Are you tired of constantly feeling the pressure to keep up with society's expectations of material possessions and experiences? Do you want to achieve financial freedom but don't know where to start? In this episode, guest speaker Shang Saavedra shares her personal journey of achieving financial freedom through a focus on reducing expenses and investing wisely.
But it's not just about the money. Shang emphasizes the connection between mental health and financial health and how reframing your mindset can lead to a happier and more fulfilling life. By aligning your core values with your financial goals, you can prioritize what truly brings you joy and let go of the pressure to conform to others' expectations.
So how can you start your own journey towards financial freedom and improved mental health? Shang provides actionable tips such as forgiving yourself for past mistakes, learning about personal finance, and taking action even when scared. She also encourages open and honest conversations about money to lift the veil of shame and help people learn from each other's experiences.
Don't let society's expectations dictate your happiness. Take control of your finances and your mental health by reframing your mindset and aligning your values with your goals. Tune in to this episode for more practical advice and inspiring stories of personal motivation and perseverance.
Get a sample chapter of my book: "How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps: A Modern Asian American Guide."
LIKE WHAT YOU HEARD?
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts! It helps our message get in front of more people. Here's how:
Step 1: Go to https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1554330617
Step 2: Click “View on Apple Podcasts”
Step 3: Click “Ratings and Reviews”
Step 4: Click to rate and leave a short review!
Are you tired of constantly feeling the pressure to keep up with society's expectations of material possessions and experiences? Do you want to achieve financial freedom but don't know where to start? In this episode, guest speaker Shang Saavedra shares her personal journey of achieving financial freedom through a focus on reducing expenses and investing wisely.
But it's not just about the money. Shang emphasizes the connection between mental health and financial health and how reframing your mindset can lead to a happier and more fulfilling life. By aligning your core values with your financial goals, you can prioritize what truly brings you joy and let go of the pressure to conform to others' expectations.
So how can you start your own journey towards financial freedom and improved mental health? Shang provides actionable tips such as forgiving yourself for past mistakes, learning about personal finance, and taking action even when scared. She also encourages open and honest conversations about money to lift the veil of shame and help people learn from each other's experiences.
Don't let society's expectations dictate your happiness. Take control of your finances and your mental health by reframing your mindset and aligning your values with your goals. Tune in to this episode for more practical advice and inspiring stories of personal motivation and perseverance.
Get a sample chapter of my book: "How to Disappoint Your Parents in 10 Shameless Steps: A Modern Asian American Guide."
LIKE WHAT YOU HEARD?
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts! It helps our message get in front of more people. Here's how:
Step 1: Go to https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1554330617
Step 2: Click “View on Apple Podcasts”
Step 3: Click “Ratings and Reviews”
Step 4: Click to rate and leave a short review!
Speaker 1 (00:00:02) - Welcome to the Fuck Saving Face podcast where we're empowering mental and emotional health for Asian Americans and voices of color by breaking through taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Make your story beautiful today in case you're new to this show. My name is Judy Sway and I'm the founder of Wild Hearted Words. We are a strategic branding and content marketing agency and we focus on working with female entrepreneurs of color to create sustainable six figure success. If you'd like to experience what it's like to work with me, you can sign up for my latest masterclass that's available on my website@wildheartedwords.com slash shop. It's called Overcoming Challenges and Traumas through Mindset Shifts and Manifestation. And when you sign up for the audio course that's about an hour, you'll also get a bonus PDF filled with incredible affirmations that you can practice every day to welcome in the life you'd like to have for a limited time. The course is now only $19. Again, go to wild heart awards.com/shop now onto the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:01:12) - I'm very excited for today's episode because we have Shung Savira here today. And so if you were on Instagram, I encourage you to pull it up right now. Go to Save My Cents, . I've been following her for some time and just really loved her story of being able to get to where she is now in her financial, I guess we'll say financial freedom in a way. , and then, you know, talking about mental health and really giving people actionable strategies to achieve their own goals based on what's important to them. And so, you know, this whole time I've also loved following you because you're a child of immigrants, that you are Asian American and that, you know, I think that there's such nuance that isn't really brought to the forefront that we don't really know about until someone puts it into words. And so before we got into this episode, I was sharing with Chung that, you know, one of the most powerful posts that I saw was about how she shared a story about someone.
Speaker 2 (00:02:08) - She doesn't name who it is and like the different trials and tribulations they had to go through and all of the loss and all of the, you know, kind of like devastating things that might have happened in their lives or that happened in their lives. And then how they triumphed where they are now. And at the end she reveals that it's her family, it's her parents, you know, it was her father's story, her mother's story. And that felt very powerful to me. Cuz I think oftentimes, especially in, you know, the Asian culture that I grew up with, your parents are like put on a pedestal or they're here and you're supposed to have this philio piety to respect them. So not seeing them as full people, but only as like the tiger parents that they were to meet. So I think that that was such a beautiful story of how you humanized that whole experience and then kind of revealed like if someone can go through all of these challenges and still arrive here now that other people can do it as well. So that's a very long-winded introduction. . I'm gonna turn it over to Shung to share about your, uh, story and how you are, how you got here now.
Speaker 3 (00:03:10) - Thank you so much, Judy. Hi everyone. I'm Shung and my story is that of an immigrant story. So I arrived in the United States when I was 10 years old with my parents. Before then we'd left China when I was three. Moved to Switzerland and Netherland and then the us. So lots of cultural changes in between. My father is a professor, so that's why we moved as this job changed and in the US my parents, you know, landed in a good middle class spot and they were very humble. They worked very hard and I was extremely lucky that they were able to save and invest and pay for my college education at Harvard fully funded. And from that, that gave me a really strong financial footing coming out of college to basically pursue, you know, whatever I wanted to do for work. I started out as a management consultant and have evolved since then.
Speaker 3 (00:04:09) - And over the years I began to really focus on being very financially literate. Mm. Reducing my expenses. Actually the more money I made, the the more I tried to reduce my expenses, saved all that difference, invested it and reached the ability to be work optional when I was 31 years old. Meaning that I didn't have to work another day in my life if I didn't want to. Mm-hmm. . And now I'm 36 and I teach the concepts of how to get there to everybody on my Instagram account. Save my sense now. So my website, but really it's about making the connection between mental health and financial health.
Speaker 2 (00:04:50) - Mm-hmm . And I think that the way that you do it is, you know, if I can say like it's not like the sexy, glamorous way that people like tout all over the place. You know about like, especially with the world of crypto now and you know, all these things like all the hype around it, you did it through like diligent hard work. So I'd love to hear more about how you started making that connection and then, I don't know, reframing some of the ideas around money. I think that a lot of people, I just heard this term yesterday when I was talking with one of the close people in my life about like being, you know, house rich and cash poor and then also I always talk about like I live in North County San Diego so I'm surrounded by a level of wealth and you know that it's not cl a clear representation of what most people in the world live through. So I'd love for you to like kind of dispel any myths or share some of the core philosophies in the way that you teach.
Speaker 3 (00:05:43) - Yeah, I was very quiet about my frugality through most of my life because it's not something that people celebrate. No. It's not something that people wanna put out there for others to know. And I was surrounded by wealth as well. I went to Harvard. Mm-hmm of all places for my undergrad. I went to University of Chicago booth for my mba. Two great schools that produced people who have really great income earning potential as a management consultant. I myself was making six figures and my bosses were making seven figures. Mm-hmm , I was surrounded by people who had very big income potential. But I think in both the Asian society as well as the American society, we equate income potential with spending potential. Mm-hmm We assume that people who make a lot of money should be entitled to spend a lot of money as well.
Speaker 3 (00:06:34) - And there's also a lot of people who don't make a lot of money but wanna spend a lot of money. There's that too. And so I would see people around me eat out a lot. I'm a huge foodie, so going to great restaurants, beautiful vacations, great fashion. I live in the hard in New York City. So yeah. I see the latest and greatest in fashion all the time. Got that hottest new handbag, everything. . And I did the math and my husband who's even more frugal than I am when we got married, he said, Sean, what if we exited the two income trap? Mm-hmm , what if instead of keeping up with the Joneses, we said we wanna buy ourselves freedom. That instead of worrying about covering childcare, worrying about getting two amazing jobs all the time, worrying about unemployment, we just learned to live off of the lower of our two incomes for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 3 (00:07:23) - Such that we would never fear unemployment. That was the start of the idea. And both of us had already been pretty good with our money up to them. We both learned from great examples. He from his mother, I from both of my parents. But I had to be the ones to call back because I grew up with more. Yeah. I would say outward consumption. And this is how the, and I didn't create this concept, but the concept of I get to, which is turn everything you feel like is an I have to in your life to an I get to mm-hmm , instead of saying I have to get up and go to work, you say I get to get up and go to work instead of, oh I have to live in this rundown apartment with bad plumbing and no dishwasher. My very first apartment in New York City, I get to live in this below market, rent apartment and save money. And so I started looking literally at every area of my life and reframing that. So just included housing, transportation, food, my clothing, how I approach travel. I think all in all I made like transitions in like 55 areas of my life to really pair back and say I am happy with what I got right now and I'm gonna go invest the difference.
Speaker 2 (00:08:38) - That's amazing because I think that that takes such personal initiative to go against the grain of what society and your immediate surroundings are teaching you. I was just saying the other day that you know, I think we forget that we have the option to opt out of what people think is true and people think is like right or good. Like we can actually say like, okay, no, like I see what you're saying but I'm gonna pave my own path. But it requires so much personal self will. So how have you encouraged people to kind of reframe their mind around it and have that kind of mental health to think that having the ability to be free or to feel safe and secure is more valuable than whatever pretty vacation you can take on Instagram and not to knock vacations. I love vacations. , I love being in beautiful places. So yeah. .
Speaker 3 (00:09:28) - Yeah. And I thi I see this in both American and Asian societies. Humans incorrectly correlate beautiful things and experiences with happiness. Mm-hmm and that's why Instagram is so addictive. And also now TikTok is that you see the beautiful lives that people choose to craft on these platforms and you assume that just because their clothes look great, their travel looks amazing, their food looks good, they must be happy. Mm-hmm . And while experiencing those things can bring temporary happiness, if that's how you define your life, by then you are always gonna be wanting to chase the next bigger better thing. And honestly, those things can only bring enough enjoyment up to a certain point than anything more after that psychology has shown does not add all that much more to your enjoyment. And rather it's so important to, instead of looking outward and being defined by whatever our cultures, our friends, our families, what other people are saying should make you happy. You need to look inward and say, I'm going to choose what defines joy for myself. I'm going to choose that and I'm going to commit to that. And who cares what other people say about how I choose to live my life.
Speaker 2 (00:10:47) - Hmm. Yeah. I'm a mentor with the founder institute in here in San Diego and there's chapters all around the world, but I get to work with different founders at different levels and stages of their business. And so when they're asking about marketing and branding and all that stuff, I always tell them it's so vital to go back to your foundation and to look at your core values and to make sure that your core values are aligned with what it is that you're trying to create. And then that makes everything else that you're doing moving forward so much easier. But I don't think that that's a practice that we are really encouraged to do to define our core values truly by what's important to us. Cuz I think it requires a level of digging deeper and that's hard work. And so , I don't think, you know, just to even find the time to do it and then to take the time to do it.
Speaker 2 (00:11:31) - But one of the things that I love learning when I was becoming a yoga teacher and just really diving more into like healing and psychology and all that kind of stuff is you have to go deeper. Like, and that's where your core truth is when you shed away the layers of, you know, I think having this is gonna make me happy or like whatever. It's like what are you actually trying to get to underneath it all? What's the most important thing I wanted to ask you, you were featured in time and you know, it said to become a millionaire had to unlearn what my Chinese parents taught me. So I'm curious as to, you know, what, what you had to do because you also said that your parents set up a great template for you and a great model. So can you share a little bit about that?
Speaker 3 (00:12:11) - Yeah, well I am very grateful to my parents for many things. One, for really drilling it into my head that it is important to get a job that pays because money does make a lot of things happen and I don't deny that you do need money to survive in this world . But I think where we differ a little bit is that my parents tend to define themselves by their work. Mm-hmm and I've been pushing to say, you're not defined by your work, you're, you're great just as you are. And I'm a Protestant Christian. My parents are also too, but I think my parents are more, even more influenced by their immigrant Chinese culture in that everybody's is always up in your business trying to say, Hey what, what are you doing with your job? How is your kids doing? Are you sending your kids to Harvard?
Speaker 3 (00:12:58) - And so all that. Whereas I was just like, look, you know, part of the freedom that comes with investing a lot earlier on is that now I can choose to do whatever work I want to do. Mm-hmm. , I'm still a working mom, I still work a corporate job, but it's actually a corporate job. I really enjoy, believe it or not, a lot of people hate on corporate nine five, but I happen to have the freedom to walk away from the high pressure of management consulting and say I'm doing this for, for the enjoyment of it. So that's number one is not really feeling like you have to live up to a certain expectation for your career. Mm-hmm . Then the other one that I think is decidedly much more American for me is self-advocacy. My parents always said Don't brag about your accomplishments.
Speaker 3 (00:13:42) - Don't be the grass blade that sticks up or you'll get mowed down. You know, all those, all those phases don't, don't speak up unless you're asked to. And then I joined the corporate world here and I realized actually you need to be verbal about what you do. Yes you need to self-advocate and sometimes you need to interrupt somebody else in a meeting. That was very hard for me to learn the art of interruption. My goodness that was hard. And to self-promote because you are not necessarily going to move ahead in career just by the merit of how good your work is. It's also about how people perceive you and the relationships that you maintain. And so while my parents hated the political aspect of having a career in the United States, I embraced it and said this is just what you gotta do in this culture if we lived in a different place and I would adapt to whatever that one is. So that was also the unlearning of my Chinese past because I work in an American context.
Speaker 2 (00:14:44) - Hmm. Can you share a bit more about your parents' story? I think it's so powerful about, you know, even on your website you have that they survive the cultural revolution in China. Yeah. And yeah, so I think that, you know, I just did an interview yesterday with a gentleman here in San Diego who, he is a, he's running a nonprofit now, but to hear his life story, you know, he said he grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in San Diego. You know, everyone around him was murdered or died on of a drug overdose. He was like, you know, he was shelter displaced for a really long time. He ended up going to prison, all of these things. And then coming out of it and creating a nonprofit where he's helping children at his former school where he fully acknowledges he was kind of like a tyrant and like bringing like 120 kids through and teaching them culinary skills and teaching them how to have life skills and all of that. I think that it was such a humbling story of knowing, you know, that's real life too for a lot of people. Yeah. So, yeah. Can you share a bit more about your parents' story?
Speaker 3 (00:15:43) - My parents survived a cultural revolution. They were part of the farming class, so they were not the educated class. They starved throughout most of it. They were telling me that their ration was one pound of meat for a month. I'm like, I go through one pound of meat probably like every two days or something. Yeah. And my parents were sent to work on the labor farms away from their parents, uh, in their teenage years. And my father desperately wanted to learn. He loved reading, he loved knowledge. So he studied in secrets. Mm-hmm. He found a, I mean all the schools were closed, but he knew of a teacher in his village and that teacher encouraged him to study in secrets such that when the cultural revolution was over and they reopened the high school examinations, which is kind of like the SATs. And back then the, the school you got into is purely based on your score on the exam.
Speaker 3 (00:16:34) - My father took the exam and back then you had to go to the town hall, whatever to figure out your score cuz nothing's electronic, it's all manual and typed up he couldn't find his name. Now granted there's 10 million people in this province, so it's really hard to find your name. And then somebody nudged him saying your name's at the top of the list, you're number one outta 10 million. So my dad, wow. My dad got a full ride to his dream college and then from there he decided that he wanted to work outside of China and so on and so forth. And really, you know, a professor salary, it's good but it's not a corporate salary by any means. But on a professor salary, he was able to provide for my mom and I, my mom didn't work full-time and pay for my college tuition and nowadays my parents are worth eight figures.
Speaker 2 (00:17:22) - Wow. That's amazing. And that was through their own learning and their own, you know, personal motivation.
Speaker 3 (00:17:31) - Yep. My, my mom went to college as well and she worked from time to time like when I was a little bit older and didn't need to be looked after and then she decided to retire early cuz she really didn't wanna work anymore. But my dad still works so.
Speaker 2 (00:17:45) - Wow. That's incredible. You know, you actually reminded me as you were saying that story. I totally forgotten that my dad told me. You know, for people who don't know and maybe a lot of the listeners do know because your parents might have been in similar situations where you had to test into a school and the school that you got into definitely represented your status within the community because there were levels of how good the university was. But my dad had suffered a brain injury when he was young that, you know, was undiagnosed and like didn't like that wasn't a thing that people talked about, you know, just so he had this invisible injury that made him from like a good student to a remedial student essentially. And my grandmother, who I loved dearly and who's very different to us than she was to her own five children, just didn't know what to do with him.
Speaker 2 (00:18:28) - And so used corporal punishment to try, try to get him in line, but like his brain was just not functioning. And so then there was an instructor like you know, similar in the school who took to him and taught him Chinese calligraphy. And so he ended up learning it and became a beautiful art for him. And then he was able to excel and this teacher taught him how to study and taught him how to do all these things. So by the time that he was testing to get into university, he actually got into, you know, the higher level university that he wanted to get into. And then he was walking around in the community and his older brother was very, very smart, very like you know, well respected in the community and he had one of those shoulder bags with the name of the university on the side and the people in the community, speaking of people getting into each other's business, like another mom was just like, you should be ashamed of yourself for wearing that shoulder bag. You know that that's your brothers, it's not yours. And he's like, no it's mine. I got into this school. You know, and just to like think about those personal triumphs that they also went through is remarkable. So I think that that's phenomenal for anyone who wants to have like key takeaways from this conversation. What are some of the just basic steps that you would share to get people to start thinking about their finances in a different way?
Speaker 3 (00:19:39) - Yeah, it's very easy for people who don't feel that their finances are in a good place, that they would feel shame about their past. Mm-hmm. and that is exacerbated by the fact that we don't talk about money in Yeah. America. Now I do feel like in an Asian culture it's a little bit less of a taboo subject, but it doesn't mean that we don't carry shame with it. . No. We love to go shame on you bag money. Yeah. And honestly there's a lot of people who come into situations that are completely not of their fault. Like your father with his brain injury. Mm-hmm , I've coached a lot of women who are single mothers. Yes. Divorce is a huge, huge life-changing experience that can also put you into an incredible amount of debt from the legal proceedings. Yeah. And people who had no choice but to take on uh, college loans because their parents can't afford people who got into bad healthcare situations.
Speaker 3 (00:20:36) - Wellbeing not covered by insurance and you have a five, six figure medical bill. I've definitely coached those people too. Mm-hmm. . So whatever your financial situation is, even if you feel broke, stop beating yourself up about it first of all. Mm-hmm. that. I think that's step number one. Like basic, like forgive yourself cuz if you don't forgive yourself, you're gonna carry that baggage from the past Mm. Into whatever actions you're going to try to take to improve your situation. And you likely would end up making the same mistakes or continue to shoot yourself in the foot because you're carrying that emotional baggage. So forgiveness number one, then number two, even if you have not been educated about personal finance doesn't mean it's too late for you to get started. Yeah. that, there's a really amazing joke, one of my personal finance friends made on her personal finance Instagram.
Speaker 3 (00:21:26) - It is, well nobody taught you how to do personal finance girlfriend. No one taught you how to have sex, don't know how to do it. Anyway, and oh my gosh, it cracked me up. Mm-hmm , it cracked me up and, and I think it speaks the point like if it really matters to you, you'll figure out how to do it. And there's so many amazing free resources. I'm not talking about sex, but Sure. Mm-hmm . Um, there's free resources on how to learn how to budget and manage our money, et cetera. So number two, you can totally learn it. It's not rocket size, it doesn't require anything more than high school math, which I assume most people in this country do have that. Mm-hmm . Then number three, you know, don't be afraid to also do things scared. It's actually a mantra that I say do it scared people say, I've never invested before.
Speaker 3 (00:22:12) - Before. I said that's great. Do it scared. Do it anyway. Or I've never figured out how to grow an emergency fund. That's okay. Do it scared but do it anyway. We're so scared of, because we perceive ourselves as having made mistakes in the past. We're so scared of making them again. And I say it's only truly a failure if you let it be. Mm. But if you start seeing all of your past perceived mistakes and failures as they're just stepping stones, they're just lessons I need to learn along the way to evolve and I'm gonna continue to make progress, but it's okay not to be perfect. That's what I encourage. Mm-hmm . So number one, forgive yourself. Number two you can learn it. And number three, do it scared.
Speaker 2 (00:22:57) - Those are great tips. I love those actionable items. And for sure, like I think that if we all talked about money more openly, I feel like a lot of that shame would get lifted and removed if we actually saw the truth behind, you know, the facade of what people present. And if we remember that most of us are walking around with those stories in our head, like, why are we not having more open and honest conversations about it Before we go, I would love to ask you about just this idea of frugality. Cuz again, I think I wanna come back to it just because it's not something that people talk about a lot . And I think that, you know, there's other money mentors out there who say like, oh you don't need to skimp and not have your five, well now it's probably like $7 latte or whatever. It's . So you know, can you tell us like more about just this idea of frugality and how to try it on, how to reframe our stories around it, how to use it to our advantage? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:23:51) - You know, well funny you mentioned this because two days ago I got a troll message. I always, I make fun of troll messages I get on Instagram. I guess first of all, people don't know me and I'm like, yeah, you wouldn't say this to somebody in their face if you walk street . They said, Sean, why are you so frugal while you're still a millionaire? You must leave a sad life. Oh and I made a really fun reel. Completely like turning it on its head and stuff. Yeah. And what I'm saying is you don't have to do everything that's someone tells you to do in order to be financially successful, but your wallet and your calendar needs to be aligned with your values. Mm-hmm . So where you spend your money and how you spend your time, are they moving you towards your goals or away from your goals?
Speaker 3 (00:24:39) - Are they, are they moving you towards spending according to your values or are you actually not really thinking about it? That's what I mean by being intentional with your money. Mm-hmm now for me, one of my values is I don't need to spend to be happy and that's why I'm still really, really frugal to this day. But it's frugality by choice, which is better than frugality out of necessity. Totally. Which is the reality for a lot of people. Then number two, I completely agree with a lot of, uh, especially female personal finance creators who say, well frugality seems to be only sold to women. And I agree. We also need to be encouraging women to not just pair down your expenses but also increase your income. I say you gotta do both. You need to pair back your expenses and increase your income to widen that savings gap.
Speaker 3 (00:25:28) - Like create that big savings buffer to invest if you know growing wealth is important to you. But that being said, increasing your income takes time. It takes time to negotiate a promotion or to job search. It took me three months to do my last job search. It's not guaranteed. And there's risk. If you wanna start a new business or side hustle decreasing your expenses, you can do it right away and you get results on day one. Right. It, it happens right away. It's guaranteed there is a floor. It's not like we can all decrease our expenses to zero. I wish we could, but we can't. We gotta pay for life. But that being said, starting with frugality is usually just, it's a good spark and it's a great habit to get into because you can always dial back to it as you work on increasing your income and your investments.
Speaker 2 (00:26:16) - I love that. I think that we've been taught a lot about the value of patients and why that that's so important because also we live in an instant gratification society. So that's another way to like, you can opt out of that. But I don't think that we, I think that's a wonderful way to reframe that. Reducing your expenses is something that can happen immediately. So if you really need that instant gratification, you can, IM immediately start looking at that and pairing it back. And that's so wonderful and I love that you're sharing like that's a core value of yours. You don't need to spend to be happy. And I think that that's a great question to ask yourself for anybody who's listening, like, do you need to spend to be happy? Is this like acquiring of this thing really important? It's something that I'm aiming to encourage with my daughter because you know, she's seven and so she wants to go to the store and like there are things that she wants. And I was like, okay, well you know, like she has money that she gets, she separates them into buckets including give, I think like give is Oh, I love that. I
Speaker 3 (00:27:06) - Think that that's,
Speaker 2 (00:27:07) - Yeah. One of the wonderful things that I saw about you is that one of your goals to create this financial freedom is so that you can be philanthropic with what it is that you wanna do. And I love that. I think that that is such a wonderful motivation to remember that it's not just for like us and like our immediate like people that we care about, but that there's so much more that we can cultivate. So Yeah. You know, like it's interesting to understand psychology. I think you bring that a lot into your work too. So understanding like she is at an age where her brain is in a normal development. So like these bigger concepts and like far off ideas are not gonna be relevant to her. But continually, you know, underscoring that and like, you know, she's bought things before where we've come home and then she like forgets it and I remind her, I'm like, okay, so remember you like sent money on that. You're not really using it anymore. Like what are we gonna do with it now? , I'm so kind of trying to bring that idea home for her.
Speaker 3 (00:27:58) - Yeah, yeah. Because people often assume that someone who's frugal must be poor. Mm-hmm. , I'm like, no, how someone spends has very little correlation with how much money they have. I remember the, the day I went to get the down payment for my current Manhattan home, I mean it's a very significant down payment. I was wearing rip jeans and I think like a radi old t-shirt and I walked to the bank to get the check and a woman looked at me and looked at the bank account and I think like her brain just exploded at that time. Just like , who has this woman sitting in front of me, how does she have so much money in her bank account? But also I, on any day I can choose to dress up in my lubies and nice dresses. You know, it, it goes. But it's just, we, when I, when I went through my very frugal phase initially it did feel shame cuz I was like, I don't look like all my classmates.
Speaker 3 (00:28:45) - I'm not doing what they're doing. I even turned down an invitation to a $60 brunch cuz I was like, well $60 brunch is not in my budget for this month. And then I was like, but I was just worried so much about what other people thought about me. Mm-hmm , what do I think about myself? And I was like, you know what, I, I have a goal, I have a very ambitious goal and I'm gonna make it. And who cares what other people think as long as my husband is on board. Cuz you know, we are a unit so that needs to be worked out. Even my parents thought I would speak too cheap at that point, at some point. So yeah, you gotta ignore the haters on this journey. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:29:18) - , I think I did see that kind of reel that you posted of for years. You didn't tell anybody that this is what you were doing. And I think that that speaks a lot to, you know, just how much pressure we all feel to align ourselves with what other people are doing. So that's such a remarkable like question of, wait, what do I think about myself? It doesn't matter what other people think, if your own view of yourself is not aligned to like, you know, what would be healthiest for you. So I've loved this conversation. I always ask every guest at the end, if you could say fuck saving face to anything, what would you say that about?
Speaker 3 (00:29:55) - I think it's really that, that shame about how you choose or choose not to spend your money. Mm-hmm. your money choices, they're yours. Mm-hmm. unless you, unless somebody else literally has lent you money and is expecting it back , they have no say over how you choose to spend your money. They really don't. It's your money, your choices, everybody else, it's just opinions, but that's it. They don't, opinions don't pay the bills.
Speaker 2 (00:30:21) - Yes. No they don't. . are they gonna give you investments like no . Thank you so much. So if people wanna follow up and continue to learn more with you, where can they find you
Speaker 3 (00:30:32) - On Instagram? I'm very active, so save my sense. Would love to connect with you through dme. Tell me that you heard me on Judy's podcast. I'll be awesome. I'll chat with you. And so follow me there. If you are not on Instagram, I have a website save my sense.com. So I'd love to see you.
Speaker 2 (00:30:50) - That's wonderful. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:30:54) - Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to support me and this show, please go to iTunes and leave your review. It means so much to me and it'll help others find this podcast. I'll catch you in the next episode. And if you'd like to stay in touch between now and then, please visit wild hearted words.com and sign up for my weekly newsletter. I've had people share with me that it's the best thing to arrive in their inbox all week. Aloha.