A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom

5 Key Levers for Financial Freedom: Mom Edition

• Charmaine • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Hey, listeners! In this episode, Charmaine discusses actionable strategies for financial freedom, specifically designed for moms, in the season one finale of the (Mostly) Stay-at-Home Mom podcast. 

She reveals the concept of leverage and how smart actions can propel your family toward significant financial milestones. Don't miss out on these invaluable insights that will help you go from hustling needlessly to.... hustling with real effects so you can stop the hustle! Tune in, and let's take the first step toward a more secure financial future together!

Speaker 0:

Hey there and welcome to another episode of the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast, where we chat about entrepreneurship, mom life and earning a side income as a busy mom. I'm your host, charmaine, and I am so happy you're here. Today's episode is titled Essential Leverage to Financial Freedom Mom Edition, and you don't want to miss this one. I think I have saved the best for last, this one. I think I have saved the best for last. It is the final episode of this first season of the podcast and I truly have brought together all of my best tips, so I hope you stick around for this episode. Like I was saying, this is our wrap-up of season one of the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast.

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I'm not totally sure when the next season will appear. I'll either do another this winter or in the spring, after my baby is born it all sort of depends on that and of course, the baby and the family will come first. But if you want to be updated on when the new season starts, I recommend subscribing and that way, when the new episode releases, you'll be the first to know. It'll appear right in your playlist of podcast episodes. So yeah, please do me a favor and subscribe to the show Also if you enjoyed the show this season. Share the episodes with your friends, leave a review, leave a rating or contact me for potential future topics to explore In the next season. I do plan to do some solo episodes, like I've been doing, but I really want to branch out and do more interviews. I'm hoping to interview mompreneurs, as they say, or you know just different moms who are juggling either part-time jobs or full-time jobs or their own businesses, seeing how they make it work. There's so many different situations out there and I think I could learn so much and share that with the listeners, so you won't want to miss that.

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Before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my business, effective Media, by Charmaine. If you're a business owner, you're good at what you do, you have a quality product or service, but you're just not sure how to explain that to the world, or you don't have time. Let me help you out. I can save you from spinning your wheels and wasting time on the internet. With my background in copywriting, blogging, websites and more, I can help you craft your media into meaningful content that supports your business From media strategy to website copy, to social media content creation or even ghostwriting your founder's story. I want to make sure your media works for you and not the other way around. The easiest way to get in touch with me is through my website, bycharmainecom. That's B-Y-C-H-A-R-M-A-I-N-Ecom. Hurry over and fill out a contact form to get in touch with me.

Speaker 0:

All right, let's dive into the Essential Leverage to Financial Freedom, mom Edition. So I don't know about you, but I've heard this word a lot thrown around in the business and entrepreneurship world the concept of leverage. So when I use this word, I mean it as a lever that propels you in a direction. Sometimes we do things and we feel like we're going through the motions and we're just kind of horizontally one step in front of the other, but levers will really propel you right, like I visualize this little video game, mario character hopping, you know, on the various mushrooms and things like that to get to the next goal. That's what I'm talking about with leverage. So what are some actions that we can take that will really give us that much more latitude and propulsion? I guess, like, what are the bang for your buck actions to take? So we're going to stay close to that territory because some of you listening may be entrepreneurs, but even if you're not, I want to see how we can apply the idea of leverage for moms. Maybe you didn't really think that moms could gain leverage for their family income. I want to open up these possibilities and show you, even if you're not the primary breadwinner of your family or a W-2 holding breadwinner at all, there are still essential levers you can pursue in your role that can propel your family to the next financial milestone. These levers are rarely talked about. Whether on purpose or not, the financial power of the home and family unit seems downplayed in our culture. But I'm here to tell you there are more ways to help your family gain ground financially than just wishing, hoping or begging an employer puts you in that position. So let's dive in Some essential levers for moms or just other family-focused individuals.

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Number one you might already have this, you might be pursuing this, but I'm going to say marriage. I don't recommend at all pursuing marriage, primarily for economic reasons, but you can't deny that if it works well, marriage provides an economic benefit. Two people working together towards the same goal is generally going to be more effective than just one person. You can encourage and sharpen and complement one another. Again, I say this with a huge caveat Don't marry for the money, don't marry just for this new position in life. Of course, marry wisely, seek wise counsel before you make that important decision. But this is truly a high leverage life decision that has impacts on your financial situation. I talked in the last episode about my marriage after kids, if you want to check that out. But marriage has changed my life for the better in a lot of ways. That's not to say I didn't enjoy life before. It was just very different. And so, right off the bat, it might be a no-brainer or commonplace thing to you, or maybe it didn't occur to you, but marriage is kind of a cheat code, if you will Like. It is powerful. So I'm going to mention that.

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Number two the second lever, is to get out of debt. By this I mean consumer debt. I am not talking necessarily about mortgage debt, but if it seems like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, it's because it's true. There's actually a name for this phenomenon. They call it the Matthew effect. It's this effect of accumulated advantage. When you have an advantage in one area, the effects tend to slowly compound, creating more and more advantage until the graph makes sort of a swooping up shape right. Have you seen those graphs? Almost like a J, but it doesn't dip, so disadvantage. In this case we're talking about debt compounds against you in the other way.

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I found a lot of graphs online that talked about you know the advantage of being a good reader. So when you have readers that are starting to, or students who are starting to learn to read, those who have less of a struggle with it in the beginning will gain ground so much faster and achieve this exponential growth. Because if reading is easier for the individual, then that person is going to spend more time reading. It's more enjoyable, and then they get better and better at reading, whereas the student who struggles they're going to have a harder time and eventually, as they get older and there's more of this gap between them and their peers, it's going to be a negative compounding effect against them. And that's just one example. With, like learning how to read, you could think of any other skill. I personally know people who are like good at music Seems like once they're good at the essentials of music, they can pick up any number of instruments. It's really fascinating how this plays out in life.

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Or in finance. Let's say you are investing in stocks and you have this compound interest and at first you know the lines don't seem to be going up or doing anything exciting. So there is a long period of time, like this runway, before you hit momentum and then, when the growth really happens, the graph starts to shoot up right, in the same way that investing your money in accounts. Yes, it takes years and years to actually see growth and a payoff from that. It's worth it. But on the flip side of that, if you are in debt, at first it might not really affect you too much, or you might not notice it too much, and then, as that interest compounds against you, it will take its toll, and so this is why I mentioned this as a lever. It's super powerful to get out of this. So, because of the Matthew effect, getting out of consumer debt is not just a good finance tip. It's essential to hit that reset button to a good path.

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Debt is like being in a hole where the ground you're standing on is quicksand. That's just lowering you deeper and deeper. Think about it If you're in debt, you have that interest accumulating each day against you. Let's say an emergency comes up, you can't cover it, so you accumulate more debt. You end up spending more on essentials because you can't pay for them all up front, like I love to pay for things up front if I can to save money, but that's not something that you can afford to do if you're in debt, right. In contrast, someone without debt and a little bit of an emergency fund can cover an emergency when it arises and they're not snowballing further into debt. This person is more likely to afford paying for things up front and that lowers their overall costs, but, lastly, they don't have the mental burden that monkey on their back of debt pushing them down. I think the psychological effects to debt are important as well. So getting out of non-mortgage debt is a superpower. It is absolutely a lever for your family.

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As far as strategies for getting out of debt are concerned, I recommend Dave Ramsey. He's got him and his team have a ton of great resources out there for free Videos. You know articles, but also the class. Financial Peace University is a great way to learn it all in one chunk of time, like with a community of other people learning it at the same time, so I recommend it. The class really blessed me and my husband. Some friends and a local church essentially gifted it to us at an extremely low rate and it's just we're so thankful. It's one of those things where you don't realize at the time that it's going to be life-changing. But truly I think our time in that class and what we learned set us on a trajectory like a much better path than we were on. So it's just interesting to look back on little life events like that. That kind of are trajectory setters and that was one of them.

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All right for the third lover, let's say you're married, you have a united team player mentality about finance. Some of the other levers you can use are there are three different ways, I would say, to raise your income. Maybe you're trying to get out of debt or kind of raise a pot of cash for an emergency fund, a purchase, or simply wanting to level up in your situation. There are a few ways to do this Work on increasing your spouse's income, increase your income or cut costs. You can do a combination, all three, two out of three, one out of three it's up to you.

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But my primary suggestion is work on increasing your spouse's income, and this is why I see a lot of wives on the internet eager to increase their income, either through starting a business or joining one through, like network marketing. I am a proponent of starting your own business, but I really caution people about it, and especially network marketing businesses or MLMs, because they capitalize on moms and housewives' desires to increase their family income and it's very hard to make any substantial money compared to the work you put in. And, of course, just starting your own business straight up is, I think, worth it too, but it's going to be a ton of work, right. So it's just much easier to focus on increasing one person's income rather than starting something else from scratch. So if you and your husband view yourselves as a team in finance which I definitely recommend then finding ways to help him increase the family income is much quicker, more effective than starting your own thing. So here is how you can help him Concrete ways to increase his income and again, I'm speaking as if you're a team.

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You share a pot of money. Combine bank accounts. I encourage this. Obviously, if things are rocky or abusive or looking like they're going south, you obviously don't want to be trapped. But I'm speaking to a niche of team player husband and wives like they're on the same page, right. So you can help your husband level up if that'll increase his income, let's say through if he needs to study for something, to get a certification, and that will increase his paycheck, or if it helps him somehow achieve a promotion. You know these are ways, concrete ways that you can increase the income that he's already bringing in. Maybe all it takes is getting a further certification. You know you could research, study materials. Go out and buy his books for him, take the kids. You know, when he gets home from work, take the kids out somewhere so he can have quiet study time. You know, whatever it might be Remember this is just a season anyway, so it doesn't have to last forever and I understand that it's a lot of work for the both of you and I talked about this kind of before. Like in intense situations, you both might need to put in more of a sprint of effort, but then after that, if you can scale back like all that effort might be worth it right Another way to do this to help your husband increase his income, is to help him start a business, which is what we did personally in our family. But starting a business is not for the faint of heart. It truly is a process. Just expect a few years in the beginning of momentum, trying to gain that momentum. It's going to be work. It's going to be set up.

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There's a lot of administrative work involved in just self-employment in general. When you cut ties with an employer, you are suddenly responsible for your own. You know tax, health, all these different facets of life, in addition to the documents you need to sign with your state and your federal system as well. So I did this when my husband and I started his or our business which we went for it because we saw the potential for him to out-earn his previous job. We liked his previous job. There was nothing wrong with it and it would have provided sort of a bare minimum for us, but we saw the potential for him to earn more with his own business. I got all excited and titled myself the vice president, secretary, treasurer, etc. Of our newly started business and I handled the paperwork. Even if you have to hire out tasks like bookkeeping, marketing, you still need someone to direct all of that right and set it up so you can be your husband's helper and number one teammate on his business. The other option is to increase your income mom or wife or whoever is listening.

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Again, is it a level up situation or just get a job situation or start a business. I'll give you examples for each. For level up, could you study to become a realtor? I don't even know Are there certifications for that. You could get yourself certified in the realtor world and become a realtor or something I do know a little more about. I was a teacher for a while and I had my primary focus was reading instruction. So if I really wanted to, I could probably start a tutoring business where I tutor kids in reading. That's my passion and my expertise, but I feel like I could gain even more expertise. You know there's a lot of really intensive and good trainings out there for reading instruction. A lot of really intensive and good trainings out there for reading instruction, especially for kids who have reading disabilities, dyslexia that's not something I know a lot about. So I could obtain that expertise and certification and then consequently have this sort of niche in my tutoring business and raise my prices because of that new knowledge I obtained.

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Right, or just getting any other job, probably part-time. You could go full-time if you need to financially. Just weigh the pros and cons honestly, because as a mom, you probably have a lot of home responsibilities as well. So taking on even a part-time job might be a lot, and it is for me. My part-time job is substitute teaching in our school district and I do that very flexibly and occasionally I choose my own schedule and it works for us. But you know it is sacrifice. The third possibility is starting your own business, again like a separate one from your husband. So I started my business in doing media strategy and website writing for other businesses, and so that is definitely my own thing. My husband isn't involved with that. So in a way, I've started two of the. I've done two of the three of these increasing your own income options and then reducing costs. Reducing costs can be a powerful strategy. I would suggest combining it with also increasing income, but it can also really help.

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Sit down and put together a budget with your husband, see if you can forego certain things for a period of time to achieve this financial goal and try to kick the bad spending habits. I mean there truly are habits that a lot of us have to work ourselves out of, myself included. Have you heard of the phenomenon of breastfeeding purchases? It's bad, but when a lot of women are nursing at random hours of the night and they're just emotional, looking for entertainment. The ads on their phone just speak to them more and they end up purchasing. I fell victim to this for sure. You know the ads on their phone just speak to them more and they end up purchasing. I fell victim to this for sure. But if you really want to achieve your financial goals, you will really have to square with and evaluate your purchases, like look through them line by line on your credit card bill or you know wherever, and really see what you can cut. If you actually want to achieve your goals, you're going to have and really see what you can cut. If you actually want to achieve your goals, you're going to have to do this.

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I think the fourth powerful lever is pursuing free or low-cost child care. So not paying for child care is a lever, because if you're working, oftentimes a large portion of your paycheck can just go to child care and that's like it's not as much as a lever as just like continuing on. But if you don't have to pay for child care or if it's very low cost, that's just going to make your money stretch further and propel you further and you can actually use your earnings as runway. So how, how do you ask to get this free child care. Well, relatives pursue family and community relationships. You know, if you have a choice whether to live near family who can watch your kids, I would say go for it. There are situations, I understand, where you can't live near family, but if you have the choice, I definitely recommend it. It has been just an essential thing for us and our family is living close to relatives who can watch our children, and sometimes you. It might take a discussion or asking and working with the other person. It might not be assumed that grandparents watch grandkids in your family. But, like, don't be afraid to have that conversation, to ask. You never know. If you ask and put it out there, what will happen.

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I do believe it's a really beautiful thing when the older generation can be involved in this way. I mean, this was the norm for centuries, you know. For most of history family units were tightly connected. They stayed in the location in general and they helped each other out these extended family networks. You would have aunts and grandmas and you know great aunts and all these relatives involved in the raising and care of children. So if it feels hard, it's because it is uncharacteristically. We're in this period, you know of history, that is not very normal, and so I do recommend pursuing this wonderful relationship. I'm not saying take advantage of grandparents who are willing to babysit. Of course respect them and their time that they're giving, but they can also get a lot out of it, and I've even seen studies that say grandparents are kept kind of younger and healthier if they look after grandkids. So you could try to look at that study and show them to convince them.

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But let's say you don't have family nearby. I would encourage you to work on your village. A lot of women kind of bemoan the fact like where's my village? And I definitely empathize with that sentiment. Sometimes it just feels like like who's there to care about my situation and it's hard. But I do suggest putting in the work yourself, not totally as a transactional thing, but can you really expect other people to show up at your door and help if you've never gone out and helped them right? So you know, get involved with a church or some other regular community that meets regularly and, as needs arise, you know, get to know the other women and families. Help them with their needs if you can and then hopefully, as you need it someday, they can help you as well. Again, if you don't have family nearby, if you have this community, maybe you develop a friendship relationship with another mom and you really jive. You have a similar parenting style.

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Then I would recommend kid trading. I call it kid trading, I don't know if there's a better term for it, but basically one mom takes all of the kids one day and then the other mom takes all of the kids the other day, so each mom has a free day to either work or do whatever tasks around the home that they need to do. Right, I actually grew up like this. Like my parents were like movers from up north to Florida, so they had no family around and I don't know how they did it, but kid trading was a big strategy for them. Like I, literally I feel like I grew up with these other kids because my mom had a friend where every week it seemed we would go over there or they would come over here and, yeah, they would kid trade, and I see why that's essential now that I'm a parent. It's a great strategy. So, whatever situation you're in I sympathize with, but please don't use that as this. Like don't dwell on the negatives of your situation, I guess. Like, try to be creative and look for solutions, because I think you might find some.

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And last but not least, the fifth major lever in mom life is creating and using household systems. I covered this more in depth in episode six, called five ultimate household hacks for busy seasons. But the idea here is that, since you're taking on more work, responsibility, trying to earn more or get out of debt, unless you streamline and systematize your home tasks, all of the additions are going to eventually pile up and seem overwhelming and maybe even become like unsustainable right, and I don't want that to happen to you. So if you're committing to a more intense earning season the strategies I recommended and the previous points maybe you, as mom, are picking up a part-time job for six months, or maybe you have started the first year of your family business right, like those are intense times those are adding to your life. So in order to not go crazy, take away some stuff you need to make your home and life tasks as easy and systematized as possible in order to fit these things in, because we still need to eat and clothe ourselves and take care of our kids, have passably clean living conditions, etc.

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The work of the home is important, but you can simplify things while you find yourself in this squeeze. For example, for meals, you could implement a one or two week simple meal plan that you rotate through every week, every two weeks. I actually made a PDF of what we do in our household. So if you would like that free PDF, just email the podcast email at mostlyhomemom at gmailcom. Just request the meal plan PDF and I'll send it right over. And that's full of just like the simplest meals I could think of. Literally Let yourself off the hook. I do prefer healthy meals but you know grilled cheese can be a meal one night and we're gonna survive.

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You know, for cleaning and chores, assign the same day for day each week that you are going to tackle that task so you can get it done quickly. You can kind of be on autopilot. Maybe it's having roles within your family or your marriage. You know each person has their roles so you don't have to waste time thinking or discussing who does what. Of course, allow some flexibility. Let's say, the person who always does X task is, you know, really tired or feeling sick, like of course, the other person could pick up that task instead. Marriage to me is all about helping, sacrificing for the other person and not just kind of keeping points on who does what chore. But in general, having defined roles helps cut through a lot of confusion and just helps you during these busy seasons to accomplish things around the home. So I do say defined roles with the caveat of flexibility.

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So, if you think about it, businesses that are able to survive, they do so because of their systems. I'm not saying to think of your home primarily as a business, but it is an economic force that again, I think is downplayed in our culture. The home economy can be strong and productive and, for your family's sake, not answering to any boss or company, right? I just I love this shift in my mind recently, like it's well within your domain to think about how you can get your life working for you and not always in this like passive, plaintive role where you need to depend on your workplace. By the end of the long workday, most of us barely have an extra ounce of energy to pour into our own homes. I get that. I was in that place for so many years. But what I'm striving for is this shift from working, you know, to please an employer to work for ourselves as a family and a home economy. Can you tell I am a certified whole mech teacher, a certified whole mech teacher who doesn't have a classroom currently.

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Anyways, those were the five of the most powerful financial levers that I could come up with for moms or those of you in similar positions. I hope I was able to raise some good points and get you thinking. As always, I welcome the feedback. If you agree or disagree or want to add to my points, feel free to email the podcast email, and I so appreciate you listening. Remember to subscribe to the podcast for updates on when the next season will be out and until then, have a great day. I appreciate you.