How I Built My Small Business

Elizabeth Husserl - The POWER OF ENOUGH: Redefining Wealth, Well-Being, and What Really Matters

• Season 2 • Episode 26

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Today’s guest is Elizabeth Husserl, a financial advisor, registered investment advisor representative, and the co-founder of Peak360 Wealth Management, a boutique wealth planning firm based here in the Bay Area.

Elizabeth has this rare and fascinating blend of expertise: she holds a degree in economics from Tulane and a master’s in East-West psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she’s also served as an adjunct professor. Her work weaves together money, meaning, entrepreneurship, and mental well-being — a thread I found both timely and deeply resonant.

Before launching Peak360, Elizabeth worked across the Americas in nonprofit settings, and today she’s also a sought-after speaker, having led workshops at places like Airbnb, Unity, and Google.

She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and daughter, and I can’t wait for you to hear the way she approaches personal finance through the lens of both human psychology and long-term vision.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to how I Built my Small Business. I'm Anne McEntee, your host. Today's guest is Elizabeth Husserl, a financial advisor, registered investment advisor representative and the co-founder of Peak360 Wealth Management, a boutique wealth planning firm based here in the Bay Area. Elizabeth has this rare and fascinating blend of expertise. She holds a degree in economics from Tulane and a master's in East-West psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she's also served as an adjunct professor. Her work weaves together money, meaning entrepreneurship and mental well-being, a thread I found both timely and deeply resonant. Before launching Peak360, elizabeth worked across the Americas in non-profit settings. Today, she's also a sought-after speaker, having led workshops at places like Airbnb. She's also a sought after speaker, having led workshops at places like Airbnb, unity and Google. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and daughter, and I can't wait for you to hear the way she approaches personal finance through the lens of both human psychology and long-term vision.

Speaker 1:

If you've been tuning in, you know this show isn't about selling anything. It's about sharing meaningful stories and learning along the way. If how I built my small business has brought you any insight, inspiration or even just a spark of curiosity, there are a few simple ways you can support the journey. Follow the show, share your favorite episode with a friend or leave a quick review. Each one truly helps me grow this show. Thank you, let's get started. I'm just going to jump right in, and something that I've noticed with myself and also with many people that I've worked with is just that, no matter how much we have, it never quite feels like enough. And I know you've done a lot of writing on this and you think about it a lot. Why do you think that that is?

Speaker 2:

First and foremost, scarcity brain is real. We're not crazy, right? Our brains are wired to seek. That is what's kept us alive. That's why you and I are having this conversation. Our brains and our mind center, we're seeking, we're analyzing, we're forecasting, we're scanning, right. It has a really important job.

Speaker 2:

But our brains weren't wired as we go through the whole dopamine loop to then know when enough is. And so, if we don't lean into other experiences, through our heart center, through our mind center, to know what enough feels like, we're constantly in the loop of our scarcity brain and that's why we feel that you're like wait a second. Is abundance mindset the answer? It's like no, because I'm still using my mind to try to call in more. So part of embodying wealth, in addition to accumulating, is literally learning how to have visceral experiences of wealth so that your scarcity brain can relax and be like oh, what does enough feel like? What does it look like? What strategies work? Right? It's almost like when you go to the gym I'm like, oh yeah, that workout felt amazing, that one not so much right. And so we have to start to learn these strategies of enough, because it's not intuitive to our brains.

Speaker 1:

Well, and enough is a relative term A hundred percent. For someone it might be affording fresh food, and for someone else it's like taking a vacation without feeling any guilt at all. So how do you help your clients define what enough really means?

Speaker 2:

We're trained in our culture to go to numbers when we think about enough, right? Like, how much do I need to make in terms of income to cover my expenses, to pay for the bills, et cetera? So notice that we just naturally do that which you know. And again, I have a job. For a reason, I'm a financial planner. I'm in spreadsheets all day long. But I have to take it back again and say let's start with your needs, let's start with your goals, right? And so one of the core concepts in my book called the Wealth Mandala, which is based on on the science of human needs, is really understanding what are the areas where clients feel full and satisfied, what are the areas in which they're feeling lack? Right, that's where true poverty lies, and it's very unique and personal to your point. Right, it's very personal, it's very relative.

Speaker 2:

And then we work backwards and be like, okay, what if they're not feeling enough in their slice of pie for leisure? We could argue I need to plan a vacation. So let's put pen to paper. How much does it cost to take my family? Maybe I want to take them to Hawaii, maybe I want to take them on an adventure? Right, we can put pen and paper and say, okay, this is my travel goal for the year, let's work backwards and start to fund it.

Speaker 2:

There is a numerical response to it. But what's just as equally important, ann, is that if we plan for a $20,000 trip and they go on the trip and they're not satisfied, they didn't actually relax right, they didn't really connect with their family, they were working the whole time because, you know, maybe they're a workaholic If we don't really satisfy the need for leisure, they come back from the trip. They spent their 20 grand, they don't feel satisfied. So do you see how that loop is? Both planning with numbers for a goal. Let's make it happen. But equally important is was that the right strategy to satisfy that need?

Speaker 1:

Right. Well, I mean and I guess it takes some discipline too to fully satisfy that need, this wealth mandala that you mentioned, how many different categories can you describe to us? What is included in this wealth mandala?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I will describe it, but I'm going to answer your first comment first. It actually can be simpler than we think. We actually know how to satisfy our needs, more than what we give ourselves credit for, and I'll speak to how do we actually discover that. But the wealth mandala it's based on the science of human needs, right, that we know through Maslow and more economists have developed. I studied with an economist from Chile, manfred Maxneaf, and it's based on 12 human needs, right, and so financial stability, safety, physical health, freedom, purpose, understanding, participation, belonging, connection, curiosity, leisure and touch. And I also leave, anne, space for two needs, because it's again, unique and personal. Someone might have a really important need for creativity, someone else for transcendence. For me it's celebration, right? So you do get to understand who you are and what's important. And then what you do is that you take this mandala and you rate on a scale of one to 10, how fulfilled are you currently in each aspect, right?

Speaker 2:

A lot of times people come to me as a financial planner and they want to talk financial stability. Do I feel stable in my financial life? Am I earning enough? How am I spending? Am I investing enough? Am I planning for a rainy day. Those are the questions. I talk about a lot in financial stability. Great, it's really important to do your work there. But equally important is to see am I feeling lack in any of these one needs? So, for example, right, I work with a lot of clients in tech. One guy came to me he was head of design of a pretty important tech company and he scored a two in his need for touch and I was like, oh, tell me about that. He's like you know what? We're expecting our second child, and I actually feel uncomfortable with the touch of, like, my first kid, and now I'm feeling anxious about the second kid that's coming. We had a really interesting conversation. He was like I feel a lot of grief because I didn't receive the touch I needed as a kid. Right, my mom was just absent, right. And so, notice, if we don't do the wealth mandala, I don't know. This is part of what's giving him a sense of scarcity and anxiety.

Speaker 2:

And then we get to decide right, can we put some monetary resources A? You know, do you want to go see a therapist about it? What do you? How do you want to work with it? Or do we bring some non-monetary resources to it and we just say, hey, let's bring that to just like your awareness with your family to see how can we relax into it. So do you see that there's some things? I think what the wealth mandala does is it points out that there's really important ways that money can support our life and helping us feel enough, and there's ways that it can't. And the key premise of my work is that money and Money is one tool and a technology. Wealth is a state of well-being, and for far too long we have confused the two, which is what keeps us in this rat race for I need more money, I need more money, I need more money to feel wealthy. Then it's like a rat race that we can't get off.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and even hearing you say it and I know that logically it's true. And yet, even knowing it and logically understanding it, it takes more than that, I think, to remove the emotional component, to it. Yeah, how do you detach from generationally taught relationships with money?

Speaker 2:

It brings such a smile to my face because I think actually it's through the emotions, you know, and I think that's the other piece it's not trying to be unemotional. So one of my favorite exercises is a gestalt chair exercise called conversation with money. It can be extremely hard and jarring right. Every client I sit down and do this exercise is like oh my God, elizabeth, a, you're crazy and B, I feel resistance.

Speaker 2:

But what's interesting is that when you sit down and literally have a conversation with money, this isn't talking to money, this is having conversation with, and what I mean by that is that you get the opportunity to express the emotion you're holding Like, god damn it, money, where have you been? Right? Or why is it that you come in so quickly and you leave so quickly? Or I don't know what to do with you, like, you just make me feel icky, right, you can put whatever phrase you want. I've seen it all.

Speaker 2:

I've had people like be like money, where have you been my whole life? Right, it's so personal and when you start to really explore what's the emotion underneath it and then what's money's response back, you start to see, huh, there's an interesting dynamic that I am actually responsible for, co-creating right. I just came off a client call when she was like, oh my God, I'm recreating this codependency with money because I just built a business where I'm subsidizing all my employees and I'm like, hmm, let's talk about that, right. And so what you start to see is our relational styles tend to transfer into our relationship with our spouse, with our friends, and our relationship with money. And the more we're clear about that, you and money can start to sit down and be like, okay, let's clean slate, let's start over. How do we do this differently? But it starts with taking responsibility with how you're showing up in it.

Speaker 1:

And how did you get to this point? Was there a moment, something that happened, that broadened your perspective on how you personally have a relationship with money?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean I think there's been many kind of milestones. A couple important ones was after I graduated from my economics degree. As my undergrad I went and worked in Oaxaca, mexico, at a local nonprofit and I was hired to help indigenous women create savings and loan cooperatives. And so I'm like, oh great, I have a super tactical financial instrument to go teach. And, oh my goodness, anne and I received so much more than what I gave, because I received an experience of wealth that was so much broader than finances. Yes, there was material poverty and I was there with a solution to help adjust that. But they were wealthy in their connection with the land, with nature, with each other, with ritual. They were joyful people. And I was like, huh, how is there so much joy amongst material poverty? And why is it back in the States? We have so much more but we don't feel as joyful. And so that was the first kind of like kick in the butt in my early twenties, like my work isn't back in Oaxaca, my work is back in the States. Even though I'm Latina, I go to Latin America for my dose of joy. Right, my work is in the States, where we have so much more, but we feel scarcity, we feel poor. So that was one.

Speaker 2:

And then I think the second one is you know, I did my undergraduate in finance and economics and I did my graduate in psychology and it was in that graduate program that one of my professors sat me down or sat us down in a workshop and taught me that gestalt chair exercise of a conversation with money. And, anne, when I sat down and had my first conversation with money, I was so angry at it, right, I was like God damn it, money, I'm trying to start my own business and you're not showing up. And I just went off on it and I just I gave it own business and you're not showing up. And I just went off on it and I just I gave it the list of the ways to start showing up. And then money, it was money's turn and it turned around and said Elizabeth, back off, you are holding on too tight and you're being so unreasonable, like in. Basically, money was like you're talking to me as if you were talking to an old boyfriend, that you're really upset up because they didn't show up in your life.

Speaker 2:

And we went back and forth and I was able to realize that I was starting something that had never been taught to me, which is how to become an entrepreneur. My parents had always been W2s right, they had been an employee. I wanted to do something different. I hadn't been taught how to do that and I was feeling the anxiety of something unknown. And once I got that, I'm like, oh, that is what I need to learn. It's not money's fault that I don't know how to do it. Let me go find my mentors, find the people in my life who have been entrepreneurs, pick their brains and figure it out to how to do it, and then I create a space for money to come in in a way that works. So it just flipped it on its head.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's interesting because a lot of us do blame money for our problems, but really there's probably a deeper route that we can dig out there and actually potentially solve our own problems. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's where financial agency lies. What do you mean by that? Well, we want to feel empowered when it comes to money. Right, when I ask clients, what do you want to feel? They're like I want to feel empowered, I want freedom, I want to feel you know that, I understand it Like there's all these things that people talk about in the relationship to money, but it's almost like saying I mean, imagine saying I want to feel that in a relationship with my partner, but I never sit down and talk to him or her or it. You know what I mean. And so part of it is like okay, you want all these feelings, but we have to do the work to get there. We know marriage is tough work. We know parenting is hard, but we are connected to the outcome of knowing that we can have a good relationship with, a healthy relationship with it. But we have to own our part.

Speaker 1:

Well, and money can often be a very taboo topic. Yeah, a lot of people are unwilling to share their personal experience with it, or even share numbers.

Speaker 2:

That's even another topic, that's why I wrote this book without an ounce of numbers in there. Right, and it surprises people. They're like, oh, you're a financial advisor and investment manager and you wrote this book, and they were thinking that they'd get like investing advice, and on purpose, because there's so many books on financial literacy, I wanted to write a book that was chock full of, like many moments and questions that we can ask ourselves and ask people in our lives, so that we can start talking more about our experiences, what worked, what didn't. And I think if we have that as the entry point, we talk a lot more about it. Because once we bring numbers in, we go into comparative mode. Right, do they make more than me? Do they spend more than me? Do they have more debt than me? That makes me feel good, right, like we go into comparative mode. So if we take the numbers aside for a second, we can still talk about money, we can still talk about wealth. Let's have those conversations.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I really like what you were just saying right there about not going into comparative mode, because it's like how you mentioned in your book the equation isn't a zero sum. It's not like I have to win and you have to lose in order for this to be a great equation. It's like no, you win, I win, everybody wins. Like that's a better option.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent. And how we define wealth is so personal, right? If we think of diversification, we normally think of it in like let me diversify in terms of asset classes or types of investments I use, right, brokerage accounts, retirement accounts. But if we think of wealth diversification not just like it doesn't just pertain in the slice of the financial stability, it also pertains to satisfying all of these other needs, it gets super freaking interesting, right? How I satisfy my need for purpose is going to look very different to you, ann, but tell me, right, how do you do that? Let's learn from each other, and so it just becomes such a deeper, richer conversation, because wealth is a state of wellbeing. That is what it is and it's unique and personal to each of us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, to remember that financial reward is not the only type of reward.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent, a hundred percent, and it's it's bubbling up. I mean, like just this year, there's this bubbling up of a questioning what our relationship to wealth and money is. So I'm not the first one to bring this up, but I do think the wisdom in our body can help our scarcity brain experience something different.

Speaker 1:

That scarcity brain. It just reminds me in real life of how someone will say if I just sell this many products, I'll be a success, or if I win that award, I'll feel really great, I'll be a success. But, like as you know, as I know, when you get there, the goalpost just shifts.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent. It's always moving. But what happens if that, if the mind is always in control of our experience of wealth, we never stop and rest. If I bring awareness of how it feels to be satisfied and I'm going to give you a super concrete example we know what a nourishing meal feels like, right? So think back of the last time you ate a meal. Maybe it was home cooked, maybe it was from your favorite restaurant. We're like, oh my God, that just hit the spot right, and we kind of close our eyes and we can taste it in our mouth and we just know what that feels like. It's not too much. And we just know what that feels like it's not too much, it's not too little, it's like the just enough with Goldilocks, right. We just know what that feels like If we take more awareness to those moments. Anne and I literally tell people swallow.

Speaker 2:

Consume. Consumption is an economic act. Consume that experience of being just right so that it goes all the way down into every cell of your body and in this moment you can just like track that you've had an experience of enough. Add that to your balance sheet, add that to your ledger. Compound that experience of meaning, just like we compound interest in our investment accounts. Right, let your body have an important role in your experience of wealth, to complement the visionary capacity of your mind and see what happens. I mean, that's the power of enough, where your well of worthiness is just bubbling up because you're so full. You open your eyes and you're like wow, beginner's mind, everything's possible. But it's possible from a place of fullness, not from a place of grasping.

Speaker 1:

But it's possible from a place of fullness, not from a place of grasping. I think there's a lot of inner work here that people need to do and not everybody is able or practiced in accessing that deeper inner side of this. What do you say to people who can't stop pushing? I mean, I worked with clients who had hundreds of millions of dollars sometimes and they were so stressed out, unhappy lives, couldn't detach from work. Just yeah, I mean it was mind boggling in some ways because I thought you, of all people, could literally live a life that you dream of and this is how you're doing it.

Speaker 1:

So, like what do you say to people who can't stop pushing?

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, again, what I love about my work is that I get to use all these metaphors from like within the industry, right. And so I tell them hey, your excess and attachment to overworking is actually creating a negative return of investment on other aspects of your life. Right, it's a negative return on investment. And there's not a quicker way than having them do this wealth mandala, because, again, the client I was talking about again worth millions of dollars. But when we do the wealth mandala and they're like I'm scoring myself at a two and multiple needs, oh, my goodness, right, my life isn't fully satisfied. And, yes, we can start to channel money in towards those needs to make it more efficient. We can hire cooks, we can do certain things, but there's the deeper, it's the in your face.

Speaker 2:

Your relationship to money is a mirror, right, and I agree with you, anne, not everyone wants to look. That's fine, right, but if they do want to look, a lot of what I wanted to offer people were simple tools to do it. So the wealth mandala is a super simple visual, but another simple one that I wanted to put out there is a satiation practice which, for 30 days, I tell them let's do a satiation challenge for 30 days. At the end of the day, I just want you to write three things that satisfied you. Right, and don't think too much about it.

Speaker 2:

It could be you know what I had that hard conversation with a client, or I went on the most amazing run and I pushed myself. Or you know what? I went out dancing and I loved it. Or I had a meaningful conversation for 30 days. Just track list of one, two, three, three things that satisfied you. Takes 30 seconds right, and at the end of 30 days, go back in one sitting, read through your list and be like huh, here are the strategies that are working, that actually give me that sense of satisfaction. Can I bring those strategies to these areas that I'm feeling lack? What would that look like?

Speaker 1:

And for anybody who's listening in, who maybe is hearing our conversation and thinking well, that's a privileged way of thinking. I'm not in a position to even maybe evaluate my relationship with money, because I just don't have enough. Do these tools still work for someone who is just starting out?

Speaker 2:

So I would say a couple of things. The power of enough is a birthright. It is a human birthright that think of when a baby is born. Just think they don't. They're not thinking in scarcity. So come back to the core.

Speaker 2:

You are in relationship with money. If you have $1 to deal with because that $1 you make choice, where's it going it might feel like you can't stretch it enough, and I get that right. You kind of want to cut it up and be like that dollar needs to become five. I understand that, but you still have to be in relationship with it, right? You do not get a free pass.

Speaker 2:

Everyone is in relationship to money because we all have to deal with it, right, and I think it's really important. Nine out of 10 clients, anne, walk into my office and they say I want enough money, I don't want to think about it, I'm just going to normalize it. Everyone says it, I have felt it, you have felt it right, and it just is because it is stressful. But I think adulting is stressful. Being a human is stressful, right, and the only time we don't get to engage with it kind of when we're dead, right, and so there's a way in which it's just part of being in the material world, because it's one of the ways in which we exchange with each other.

Speaker 2:

But I think what's really important is to again decouple money from wealth. What's really important is to again decouple money from wealth. Money is a tool for exchange. Wealth is a state of wellbeing and what's happened is that, as we've started to kind of lose some of those intimate relationships, money has become a stand-in for our sense of self-worth, for our ability to trust each other, for our sense of success, and that's why it feels icky. But if you start to separate and be like, hey, I can start to have my relationship to wealth, I can increase my ability to feel wealthy without adding $1 to my bank account, because I get more nuanced and better at creating the strategies that fulfill me.

Speaker 1:

Especially in this country, being so capitalist, it can be hard, because it's not just an internal battle but it's also a fully cultural one. I mean, money is so intertwined with identity and self-worth. It's possibly one of the first questions people ask you in this country is so what do you do? And in some ways they're kind of sizing you up Are you worthy of my time? Ways they're kind of sizing you up Are you worthy of my time? Basically like how wealthy are you or how successful are you. I mean, how can we change that in these achievement oriented circles?

Speaker 2:

So I think we can take small mindful steps.

Speaker 2:

I know for myself in my industry, when I'm sitting down and talking to clients and we're going through kind of like their assets and their liabilities and their debts, I consciously try not to say net worth and decouple worth from our definition of money and we talk about asset size, because I know if I say net worth they're hearing self-worth right, and so that's one step that I've actively said let's start talking about asset size. It's kind of more neutral, right, and when I talk about your worth as a person, I go to the wealth mandala and I say, hey, what are we working on? What are the areas that you're feeling lack that I can start to help you bring some more resources to. So I think that's one particular piece. I think, too, is we can get more nuance in how we respond to that question what do you do, right? Maybe we even start asking it differently, like, hey, you know, what's one thing that really makes you excited in your life, what are you passionate about? We can ask different questions and start there.

Speaker 1:

This is really. It's like money therapy. I mean what you do. You're a financial advisor, but I feel like you're providing people with a deeper conversation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know I'll be giving two keynotes this year at financial advisor events. To be like how can we, as financial advisors, have more tools? Right, because, again, we're the ones that people come to and talk about money and so we have such an important role to do the organization of financial stability. That is a really important job. Right, I can sit down and work through numbers and be like, hey, this is the plan that we're creating for you to get to the numerical. Enough, right, but that's only half of my work.

Speaker 2:

As we move there, what's happening in these other areas of your life and I'm not saying every financial advisor needs to be a therapist, but they can help identify. To be like, hey, this is actually gnawing at you, right, I walked into a client's house the other day again, financially independent, retired, does not need to worry about money. But he told me in his words Elizabeth, I feel less wealthy because my body is starting to fail me and I can't do the fly fishing trips that I love. And I was like well said, well said, you feel less wealthy not because your accounts went down, because you can't fulfill some of these other really important needs in your life. And I just had to sit with him and be like you know what I'm going to feel that grief with you, because that's real. I could have just said don't worry about it, you just made 6%. But no, he was saying he was feeling less wealthy. I had to just sit with that and be like, yeah, you were right, this sucks. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1:

Which touches on another point that I think a lot of people they put their lives and their health on hold while they're chasing money, yeah, and then they get the money and they realize their body is broken or not as capable, so they don't have the time or ability to do the things that they never did.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there was a great book that came out last year called Die With Zero right. I read it. Yes.

Speaker 1:

Bill Perkins Bill.

Speaker 2:

Perkins it was amazing, I loved it and I think that was his point right Is that we trade a lot of times making money for time and we don't know what my future self is going to be able to do. So how do you prioritize those memory dividends right, those experiences that bring you meaning, alongside prioritizing trading your time for money? And that's an equation that's always in flux, but it's a really important question that he asks us.

Speaker 1:

And I think it also covers topics like the psychology around why it can sometimes feel so difficult to spend money.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

There's that gnawing guilty feeling that doing so would be irresponsible.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent right. You may have saved your $20,000 for your travel bucket, or maybe it's $1,000, or maybe it's $200. It doesn't really matter. Whatever your number is, you saved it, you met it. Now it's time to go take the trip. And you go and you're like I'm feeling uncomfortable, it's hard to spend, it's hard to actually let that go. You go on that trip. You might have spent a lot of money, but you didn't feel any better. That's empty consumption, right?

Speaker 1:

That's the hungry ghost that we continue to feel. We don't feel full. Yeah, I think this might be my life sort of battle. In some ways I have a very nuanced relationship with money because my dad came from a very poor family. My mom came from a very wealthy family, but my dad's family that was poor was very rich in love and connection, and my mom's family that was rich was very poor in like trauma and bad situations, and so it is confusing to me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we are shaped not only by own experiences. Yeah, we are shaped not only by own experiences. Our families, our culture, what country, right? My grandfather was a product of being, you know, a Jewish man in World War II. Europe, right. And so he just came over to Latin America with scarcity that I've had to work through in my own system. So we have financial DNA is real, right, financial DNA has a lot of different voices, which is what makes it confusing. But the answer isn't shutting down or saying I want so much more of you that I'll think about it, because guess what? More money, more problems, like it is real, it's more complex.

Speaker 1:

As I've been reading your book and also even just listening to you talk about some of the lessons that you go over in your book. I'm not going to lie, the topic is slightly uncomfortable for me. It forces me to face something that I have a lot of resistance to, and it's going to take me a while.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a lifelong journey and a lot of times what I tell people is we'll do things for other people that sometimes we don't do for ourselves. So I know for myself. I finally decided to look at my relationship to scarcity, which I inherited from my grandfather, because I was committed to not passing it on to my daughter, like I didn't know how to do it for myself, but I knew it, that I didn't want to pass it on to her. And I'm like, oh my God, clock is ticking, she's a teenager. So I was like, okay, I'm going to do it. And I'm sure I passed on scarcity in some capacity, but I'm also passing on the awareness that we talk a lot about it and she knows our story and what, how I'm growing with it, right. And so, for example, because scarcity was part of my story and I hate wasteful expenditures, right, I hate mistakes, like I'm a perfect, I'm a recovering perfectionist, and I married my husband, who's kind of like an absentee professor. He's burnt pots, he's left his suitcase in hotels, I mean like random stuff. That just like pisses me off. I'm like, oh my God, I cannot believe it. That was a $300 mistake.

Speaker 2:

And so at some point we sat down as a family and we agreed and it was actually my daughter's idea. She's like, mom, we have all this. We have a budget with line items for food, for groceries, for that or for gas or whatever. Can we add a mistake line item? I'm like what she's like yeah, can we just add a line item where, if it's underneath a certain amount, we don't get angry at each other and I'm like, oh my gosh, you're totally right. My anger is causing a negative return on investment in our family because I'm stressing them out. And we added a mistake budget of $200 a month where if there's a mistake that's underneath that, it's my responsibility to deal with my emotions and not put it on them. And I'm like it was brilliant and it came through engaging with her and saying, hey, this is where mama's struggling, right, so it can be a collaborative effort to move through those things that we struggle with.

Speaker 1:

If someone is listening right now and they feel really stuck in their fear around money, what's the very first small step that you're going to have them take?

Speaker 2:

If they're feeling fear, I literally want them to grab a piece of paper and write the top 10 things that are causing fear.

Speaker 2:

Just do the dump right. Do the dump of everything that's causing fear in their life, because the first step is the awareness that whatever you're feeling is valid, and just get it out there, right, so that's the first thing. Then I want them to take a step back and just take a breath and be like, okay, let me read through that list, right, maybe I can scratch through those some things that are perceived versus actual fears, and maybe I can choose that one fear that if I were to address today would make the most impact in how I feel in my relationship to money. And so then you select one and you say, okay, who in my life can help me with this fear? And then it becomes a narrow focus of, like that, if I were to address this core issue, things start to change, and that's how we work through the emotions, because emotions can make us feel hazy or stuck or confused. So just give voice to them and write the top 10 things that that emotion wants to say. Take a step back and choose one starting point.

Speaker 1:

So for someone who's just starting out in their early 20s and you know things have changed now the cost of living is pretty high and wages have not kept up. What advice would you give them for getting started with their financial journey and their planning?

Speaker 2:

A couple of things. So first do kind of like a mental detox of like, what are the things that I thought defined success? And then you're like now let me look at my life, let me look at what's coming in right and what are those fixed expenses that I need to pay for rent or mortgage or lights or food, et cetera, and let me see what wiggle room do I then have to save and to automate those savings from day one. Right, because if you save on day one, it happens. If you save at the end of the month, it never happens, because we end up spending that surplus. And then, two, if you're not able to save or you're not happy with the level that you're putting into your different buckets, go back to your fixed expenses and be like, hey, what changes can I make, right? Am I living by myself and maybe I'm up for living with one other person and sharing the expense of rent? Or am I eating out too much and maybe I'll start planning my groceries more and cook more at home? Am I taking Uber out of convenience and maybe I'll start kind of like driving or planning? I think, once we start to bring the planning in which again it's kind of the scarcity mind at use is we can plan right how we allocate resources.

Speaker 2:

I tell people financial planning either happens by default or by design. Most people it's happening by default, but you can design it and then start to design it and give yourself the leeway of having a quarterly check-in with yourself to be like what's working right? Where am I too tight? You're like you know what? That food budget that I gave myself just doesn't feel good. I'm not nourishing myself in the way that I need to.

Speaker 2:

Let me modify that. Where do I make adjustments? Because the reality is, if we approach financial planning from a place of choice, something shifts. Even if it's a limited number of resources, how do we start to bring an element of choice to it? And I think the reality is that there is more choice than what people give credit for. It does require, perhaps, shifting some things and saying I'm not going to live alone and be like maybe I've discovered a different part of myself when I share space with someone else, so we can get more creative and we can decouple from what the past generations have defined success to be. It may not be that way.

Speaker 1:

I really like that, especially for today, and how much it's changed since we were all 20.

Speaker 2:

Well, and I'm thinking of, like my 14 year old daughter, I'm like what's her job prospect going to be like with AI? Right, there's so much change on the horizon and so I think we I mean that's how we have survived centuries is being nimble. We have to adapt.

Speaker 1:

So, just as a final question here, if you could talk to your younger self, let's say like your early twenties younger self, and talk to yourself about what true wealth really means, how would you define it to yourself? Like, what does it mean to you? What advice would you give yourself?

Speaker 2:

Uh, that's a great question, and so I think a couple of things I would. I tell my younger self that what she has over me is a gift of time, right, and we know that from a financial strategy standpoint, compounding interest has greater impact over time. So on one hand, I would say, start compounding interest sooner, open that Roth IRA at 14, put a hundred bucks in. But equally important is the power of compounding meaning, right, so those things can happen in parallel where I'm compounding interest and saving from a young age. But compounding meaning and getting super clear what are those strategies that build wealth in all 12 needs, not just in my financial stability one, and if I understand the magic of compounding more broadly meaning and interest. Oh my goodness, the wealth portfolio that 20-year-old can build is amazing.

Speaker 1:

Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us. Yeah, it's just been a really insightful conversation. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Anne, for having me.

Speaker 1:

It's just been a really insightful conversation, thank you. Thank you, anne, for having me Today's key takeaways. Scarcity brain is real and it's not your fault. Our brains are wired for seeking, not for recognizing enough. If you've ever hit a milestone and still felt unsatisfied, it's not because you're ungrateful, it's because your biology hasn't caught up with modern life. The antidote is learning how to embody experiences of enough so your nervous system learns to rest.

Speaker 1:

Wealth is not the same as money. Money is a tool, but wealth is a state of well-being. You can have financial success and still feel empty, or have modest resources and feel deeply fulfilled. Redefining wealth starts with tuning into what makes you feel truly satisfied. What does enough feel like? What are the areas of your life where you feel satisfied and full, and what are the areas of your life where you feel lack? More money won't fix a broken definition of wealth. If your internal definition of success is flawed, no external gain will ever feel like enough.

Speaker 1:

The Wealth Mandala a 360-degree look at what really matters is built on 12 human needs, including financial stability, safety, physical health, freedom, purpose, understanding, participation, belonging, connection, curiosity, leisure. Belonging connection, curiosity, leisure and touch. Elizabeth's Wealth Mandala invites you to rate how fulfilled you feel in each area. From there, you can design both monetary and non-monetary strategies to invest in the areas where you're running low, so that you can plan with intention. Try the conversation with money exercise. Sit down literally and have a dialogue with money. Let your emotions speak first anger, guilt, confusion and then let money respond. This gestalt exercise can reveal long-held beliefs and relational patterns that shape your financial behavior.

Speaker 1:

Satiation is a practice. Write down three things that made you feel satisfied every day for 30 days. At the end, reflect what worked. What filled your cup. Can you apply those strategies in areas of your life where you feel scarcity? Mentally detox from others' definitions of success. Define what wealth means to you. Design a simple plan. Automate savings early and allow your values, and not just your income, to shape your financial life. Practice compounding interest and compounding meaning. Yes, open the Roth IRA early, but also start noticing what fills your soul. Compounding meaningful experiences and embodying the feeling of enough is as valuable as compounding dollars in your accounts. That's it for today. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.

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Anne McGinty

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