Money & Career Mastery: From Overwhelm to Ownership

38. The Value of Time: Shaping Your Legacy // with Suzanne Scullion

• Laura Sexton • Season 1 • Episode 38

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Join us as Laura interviews Suzanne Scullion, the head coach of Grace Financial Coaching. Suzanne shares insights on financial habits, legacy, and the importance of time management. They discuss various topics, including the legacy of parents and grandparents, the value of time over money, and the significance of intentional time and money management.

In this episode you’ll:

·        hear a personal story of legacy

·        learn the impact of time tracking

·        learn the importance of acknowledging mistakes

Listen to my episode of Suzanne’s Podcast: Le$$ons Learned 

Learn more about working with Laura Sexton

· Become a master with your money. Learn more here!

· Checkout the resource library here!

Want to ask a question Laura can answer on the podcast? Connect with her here!

Want to receive a live money or career audit? Apply Here

Send an email to Laura@AccelerateYourLegacy.com or send a DM on Instagram @accelerateyourlegacy

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Laura:

hello, and welcome to the accelerate, your legacy podcast, where we talk all things, money and money mindset. My name is Laura Sexton. I am a trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. My goal with this podcast is to encourage and inspire you. As you set out on a financial journey that eliminates stress and amplifies freedom. Today's the day you stop paying for your past and start saving for your future. If you're looking for more peace in your finances and margin in your budget you've come to the right place. Just a quick note. Before our episode begins, we had a little bit of a technical difficulty. Something happened with the recording, and I do apologize for that, but this message was just too good not to share. So I hope you can forgive us this one time for a little technical mess up. We'll get better at it next time. Hello, Accelerators. Today I have with me Suzanne Scullion. She is the head coach of Grace Financial Coaching for the past seven years. She has helped hundreds of clients build strong financial habits so they can experience a more stable future and carefree life. Her exclusive program is called Grace Technique. Which stands for guidance, resources, accountability, communication, and evaluation. Suzanne is also the host of the YouTube show Lessons Learned, the dumbest thing I've ever done with money. And I have been a guest on that show, so you need to check it out. And just for a fun fact, Suzanne owns and rides a motorcycle and even met her husband at a Harley Davidson dealership. Suzanne, welcome to the show.

Suzanne Scullian:

Hey, Laura, how are you? Good to see you again.

Laura:

I am wonderful. Thank you for being here. Suzanne, I would like to start all of my shows with one question, and that is, who is one person whose legacy you admire or would like to emulate?

Suzanne Scullian:

So I thought about this one for a while. You know, first people come to mind are my parents. Second, but I've actually lost both my parents already. I'm under the age of 40, unfortunately, and they are both no longer with us. Both passed away from cancer. And so, you know, your mind goes there first, knowing really already having received their legacy, right? How many people under the age of 40 can say they know exactly what their parents left them and How all those sacrifices that you made when you were a kid wearing hand me downs, how all of those things came back to you because your parents were so frugal. Then I thought a little bit longer. I thought about my grandparents. Same thing. I distinctly remember my grandparents taking us on vacation. Well, let me rephrase that. The whole family went on vacation. They had six kids and 18 19 grandchildren at this point. Wow. So everybody plans this big vacation. We're living in New York and we were going to the, we're going to the mountains in Pennsylvania and on the last day, we're all checking out. So we're all meeting in the lobby. It's beautiful. You know, wood cabin. It's just gorgeous. And my aunt is sitting in the lobby on the couch crying. I'm like, what is my aunt crying about? My grandparents have paid for everyone without telling us. So when everyone went to check out, their bills had been paid.

Laura:

I just got goosebumps.

Suzanne Scullian:

Great legacies from my parents and my mom's parents, really just two beautiful examples of legacy. But the next person I came across in my mind was actually an old boss of mine. So a million years ago, I worked in professional sports for a professional hockey team. But even prior to getting a paycheck from them, I interned for them. I took an unpaid internship. I don't know if those exist anymore, but I would strongly recommend one if you can get one. I was assigned to a mid level manager at the time. He eventually became my boss when I worked for the team, and to this day I still consider him a mentor. He is now a... Senior, senior, senior executive at an NFL team National Football League team. And he's, I want to say he's produced eight Super Bowls. Like he's produced the entire halftime show. Oh, cool. Big time. He's just always been very reasonable, very realistic. There are no platitudes that come out of his mouth unless he's being sarcastic. Everything is, is mean something when he says it. A couple of years back, several years back now at this point he said this thing to me and luckily I had the foresight to push him on it. He said, we have two finite aspects of our lives that drive us: time and money. And it was kind of in the conversation we were on the phone. I can tell you where I was standing. I was at a gas station pumping gas. It was just a very poor timing for a phone call, but I just remember thinking to myself, like, okay, well, what does that mean? And I asked him, I pushed him on it and. You know, it's just not an answer that I think a lot of young females would, would garner from an older mentor, right? So many times these days you know, females are encouraged to seek female mentors. Men are encouraged to seek older male mentors. And I'm really glad I had this relationship with him. Push him and get a little more information. And he continued by saying, a lot of people weigh money as the most important thing in our lives. And But time is actually the most important. Time is truly your most valuable asset because you cannot buy time and man that really hit home.

Laura:

I think that's funny because I actually close out every show saying thank you for spending your most valuable resource your time working on yourself today because I can buy a lot of stuff, and I can go get more money, but once time is spent, it's completely gone.

Suzanne Scullian:

Exactly. It's, I think of all of the times, no pun intended, all of the times where I wanted to buy another coaching program to improve myself. And I had to stop myself and I had to say, I don't have the time for this. I have the money. I can pay the 700 for the coaching program. I can pay the 8, 000 for the coaching program, whatever it is, whatever level we're talking about, but I don't have the time to dedicate to this. And if I don't have the time to dedicate to it, is it worth that money? That money, like you said, is expendable. You and me can go get more of it. I can hang up this podcast recording with you and go get a job at the, at the supermarket down the street for me and go make back the money that I just quote unquote spent having this conversation with you. But if I don't have the time to invest in it, why am I going to spend the money? Because really time comes before money because again, it's not refundable. You can't go get more of it.

Laura:

I just had a crazy conversation with my mother this morning. So I took my mother back to the airport today. She was in town for my daughter's birthday and she asked me how I budget my time. You and I make budgets with people. We put our values and things like this. So I'm going to ask you, Suzanne, how would a person go about budgeting their time? Because I'm learning this along with everybody else. This is a new journey for me. How do you think one would go about budgeting their time?

Suzanne Scullian:

It's really funny that we're having this. It's all, it's not funny. It's the universe decided to put this conversation together because I went through I interviewed four different productivity coaches. Last month.

Laura:

Right. I remember you saying that.

Suzanne Scullian:

Yep. And one of the ones I interviewed sent me, just the most basic rudimentary cell time budgeting spreadsheet you've ever seen. And it wasn't necessarily to budget. It was to do a forensic analysis of how I was spending my time currently. When I was filling that out, like, as my day went on, I was exponentially more productive. I continued filling it out, even though I didn't hire her. The way that we budget our time. Sorry, guys, spoiler alert: it's the same way we budget our money. We have to write it down. We have to be intentional. I don't care if it's on a piece of paper. I don't care what's in the budgeting app. I don't care if it's on this spreadsheet that took that productivity coach 30 seconds to make for me. It helped me to see how I was spending my time where I was wasting it. One of the things I was worried about was, am I spending too much time on social media? She had on that spreadsheet, she had a little separate section for personal social media. Use like, what are the times you're using and your phone will record that for you. So that's kind of because you don't have to go back and track every 2nd. You're on social media and then personal TV watching. So, like, if you're not in an industry, like. Television or something like that, where it's your job. How much personal time you're watching TV? Well, one bad thing came out of that. And one good thing came out of that. The good thing was we found out I was watching way less TV and spending way less time on personal social media than the average American. Less time than the average American, which meant I was already doing a decent job. So where was I getting my extra time from? And going through that exercise with her made me realize. There were certain things I was about to commit to, but I couldn't, I did not have the time. And I am so glad I interviewed those productivity coaches. I did end up hiring someone, not that one particularly. But man, that has really, that little spreadsheet, I now make a new one every single week. I track what I'm doing because like you said, we can make more. Money, but we cannot make more time.

Laura:

Wow.

Suzanne Scullian:

That spreadsheet only has X number of hours broken out on it, right? I can't just drag the bottom of the spreadsheet. I'm not working at three in the morning.

Laura:

I'm not? Unhealthy. No joke. I mean, I am, I am up at three in the morning often with my newborn. So, you know, that happens, but. When we set up this conversation, I didn't know we were going here today and I'm very thankful that we are, because what I wrote down is paying attention to the time makes me more productive. The same way paying attention to your budget helps your financial future. Right, like, we're more productive with the way that we're spending our money more intentional. Cerebrally, I know I need to be more intentional with my time, but I think writing it down is going to be helpful. So I'm glad we had this. But 1 of the other things we talked about when we were setting up this talk that we were going to have today was. How admitting your mistakes. We'll put you on the path to changing your legacy. So, right now, we are admitting we have not made the best use of our time. We're going to change that to increase our future and our future output. What is another way that admitting. a mistake has helped put you on the path to the legacy you want to create?

Suzanne Scullian:

Well, I'm going to go back to my mentor who I worked with in professional sports for a second because one of the other things I remember him saying was you know, just as an example about the time and money thing, you know, you can't buy time if you're a parent. Time that you give your kids is invaluable, right? The time that you give your relationship with your significant other is invaluable. That will make your relationship better. That time will make your kids better people. One of the things he recounted was being 21, that adage, that mindset didn't really click with him. But he's closer to 65 now. He wasn't 65 when we he remembers thinking, That churning out a 60 to 70 hour work week, which is very easy during a sports season. It doesn't matter what sport you work in. You know, baseball is known for being the longest one, you know, game wise. But it doesn't matter. You could spend your life in your office as a, as a sports professional and still not get everything done. But what he was doing was churning out 60 to 70 hour work weeks and not leaving time Not leaving time for similar things for catching up with friends, and he knew that he had to make a change, and he left the team that we worked for for this new position he's in now, and he also moved cross country. Left a very intense high energy where you are socially rewarded for working, telling people you work 60 hours a week. Telling people you can't do X, Y, Z because you're working, you're giving social credit for that really. That was one of the things he had to learn. I think that's one of the things we have to learn with our time, just because we're not high level sports executives, just because we're not CFOs, just because we're not CEOs of, of whatever does not mean that our time is not any more valuable than anyone else's. The mistakes that he made, like you said, there were a lot of mistakes he made when he was closer to 21 years old. He didn't get married until later in life. Had a child, but maybe they would have had more? If that, if he had taken that time that you mentioned, and instead of making those early mistakes, if he had learned that lesson a little earlier, I don't know. And she doesn't know, right? We don't know what could have, would have, should have been. There's certainly no reason to look back, but when you're advising a younger person, Even if they're, around 40, they don't have to be 21.

Laura:

I love that. What came to my mind when you said that was a conversation I heard Ed Mylett say, I don't know if you follow Ed Mylett. His podcast is. Phenomenal. His style is wonderful and he's great at productivity and building business and things like that. So I highly, highly recommend. He had one podcast where he talked about creating his schedule for his work week, work month, work, whatever calendar he was creating. And he said the way that he makes his calendar now. Is he puts all of his family stuff on it 1st, there's no room for a work thing until after his family things are on there. Because his family says priority and he said, if I'm going to tell you, my family is my priority. If they come to me and say, hey, I have a dance recital on Thursday. Guess what? I'm rearranging all of my work stuff. He said, but they don't come and tell me that because I got the schedule at the beginning of the year and I put it on my calendar ahead of time. The 2nd, I get the calendar their schedule on my calendar, the second I get it and that for me was mind blowing. So, I've already done that for my kids this year. Minimum school day, guess what? I know what I'm doing on minimum school day. This is what we do now on minimum school day. Half of the entire school goes to Chick fil a. It is so stressful because half of the school is there, but my kids expect it. We are going to Chick fil A, and we are going to eat with our friends

Suzanne Scullian:

I mean, do you think the lines at lunch are bad? I can't imagine what the wait time is when half the school is at one location. I think you make a good point about the family 1st on the calendar and the work. 2nd there's out there. That's. It's attributed to Zig Ziglar. Show me a man's calendar and his checkbook and I'll show you what's important to him. And this literally is pretty much the summation of the conversation, which is you're, you have your time and that's the calendar and you have your money and that's the checkbook. And if your checkbook is just bills. And not paying for a vacation. All right. For you young people, a checkbook is something that used to be banking. So now just go check your online banking statements, but your checkbook is just utilities and bills, and it's not the down payment for a family vacation. It's not the check written for Christmas gifts. It's not the check written for the humane society down the street who needs a new washing machine because there's broke last night. And they're not going to be able to wash any puppies and kitty blankets without it. If your checkbook is just the necessities and no fun and no giving, that's going to be your legacy. And it's the same with the calendar. You have those people out there. I'm sure you've met them. Some of them might be your friends who were taken very seriously. Their parents took very good care of them financially. Like weren't there emotionally. And listen, some people have issues that they maybe have never worked through, but they also didn't go to their football games. They didn't go to their dance recitals. That's the stuff they mention. They don't mention the lights were on, I had a roof over my head, I had a hot meal, and mom also made me lunch every day. They mention, nobody ever came to my Pop Warner football game. My grandma came to my piano recital, but nobody else was there. That's the stuff that gets mentioned. Well,

Laura:

that just... Got me feeling all kinds of ways on the inside, like conflicted and because, because I live in a world of mom guilt, right? Where I want to be with my kids all the time, but I want to be working. I want to. So I'm trying to in this new school year, like I said, I've went ahead and put all of my kids stuff on my calendar. So I know what's coming up for them. But also I'm shifting my work time where I had been working more in the evening. I'm now shifting that earlier because I thought people weren't going to come during the day, but guess what? I put some earlier in the day in the calendar and they're clicking on it. And so I'm, I'm able to make the shift. I had to do things slowly. Move forward, I had to, I had to figure it out, but now that I'm figuring it out, I'm trying to find ways to make more intentional time with my children because they're only young once. I only get to do this with them 1 time. There are 4 of them. So I get to do a lot of 1st. Multiple times, but they're only in this season together once. As we start to wrap up. I have a couple more questions for you 1. I want to make sure everybody hears the most important part. Suzanne, where can people find you?

Suzanne Scullian:

Oh, well, first of all, I want to thank Laura again for being on my show, which was Lessons Learned, the Dumbest and Most Ridiculous Money. If you want to hear more about mistakes, you can find Laura, Laura's episode there. But also I've been interviewing people for over two years now talking about their financial mistakes and boy, some of them are cut and dry, too much student loans. And some of them are a little deeper. Like we're going right now where it's, man, I wish I had. Take an X job instead of Y job. I would have had more money. I wish I would have had those deeper conversations with my spouse about money. That was a mistake. It wasn't really one thing. It was just not having a plan, not talking it out and developing those relationships or healthy relationship with money when it comes to that stuff. But yes, gracefinancialcoaching. com is the website. You can get to the podcast from there and the YouTube show as well. It's. Going through people's mistakes in a fun, light hearted way really can help break down those walls for people that like we work with, Laura, who... Or struggling with the budget, struggling with debt, struggling with maybe working 60 to 70 hours a week and not feeling the fruit of those.

Laura:

Well, I always want to make money relatable. That is my goal. I want you to be in relationship with money and not money's way up here. It's a high level. I can never attain it. I can never, no, no, no, we're in this together. We're doing this together. And that's what I want this podcast to be. And that's exactly what you do. On your show, you make it fun and relatable and people are allowed to talk about their mistakes in a way where they're not judged and they are uplifted at the end of the conversation. So I want people to run over there after they're done listening here. But my last question for you, Suzanne, is this. What do you want your legacy to be?

Suzanne Scullian:

So, my husband and I don't have any kids. We are already 40. I'm getting to 40, don't tell anyone. And so we do not plan on having any kids. I think what I want my legacy to be having lost my parents at an earlier age but still being an adult when they passed away. I think, I feel like I had a really good sense of the things we can't. Which a lot of it's like our family history. Now, does that include some physical items? Yes. Am I going to hoard everything into a climate controlled storage unit and leave a note for my brother and sister when I die and say, here's what? No, but what I have done, particularly in our house, because we lost both parents, because all of our grandparents are already deceased, we have a lot of their stuff. So I've placed it strategically around the house so that When you see those things, they remind you of those people, and it doesn't have to be stuff. We have a ton of pictures, a couple more pictures than I want to tell you of family vacations and those memories and stuff like that. But I like to think that I'm taking care of some of these items, my grandmother's secretary's desk, it was one of the first pieces of furniture she purchased when she came over here from Europe. Is that really important right now? Do we need to make space for those things? No. But I'd like to take care of them for people if they do want them one day. And so when I go and one of my cousins sees that I had The globe that used to be in our grandparents house, and she just loved playing with that globe. Well, then I want her to have it, and I want her to look at it, and I want her to say, this reminds me of all the nice things that our grandparents did for us back in the day. And so I think passing down those stories and those legacies and those good memories, that's what I would like my legacy to be.

Laura:

Yeah, you saying that took me instantly back to my grandparent's living room where we had a globe right next to the piano. I can smell it and I can feel it and I can see little fingers getting pinched because it spun too fast and the hand got caught on it and So happy memories sad memories, but I'm right there with you and I love that. I'm just going to put this out there. Your legacy is also all of the lives that you were changing in your coaching business and the fact that they have changed their own legacy and you were just passing it on. What we do is we help people create their legacy and you have helped me today. And so I thank you. And I know that the people listening have been helped as well. So thank you so much for being here with me. I really appreciate it.

Suzanne Scullian:

Thank you, Laura. I really had a great time.

Laura:

Thank you for spending some of your most precious resource your time. Working on yourself today. But don't just listen to the show. Implement something you heard. If you found a piece of today's show, valuable chances are you have a friend who will too. So please share this with them. And please rate and review the podcast to help spread the word. Remember the legacy you leave is not just dollars and cents and a bank account, but the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. If you have questions or need encouragement, send me a DM on Instagram at accelerate your legacy. Or check out the resources listed in the show notes. I'll be back next week. Bye. For now.