The Lipstick Alchemists
We help ambitious women that are ready to stop playing it safe and start living in alignment.
The Lipstick Alchemists
Your Money Mindset Is Secretly Controlling Your Life
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What is your money actually saying about your life… your identity… and your purpose?
In this deeply personal episode, we explore the emotional connection between money, self-worth, scarcity, and the lives we truly want to live. From spending habits and shame around money to investing in dreams that feel terrifying but aligned, we unpack how money often mirrors what we value most — and what may be holding us back.
Andrea shares the heartbreaking loss of both of her parents at 66 and how inheriting their carefully saved money completely shifted her perspective on waiting to live life someday. Stevi opens up about the fear, imposter syndrome, and financial anxiety she faced while saying yes to becoming an author — and why aligned decisions often feel scary before they feel empowering.
We also dive into:
Scarcity vs. abundance thinking
Why guilt around spending may reveal deeper beliefs
How your language around money shapes your reality
The danger of constantly “waiting” to live
Why purpose-driven spending feels different
The cycle between negative money thoughts and behaviors
How reviewing your monthly spending can reveal what truly matters to you
This episode is an invitation to stop asking, “Can I afford it?” and start asking:
“Does this align with the life I’m meant to live?”
#MoneyMindset #SelfWorth #ScarcityMindset #WomenEmpowerment #PersonalGrowth #MindsetShift #AbundanceMindset #TheLipstickAlchemist #WomenInBusiness #FinancialMindset
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Welcome to the Lipstick Alchemist, the podcast for ambitious women ready to stop playing it safe and start living in alignment. We'll explore the mindset shifts, the soul nudges, and awaken the version of you you were always meant to be.
SPEAKER_00More on identity shift and as it relates to how we treat our money. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, it just felt like we, as we kind of like ended that conversation, it felt like there were so many more things because it's such a deep and important topic.
SPEAKER_00I know. I need to shout. So I, you know, coming back to I think the what money is telling you about your life and your value, and the hardest thing and one of the worst best exercises is really to look back through your spending for a month and say to yourself, okay. Ooh, that's a scary one. Yes, I know. I that gives me a little little armhair stand-up, a little sweaty armpit situation. But I think when you look at it, you can remember when was I because I and there have been we months where I I had flames coming off my card. It was like, rah, make it rain, go, go, go. And sometimes it felt really aligned to who I was. And I think to me, to your point on the last one, I got to a place vacation-wise where my boys are 17 and 19. So when I'm on vacation with them, I really had to get to a place where I'm like, this is about the best experiences. What can I? Because that was bringing me so much joy. Yeah. But when when they were younger, or maybe before I made peace with that and really sat with myself to say, listen, do you want to be somebody who comes home with $10 extra in your checking account from vacation, or do you want to be someone who comes home with a million pictures and all this joy? And you know, it reminds me of one little thing too that always kind of I think is a a life lesson in my in my world. And I think probably some people know this watching and some not. Yes, I think I probably do. But um, you know, I lost my both my parents at 66. And I remember, you know, their last everything was about waiting for they did everything right. They saved as much as they could, they provided so much to us. They, it was all about waiting to do everything right, waiting to retirement, and it was always about putting it off. And I think all the time, you know, when they passed, my sister and I inherited their their 401ks and their life savings. And I always thought I would give up every dollar of that for one vacation picture of them with my kids. Yep. And I think they were so responsible with money, but their belief system was delayed gratification and if you work hard, and they unfortunately didn't get to live long enough to experience that. So I think it really changed the way I deal with money in, you know, with anyone I work with, but also in my own life to say, when you're spending that time, there's nothing more valuable. And and accumulating a bunch of money that you never spend or that someone inherits because you just were always waiting for someday and you couldn't bear to buy the $12 pina colada is really something that um is just a waste of nobody wants to inherit that life savings that way.
SPEAKER_01And I know, you know, your mom looking down is so happy that she gets to leave that legacy for you. But I can imagine how it felt for you to get that and wishing it went different and that she actually got to live maybe the life of her dreams. Yeah. And then said it was cut really short.
SPEAKER_00It did help me, I think, and it was a big gift, same as what you said to help me understand. Listen, you because I I don't know how long it would have taken me to get over that, you know, vacation hangover that you get, you know, every time you spend, or when you're oh when you've overspent on something that maybe was a good time, but you carry a lot of guilt and shame for that, you know you have to make up for it.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, that is the biggest thing. The guilt and the shame.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And she that healed that for me. So that helped me get over that place. But what another lesson of if we could have learned that without having to lose somebody who didn't have that value, wouldn't that have been such a better lesson? And I think that's why you and I have really committed our lives to helping people understand the joy of from your money that you can get today by aligning it to your identity and really making it a part of what you love to do so that you don't carry such a burden of shame or guilt or fear or you know, lack or all the bad emotions that come with you know, spending that doesn't align to your identity.
SPEAKER_01Because it is a choice of almost like, are you choosing the scarcity approach, fearing that you're never gonna have enough, or you know, just kind of holding it, or are you choosing abundance and a belief that more is always on its way to me? And when you align, as we always say, when you really align to what your purpose is and you're spending money on the things that feel alignment, you don't maybe you have a little bit of shame and guilt. I I don't think you do. I think you probably have more like judgment of like, am I making the right decision? But you usually can look back and be like, oh, thank goodness I did that. Um and so it is just interesting when you can figure out like there's alignment there, and this is something like you said, that is what I'm supposed to be spending money on, or it feels good to me. Um, how you treat it in the future is so different.
SPEAKER_00It is, and I think you said something really important there too, which is the scarcity mindset or being responsible with money is by most definitions the more noble way. You know, the people who save every dollar are really thought of as um, you know, more responsible, good stewards of money, good, um, you know, so when people are aligning to who they want to be, who they believe in their mind is more noble, they tend to align to spending less. When really that is an identity that may or may not be serving you. I think none of us want to be blowing money on things that don't matter or that don't help people or that don't make us better. But scarcity is it just to me as bad as somebody who isn't aligned and is spending too much because they spend their entire life fearing that they won't have enough and look at what they're the identities and opportunities that they miss by taking what they feel is the more noble, responsible path with money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, I um I agree. And I think about just even recent situations when we come back to the identity shifting. And as we've kind of wanted to step into the next version of us, we talked in the last episode about what you kind of leave behind and what you should leave behind, but how scary that is. And I think there is an element I found in the last few months a lot that comes with it on like the money piece too. So we had a few different situations. One of them, um, I'm coming out with the book. I'm proud of you. So proud of you. Which was a whole scary thing. And I mean, talk about facing unworthiness, imposter syndrome. I mean, all the things that we address. Um, but when I was 25, I wanted to write a book. I actually started writing a book about travel. I traveled the world. Sprinkles is joining me.
SPEAKER_00Hi, come here, Sprinkles. She's very busy today, just going back and forth. So she's a giant white dog has decided to run about seven miles during our podcast.
SPEAKER_01But this is why I love this. This is what we wanted, right? This feel let it be, let it be us. Um, but then every time Sprinkles does that, I forget what I'm saying. We're talking about your book, which was a huge, huge deal. So when so the the whole funny thing about it is I was started to write a book from all my traveling. I'd already always been told by people that they thought I was a great writer when I talked about my experiences. And so I started writing a book. And one day, um, I went to the bar. Well, I stayed out late at a bar and I made the responsible decision with my roommate. And we actually took a cab home. It was in the cab days. There were no Ubers, but you dialed the like two, two, two, two, three.
SPEAKER_00You get the sketchiest guy that's smoking the Marble Reds and the inside the car.
SPEAKER_01Left my car um at somewhere by uh Casey Moore's in Tempi. They have a mess bloody maze, yes. So good. And they came back to my car and someone had broken into it and they stole my computer and like all my journals. And so when you have those like traumatic things, I'm like, well, what am I ever gonna write about? And like everything's gone. So fast forward to today, I get this opportunity to be a part of a book. And I immediately am like, I mean, I was excited, but then right after that was fear, was judgment of myself, was what are people gonna think of me? Um, am I my story even worthy to share? Like, what am I gonna talk about? But there was also a financial component, which was I was investing in it and making the decision to do that. Um, but the cool thing with the book is all of the profits go to help a nonprofit that supports young girls and it's a mentorship. And and so it's like there's so much good in it for others and for me. Um, but I was very held up and like, oh my gosh, we've had so many financial decisions lately that just felt like I kept like freaking swiping the card. And I'm like, oh, and it felt very heavy to see like credit card going up instead of going down. And so there was a lot that I questioned yet. What was interesting was it still felt aligned, but so much I held myself back from making that, making decisions. Um, and I could have made the worst decision and said no was simply because it felt like an investment that I didn't want to make or I was too scared, you know, that not knowing what was gonna be the result on the other side.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I think that is the whole purpose. I mean, it really does sum up a lot of our purpose for this podcast. And one, which is whether it's money or alignment or who you think you are or helping other people, is really coming back to your purpose and thinking to yourself, okay, aside from the investment, aside from me thinking that my, you know, if everybody, every single person laughs at me and my story is not worthy, which your story is amazing. I can't wait for people to read it. Um if our purpose is helping other women walk, like understand from our journeys, which have been arduous and ugly and are still and also so fun. So fun, so amazingly tragic and toxic sometimes and nuts. And I think our purpose is helping other women, you know, that kind of grab their hand and say, come walk with us and and let's all find our purpose together and let's not have the courage and help each other to step into our purpose. But things like doing the book or going and doing big events, those are times when you have to look in the mirror and say, okay, I'm spending money that I I don't know how is gonna come back to me. And maybe it's just something fun that I do and it's a part of my life. But if my purpose is stepping into joy and aligning my money with joy and then showing other women how to do the same, if that's all that I do is one per one woman reads my story and thinks that they can, you know, come from very humble beginnings and accomplish something, then wouldn't that be worth every dollar spent? And that's where you, I think you have to keep coming back to over and over when the identity that you have today and the finances and the appearance and the look and the confidence and the intellect and the tools and the skills don't match up to where you're going. Oh girl. You have you have to really look in the mirror and say, this is what, if this is what I'm meant to be doing, I have to take those steps. And maybe I do fall flat on my face, as I have done so many countless times, and I'm sure we'll continue to do. But if that's what I'm here to do is help help people walk along this journey and share those missteps and share the times that I've run into a brick wall vulnerably, then wouldn't have it be worth it to have learned that that lesson. And that goes with money and everything else that you're feeling insecure about. But if you don't know what that calling is, yeah, it's really hard to take that risk.
SPEAKER_01Oh, well, and something that you made me think of too is even just the language and how important it is like when we think about money, like how are we talking about money and our beliefs around it? Um, because that shows up too, and I think that really influences our behaviors, um, which as we've said, even goes towards the results too. And so as you're stepping into that next version or you're stepping into your purpose, like what are you saying as you're out there making the decision? So for me, was it I can't afford this or you know, this is this is too expensive when it's like, again, you, as you said, if if this is aligned to what I'm supposed to be doing, those shouldn't even be on the table because we have to trust that it's all gonna come back to us. Maybe, like you said, not in the way that we imagine, but it's on its way to us. Yeah. Because you're living in alignment and in abundance and it's it's coming.
SPEAKER_00And you really have to get to a place where you are swiping that card, maybe with a little trepidation because it's more than you've spent on something. But when you swipe it and you're imagining that version of yourself, the more you're you swipe with joy, the more that is your your purpose screaming to you. This is something that's in alignment versus other things that maybe feel like they're just counter to. And like I talked before about my shopping, that is something is a habit that I have that kind of detracts from work that I probably should be doing. So I'm not swiping with joy. That's a time when you examine your money beliefs and go, I'm doing this habit over and over, and it's not bringing me joy. It is maybe um distracting me from doing some other real work and looking at things that I need to do to step into my purpose. But having another um Louis Vuitton anything is not probably the thing that's stepping me into the highest version of myself. And those are the hard conversations to look, not just at, you know, swiping with things that align to joy, but what am I doing and what am I spending on? Going out drinking too much, things that are not aligning to this version of myself. And that's I think the the real hard thing when you peel back that budget and you have to kind of look through the and I've I've you know distracted from the hard work using all kinds of different things, but I think um it's really coming back to is this is this who I am I spending in a way that aligns to my core values and beliefs and who I need to be or not? And if I'm not, then that's the fastest thing to to realign. Or maybe you don't even know what your purpose is yet, and that is when your money goes a little haywire and there's no rhyme or reason to how you're spending, which means those are identity, real identity crisis times to say who am I gonna be in this this section of my life.
SPEAKER_01And if I and I think if people don't know that, that's okay. But also like think about if you have goals. You have big goals and dreams and vision that you have, because likely if you don't have those, you're doing exactly what you said to. But if you know you have a big dream to give back to this huge charity or you want to go on a dream vacation and you want to upgrade to first class, like that's all great things. Now suddenly it brings you joy to start to save towards that or spend, spend the money on those things because you know it's it's a big goal that you, you know, work towards. But if it's just something you're doing, you have extra money in your account and it's running away from you, it's probably because you one, like you said, don't have a purpose or you don't have goals and dreams that um are pulling you enough to get you excited.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's where your money, your language around money also is a big indicator to say, or even your behavior beliefs around it or how you treat it, which I always think of like look, you know, if I look in my purse and I have crumpled up dollar bills everywhere. That I think I have a half-dollar bill. 15% of it, or one that has a dog here on it. Oh no. Those are not signs that you value and you're treating your money with respect. And it sounds so silly, but even if you you if they're not organized in your wallet, if they're not treated with there is there's something in you that is not really respecting money. And everyone knows a George Costanza that has $19 bills and every receipt ever, or even if you're accumulating receipts, like why are you saving every receipt that you got from your iced tea at Starbucks? What is that? Is that that's a lack mindset accumulating paper to be like, I gotta really account for this $2.67. And it really is sending you a message on your money. Also, the things you say about how you spend. I'm a miser, as cheap as I am, I wouldn't spend money on that. That is a signal that you're really not aligned to joy a lot of times, or I'm so terrible with money, I wouldn't trust. Oh, yeah. You know, those are things that you're you're making come true, but they're really signs, not of who you are with money, not of your character, not of your responsibility or education or acumen around money. They're signs around your journey in life and where you are with regards to purpose.
SPEAKER_01And I think people will say, like, especially as as prices have gone up the last few years, it's like, oh, that's so expensive, or oh, I can't afford that. And it's like, well, choose what if you've, if that's the thought you have, well, how can you say that in a way that makes you more owning that you're not spending on that? Yeah. Versus in that situation, I feel like you're giving all the power away to somebody else to just say, Oh, I can't afford that. Well, no, maybe you're just choosing not to spend money on that. And that's good. And then you're owning again, I'm lining it to something different.
SPEAKER_00And I think affording or things being what what I've noticed in my path in life, my own personal path, but also in people that I observe. Um, you know, as you start to get into that mode of I can't afford, I can't afford, I can't afford, um you are taking on kind of a very, like you said, reactive journey in your life because you and I did not come from any money at all. And there were a lot of times I couldn't afford, couldn't afford, couldn't afford. But I a lot of times in the wrong way, or I would run in some direction and I I made it so that the things that I truly wanted, I was able to, and I'm still working on doing that. But when you reactively sit back and you're a victim of the price of goods, um, that is a choice that you're making to not grow your skills, to not connect to helping a community, to not connect to um, you know, trading off money but serving a deeper purpose with your family or volunteering, you're making a choice to step into somebody who made career choices that were not aligned with affording a higher lifestyle. And and if you've done that without a reason that connects to joy, it starts to feel very bitter and very um unfulfilling. If you decided you don't want to earn a gazillion dollars because you want to pour into your family and you want to explore your art and you want to do crafts and you want to volunteer at church, that feels amazing. You don't feel like you can't afford, can't afford, can't afford. You feel like you've made you've proactively made a trade-off that makes your life step into purpose. If you've chosen a career and adjusted your career as you've gone, you don't feel can't afford, can't afford. It's the people who don't go one direction or the other that wind up feeling very resentful and sort of stuck because you can't exist in that space of not choosing joy and not choosing advancement. It's a hard place to live, especially like we talk about if you're in those late 30s to early 40s, where you know, a lot of your family purpose is has um, you know, looks different.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And your career purpose, you've either, you know, done the work to evolve in your career and you love it, or you've not done the work and you're probably beginning to atrophy. And that's why this is the most important time. And for me, I'm speaking as somebody who was in this exact spot, not as somebody who's judging this spot. This is the spot I was in when I changed my trajectory. So I look at how I spoke about my lifestyle and what, you know, the things that were happening to me. And, you know, in retrospect, it's really clear that I was just choosing not to evolve in one direction or another or another until the world chose for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, and it because those habits they feed into it, right? Then that's like the more negative you're talking, the language you're using feeds into how you behave, and then the results are shitty, and then you feel shitty, and so then the shit just keeps continuing, right? You're thinking negative thoughts, and and so I do think that there is so much power in the language because our brains um don't know the difference between true and false. Um, our brains, they just know, like where I mean, from being cavemen, like the way that we we still operate in those ways today. So we have to remember um, the more that you're thinking and like saying more positive words, yeah, um, I think can really have an impact because your if your brain knows, oh, I don't have money, it finds ways to confirm that. To confirm that.
SPEAKER_00So I think this is a good challenge at the end of this episode is to figure out is to go ahead and take the leap. I double dog dare you to look at a month's worth of credit card bills and really think back through that spending and think through when I when I spent that money, uh, you know, not on essentials, maybe even a Costco run that was out of control.
SPEAKER_01Oh guilty. No, you don't even go to this store.
SPEAKER_00You still never dare step into a Costco. I Instacart it, ma'am, for good reason. But if you have the courage to do that and really come back, I think we could build on this episode and say, okay, when you look at what brought you joy and what didn't, maybe the things you thought should have, like spending on your kit didn't bring you joy, and those are places that we can explore further to really say, why, how do we align those things so that our money can stick to us and and we stop judging what we should get joy from and really start figuring out where we're gonna get it from for real.
SPEAKER_01Also, before we forget, I want to make sure we take a minute to give a shout out to our sponsor, Varon Brands, who has just been so amazing to work with. And I feel like is one of the reasons we're even here today, helped us come up with our name. Um, I feel like really understood who we were from the get-go. And so, for people who are looking for who are a brand and really trying to figure out how to represent themselves best in the world, um, I feel like we would just scream her name, their name, really from the rooftop.
SPEAKER_00I agree. And I remember our very first meeting with her, where we just had this idea to do a podcast and we had no idea what that even meant. We thought we had some messages to share and she She really made everything so concise and perfect that it made us feel like we had an identity and more of a calling to. I think it's just, it's when somebody takes your vision and brings a little bit more life to it. It really, I think, put a lot of wind in our sails to feel like we had a message that we could get out there in a way that was not just funny, but also impactful to our and that everything that we do moving forward really aligns to that, which is what we wanted, but I don't think we would have even realized without her that that was like an important thing. And she films all of our funny, ridiculous cliffs and shares a song on Hyper Woman.
SPEAKER_01Yes, hype woman for sure. So if you are a brand, a purpose-driven brand, especially especially, reach out to Lori at Viron Brands.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, can't recommend her more.
SPEAKER_01Oh, real for real.
SPEAKER_00For real ski.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, thanks for hanging out with me. And thanks to all of you for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next time. Catch you on the flip side. See you next time.