On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Bernadette Joy, Chief Educator at Crush Your Money Goals about changing the way we think about money and how to crush our money goals.
In this episode we discussed:
The value of becoming who you want to be.
Bernadette Joy is the Chief Educator at Crush Your Money Goals. Bernadette Joy paid off $300,000 of debt in three years and built her first $1 million of net worth in her 30s as a first generation Filipina-American, the eighth of her father's nine kids! After being tired of the stale and outdated money advice, she launched Crush Your Money Goals® in 2020, a money media company to serve up practical and fun educational content. She's featured as a money expert on CNBC, Good Morning America and Business Insider. You can read her money tips in Forbes and as part of the Financial Expert Board for CNET.
Connect with Bernadette Joy:
On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Bernadette Joy, Chief Educator at Crush Your Money Goals about changing the way we think about money and how to crush our money goals.
In this episode we discussed:
The value of becoming who you want to be.
Bernadette Joy is the Chief Educator at Crush Your Money Goals. Bernadette Joy paid off $300,000 of debt in three years and built her first $1 million of net worth in her 30s as a first generation Filipina-American, the eighth of her father's nine kids! After being tired of the stale and outdated money advice, she launched Crush Your Money Goals® in 2020, a money media company to serve up practical and fun educational content. She's featured as a money expert on CNBC, Good Morning America and Business Insider. You can read her money tips in Forbes and as part of the Financial Expert Board for CNET.
Connect with Bernadette Joy:
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Watch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work. Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast changing the way we think about money with Tony Stewart. I'm pleased to be joined today by Bernadette Joy. Bernadette is the speaker and chief educator at Crush your Money Goals. In this episode, we'll be discussing Bernadette's thoughts on how we change the way we think about money and crushing our money goals. Bernadette, welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excited to learn more about you. So let's start out with who you are. What is your origin story?
Speaker 3:Sure, so I love that you said origin story, because I'm into comic books and stuff too.
Speaker 1:So my origin story is my.
Speaker 3:I'm the eighth of my dad's nine kids. My both my parents are immigrants from the Philippines. I was born here in the US.
Speaker 3:I think, like a lot of people, grew up with a narrative that money was scarce. My family, even though my dad eventually moved up the ranks and let a relatively successful corporate career, there is still always the talk of well, we don't have money for this and we can't afford that, and that's expensive. Those are kind of the words I heard a lot growing up, and then I myself decided to do exactly what my parents told me to do the recipe for success, which was to get good grades, go to a good college, not just get one degree, but got two degrees, then also got a master's degree and was making six figures as a 20-something year old in New York City and realizing that I was completely burned out. I was having some serious mental health challenges to address as well, and there was never really a discussion of when is when do you have enough money? When can I stop feeling like I have enough?
Speaker 3:And so I decided to start pursuing my own personal finance journey in 2016, after I graduated from my MBA program, with $72,000 of student loans and not one, but two mortgages, neither of which I could really afford, plus all of the bills that a normal person has, right that credit card's in the car and just try to live your life. And that's when I started to learn about becoming debt-free, which really appealed to me, not only from the mathematical side of it of paying off debt, but the emotional freedom that comes with not owing other people money. And then that led me into the FIRE movement Financial Independence, retire Early and now I am 38 years old, my husband is 41, and we are completely debt-free, including everything, and we have about $1.5 million invested and I am on trajectory to literally hopefully retire in the next couple of years.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome, and what I love about what you talked about is that it was the emotional and mental aspect of changing your trajectory, and I can identify. I started out working for a large insurance brokerage but feeling the same way. I was making a decent income, but it was stressful mortgage and everything. I'm still carrying a mortgage, so maybe we could talk about that. But overall, what you're talking about is a mental aspect I think is so important of what you did and where you are.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Well, I have the three degrees. Two of them are business degrees, but one of them is a psychology degree, and I actually find the psychology degree to be more useful in what I do in financial education than the business degrees, because I learned that so much of what I found people to really be challenged with money is not the knowledge aspect of it. At this point, at this day and age, the knowledge is out there. If you really want to learn something, you can Google it, you can take a free course, you can listen to a podcast, you know, like we're doing now.
Speaker 3:But the real challenge I see people have is how do you manage the emotional stress and the burden that comes along with making financial decisions? A lot of times related to what I just said about, like my family origin story, but also like where you are in life and what goalposts you're trying to get to and I posted recently I thought about this to myself is that if you really want to become happy, then you need to stop moving the goalposts. But that's really not how we are trained in personal finance. It's always like get more money, get more money, and one of the questions that I often ask myself and of my learners in my community is like at what point is it going to be enough? And I think that's the kind of conversations we need to have around personal finance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's so important and it's something that's come up for me recently as well, as you know, talking about that transition for people when they retire and going from that saving mentality to a spending mentality. It's really hard for people to make that transition because we're just talking to a chemist.
Speaker 3:So hard, so hard. I personally witnessed this with my father, who passed away two years ago, but he retired in his 70s because he was afraid to stop working. He was only retired because he was forced to retire and I personally witnessed him where he would just kind of like literally walk around in circles in our neighborhood because he wasn't sure what to do with all his time at that point, and no one had a conversation with him. Well, if you're not working, what would you want to be doing instead? And one of the things that really hit hard for me the last couple of years was that my dad ended up moving with my mom to Las Vegas.
Speaker 3:We live, we grew up, in New York City and it turns out my father loves hiking and I just like did not know that my entire life, because he never really had the opportunity because he was always working and it wasn't until the 70s that he started hiking right. And then with my own in-laws my own mother-in-law just retired this past year and she said to me well, if I'm not working, am I even worth anything? Like? She like said those words right, and you know there's so many people that I talk to who feel like, well, if I'm not working, if I'm not productive, if I'm not making money, then like, am I like, what am I doing? And actually there's plenty to do in life other than accumulate money, right? So I really love that.
Speaker 3:You shared that. You know that's that's you know, a challenge that you've had personally and I'm sure a lot of people can relate to. That is like we're. We're so in the practice of just focusing on accumulating and accumulating. Now my in-laws are a point where they can spend and they did a good job with their actual retirement. They like saved enough for retirement, whereas my parents they did not. And so I could see where the fear was with my parents. But with my in-laws, even though they've they've, they've Saved up enough, they still won't spend, like they keep saying, well, this is expensive. I'm like you can afford it, like Go live your life, like what are you gonna finally live your life? And so I love that you're sharing that, because I think that there has to be more conversation around. Well, what are these specific things for me to think about of how much I need to accumulate it and what am I really accumulating it for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know that that's great, and actually that leads us into the next question. You know where you talk a lot about. Fear is how can we face our fears?
Speaker 3:I Fell into the fallacy a couple years ago where I used to tell people part of my Curriculum was to like face your fears and basically overcome them, as though those fears will just like dissipate. Right, and what I personally have learned for myself is that the fear never, really ever, goes away. Truly, there's very few fears that I've had that like Doesn't at least have a little bit of a voice in the back of my mind and saying it's still there, right so, even though for me, even for I have over a million dollars saved for retirement and I still have plenty more time to save up for for retirement but I'm still like, oh my gosh, I'm afraid. Like what if? What if I? What if the stock market crashes tomorrow? What if, like, I make a mistake with my money? What if my business just goes under? Like there's so many things that could potentially Curtel all of the work that I've done.
Speaker 3:And so what I realized was that Making moves versus waiting for motivation has made a big difference in me being able to you know, quote unquote overcome those fears. If I kept waiting until I felt like I wasn't afraid anymore to start making some moves, then I would have never done all of these really hard things in my finances, and so a big tip that I would tell for anyone who's listening here is that motivation to me is actually a fallacy. I think if you wait until you're motivated to go do something, then chances are you're not gonna do it. But if you just make the moves first work regardless of your if you're afraid or not, then over time you'll one realize you won't die To right like you'll actually build the confidence to be like wow, I actually did that thing, whether it's in finances or anywhere else in real life.
Speaker 2:That's so funny. It makes me think of something that's sort of related, sort of unrelated, is. We were on a whitewater rafting trip and it was flood stage and it was a pretty scary rapid and we're all looking at it and what are my friends goes, well, he goes. The good news is he goes. There's no snipers here, so we might as well go for it, and it kind of broke the mood, but it was more like you know, you know, let's do it. Let's stop Talking about the motivation and what could go wrong. It's like you know, let's get started, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love it. In your example that was actually like potentially the literally life or death kind of thing right, whereas a lot of the decisions and things that we're have to do in money are not life or death Right, like if we love that you know, if we put money into an investment and it totally crashes and burns, we can know not to do it again, but we won't likely we're not gonna die.
Speaker 3:There's very few things that are actually life or death when it comes to personal finances, but people are treating these decisions as though they are, and so one of the things that I think is really important to consider if you're afraid of making a financial choice is one ask yourself Am I gonna die If this happens?
Speaker 2:that's awesome right.
Speaker 3:And then the second thing is like, even if the worst case scenario were to happen, am I not smart enough, am I not capable enough to figure it out?
Speaker 3:You know, and and so I love that your example was actually like that that probably would scare me more, you know, like because I'm not a good swimmer I actually can't swim at all, so that would that would terrify me more. But the analogy that I've had with people. If you follow me on Instagram, I post a lot of dance videos, which you would think what does that have to do with personal finance? But I used to go to dance classes where I would just, oh my gosh, people are looking me, I'm not as good as other people, like everyone else's like looks professional, I'm too fat, like there's like all of these things that were coming up in my mind, and I finally had to go to dance class and I said to myself am I gonna die? No, if anything, this is actually gonna make me live longer because I'm gonna burn some galleries today, and that has helped me build my confidence, versus waiting until I was confident enough to go to class and actually show up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's really important. What you just said is doing something helps you build the confidence. It's that repetition, it's they're getting started, and I think people overlook that sometimes. As you know, I, if you're not learning anything about your money is you're never gonna get confident with it. That'll always be that scary super thing, you know. So I want to make sure we tackle a bit about goals, because I, you know that's that's what you focus on. So why should people start off and focus on their goals?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you picked up on. So my, my program is called pressure money goals, and the reason that I decided to help people focus on goals is because you need to have a specific destination. So we consider financial independence to be a journey, and it's only a journey if there's an endpoint. So, to your earlier point of like, if your goal is just to accumulate endlessly without any end site in mind, then is this really a journey or are we really just gonna run ourselves into the ground? So when I talk about financial goals, I'm looking for people to write down and to commit to specific end points that actually are, that matter to them, but also, more specifically, that are something that they chose, not just what other people told them they should do.
Speaker 3:So kind of classic example is whatever people come to me for coaching or come to my classes, I always ask them well, what are your goals? And they're like I wanna save more, I wanna pay off debt, I wanna be able to retire. And I have to get them to say well, save more for what? Retire by when? Pay off how much debt by what date? And so when we talk about goals, they have to be highly specific. They have to have a specific time frame around them and they have to be something that actually matters to you.
Speaker 3:One specific example of a goal that I often question for people is like I wanna buy a house, and especially for millennials like me, I'm like do you really wanna buy a house or do you just think you're supposed to buy a house? Because that's what you're supposed to do as an adult and I say that to people all the time because I'm a millionaire who rents I actually owned three houses, three separate primary residences, and I ended up selling all of them and going back to renting, because renting for me actually fit my lifestyle better, because I travel and I don't wanna do housework and I don't wanna mow the lawn. So in talking about goals, I'm the coach that will question whether or not those are the goals that you really want, versus just assuming that those are what you should be aiming for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's awesome, and I think that's where the personal comes into. Personal finance is so. Many things are like well, you have to do this, but it's like but you don't, you can do whatever you want, that's right. You don't.
Speaker 3:But a lot of people make those assumptions like I have to buy a house, I have to go to college, I have to work for a company. It's like another prime example I must have kids. Like, do you really? That's really the question. And it's not to say that there's one right way or the other. A lot of times on my media channels I talk often about the point that I'm child-free and people take that as a. Some people say like, oh well, you're just hating on people who have kids. I'm like no, I'm not, I'm actually. It's actually the opposite. I respect people for having kids so much. That's why I don't have them, because I know I would not be fully committed to that endeavor, right. So I really love that you asked me this question because people just take goals at face value, assuming like well, everyone should have the same checklist of what makes you financially successful and it's just not true. It's just not true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I got the question. Are you the auntie who spoils the kids?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. I am so the auntie who spoils the kids. I love sneakers. That's one of my like kryptonite things and I just bought a bunch of really like tiny sneakers for babies. Like that they definitely do not, but I like to be the auntie that buys this stuff that like doesn't make sense for the parents to buy cause, like you know, baby's gonna grow out of a pair of like baby Jordans in like three months. But, I'm not buying it for you because it doesn't have to make sense for me.
Speaker 2:Oh, and it's fun. You know, I mean I think that's what I'm getting from you when you talk about these things. It's also about having some fun with your money and the positive emotions, and I'm minored in psychology. So you know, I completely agree with what you said earlier. Is you know, talk to my son about this. He's 18. So he's just starting to really think about the financial world and it's like I'm like, if you understand the psychology, you're gonna do really well with money. I go, you can learn the tactical skills, but if you can understand the why, you'll get so much further ahead.
Speaker 3:I agree and I always. You know, my biggest fear, to be honest about Finances is to at some point have all the money I need and still be unhappy, because I I'm sure we can all point to someone who is financially successful and is not happy and To me that's like well, what's the point of that, what was the point of all the accumulation if, like you said, you're not having fun and you're not actually enjoying the fruits of all of the Hard work that you put into it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I'm a person is. I want to switch gears real quick and ask you a question about Generational wealth, because I know you talk a little bit about that is, how do we break generational purses and build generational wealth?
Speaker 3:well, so I Feel like this could be an entire podcast episode on its own but, I, will say, and, in a nutshell, is is I'm gonna say for anyone who, like me, comes from a family where money was always treated as scarce is you can decide that you will no longer Perpetuate that narrative like literally today, like there's nothing else you have to do, you don't learn any skills, you can just decide and say out loud I do not have to manage money the way my parents did, I do not have to believe in the money things that my parents did, just because that's what was passed on to me right. So for myself, unfortunately, I kind of had to learn this the hard way, which is when my father passed away. There was no will in place, there were debts to be paid, there was no conversations about how we would take care of our mom going forward, and it caused it caused a lot of strife in my family after that right, and so I decided for myself and this is even before my path. My dad passed away a Couple of years before that. I had asked my parents Can we put in a state plan together? Can we do these things? I'm like, and I said to them I don't even want your money. Like I don't, I don't even need to have any money from you. I just want to know what your wishes are and I want to know what what needs to be taken care of. But you know, in case something were to happen and they were very gunshot and having that conversation and they didn't I at least got some verbal things from them, so I knew some things and so I'm saying this like as Let me be your cautionary tale I don't want to see another family go through that so you can decide today to say here, here, I am a completely different person from my family and I can decide to do things differently.
Speaker 3:But, practically speaking, one of the best ways that I found that has helped me to break generational courses is to go through an estate planning process myself. Like me, specifically, as a 38 year old, I have a. I've had in the state plan for several years, even though I'm perfectly healthy, even though I don't have kids, even though you know, like no one else in my family has an estate plan. But going through that process forced me to make some of these really like grown-up decisions and to have some really awkward at times, conversations with family, and I feel so much better for it, and I think that is a practical step that everyone should take if they really want to break generational courses down the road.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome and you know and I think that's so important is because so many people feel like you know they can't break that cycle. You know that this is the way it is, you know, but that you know this is empowering because you're you're helping people make the decision for themselves and discovering how to do it. So let's get into the get ready questions. The first one is what is one simple thing you can do each year to set yourself up for financial success?
Speaker 3:Oh, I am a big proponent of what I call the seven-day money funds, and it's basically where, for seven days, you just don't spend money.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Pick seven days, and here's the thing you have to prep for it, right? So like, go buy all the groceries, go buy all the things that you need to Do, like so that you're not, you know, fill up your gas tank, make sure all your bills are paid, like everything that should be paid, but then for seven days, just don't spend any money and see what happens. Right, and why I tell that to everyone is that you really start to notice what your impulses are right and you really start to also notice, like there's actually a lot of stuff I can do that doesn't require money. Like let me go take a walk with my girlfriend instead of going out for drinks. Like let me go clean up this closet instead of buying more stuff to stuff into it, right? So I'm actually saying this because I'm literally in the middle of my no spend cleanse right now, and that was it was very hard to do during Black Friday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's quite the week.
Speaker 3:And I'm going to tell you, I'll be totally honest, I wasn't 100% successful at it, right? So the point of me saying that is that you don't even have to be successful at it, you don't even have to complete it. Well, you just have to attempt it and see what you learn from it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and I think that's in line with what I've heard from other people is being mindful of your spending, thinking about what you're spending on money, because I think so often, like you say is, you know, is like hey, black Friday's here, let's go shopping. You know it's Cyber Monday, I got a deal, you know let's buy it, and without thinking about like, okay, what do I really need it? And then it gets back to the whole goals. First thing, absolutely Okay, you know, is this gadget something that I'm going to really use, or is it going to go in our pantry and you know we may use it once you know? So that's awesome advice. So the next question is what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?
Speaker 3:Well, shameless plug, I am currently in the middle of writing my first book and it's going to be about 25 money. So yes, look out for the book in 2024. So, of the 25 habits, the one that I would suggest is what I call the dollar rule, and basically it's the habit of anytime you spend money on kind of like physical objects, like clothes electronics, furniture, anything like that.
Speaker 3:Ask yourself if it's going to come out to a dollar per use, and if it is, then just go ahead and buy it and stop stressing over it. But if it doesn't, it doesn't even mean say it's, not even to say that you can't buy it, it's just to ask yourself well, is it really then? Do I really want this thing? So here's an example that I tell people all the time. This people assume that I tell people just cut out everything.
Speaker 3:But I just bought recently, like I bought a new computer bag for myself and it was not cheap. It was like $170, and could I absolutely find a computer bag for less than $170, or sure, right. But I just got a new office for my business and I will be transferring my laptop back and forth almost every day, and so I said to myself well, will I use this bag at least for the next year? So is there at least 170 days in the next year that I will carry this bag to and from work, and is it worth a dollar per day for me to have the proper bag to have in my laptop and to keep it safe? But then also that I just like, like and I think it's cute, right? So then the answer was yes and I just bought it and then I just moved on with my life and I find that a lot of people end up spending too much time thinking about it purchases Just because of the dollar amount versus the actually usage are going to get out of it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome and I think you said something very pertinent. You were able to move on to the next decision. I think you know people get drowned in that decision making when it comes to money, like should I do this, should I do it? And it gets into the psychology that we were talking about earlier sets. That's awesome. So please keep me posted on when your book comes out. And for people watching and listening to this podcast is when Bernadette's books published. I will add it to the show notes so you know if you're watching the show in the future. You know, listening to this episode, you'll be able to find a link to it, which will magically appear in the future at some point. So that's great, so you know. The next question is what money myth Are you trying to break?
Speaker 3:This is a controversial one, but I will say the money myth that I'm trying to break right now is to always be investing, or that you're missing out on investing if you're not putting money into the stock market.
Speaker 3:At this moment, and I think particularly in 2020 and 2021, we saw like such a rise of personal finance influencers who are touting like just put your money into VOO or VTI and like, look, you'll just double your money like magically, and it made me kind of crazy because and I'm sure you can relate this to having come from personal finance A lot of these people and not to hate on saying that, just because you're young, that they don't know, but I was like I'm old enough to have like, live through 2008 as an adult in financial services, and so a lot of people who are telling that advice had never really gone through a serious recession cycle, and so the myth that I'm trying to bust with people is that, yes, I want you to invest, but first pay off your debt, especially high interest credit card debt.
Speaker 3:Right now, interest rates are like 27% on average for credit cards, and it's making me crazy when I hear personal finance people saying well, you should be putting money into the stock market because you're losing money. So try to find me an investment for a beginner investor that's going to make 27%. I'm not going to guarantee you will not. Do you see how past then I am about this topic? So I am. I'm fully on board with people investing, but I work with people to pay down their, their high interest at first and ideally, pay off as much as possible so that when you do go into investing, that you're not taking on additional risk that you don't need to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I'm with you a hundred percent, because you, you know that's exactly the point is, you have to look at the trade offs, and I think that's what people also have a hard time with their financial life is that you have to look at more than one thing at a time. Is, you know, it's not you know, a silo decision, whether to invest or not? That's the wrong question is like, what is the most effective use of my money? You know it's a scarce resource, so how do you find the most utility for it? And that's what you're talking about and that's powerful advice. I'm with you a hundred percent. I'm breaking that myth, thank you. So, yeah, so that's great, so you know. The next question is you know, let's get out the time machine. Is what advice would you give your younger self If you could go back in time? Know what you know now about money.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm having a hard time picking between the two, so I'll say the two, but I'll be more succinct.
Speaker 3:So the first one would be the first one would be stop buying all those secular shots for people that you'll never see again, which is basically my way of telling you, the listener stop spending money trying to impress people that you could be doing it yourself a favor for instead. And then my second piece would be like take the leap and go into entrepreneurship sooner, like I wish in hindsight. I waited until I was confident to go into entrepreneurship and in hindsight I should have just taken the momentum earlier and started the side hustle sooner. And my biggest regret now is that I spent more years in corporate than I care to, and this is not an I hate corporate message here.
Speaker 3:I actually think working a regular nine to five kind of job is great for a lot of people If you can separate your identity from your career. But for me personally, I knew very early on that I was any quote unquote good fit for corporate Like I. Like. I don't like a lot of structure and I also am very motivated by working on like kind of bigger scale things. And so I wish that I had waited. I wish I had not waited until the time that I did to start my business.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome and I think that's great advice for people. And I think it gets back to what we were talking about with psychology, because the word you mentioned and I think is really pivotal there is confidence Is when you felt confident, and I think that's the support for people to understand is that you know it's up to you psychologically when you're ready to do these things. And it even gets back to what you were saying about there's no right or wrong answer. It was when you were personally ready to make that move, but to build up that confidence you know, next one you love.
Speaker 3:I wanna tell you a full circle story, if you don't mind, just cause I think-.
Speaker 2:Go for it.
Speaker 3:Here's the point is.
Speaker 3:So I worked in financial services like you and I was in my twenties and at the time it was very much like know your place, like you're just an analyst, like you have to, you know, do what your superiors tell you to do.
Speaker 3:And I was always kind of told to like, kind of like know my place and wait my term right. And then this past week one of the big financial services companies came out, came to me, found me on the internet and said we want you to come in and speak to our organization about the very thing about financial independence, financial education, how to be happy all of the with your finances, how to organize all that stuff. And it was such a full circle moment for me where it was just like I realized that I still can. I still had a place in corporate. It was just as a third party, it was just like as an outside expert. And it wasn't until I was featured in Forbes and CNBC and CNET and all these places that they wanted to listen to me. And so I share that with people in that if you're ever feeling like you don't belong in a place like that's not a you problem. That might just be saying that, like you need to find where where your expertise and your style is like appreciated.
Speaker 2:I think that's great advice is because I think so often. You know we work in these jobs and you know we tailor our personality instead of following. You know who we are, that sometimes it isn't just about us. It's so easy to think like, well, it's just me, where maybe it's everything. So one congratulations to you. You know so, everybody watching and listening is. You know there's a lot of places you can follow Bernadette's work. You know, as she mentioned, she's in Forbes, she's in CNBC. You know so that there's a lot of ways to get in touch with her if this is really resonating with you. You know so, bernadette. To wrap up, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?
Speaker 3:The number one tip that I would have on changing the way we think about money is, you know, I would say, is to how do I say this in a very like eloquently? No, I'm not going to try to be eloquent about it.
Speaker 3:I'm just going to say is to unsubscribe.
Speaker 3:If I can sum it up would be to unsubscribe from anything that is making you feel less than and is not in service of honoring your future self.
Speaker 3:So, more specifically, that you can take that as literally unsubscribe from any platforms, any media, any thing on your feed that does not feel like it's in service of making you feel like you're becoming the person you want to be. But you can also take it in the metaphorical sense of like unsubscribe to any beliefs that you've been subscribing to monthly or letting take rent up in your, in your head, that are no longer serving you. And I think that for me, specifically this year, I have focused on unsubscribing from the idea that my worth is tied to how much money I make, and that's a belief that I've subscribed to for a very long time, going all the way back to my parents, and this year I've just chosen that I will no longer subscribe to that and I will literally stop my cancel my payments to that idea and I'm going to replace that instead with the idea that my worth is really tied to how I treat people and how people will remember me and how they impacted their lives, and not how much money I made.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That is super powerful advice. I love it and I think that's something that we can all strive to do is to not let our money drive us is, but to use money as a tool and to understand that. You know, we don't have to do what everybody else says. We have to do with our money, and I love that. That's been the theme through the show. You know that you've come back to it and I hope that's been useful for people who are watching and listening. So, Bernadette is, where can people find out more about you? How can they learn how to crush their goals?
Speaker 3:Sure, so my primary social media platform is Instagram, so you can follow me at Bernadette Joy If you just type in my name, you'll find that. And if you are interested in some of the secrets I have for you on how you can start building wealth faster, I have a free guide. It's at crushyourmoneygoalscom slash free guide and I share with you the 10 secret weapons that I use to become a deaf remillionaire that you can use today.
Speaker 2:Awesome and I'll give the shout out as well to your newsletter. I've been subscribing to your newsletter for the last few weeks and it is an awesome newsletter. So you know Bernadette is really thinking about things differently. So I'd urge you to go out there and check out her newsletter and, as always, there will be links in the show notes to Bernadette's social media profiles, along with her website, and so you can learn how to crush your money goals. So, bernadette, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. This is really fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. Please be sure to like, subscribe. You know what to do and to change the way you think about money. Until next time.