Cash & Sass™

How Surrender, Generosity, and Emotional Detachment Create Real Financial Freedom with Matt Morizio

• Lisa Marie Robinson • Episode 127

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What if the fastest path out of a scarcity mindset wasn't discipline or willpower, but it was generosity? That's exactly what Matt Morizio discovered, and the science behind it will shift something in the way you think about money.

Matt is the founder of Reconstructing Wealth, a fee-only wealth management firm helping purpose-driven people align their money with their mission. After five years in the minor leagues with the Kansas City Royals, he transitioned into financial advising and has spent nearly a decade rebuilding his own relationship with money, while helping his clients do the same. In this conversation, Matt and Lisa Marie talk about surrender, emotional detachment, valley seasons, and why real financial freedom has nothing to do with your account balance.

What You'll Learn:

  • How Matt's scarcity mindset, inherited across generations, showed up even as a financial advisor, and what finally broke it
  • The "blessing account" strategy and how a simple act of structured generosity rewired his financial psychology
  • The neuroscience behind why you cannot simultaneously feel fear and love about the same thing, and how to use that to your advantage
  • What it actually looks like to emotionally detach from money and make decisions from strategy, not emotion
  • Why Matt redefines financial freedom as emotional detachment — not a number in an account
  • The "freshman phenomenon" analogy that explains why most people stay financially stuck their whole lives
  • What both Matt and Lisa Marie learned about identity and resilience during their deepest financial valley seasons
  • How to reconstruct your money story with more freedom and less fear

Guest Information:

Matt Morizio is the founder of Reconstructing Wealth, a fee-only wealth management firm that helps purpose-driven providers align their money with their mission. After five years in the minor leagues with the Kansas City Royals, Matt transitioned from pro baseball to financial advising, bringing the same discipline and drive to helping clients build wealth with purpose. His approach combines practical financial strategies with mindset shifts to help clients move from financial confusion to clarity. As a husband, father of seven, and someone who has always gone against the grain, Matt is passionate about helping others break free from fear-based money habits and step into a life of intentional abundance.

Connect with Matt:

Resources

Follow Lisa Marie on your favorite social platform:

Transcendent Wealth Co. LLC
https://www.transcendentwealthco.com   

SPEAKER_01

All right, y'all. Today's episode is gonna feel like a deep exhale. We're diving into something that doesn't get talked about enough when it comes to money. And that's surrender. Now I know surrender might sound a little soft for a business conversation, but when you have been clinging to control, gripping every dollar and trying to force the outcome, let me tell you, that's the real hustle keeping you broke and burned out. And I talk about this all the time. So I am excited because today's guest knows exactly what that feels like. Matt Mauricio, is that I say that right? Oh, I hope I said that right.

SPEAKER_00

You get Mauricio.

SPEAKER_01

Is a pro baseball player, turned financial advisor. Gonna have to know how that happened. And now the founder of Reconstructing Wealth. He's a fee-only wealth management firm helping people align their money with their mission. He's a husband, a dad of seven, and yes, I did say seven, and someone who's been through some really well, I guess what we call dip valley seasons, right? You know, the up and twists and turns. And so I'm excited to have this conversation because while our backgrounds are different, our philosophies around wealth, surrender, and mindset line up really, really well. Because you know, I talk about this all the time. So if you're like me, grab your sweet tea, your journal, or your favorite glass of something strong, if you wish, because we're going there today. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for being a guest on my show. And we're just gonna dive into it. And everybody knows when we dive into it here on Cash and Sass, we're diving into everything and anything money. You shared that your biggest shift came when you realized your money issues weren't about clarity, that they were about control. So I want to dive in and just talk about that. Like, can you tell us what that looked like for you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Gosh, go, you aren't kidding. We're gonna go right into it. So thank you for this opportunity. I love that. Um, yes, they did it, it did kind of rear its ugly face, and I didn't realize that I even had a control problem necessarily with money. But for me, and this is why I love your mission and your show to share this topic, like talk about finances and where does it our relationship with money come from? Mine, like most people, comes from my mom, my parents, like what parents are divorced. I lived with my mom most of my life. I inherited her relationship with money, who she got from her parents, who got from their Great Depression error parents. Like it was one of worry, fear, scarcity. I used to feel like it was a badge of honor for me to be able to squeeze a quarter out of a nickel, is the best way I can describe it. Like penny pinching, hoarding, saving, conserving, worrying. That was that was my upbringing all the way until I was, I don't know, until I started this career nearly a decade ago. So I'm talking in my 30s with with children and a home and a wife, like seemingly having to have it figured out. I sure didn't have it figured out. But in my life, I've always been somebody to dive headfirst into something. If I'm gonna do it, I do, I go all in. I mean, as a pro athlete, I'm a like you said, dad of seven kids. I mean, I feel like I'm winning a race. I didn't even mean to enter there. But what I don't do is fence ride. Like if I'm gonna do something, if I feel called and called and led towards something, I'm gonna go head on into it. Accept my money. I was for the longest time, it was on my heart to to give, to, to give to where I felt like I was being led to give. And sometimes I would, I would be consistent with it, and other times I wouldn't, and then I would, and I was living in this like meet midline of fence riding, which is not me and it's not my style, except that it was, and I realized that it was because I I couldn't commit because I would had this fear that money had this grip on me, this control on me, which is interesting because I thought I was trying to hold it, to control it. And it wasn't until I basically said, enough's enough. I've been wanting to do this thing for years. I've had all the reasons to do it and not do it certain months. I had a conversation with my wife and said, Look, I think it's been too strong on my heart and I've not been able to shake it. I think that I want to, like, I think I'm being called to just consistently give what I thought I called a 10%. I gave 10% to a separate fund account, basically for me. I knew if I left it in my own savings account, I was gonna all do all the things I had been doing, which is like pay credit card bills, pay this bill, like oh, I got reasons not to this month, oh, this month I can, this month I can't. So if I set it in a separate account, that for me was that action of going all in and really surrendering, giving up control, finally saying, I'm doing this thing. And my wife agreed, she was on the same page with me. So we went for it. We opened up a separate bank account, separate savings account, has its own debit card. We call it our blessing.

SPEAKER_01

You're speaking my language. I want you to know that. We're okay. I know this is why I was. You are speaking my language. I can't wait.

SPEAKER_00

I know. I've listened to your shows and love, love your mission. And that's why I'm honored to be on this, to share this story, because it had such an unknowingly profound effect on me. I didn't like I want people to understand if they're listening that I didn't set out to do this in an effort to change my relationship with money, to be better with it. I set out to do this because I was frustrated that I couldn't commit on this thing, where I was a very committed person in other places. So to me, to set to commit fully, I had to have it in a separate account. And it was a different debit card color, like everything. And I included my kids in the idea of this. This is what it's here for. We're putting this money aside for other people. This is not ours. So when we feel called or led to use it, we're gonna use it on other people. That was the plan with it. And it's fun because they'll shout out too, like, hey, let's let's bless somebody today, is how they'll say it. But that means that, or they'll see when the purple card comes out. Like that's the color of the that debit card. They get excited.

SPEAKER_01

See, that gives me an idea because I love I love that. And that's one thing I haven't done is what you did. But you know, I love I love that you do that.

SPEAKER_00

It was that season where I I did that act of setting aside money and finally committed to what I felt like was calling my heart to to to give some away, to generously give. And it was in that surrender of the control on money that subconsciously what was happening, and I actually had some P I have some friends who have PhDs in psychology and neuroscience that I ran this by because I don't have that type of knowledge, and I'm but but I'm feeling what I'm feeling. Um, and I'm realizing like as this has happened, I'm talking like years have gone by as I'm doing this, I'm worrying less about my own situation. And I have less anxiety and fear around finances. Part of that is because I'm immersed in the world of giving advice on money and how to help. So so I'm understanding the language of it and I'm understanding how that game works. But it was undeniable that that simple action of like giving it away, a little bit of it away, was doing something inside. So I asked. Yeah, and I asked like uh exactly. So I asked my friends there that have the degrees that I don't, and I asked what was happening, and the way they articulated it to me, and I'm gonna explain it to you in my own plain English version, is a lot of times in psychology, it's discussed that there are two root emotions, fear and love, kind of our root emotions, and then many, many, many emotions stem from them. Well, they explained that I was living in this fear-based emotional state with finances where I wanted to, I thought it was doing the right thing, like don't overspend, save, conserve, but it really is this fear-based hoarding and gripping of finances. They said, but when you willingly It's still a scarcity mindset, it is, and then and and some of it will serve me because it doesn't force me to overspend, but when it controls me and I don't control it, it's a problem, which was what was happening. But this um love-based emotion of act of setting up a blessing account to give to other people, love is always the strongest emotion, and it was oh basically overriding my own like operating system. They said to me, we can't simultaneously experience fear and love about the same thing. We obviously can have fear and have love throughout the day, but at the same time, we're not going to experience both at the same time about the same thing. So, love being the stronger emotion was always overriding your subconscious to say, hey guys, basically what was happening if you're you know, we used to worry about this thing called money, but uh we're giving it away now. I don't know if you guys got the message. Like, we're okay giving it away, so we don't have to have fear over it anymore, we don't have to worry. And subconsciously, my psyche toward finances was rewired as a result of that is how they articulated it to me. And I was like, well, shoot, it makes sense. I didn't plan on that, but like I've experienced it. It's my truth, I've lived that. So there is real truth in that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I love that because I mean, a lot of times people who come to me that they're wanting to have control better control over their finances, they're wanting to get rid of that scarcity mindset. And so what happens though is our brains, when we have it in one account, it means it's there for us to do whatever. And so one of the things I do is open multiple accounts. So I use the Prophet First mythology and have them open more accounts. If you listen to my episodes, you've heard me talk about it before. And the only thing I haven't done is a blessing account, which is going to change because I absolutely love that. Cool. Um, but like in personal savings, you know, people say emergency. I don't like the word emergency because in our brain, again, if you actually go and look at it, it is a scarcity word. And what I consider emergency would be different than what you consider emergency. So what I tell my clients to do instead is to set up different savings accounts for specific things. So, like if you own a house for your house, if you uh for the house repairs, because y'all listen, you gotta take care of the appliances, you gotta take care of the house, eventually you're gonna need new windows, eventually you're gonna need a new roof. I don't care, it just happens. Eventually, your washing machine, your dryer, whatever is going to go out, they don't last forever. They're not meant to last forever. Right. Hopefully, you can get a good 10-15 years out of them, and you don't know if one's gonna break down or whatever. True. So I tell them to have those things. And like if you're in South Carolina, like me and Matt are, which we so need to talk about because you're like two and a half hours away from me. I know. Um if you're in South Carolina, we have what's called property tax on our vehicles. Again, we know it's gonna come and we know what month because all you gotta do is go look at the sticker on the back of that on the tag that's on the back of your vehicle. And if you know how much, I tell my clients and they're like, oh wow, really? Take the amount. Yes, it's gonna fluctuate a little bit, but normally it decreases every year. Okay. I normally round up, then divide by 12, and that's how much I put into the vehicle savings account for the property taxes because it's so much easier to put 40, 50, whatever dollars per month than it is to come up with 900, 600, 700, or 1,000, whatever it is a year to pay. And you know, and that's also like your oil changes, your tires. Those things that aren't recurring every single month, but they are recurring. And so I love the fact of you surrendered and just said, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. And it was your way of you were changing your scarcity mindset without realizing it because you didn't realize you had it. You didn't realize, because I've talked about this before that we have there's two types of extreme scarcity at call. And it's basically feeling worthless, not sure you deserve to make money. So it basically goes away pretty much as fast as you get it. That was me. That was where I was. Then you have the ones who have it and they because of however they were brought up, they feel like they've got to hoard it and never spend it. Like they have that's the only way they can have control over it because tomorrow it could disappear.

SPEAKER_00

Correct.

SPEAKER_01

So those are the two extremes. And majority of the time, that kind right there that you're talking about, they don't realize it's a it's a that it is a form of scarcity.

SPEAKER_00

For sure.

SPEAKER_01

Um, until you have like someone who you talk to or me go, Well actually. And I didn't realize it either until I did some deep research and realized that. So I love the fact that you did that. What I'm interested in is how did the surrender change your relationship with money? Because whether you realized it then or not, it did change your relationship.

SPEAKER_00

For sure. Yeah, yeah. It and it changed it for the better, I will tell you. First off, I've heard a quote most recently, I heard a guy named Dean Graciosi say it on a podcast. But the quote was if you think money can't buy you happiness, you just haven't given enough away yet. And when I heard that, I'm like, I understand that now because I've set up an account to give away, and it's a lot of fun to do that, to serve other people in that capacity. And when I have that account set, there's this feeling of unlimited money. Even though it's not unlimited, I know what's in it. I'm putting money in there, I know it's not unlimited. But when I know that it's not going to be used for any of my needs, it feels like it's okay to spend ridiculously uncertain things if it if it's going to change somebody's life. It's okay to spend there's this feeling of like freedom with finances that isn't reckless, and it isn't that I now take that freedom and then go spend on anything I want in my own personal life. It's not that. What happened is I have this healthy understanding of the benefits of using money effectively to serve other people and use it as a tool. So now for me, money becomes more like chess pieces on a chessboard than it is this emotional burden that I'm I have to carry as the provider. And that's the best way I can describe it. I know you talked about some of the valley seasons, and I'm sure we'll get into some, but when even when I'm in the depths of the valley, I feel less emotionally charged. Now, I don't care who you are, how much work you've done on yourself, we're still human. If you're struggling to pay next month's rent or next month's mortgage, there's some emotion attached to that, no matter how good you are with it. But even in the depths of the valley, knowing what I know and having the relationship with it that I have, I still felt like, well, there are levers that I need to pull and I need to make levers happen and to make to extend this runway to be able to get through to the other side, as opposed to, oh my gosh, panic, panic, panic, because I have no real understanding of how it works and I have this unhealthy relationship toward it. It's a burden for me. And now I'm not doing a good job with the burden, and then in goes the tailspin, the inward tailspin that's happening emotionally with who I am and how I'm not living up to what I'm supposed to be living up to.

SPEAKER_01

Especially when you're you work in financial plane, you know, wealth mentor, financial plane. Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm a fractional CFO, yeah, which is chief financial officer and a wealth mentor. Y'all, I've had some tough seasons, and a lot of it, yes, was before I started my business. Like reading, you know, my story. I was on food stamps, I didn't come from money. When I started my business, I was on food stamps. And then to have the business and teach and do what we do, and then go through that tough valley season of you know, life happens, hello. And oh, all of a sudden, one thing that used to not be so tight is tight and how we react or how we lean into it and instead of learning not to spiral, because at first that's what we'd be doing. And the reason why I know I spiraled is because I was like, wait a minute, who am I to be teaching what I'm teaching to be a fractional CFO to people who may and then hit that rough spot because life happened. And one of the things my coach told me is he says, There's always chaos. There's always going to be chaos. Now, if you know me, I love to try to argue or try or try to say, no, you're not right. And my brain immediately wanted to say, no, there isn't. And then in the split second, I stopped. I went, wait. And it like my brain just kind of went through and I went, crap, he's right. And so I said, You're right. There's always he said, Okay, what we get to choose is how are we going to be in the chaos. And if we choose to be calm in the chaos, then the chaos isn't able to knock us off. Instead, we are able to be strategic because we're leaning in and looking and saying, okay, what can we learn from this? And we're able to say, you know, and then if it knocks us off, someone else that says, fill the fields, do everything you gotta do, pitch, screen, whatever, and then move, don't stay stuck in it, right? And that's part of it. Yes, because if you bury it, then it's gonna end up exploding later anyway. But being the calm in the chaos is what helped me be able to, like you're talking about, stop that spiraling effect from happening and saying, okay, how like you said, levers, chess pieces. Yeah. Okay, what do I need to do? Because I love that. I didn't know that I didn't think about it as that analogy, but that's exactly what we're talking about. Chess pieces. Okay, what do I need to move to where we can navigate through this, get to the other side, and then you know, be okay. And so that, and I am gonna go into the Valley Season. So I love the fact that you brought that up. Because y'all, you gotta understand life happens. I promise you are not the first person that's had hard shit happen or you know, thought you were ahead and all of a sudden felt not backwards. I know I wasn't the first person, it may feel like we were, but you're not, and you're not alone. And so I want to really get into that. You said something that that really hit close home to me, hit close to home for me. You mentioned that there was a tough season and the professional ball player, this is the reason why I was like, huh. When you couldn't afford groceries and you had to use your mom's credit card. And I know what that's like because I was working 60 hours a week, barely able to put food on the table. And before they said I qualified for food stamps, I was having to borrow money from my in-laws or my parents or whatever to put, you know, or choosing what bill to pay or what bill not to pay so the food could go on the table. And so I want to my question to you is what did that moment teach you? Not just about money, but about your identity.

SPEAKER_00

That's a hard season, but meaningful. And I know that you're a more empathetic fractional CFO, a more empathetic advisor because of it. And that's that's really like to fast forward the answer. I'm not sidestepping the question, by the way. I will talk about that season. But what it taught me was that I needed to go through and basically be knocked to my knees to understand what the depths of the valleys do really feel like, so that when I can become the teacher for other people, it's coming from a place of A, experience and B, email, you know, understanding and understanding. Yes. Like the advice you need to give when you're in that season is not what you're going to find in a textbook on personal finance. And often the non-traditional life that the clients that I work with that that they're trying to lead requires non-traditional advice. And I can only give it empathetically from a place of experience because I've been knocked on my knees or more.

SPEAKER_01

You can actually say that I understand you've been there because that's one of the things I tell them. So there's nothing you can tell me that will shock me or make me judge you because I've been there, I know what it's like. And having that empathy changes everything because now they don't have that fear to share because they've got someone who understands they're in a particular season.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes, and and it was it's hard to, as somebody who is paid to help people figure out their financial lives from an investment standpoint to planning to budgeting to all of that. It's really difficult to live in that season where I'm paid to help you figure out your dreams while I'm also simultaneously living my own personal financial life, you know, on paper at least. But that was a hard time. That was early into this career where it was a real step out in faith. You know, for me, my faith is pretty important. So I really felt like I was being led to this new direction in a career. I had to pray for a career change. I didn't think this was supposed to be the one, but then after really trying to figure out the reasons not to, it just reinforced why I should. So I I'm new into this career, financial advising. And I had taken a pay cut to get into the industry to start. I had no clients, so I had to really build up a client base to even eventually afford my own life. And the speed that I built in my client. base up at was not fast enough as to when they started to, they being the firm I used to work for, started to ratchet back that salary they had given me as a runway. And they really ratcheted that back pretty aggressively to the point where I was living in outside of Boston at the time, which is an expensive area of the country, and my income dropped down to probably what was annualized about 50K a year. And I had four children, five children at the time, excuse me. One was a newborn. So I'm five children, early 30s, have two cars, a house, and I'm not making enough to even provide for my family. And that's hard because the shame that comes with that as the sole provider is heavy. The disappointment I felt like my wife had because she trusted me to go and do this thing only to feel like what are we doing really kept me up at night to say the least. But I was in the middle of a home refinance because that was a lever I could pull. There was some equity in my home. I had already maxed out the credit card lever, which is not, you know, there are some levers I should say this that they're like hey in case of emergency break glass kind of lever. Well I had to break a lot of glass you know that's the best way I could say it. But I had used that I had depleted all savings. I had sold the stock from of ATT that my grandfather gave to me when I was a newborn everything was gone. Credit cards were max. I quite literally couldn't buy a cup of coffee on my credit card. And I had nowhere to turn so I was in the midst of a home refinance because I looked I'm like there's a lever that's something I could pull I can pull cash out of the equity of my home refinance the home and pay off some of this credit card debt. And if anybody's ever done that they know refinancing a home is a lot like closing on a home. It's a mortgage process that takes 30, 60 days. It takes a while. Well imagine a plane trying to take off and then the runway just stopped too too quickly. Like that's kind of what happened. I was at this point where the home equity loan didn't close yet the refinance didn't close and I needed to buy groceries. I had just enough in my account to pay for next week's mortgage payment and I had nowhere to turn so I called my mom and said mom I don't really want to explain it and get into this. It's a bit humiliating but I need to borrow your credit card. And she said oh sure whatever you need thank God she just said like sure I didn't even have to explain like all of the financial crap that I was going through which was not textbook. I'm a financial advisor maxing out credit cards, depleting savings in the name of entrepreneurship, in the name of a calling like that's not what you're reading a textbook. But here I am doing it living it um and I was able to just use her card for a few weeks is really what it boiled down to. Finally the home equity line closed and I was able to pay her back and then pay off a little bit of the debt but that cycle continued because it's difficult to grow a practice in this world.

SPEAKER_01

It's difficult to grow a business I mean in general right it's not it's not it's not there's nothing I tell people all the time that it takes a certain kind of person to be able to have a business and if you think the business you're gonna start the business and it's just going to go up and there's not going to be this six steps forward down uh mountains then you need to not start the business.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

I've been I'm eight and a half years in and let me just tell you there is not been nothing about where it's just been easy gliding. It's more like I don't know you you're surfing and all of a sudden this wave is just gonna come over you and literally when I say comes over you it like topples you and knocks you down and you end up like 15 waves back from where you were and it's when you're the breadwinner and I'm the breadwinner I'm the sole provider for my girls and when you're a provider for your family it holds a lot. Yeah I think we put even more pressure on ourselves but it puts things on there. And I know for me it put even more because my only other option was to go back to corporate. And when I got let go in 2016 I made the talking about levers I pulled levers right I went to my landlord and said hey I want you to prorate my rent I know because I background I knew I was going to qualify for income child tax credit because I didn't make enough money. I knew all this I could estimate about how much it was going to be I knew all this. And I literally said I want you to prorate my rent and then come April I'm going to pay it three people told her to tell me no and she still said yes. Amazing whatever you believe in higher powers was so involved in that there's no way it that she wasn't sometimes it's undeniable. Yep it's just you know I mean and so she did and she wrote agreement and so I pulled the lever again food now I qualify for food stamps. I had my vehicle repossessed I wasn't going back to the world I was in if I was barely going to make ends meet I was going to do it on my terms because I was tired of migraines I was tired of the tension headaches and I was honestly tired of making someone else wealthy who could travel everywhere and anywhere and they weren't taking care of their employees and I who worked I was a CFO without the I have a CFO without the title and the pay as well as being in charge of trust huge thousands and thousands of dollars trust accounts and I just it wasn't appreciated. Do you know what I mean? And so like you're talking about you just take that chance and one of the things I want to ask you is you said that you learn to emotionally detach from your finances mostly and you talked about it earlier. But my question is what does healthy detachment look like and how has it helped you make better decisions because that's something I've actually started learning to do over the last two years especially and I think it's even more healing when it comes to changing our relationship with money as well as realizing that we're opening ourselves up to receive even more.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah really good the I'm I'm gonna be on a crusade maybe for the rest of this journey however long this this journey is maybe my life that I want to redefine financial freedom as when somebody emotionally detaches from their money to the best of the humanly is possible. That's what I think true financial freedom is and I can say that from the perspective of having had thousands of conversations with people about their personal finances and managing money for people who I know because I'm running the numbers, they're going to be great financially speaking. They have what the world would define as financial freedom they have enough money in their investment account to fund their life where they can work or not work. You know work is optional for them. That's what the world says financial freedom is but I'm going to tell you that I've had conversations with people that are in that situation that I would be hard pressed to define them as financially free because they worry all the time about their money. And that's that's not true freedom to me. So I've found financial freedom really for me the definition is when you can emotionally detach from money. And what that has done for me what that looks like for me is making decisions not and not assigning emotional words to them like that was a good decision. That was a bad decision. Well that's not really those are more emotional I I look at the decisions like okay that was well thought out it didn't go as planned or that went as planned we thought that one through and that worked out or yeah you can get lucky that's not an emotion as much as it is like I know I didn't do the homework on that one but that one turned out to work out pretty good. Like that is much more looking at life like a chess board and you're using chess chess pieces if we want to keep that analogy going you said it earlier and it made me think you talked about the emotions that we attach to events and it made me think of this line that I think I live by that your life is not necessarily a series events. Your life that you experience is the emotions you attach to that series of events. So I'm not attaching the emotions of my identity of that was good, that was bad, I'm great with money I'm terrible with money to the decisions I'm making on finances. Now I will tell you what that looks like and where that comes from is comes really from education. So if generosity that we talked about at the beginning of the show is the shortcut to changing your relationship with money the long sustaining way to to continue that emotional change is just through understanding how it works. Like understand the game of money I I compare it to this because a lot of people fear finances and it's really fear of the unknown like your daughter is going into high school like I bet you last week before she got into high school there was so much anxiety and apprehension about what is high school you know get listen and she wouldn't talk to anybody she wouldn't have a conversation with anybody she would say she was fun but she was not fine yes I caught I called it I mean I've even named I call it the freshman phenomenon like that's what people that's so like right most people worry that week going on to their freshman year and everybody can relate to this and understand it that going into that freshman year they they they stressed about the classrooms am I going to get lost are the classes going to be tough my my teachers, my students, my classmates what are they going to be like but then after the first handful of days maybe the first full week week and a half 80% of that fear that you had a week and a half ago is gone because you know the class schedule and the teachers and the students and the routine and the layout of the building and all that stuff suddenly becomes known. It was once unknown and it's now known here's my prop what I've learned and the problem is most people financially speaking live their lives like incoming freshmen is the best way to describe it. They never take the time to understand personal finances. And there's no excuse today with ChatGPT and AI and the in the age of information we live in you can quite literally type a prompt into chat to say I don't know a thing about personal finances but I want to become a a personal finance expert. Where do I start? Give me the top five places to begin you know and you can start your journey there if you don't think you you're qualified to start. There's no reason not to but that's really what emotionally detaching from money looks like for me. It's understanding it more and you have to first realize make the call that you need to learn you don't know what you don't know and then be humble enough to say okay it's time to educate myself and I promise so much of that fear and anxiety you once felt about money is probably going to start to dissipate because you're going to realize that wow this is actually not over my head like I didn't need the wizard you're gonna feel like you're seeing behind the curtain of the wizard now and realize what was I worried about this whole time yeah and you're right I mean part of that is our society right I mean that's the reason why I started the podcast Cash and Sass because I was tired of money being such a taboo subject because it's not gotten us anywhere with not talking about it.

SPEAKER_01

So let's try something new. Love it um so you I feel there's this beautiful theme in your journey and call it the word that comes to mind is just reconstruction. But what are some ways that you've helped your clients rebuild their money stories with more freedom and less fear like you were talking about with that detachment.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah sometimes it comes in the form of pushing I mean a lot of the times it comes in the form of pushing pushing to a place of discomfort because that's where growth is and that's what we're talking about. I don't hide my underlying mission is to reconstruct people's relationship with money. That's why I named the firm Reconstructing wealth because I've seen it firsthand in my life how my life changes as that transformation has happened. So I want to do that in other people's lives like how it looks is I may challenge some people to say look you've got that money sitting in a savings account it's a whole bunch of money and you really don't need to keep it there. You have no plans for it why don't we start investing that money and now that what used to be this giant scary I don't like investing I don't like the stock market I'm worried about it going down all the things that people worry about when they start to understand how investing works because they've trusted me to let's go there I'm thinking of one client as an example he's he started that years ago and then you fast forward to today he bought his first home and it was in up in the Boston area it's nearly a million dollar home and he's the one talking to me about investments and the way he thinks through debt versus investing how to use money effectively like he's now becoming the teacher to me almost the roles sort of get reversed where it's like teacher student student becomes a teacher teacher becomes a student. It's so fun to see that because I've seen his transformation he used to worry about that's that money sitting in his savings account that he's kept since a high school he never wanted to see it go down and then he understood the rules of the game and to grow wealth you have to invest in and there's a chance it will go down but over a long period of time it should go up. And he experienced it because he was afraid of the unknown then he started to understand it. And then the conversations that follow as a result of that first step of discomfort has really transformed how he thinks through money and decision decisions related to money. And that overall over time is really transforming his relationship with his reconstructing how he sees money. And now he doesn't care necessarily about the money as much as how he's using it and what it's doing for him in his life. And that's the beauty of re the reconstruction that's one of many examples that like really highlights the joy of what I get to do for people.

SPEAKER_01

I love it. Before we wrap I know you've got a free resource for my listeners who are ready to start real money with their purpose which I love because one of the things I say is being wealthy truly wealthy is when you're it's in alignment with your core values and your desires and all and there's a difference between being rich and wealthy and strive to be wealthy, not rich because y'all there are a lot of rich people who are still broke and a lot of rich people who are miserable. And so we're aligned in that area but you have a free offer.

SPEAKER_00

So can you tell us a little bit about that and where people can find you yeah I love how you speak I feel like it's me and a female version with cooler hair. That's like what I feel like um thank you so much. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Well we're gonna have to do this again I already decided you're too close not to right right we'll try to find it in person.

SPEAKER_00

Yes if you follow me on Instagram it's just my name Matt Morizio you'll get to know my life a little bit but also send me a DM to say you heard about this you heard on this podcast about this course I created a three-part video series on transforming your relationship with money and it goes into some of what we talked about like the science behind it the emotions behind it. It has some real blocking and tackling of like what to do to start out with personal finances but it's three six to eight minute long videos. It's not a big lift and it's it'll cost you an email address it's free and it's a great primer for anybody who feels like they've been something's been stirred inside them during this conversation they want to learn more. Like it's a free resource that that won't hurt you might help. So send me a message send me a DM on Instagram and I'm happy to share that link with you.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome awesome and y'all if this episode had you nodding going damn I've been trying to control everything. Y'all look I've been there too right you don't need another budget you need a financial strategy that's aligned with who you are what you value and how you want to live and that's exactly what we would be doing during a wealth alignment call. It's not about spreadsheets or shame or any of that stuff. It's about clarity confidence and making moves that actually feel good I'm just gonna say in your body and in your business because when you feel good like Matt was talking about y'all it what it opens up energetically is just unbelievable. It's totally different. And so if you know you're ready head over to the show notes grab the link and book your call because I'd love to support you. And Matt, thank you so much for being on my show. Y'all have already decided he has to come back I truly truly appreciate it. And everybody until next time remember confidence and cash are the ultimate power duo. Go check in with your money and as always have it fantastic and wealthy.