to have us believing that we're going to make a lot of money, invest it and then retire.
• 17:34
  Erin Gray: And I don't necessarily know if I agree with this.
• 17:38
  Erin Gray: I think this might be some of the most limiting advice.
• 17:42
  Erin Gray: When we act from this space, right, we assume that we will never work again.
• 17:47
  Erin Gray: I mean, wasn't Betty White the one that, like, worked and she passed away?
• 17:51
  Erin Gray: Like, when you're doing work you love, why are we retiring?
• 17:55
  Erin Gray: You know, when we act from this space, we assume we're never going to work again, that this money that we're creating now has to last us until we die, and that just feels very limiting, nevermind what we're telling our bodies about when we retire, right, if we're thinking about, okay, well, when we retire, then the next stage is death.
• 18:19
  Erin Gray: What are we prepping our bodies for?
• 18:21
  Erin Gray: So, if we're working to invest and accumulate to finally get to do what we really want to do, if this resonates with you, then the question is why aren't we doing that right now?
• 18:34
  Erin Gray: Why aren't we enjoying what we have right now and working and doing work we love right now?
• 18:40
  Erin Gray: Like one of the questions I used to ask my clients when I was getting clear on, you know, their financial plan was what do you want to do in retirement?
• 18:51
  Erin Gray: And they would share with me and I would always be curious of like, well, why aren't we doing some of that right now?
• 18:58
  Erin Gray: Right, if your answer is I'm going to start doing X, y, z kind of work, then the question then becomes why aren't we doing that right now?
• 19:05
  Erin Gray: Which that's going to bring up limiting beliefs.
• 19:07
  Erin Gray: If the question, if the answer is you know, I want to travel more, well, why aren't we traveling more right now?
• 19:14
  Erin Gray: I think one of the biggest ahas I mean, I always say one of the biggest ahas but I think one thing that I really have thought about, as my parents have started to I don't like to say the word age, as they've been around the sun more than I have is that there are different seasons of our life, like what might you be able to do right now that you may not be able to do when you're 80 or even want to do Right?
• 19:43
  Erin Gray: So I think, really starting to get some clarity around.
• 19:48
  Erin Gray: Am I prolonging something I mean?
• 19:50
  Erin Gray: So many times I hear people be like well, when I retire, I'm going to go travel Europe.
• 19:53
  Erin Gray: Well, are you going to be in the best health, which I believe I will be.
• 19:58
  Erin Gray: But if you're holding off because you think sometime in the future is better, I just want to encourage you and challenge that line of thinking and really asking yourself what can I do right now that maybe I may or may not be able to do at 10 or 15, 20 years from now?
• 20:20
  Erin Gray: You know I talk about how we took off with our daughter and, yes, do I think that there will be more opportunities for us to do that?
• 20:28
  Erin Gray: Absolutely.
• 20:29
  Erin Gray: Do I also think she's getting into a place where she's going to get into high school?
• 20:33
  Erin Gray: I mean, she's already started.
• 20:34
  Erin Gray: She's like mom, I don't want to travel like as much as you want to like.
• 20:37
  Erin Gray: I want to stay and I want to be in school the entire time.
• 20:40
  Erin Gray: I'm in school.
• 20:41
  Erin Gray: So there was a window of opportunity that we got to have because she didn't really care too much about school and friends, but now she really does.
• 20:50
  Erin Gray: So what are some things that you may might be prolonging or, you know, pushing off to some later date, that maybe it might not be as easy or you might not be in that state of mind to do it at some point later down the road?
• 21:08
  Erin Gray: So define what financial freedom actually looks like for you.
• 21:12
  Erin Gray: It's not a number, right.
• 21:14
  Erin Gray: It's about how you want to feel about money.
• 21:16
  Erin Gray: Okay, so to recap one, how to confidently manage our cashflow with ease, how do we make money work for us, how do we break free from scarcity mindset, how to spend guilt-free and still build our wealth, and then how to build financial freedom on our own terms.
• 21:39
  Erin Gray: Start looking and playing with these in a way that feels good for you, and I want you to know if this episode resonated with you, if it spoke to you, that you are not behind, no matter where you are.
• 21:57
  Erin Gray: Right now you can learn these skills and we can shift the trajectory of our financial future and if this is something that you want one-on-one support with, I would love and be honored to walk beside you along this journey.
• 22:13
  Erin Gray: You can schedule a link in my show notes or you can go to my website generatealifewelllivedcom.
• 22:20
  Erin Gray: Click on the link, work with me and schedule a call.
• 22:23
  Erin Gray: We will dive in for that first hour.
• 22:26
  Erin Gray: You know, looking at your goals, what you want to create, gain financial clarity around where you are and then work towards that together.
• 22:33
  Erin Gray: Okay, I'll see you in the next episode.
• 22:40
  Erin Gray: Did you learn something today?
• 22:41
  Erin Gray: Do you know another female entrepreneur who might be avoiding her money?
• 22:43
  Erin Gray: Will you send this episode over to her for me and, if you have it in you, please leave me a review for this podcast.
• 22:50
  Erin Gray: It helps the show grow and I love hearing from you.
• 22:52
  Erin Gray: See you next week.