Single & Struggling – Step 6: Progress through Now Voyager

Single & Struggling – Step 6: Now Voyager (The Transformation)

This is the final step in the Single & Struggling series—and it’s where everything comes together.

After organizing your finances, prioritizing what matters most, breaking the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, and setting realistic goals, you’ve done the hard work. Now it’s time for transformation.

Inspired by the classic film Now, Voyager, this episode is about becoming a fully independent, self-reliant person—someone who takes control of their income, their decisions, and their future.

Jerry walks you through what it means to:

•  Step into your own financial identity 
•  Build income streams you control 
•  Recognize and develop your personal skills 
•  Move from survival mode to intentional living 

From simple ideas—like a neighborhood dog-walking business—to long-term side income strategies, this episode challenges you to ask: What can I do, and how can I use it to build a better life?

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about progress.

You’ve gone from chaos to control. Now it’s time to become the person who stays there.

🎬 Plus: Film inspiration from Mildred Pierce and Now, Voyager that ties the entire journey together in a powerful, memorable way.

💬 Have a question or comment? Contact Jerry here

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The following podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Remember to seek competent tax, legal, and investment advice that is unique to your personal situation. Hey everybody, welcome to the Pink Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jerry Williams. We talk about all things related to money from a queer perspective. And I'm glad you joined me today. And this is the final episode of our single and struggling series. You've done a lot of work and we've made a lot of progress. So again, this is fantastic that we've reached the end of this series. And let me just kind of go back over, like I have done previously, the things that we've been uh working on and the way that we created this process of moving us from chaos to control. But we started by, of course, just gathering all of our bills. We took every document and we sorted them and we put them in their individual piles and we you know organized them so we know exactly what we're looking at, sometimes for the first time ever. But this is even before we set any financial goals, we just wanted to get ourselves a real first hand look at what's happening. And as I mentioned before as well, if you have some of your bills that are online and you don't get an actual paper statement, print that out as well so that we have a complete 360-degree look at everything that is in our world that we pay money to, because that's where we're going, is to organize control and be very specific at how we deploy our money because it's our money and we need to use it very strategically. So we went from our organization and sorting to then taking a look at the most important things, and in this financial triage, this is where we were able to say, these are the most immediate things that I have to tackle right now. And in medical triage, they use a color system, and we're gonna adopt that as well. So we're gonna say red is for we need to take care of this today, and then we use yellow for very urgent, and then we used blue for not as urgent, and then black for everything else. So again, you can use any color system you want, you may not even need colors, what have you. You do you and what makes sense to you, but the same strategy is there, and this is time where you also need to make some difficult phone calls that you may not be comfortable making, but unless somebody else is going to be able to do it for you, you really need to do it for yourself. And I encourage you to do it for yourself because you need to become self-reliant and you need to become the type of person who knows how to handle a conversation that is uncomfortable. And you should always go into it with a plan and a strategy and be organized and be calm and be polite and ask for what you want. You don't ask, you don't get. And mainly what we're asking for is time. Time to get herself organized, time for a little bit of help so that you can get on your feet financially. And so, time in the sense is a commodity that we need to utilize to our benefit. If we are given that time, we don't mess around with that time and go take a vacation or something. This is where we say, I'm gonna knuckle down and I'm gonna do the hard work. And this is one of the most important steps in my mind. So we've taken the red and we've done the best job we can to make sure that we have kept a roof over our head and that we have created the environment that we can live in by making sure we have our water, our heat, everything else that we need for our creature comforts. And then we also took a look at our transportation and made sure that we protect our income by protecting our means to achieve that income. So we have to get to work somehow, and usually that is by driving. You may take the bus, you may take the subway, whatever it is, but other people, most commonly, like us in the suburbs, we have to rely on a car. You live in Texas, you're gonna have to have a car. Anyway, you get the idea. So we protect our income, make sure that our transportation is set up, and then we can worry about some of the other things that we need to worry about, like food, right? And as I mentioned, you can eat any which oil you want, but we don't want to do the DoorDash every day. We don't want to eat McDonald's every day, we need to steer clear of things that are harmful to us, but if we have to go on a robin diet, we have to go on a robin diet. That's just the way it is. But we're not gonna stay in this world forever. This is a temporary situation till we fix what's wrong. Sorry, my allergies are killing me. Everything's in bloom around here, and it's all trying to kill me. Anyway, so that was step two, was our financial triage, and then we moved into step three, which was breaking this paycheck to paycheck cycle, where it is common for 60% of Americans to live in this paycheck by check paycheck world. We don't want to do what is common, we want to move what is into normal. That is having the ability for us to manage our money as we see fit, and we don't live paycheck to paycheck, we use money strategically so that we can deploy it as we see fit. And that usually is creating a safety net for ourselves first so that we have a cash cushion to fall back on if things go south, and then we pay our bills on time every time, every month, and we have a priority how we how we have things structured to pay them. And I always keep saying this, but I think it just bears repeating because I find it so helpful is use AI to your benefit and put all this information in there and help it keep you on track and do the math, etc., for you, so you're not wasting time with spreadsheets and pen and paper. You know, let's not do that because we have more important things to do with our time. Our time is just as important as our income. In fact, I would say it's equally as important. So time is going to be our ally and our friend if we use it appropriately, and that's what we're learning. So we move out of our paycheck, breaking our paycheck to paycheck cycle, and then we're getting now to our goal setting. And this is where you want your goals to be specific and you want them to be measurable, meaning if I'm trying to build an emergency fund of let's say a thousand is my initial starting point, then I'm gonna start doing that by this means. Maybe it's a dollar a day, maybe it's ten dollars every week, whatever it is. So this is your path that you can take a look at and say, my first hundred dollars, yay, keep going. And it builds and builds and builds, and that's how you reach your goal, right? They say, How do you eat an elephant? One spoonful at a time. And this is what you do is you set those goals so that they're realistic. You can't say, I'm gonna save for ten thousand dollars in wind. What universe are you gonna save up ten thousand dollars? Now, maybe that's your long-term goal, right? In three to five years, but short term, that's where we're at, and we're just getting started. So we're not gonna set an unrealistic goal, we're gonna set one that is achievable because that just sets us up for failure, and we're not gonna do that. So they're time-based, they're realistic, they're achievable, and I said, like I said, they're measurable. So this is really where you really need to get specific by the things that are important to you, paying down my debts, creating an emergency fund, making sure I have protection in place. And that also, like I said, is for short-term, long-term disability. If you have it through your work, you are blessed. If you do not have it through your work, it may be something to really explore through any number of insurance companies. It's not cheap, but sometimes it's really worth it. And even if it only pays you 60 to 70 percent of your income, which is very, very likely, then that's 60 to 70 percent of money you would not have otherwise. And does it cover everything? No. That's where again we have that income stream or that cash cushion, whatever it is, so that we can fall back on and make up that difference. Usually you're looking at a 30, 60, 90 day time frame. Long-term disability is just what it says for long-term, short term is just what it says, short term. Everybody has different definitions. Sometimes there's a waiting period, so all that needs to be taken into consideration and goes back to saying create that cash cushion first, pay yourself first. You are as important as everything else, and you are a creditor to yourself. So that's my best advice to you in a way to structure what you're doing, how you're doing, what you're doing. Now in this process of moving us from chaos to control, we've done one, two, three, four, and now we're at five, and we're heading into six. So five is what I call the Mildred Pierce Path to Success. And for you, those of you that haven't listened to the last episode, I encourage you to listen to it. If you haven't watched Mildred Pierce's movie, I encourage you to rent it, stream it, buy it, whatever, because it's a fantastic movie, and Joan Crawford just kills it. And the reason I say again you should watch this is because she creates a means to move herself out of single and struggling into a fully well-rounded person who takes control of her life and she does what she can do best for herself. And we're talking 1940s, whether you think this is pure Hollywood fiction or not, but she takes what she can do best, in this case, making pies, and she goes from just selling them to her neighbors and friends to owning her own restaurant and then a chain of restaurants, and she becomes very successful. So good for her. A lot of other stuff goes on in her world, but that's the reason to watch the movie. It's lot very, very entertaining and very fun. So, Joan Crawford, like I said, is one of the Titans of 1940s, Hollywood, and she had a rivalry with Betty Davis, who was also the Queen of Hollywood, Queen of Warner Brothers Studios, and they made some of the most fantastic movies in my mind that have ever been made. And one of the best movies that Betty Davis did, if you haven't seen it as well, I encourage you to watch it is Now Voyager. Now, now Now Voyager is about Charlotte Vale, and she comes from a wealthy family. And again, I'm not going to spill the beans about the entire movie because it's really, really a very good movie. She didn't win the Academy Award for it, but she should have because it's just an extraordinary movie. Anyway, what happens in Now Voyager is that she goes from this spinster and she is this woman who is not in control of her life, and she moves through the movie and she becomes this different person because she does all the hard work to change how she's seen, how she sees herself, and how she is able to control her own life. So instead of being controlled by others, she is now in control of her life. This is you. This is you going through that same transformation for whatever metaphor you want to use, from you know, caterpillar to butterfly, whatever, Cinderella, you name it, any number of those transformation stories, you could say, yes, that is me. And just like how Mildred pulled herself up by the bootstraps, I really don't even like saying that, so silly, but anyway, you get the idea that she said, What can I do? And this is what I can do, and I'm going to do it, and this is you as well. I encourage you to become a fully well-rounded independent person. You've taken yourself from chaos, followed the steps, done the work, and now you are gaining control of your world. And what that looks like is you being able to say, This is my destiny, this is what I want, and this is how I'm going to get it. Those are, again, very solid future goals that you need to, I would encourage you to define. What does that mean? Create an income stream that I have full control over. Okay, there you go. That's a great goal. What does that mean? I don't know. I need to figure out what I can do best. I'll just give you an example. Now, a lot of people say, you know, I just don't know what I can do. I don't have any, I don't know. Oh, I don't know what I can do. You can do a lot of things. A little girl who's 11 years old in my neighborhood put up posters to dog walk for$6 a walk. And if she can do that at 11 years old, you can do that. Now, I don't know your situation. I don't know if you're capable of doing this. But what I'm saying is even an 11-year-old girl said, What do I have that I can do to make money? And she decided to do that. Another guy that I used to work with years and years ago, I remember I remember him telling me that when he was in college to make extra money, he started washing windows, you know, houses. And he said he grabbed his bucket and his squeegee and off he went. And years later, he was still doing it, even uh, even though now he was married, he had kids, he had a totally different career in the Medicare advanced selling Medicare Advantage products, Medicare supplements, prescription drug plans, that whole thing. So totally different skill set, right? But anyway, the fact is that he was still doing it. He told me that he did originally just single-story residential homes, and then he eventually started doing two-story homes, and then he also started doing some small businesses, and he got a lot of referrals, and he got a lot of repeat customers, and it just kept going on and on and on, and he never gave up because it became an important income stream to him. And he told me that it was actually getting to the point that it was a more uh lucrative income stream for him than his W-2 job, and that even when he decided to quit or retire from the whole Medicare world, which gets a little tiring, then he was just going to continue to expand his business. He had even expanded it to the point that he was selling, I think it was shutters or blinds or something like that. I don't know. But anyway, you get the point as well that he decided to do something early on in his life that he was capable of doing as well, and it turned into a long-term business for him and a very important income stream. This is now Voyager. This is saying I'm moving on the path of progress to becoming who I want to be, a fully, well-rounded, independent person that is able to control my income stream regardless of what happens out there in the world. Because when you're working for other people, right, you don't have control. They tell you when to be there, what to do, how to do it, and what to say when you're doing it. That's a lot of control that you're giving up. If you don't want to be your own small business person, great. That's not for everybody. I completely understand that. But can you do something to develop an income stream that can run alongside what you already do for a living? Again, I say these things all the time. I sound like a broken record, but can you do the DoorDash? Can you do Uber? Can you do any kind of gig work? You know, can you mentor people? Can you tutor people? Can you write for people? You know, on and on and on. I know there are lots and lots of resources out there these days where gig work is a big, big deal. So I would encourage you to explore it because you do need that income. If you can't get a raise at work or promotion in the time that you need, just think about if you had that extra income that you could apply to not only paying down your debt, but to build up that emergency fund. And next thing you know, you're not only doing a dollar a day, you are on your way past that thousand dollars to that five thousand and towards that ten thousand. That is an amazing achievement, and you could get there, you can do it. You decide how bad you want to do it, and if you have other obligations, structure your life so you can achieve this. Doesn't mean you have to divid devote eight hours a day to it, right? You're saying a couple hours a day. That may be achievable. Anyway, all I'm saying is I appreciate you sticking through this whole single and struggling series, and it was because of you that I put this together because you responded to the single and struggling episode that I put out, and I was very surprised. I didn't think that that many people would find that topic very interesting, and lo and behold, to me, it became a very popular episode. So I decided there must be more to this, and you know what? I think that I have forgotten when I was single and struggling, what was it like? What kind of help did I need? What could I have done if I had somebody else to guide me? Because I was bumping along all in the dark, nobody there. Yeah, I had friends who I thought had their stuff together, I'm sure they did, but I was embarrassed to reach out to somebody and say, you know what, I am behind my bills, I don't know what to do, I don't even know how to save money. I didn't even know what living beyond my means means. What does that mean? Well, you know, when you find out in your very first step, one and two, you are living beyond your means. You're not opening your mail, you're behind on your bills, and the wolves are at your door, right? And we then recognize what living beyond your means means. And we're gonna stop doing that, and we're gonna get ourselves under control, and we're gonna live a better life that is organized and controlled by ourselves. Hence, now Voyager, go for it, do what you need to do because you can do it, you're capable of doing it, you have a path, it's right in front of you. Hopefully, you followed it and it's helpful to you. I think that if you change the steps however you want, okay, this is not something that's set in stone. You can do what you want to do with it, but you have the information, it's right in front of you. And if again, you're on a totally different level with your financial life. If you've been listening to this series and you found it helpful or interesting, share it with somebody else. Again, be alike to somebody because helping others helps yourself. That's how we all learn. We all learn from each other. So this is one way that we can say, take a listen to this podcast. Maybe this uh single and struggling series might resonate with you. Hopefully, maybe it'll help you. So why not? Why not, right? And again, watch those two movies, they are so good, they are really, really good. Put a box of tissues in front of you because you're probably gonna need them. Anyway, I hope that you have a great day, and I appreciate you listening, and thank you for being there. And I will talk to you next time. Oh, by the way, before I let you go, this is the end of C season six, by the way, as well. So I will be moving into season seven. I'm gonna be changing things up a little bit, the format's gonna change, etc. But keep an eye out for that, and I will talk to you next time.