Hey, sis. Welcome back. You're tuned in to Sis Mind Your Money, the podcast where we talk all things money, wealth, and financial freedom without the confusion and without the judgment. I'm your host, Bridgett Dickey, wealth educator and strategist, founder of Dickey Financial Services and Wealth Management Firm, and the creator of Girl Mind Your Money movement. My mission is simple: to educate, empower, and equip women like you to take control of your finances and build real, lasting wealth. So grab your favorite drink, get comfortable, and let's get into it. We're gonna talk about this ideal me lifestyle, and what does all that mean when it comes to the ideal lifestyle that you want. Of course, I work with primarily women. I've been doing this for well over 10 years, and primarily I work with everyone, but mainly women. And a lot of time women are taking care of everyone else, and they don't know how to ask for what they want, right? They're sometimes ashamed. They're so concerned about taking care of everyone else and how do I live this life that I want? And a lot of times you're just giving and giving from an empty cup, and you don't know, as far as what you want, and what does it really cost? How do you get there, right? And this is real life. I do this exercise with all my clients, who hire me. We do this personally. I'm showing them step by step, like how to get here. I want to know their number. So I make this a fun exercise when they do it with me because a lot of times they wanna justify the cost or I don't know if I should do that. How much money is it gonna cost? And I want you to have that real life that this is your real life. I have clients who want a driver, and she was like, I want a driver to take me to certain events." I said, "Well, okay, have a driver that takes you to events." But she said she didn't wanna do Uber. And I said, "Okay, fine. Don't do Uber." I said, "If you want a driver that per-" She said, "I want a person that knows my name. I want somebody that knows me." I said, "Okay, then how much is that gonna cost you to do that monthly? If you saying you're gonna have four or five events that you're going to and you don't wanna take Uber and you wanna physically drive, what does that look like?" And so we researched it. I'm giving you permission to live the life you want, and at times we don't think it's real. We think everybody on Instagram and they're doing all of this and they're not... Is this real? And I want you to live this lifestyle not on a credit card. And what happens is this, and what I mean when I say that is that I don't want you to use the credit card to pay for everything. Use the credit card to get the points, pay it back 100%, but don't rack up so much debt, and that's what I deal with, because you're trying to maintain this lifestyle. What income do you need to be making to maintain this lifestyle? And that's the key here, okay? And so what's stopping you? What is stopping you from living this lifestyle that you want? When will you finally start? We only have one life, so this is not a dress rehearsal. So when do you start doing the things that you need to do, right? When do you talk to fear and tell fear, I know you're here, but I ignore you." I tell fear all the time, "I know you on my back, I know you sitting on my lap, but I refuse to listen to you," and that's just my choice, and that's what I have made up in my mind that's what I am going to do. And that's what I want you to get to the point of where you can do, right? And get to the point where you can live the life you want on your terms, and not be upset, mad, shame, and feeling that way, right? So this is why most of lot not living the ideal life, right? They actually don't write it out. They don't know physically, never defined it, written it down on paper, put it in a Google Doc. Feeling guilty of wanting too much, and society has told us that, women, all we do is caregivers, and we need to take care of everyone else, and then how dare you, you want to do something for yourself. And so that guilt sets in. But one thing I've learned over the years, one of my mentors told me that word guilt: if you haven't done nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical, then what are you guilty about that you are putting this on you, right? Think it's all a dream, that this is unrealistic. Like, this is not real. Only people that can live this way are the celebrities. But before they were celebrities, they were just ordinary people. They were broke, struggling, in college. They just kept going. They never gave up. And so we don't know the timeframe of when all this is gonna happen. You just don't know the timeframe. And so one thing you wanna keep in mind is that you don't know when all of this is gonna happen, but you just need to keep on with the process. Work hard, but don't know getting closer to it. That's that one thing. You're working hard. I don't know when it's gonna come, but your responsibility is to keep working and not give up. Not give up on yourself! Not allow the fear, doubt, and anxiety to step in and stop you from doing what you know you should be doing. So one of my clients, I love we did this together, and I'm using a lot of hers in this. But one thing she made very clear, that she wanted to have a weekly spa day. She wanted every week she wanted to have a spa day. She found a spa. She knew exactly which spa package she wanted. She said, "It's gonna cost 500 a week." Okay, so we know that's going cost about 2,000 a month. She wanted a personal chef. She said, I wanna be able to have four meals a day, five days a week. She wants to be able to have dessert with every meal. She said on the weekend she would eat out. She also wants to be able to have a massage, and I did not know this, that they will come to your house every day and you can get a massage every day before you go to bed. You can set it to whatever time you say you go to bed, they will be there. That's what she said she wanted. Now, I'll give you her age. She's a young girl, and she said she's 23. Well, now 24, she just had a birthday. And she said, "I wanna be able to start investing $2,000 a month." So look, she's still living the life she wants, but it's also important for her to plan for her future, and planning for life. I think a lot of times we don't think life will happen. Life will happen. If you're married, someone, if your spouse gets cancer, lose a job. Things happen, but if you're putting money along the way and doing the things you need to do, you can be prepared for when life happens. So when you do wake up and now you're 65 and you say, "Look, I don't wanna work," or maybe 65 is not your number. I have some clients that wanna retire at 50; That is, I know plenty of people who have retired, no longer working at 50 years old, but they made certain sacrifices, they did certain things to get where they need to be. But that was important to her, that she invested. It was all the things. She found the home she wanted to stay in and all the things of what she wanted, and so what's the difference between wishing and planning? And I want you to put in the chat, what is your definition of wishing and planning. Wishing is "I wanna live better someday," like, "One day I know I'm gonna do this." But planning is saying, "Look, I need to make 300K a year. How do I get there? In order to live the lifestyle I want, I need to make this particular income." And what a lot of times women do is get caught up in the how. Like, how is all this gonna happen? It's not your concern. It is not your concern to figure out how. What I'm asking you to do is know your number and then you start working towards that. But what happens is we get caught up in the that'll never be me." Well, if you keep saying that, it won't. The power of the tongue is so powerful, right? And what do you need to be doing? Is it investments? A lot of time we feel like we have to physically make all the money ourselves, but is it things that you put in place that allows you certain assets that you set up that's paying you a monthly income or a quarterly income to be able to create this lifestyle? Culturally, this is not taught. This is taught to work, go to school, take out student loans, get married, have a child, and that's it. Nobody's telling you about planning for life. I work with all types of clients and some of my other clients that I deal with, and I have friends of all walks of life, this is a normal conversation at the dinner table or at the breakfast table. This is planning, showing how to build wealth. This is normal. When I grew up in the home, it was always we was in survival mode. How are we gonna pay this? How are we gonna do this? It was never about getting ahead, it was all about just maintaining. And so, a generation, next generation comes and you do the same thing, right? And you never know what that looks like. On Saturdays when I was a kid, I had to clean the house all day. I know some of you, that probably hits home for some of you. I had to physically clean the house all day. By the time my mother get home, she was like, "Look, I want saw to hit me in my face." And that's what happened. That's what I had to do, and so it was no time for dreaming and thinking and planning and it was just labor, work. And so I never had the opportunity to dream until I got older. A lot of us think, can I retire my parents if my father was still here? And all of what I would do, would love to, at a point in time, if he was still here, my father would not be working. I have plenty of people who are in their 70s, late 70s, still working. Own a vacation home. What's your rich dream? Like I know I'm here in Houston, Texas, but I wanna be able to have a winter home, so in the wintertime I can go. I got a summer home and I got my main home. Why don't we think we can have that? Can you travel six months out of the year? Do you know you can take a cruise now for nine months out of the year? I don't know if I would wanna be on a cruise ship for that long. Put in the chat if you would wanna be on a cruise ship that long. But you can do that. Putting your kids through school or helping your child start a business. Maybe they don't wanna go to college, but you have the money set aside where they can do whatever they wanna do What is it that you want? Starting a business full time, right? You been doing it part-time, because that's how I started my business. It was doing it part-time, working a full-time job, having cli- I would set, I would have clients on my lunch break. By the time I get off of work, I would have clients set up. I would literally, I was going to people houses and sitting at their kitchen table helping them. But now things have changed. So what do you wanna do? So now we doing the business full time, I'm so grateful I'm able to do my business full time. Or you wanna be able to tithe and give at a higher level. What's your stretch? Mine is I would love to be able to fund my church. That's my stretch, is that I would be able to set up a pension and fund the pension for the employees at church. Why? Because people who work at a church full time, they don't have retirement accounts. But let me be the pension. Let me be the person that funds it every year. What is it that you wanna do? What difference that you want to make in this life while you're here, right? What does that looks like, right? So what happens when you define your ideal me? You stop apologizing for what you want. A lot of women, we apolo- it's just, somebody tell you have a nice dress, you just can't say thank you. "Oh no, this old thing I bought." Mm-mm, just say thank you. Stop apologizing for it. You look good. There's nothing wrong with that. You stop working towards somebody else's goal, and you keep you on the front of that. You know exactly what you want. What you want, no- what nobody else wants. And oftentimes when you're, I don't know if you're married or single, but when you when you're married, a lot of times you end up losing yourself because it's you and the spouse. But y'all are still two different people. What do you want? Eliminate that guilt or the anxiety, that fear about having luxury items or doing things that's for you. It was a young lady I met, she asked me, "Well, I wanna be a millionaire." I said, "Okay, well, what do you wanna do, you know, with the millions once you get it?" I said, "So it's so much, purses, shoes, cars you can buy." I said, "So what is it? You know, once you do, what are you gonna do?" And she said, I never looked at it that way." I said, "So what are you gonna do with the money? What is the vision for it?" So what is it that you want? Can you track that you're getting closer to this vision, to the life you say you want? Are you tracking it? Are you looking to see in my accounts, okay, I funded my Roth IRA for 2026 or 2025. I put this mo- Are you tracking it? Are you able to see your progression? Are you able to go back and say you're sitting down with your financial plan and say, "Look, am I close? Am I where I need to be? What things that I need to stop doing, say, in order to get where I need to be? Okay, do I need to be making more money?" "Do I need to get rid of this debt?" What is it that you are willing to sacrifice and make those changes, right? Why do it yourself? A lot of times I meet men and women, it's like they do it yourself. They on YouTube, they doing the Google searches they doing one sheet, and they don't understand the situation. You have no accountability. You have no one helping you. Life changes. So when life changes, what happens? Often when people come to me, it's in crisis mode. Life has happened. Somebody has died, somebody has gotten sick, somebody has lost their job, and then you didn't have a plan. So when life happens and it will, when you lose... In my situation, while I was building a business, at that time said husband had got cancer and had two layoffs in less than a year. All of this happened in less than a year. Two of the events happened in less than a month, but only thing that didn't hit me as hard is because I had a plan. I had insurance outside of work. I had a plan. I had things on paper, so I knew, okay, this happened. Okay, I got this over here. I had my village, "Okay, I need you to help me with this." Because it's not always about money as well, it's also about who's your, who's in your village. So when life happens, who's in your village? So when I call and I'm checking on my clients saying, "What happened?" "Oh, such and such passed away. I need help with this." When life happens and you need that support Because I don't know everything. When I, when life happens to me, I call my support system. "Hey, this is what happened. What do I need to do?" So you want to be able to put yourself in a situation where you are getting the help and the support that you need, right? And living the life that you want. It is having a financial plan on paper. How do I figure out this ideal lifestyle? I want you to write down on paper and believe that you can have it. Don't worry about how you're gonna get there, just write the numbers down. Write the lifestyle that you want, the things that you want to have, and it's the power of getting you together and saying you're organizing yourself so you can say, "Look, this is the lifestyle that I want. These are the things that I want in life." Write it down. If you want to be able to say, "Look, I want to have the massage every week," write it down. What does that look like? So when you're going through this and what is it that you want? Do you wanna have, "I want to have a trainer." So my trainer's three days a week, how much is that gonna cost? If you wanna be able to say, I want to have, I wanna buy clothes," how, what does that look like? I wanna be able to put back $500 a month every month, and I have this money set aside so when it is time for me to get the things that I wanna happen, right? So the key to all of this doing this ideal lifestyle is that you are putting the monies physically away. So if you're saying you gonna budget $500 a month for clothes, and most of my ladies, I have one that budget 2,000, but you budget however much you want. The goal is to physically put the money back. Now, to live the ideal lifestyle that this one client that I'm showing you the example that she wanted to live, it's gonna cost her right at 300,000. That's about 25,000 a month. So what is it that you need to be doing so you can get to 25,000 a month? Are you a business owner? Do you need to increase your packages? If you work in a job, do you need to be able to say, "I, okay, I need to... This job is not gonna pay me the money I deserve," right? "They're not paying me my worth." What investments are you willing to make? Certain investments gonna take some time to pay off. What are you willing to do to get to that number? Are you willing to face the fears that I'm living in debt, I'm drowning, I don't have a budget, I don't have things in writing, I don't know my numbers, I don't have a plan? So what step are you willing to take to get you where you need to be? And that's what the process is. It's not getting to the point where you are giving up on yourself and you are feeling down, or you feeling like, "Well, that's for everybody else and not for me." Can you live like you a millionaire, even if you're not right now? Can you live the life you want right now even though you know you're not? When you look in your bank account, it don't show a million dollars, but can you act like a millionaire? You're probably asking, what does it look like to act like a, be a millionaire? It's the mindset. So the best way I, the best example I can give you is this If you had to hire someone to clean your home, and they say it costs $200, right? And it may take them three hours to clean your home, and it's $200. But you spend your time cleaning your house, and now you're going into doing, what, 15, $20 an hour work, where you should be doing, if you wanna make $1,000 an hour... So if it takes three hours to clean the house, and say your cleaning person charges, I don't know, $50 to clean the house every hour, would you rather be making $50 or the $1,000? Well, if you made 3,000 and it cost, if it takes three hours to clean the house, and if you made 3,000, would you rather make 3,000 or $150? 'Cause then you can pay the person to clean your house for $50, $50 an hour, where you can go and make the $3,000, you know, the $1,000 an hour of work every hour. So it's trading your time. What would be the best use of your time, $3,000 or the 150? So it's shifting your mindset to stop doing work that's not gonna get you closer to where you need to be. So let's give you an example. Well, if you just looked at this, or if you wanted to do weekly spas, well, if you made 3,000 in three hours, you can go get your weekly spa and go put some money in your investment, where you can cut one of them back. But you can figure out, well, if I did that for six hours, I go and work another three hours and make another $3,000. That's gonna get you closer to where you need to be. It's trading your time not to be doing $5 and $10 hour work. Can you get to the point where you're doing $1,000 hour work, or what investments have you put in place? Things that you're willing to do. In order to live a particular lifestyle, you have to make a certain amount of money. You just do! You have to make a certain amount of money. What happens is this, most people are making 50,000, and they trying to live this lifestyle on $50,000, so that's how the credit card debt happens. That's how the loans happen. Because you're trying to fund this lifestyle making $50,000 a year, but you haven't, and what happens is, 'cause I deal, I see it all the time, they're not investing money because you're not making enough money. And I would never tell any of my clients not to live the lifestyle they want. I want you to live the life you want, but I'm gonna tell you it's gonna cost you. This is how much it's gonna cost, and these are the steps you need to do to get there. How are you gonna grow? You gotta get to the point where you can go from paycheck to portfolio, meaning you wanna get to the point where your money is working for you, or the income that you are making is allowing you to live the lifestyle. That's working at a job, that is having your own business. It's a combination of you still working a job, have your own business, investments, you got into real estate. There's so many ways, but we trying to take one income and do everything. Why not have five different assets that are paying for your lifestyle versus having one job trying to pay for everything? But in order to do this, it's having a plan. It's having things in place so you can live the lifestyle that you want. And that's a wrap, sis. Thank you for tuning in to Sis Mind Your Money. I pray today's episode give you something real to work with. I'm Bridgett Dickey, your wealth educator and strategist, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, go mind your money, sis. Before you go, think of one girlfriend who needs to hear this episode and send it to her right now. Text it, post it, tag me, just share it. We're building this community one sis at a time