How Your Beliefs Shape Your Financial Reality | DFS 383

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and somehow we have ended up on it

with a series of episodes talking about finances and

financial success. And did you know that your beliefs around

money actually shape your financial reality. Those early

money stories that you heard shape your financial decisions.

Today, I had a friend say one day that her parents really

didn't discuss money, and so she didn't really think that

impacted her one way or the other,

but the more we got into it, and then she asked me to do some

energetic work on her around money, and all these memories

came flooding back

about the fact that her parents didn't have much money, and how

they spent one summer living in their grandparents backyard, in

the tent, and they thought that was the funnest thing ever. It

was like summer vacation, and come to find out they had lost

their house, but her parents made it seem so fun,

pardon me, made it seem so fun that she didn't know as a

problem. But somehow, as a kid, you kind of know something's

wrong. I don't have children, but I like to shock people by

saying that, yes, I may not have them, but I was one, and I was

very much aware of what was going on in our household. I'm

the youngest of four, and I've heard stories of, oh, you would

know you were too little. And there are a few things that

happened, like before I was six or seven years old that you're

right, like I may not have been alive, or I was too little to

even know there was a thing. But once I started elementary

school, pretty much, I was pretty aware. I was aware what

was going on. I was aware when my mom sat down to pay bills. I

was aware when she was doing math to balance her checkbook. I

remember her asking me to do the math. Which math was not my

strong point. I have a story about that, but math was not my

strong suit. So it was kind of a big deal that mom wanted me to

do the math to balance her checkbook.

My dad told me a story. He and my mom got married very young.

He was in the Air Force when they got married, and when he

came back, he went to college on the GI Bill, and he was in, I

think it was an economics type class, and the professor said,

Whatever dollar amount you have in your head is the most money

you could ever spend on a house is what you're going to spend on

a house. And if you buy a house that exceeds that dollar amount,

you're going to feel uncomfortable living there. And

I can remember, at the time, I was probably in my early 20s,

and I thought, Wow, that's quite a story.

I don't I don't know how I feel about that, or what I believe

about that, that several years later, I get married, my husband

and I moved into the house he had before we got married, and

it was a small, little house, a mansion, compared to somebody

living on the streets, but it was, you know, 15, 1700 square

feet, Three, bed, two, bath, and my friends started either buying

bigger homes or building really big, nice, beautiful homes. And

I can remember thinking, wow, I don't want the payment that goes

along with this house. And I remember very distinctly driving

home from a friend's house. They had just built it, just moved

in, and they had a little bit of a house warming type party. It

wasn't a gift thing. It was just so everybody could get together

and see their new house. And it was beautiful. It was so

beautiful. And the whole 3040, minute drive home, I was going

on and on and on about how beautiful this house was, and it

was so well decorated, and I don't really have a knack for

that blah, blah, blah. And we pulled that driveway, my husband

gets puts the car in park, but he doesn't turn it off. It was

winter, is really cold, and I went to open the door, but the

car wasn't turned off.

And I looked at him and I said, Are we like, what's happening?

And he said, just so defeated. Do we have to buy a new house?

And I was like, Oh, absolutely not. I was just really

appreciating theirs.

I did not want that big, beautiful house and the payment

that went along with it for a laundry list of reasons. But for

me, I loved the freedom of having a lesser house payment,

because I could do more. I had more freedom. I had more

flexibility. I also had a limit that I couldn't buy a house that

cost more than $100,000 and I'm pretty confident all my friends

are buying houses way more than $100,000 and I was just like, I

can't do it. Fast forward a few years, my husband and I decided

to move, and we're looking at houses, and we found this

beautiful house, and we bought it, and I believe it was

$125,000 and the whole time we lived there, which was only four

years, the whole time we lived there, I kept thinking, wow, I

have exceeded my $100,000 limit. We're at 125 what is that doing

to me? How am I feeling? I know, the first four or five months

that we lived there, I took my lunch pretty much every day to

work anyway, but I made a very strict rule. We could, I could

only eat out lunch Mondays and Fridays because you got to start

a week and end a week eating out, typically Mexican food if I

get to pick occasionally a burger or pizza. But I'm good

with Mexican food both ways. We did not go out to dinner one

time in the first four months, not once. We didn't even order a

pizza. I cooked or he cooked. We cooked every single night. We

did not eat out because I had this great fear that living in a

house over $100,000 was going to be the undoing of us. And guess

what? It was not. It was not the undoing of us. He decided. A few

years later, we decided, I don't know that's for another day to

talk about and then I can uncover but we decided to move,

and I was looking for houses, and it wasn't quite as easy to

find houses online as it is today,

but I was on, I think, realtor.com one of those, and I

found a house, and they did not give the address. And so it was

a Saturday morning, and it was winter. Why do I keep doing this

stuff in the winter? What on Earth's up with that? And I

said, based on this map, I think this is not very far from us,

but it's the next neighborhood, a newer neighborhood, and newer

houses. So whatever house I bought in that neighborhood was

going to be newer and more upgraded than where we currently

lived

so I got in the car and drove around, and sure enough, I found

the for sale sign, I found the house, and I went home, and I

said, it's down the street. Just at first glance, it kind of

matches what we want. We were in a two story. We wanted one

story, all one level, two car garage. And so just, you know,

first blush, it looked like it was pretty good, like it's it's

going to meet our criteria. And lo and behold, I am sitting in

this house, and we bought it and we're still here. But by selling

that house and moving to this house, we were able to put a

nice down payment on it, and our house payment went down.

And I can't tell you how good I felt about that. I loved that my

house payment went down because I never really had changed that

story, that upper limiting belief of my upper limit of what

I could do, and my dad's story did not block me in.

It just made me very aware of i i have those choices, I have

that belief. But is it really true? Does it serve me now? I

can't imagine. I'm in Oklahoma City, and we have a really low

cost of living compared to other places, but I don't know that I

could find a livable house for me for that amount of money.

Thank goodness I'm not looking, but I don't know that I could.

So we have these stories, and then we make our decisions

based.

Based on these stories, let's talk about a car. Oh, my word.

When I wanted a new car, my husband lost his ever loving

mind because a car should not cost that much. Yes, I'm well

aware, but they do to this day. We are still having the

conversation of how much a car costs versus what it should cost

when you go out to eat, how much should it cost at a restaurant

versus what it does. All of these things upset him and other

people in my life that I know,

but it's part of living. Income goes up, cost of living goes up.

There's a recession. There's a not a recession. What's that

other word for it? There's something else that's similar to

a recession, but it's a different word. Anyway, things

ebb and flow. Gas prices, oh my gosh. When they hit $5 a gallon

here in the US, the world was coming to an end. They would

never go down it. That was it. I think gas is down to 280

something. Now crazy that the price of gas like shifts like

that, but everybody thinks everything is solid, and it's

not. It's fluid. It's very fluid, and it bumps up against

the idea of abundance.

There's plenty for everyone, there's lots of money, there's

lots of everything, but we get it in our mind that there's not.

If we can change our internal narrative, we can change

everything.

Did you catch my episode a couple episodes ago about going

to Spain, and I had somebody say, There's no way I could ever

afford that. I can't do that. And then when she found out it

was less than $800 for a round trip, plane ticket, and she

could have stayed in my bedroom because I had two beds, all of a

sudden, it's a game changer

when you can start chipping away at those stories that really

aren't even true, then possibilities open up. I never

considered going to Spain for a month. I went to school in Spain

when I was in college many years ago, and I just never thought

about it like that. Just wasn't on my list, not only going back,

but also going for a month. And my friend said, Hey, would you

go to Spain with me for a month? And I said, Yes. And she said,

can you go in June? And I said, Absolutely not. It's Lake season

and and I'm at the lake, I'm at the lake in June. I can't do it.

She said, When could you go? And I said, October. So now, two

years in a row, we have gone to Spain for an entire month in

October and stayed on the Spanish Riviera. It's beautiful

on the Mediterranean Sea. Phenomenal, wonderful time. I

hadn't really ever thought about it, but I also hadn't shut it

out. We were doing a coaching program together, the same

friend of mine, Kimberly Crowe, and I, and several people at the

end of the class said, If being an entrepreneur and having

financial freedom means we have to travel the world and we have

to go to Spain for a month. I don't want it. Two different

women said that, guess what? You don't have to my husband is

invited everywhere I go, and you know what he says, I don't

really want to go. He's traveled quite a bit. He's seen quite a

bit. He's like, Yeah, I don't want to go. I don't want to go

the airport. I don't want to deal with people, not wanting to

go is very different than I can't afford it, and we just

throw out that I can't afford it card at every turn. I can't

afford it. I can't do that. That's not for me. Why isn't it

for you? And why can't you afford it? Why not? It's a

story. You probably heard some story somewhere along the line

about only rich people travel. When people find out I went to

school when I was in college in Spain and France and Mexico,

they're like, oh my gosh, you must be from a really rich

family. No, no, I'm really not. My mom made it a priority, and I

went to school in Mexico for the summer, and then when I was in

college, I started saving my money working at the library on

campus 20 to 30 hours a. Week to save the money so I could offset

the cost of going to school in Europe. And I did, but I had to

make choices, and my parents and I laughed about that, that my

dad goes, I'm the youngest of four, if you don't know, if you

don't know, I'm the youngest four. And my dad said, I don't

know if we could have sent any of the other three kids to

Europe with a credit card and not had to file bankruptcy. And

I literally had kept track of everything I bought the day I

bought it, and how much it cost back then it was in pesetas

instead of euros now, but I tracked it all because I didn't

want any surprises. Also, back in the day, in the olden days,

back in the 1900s in the last century, they would not process

a credit card instantly, so they would hold on to the credit card

charge until the dollar was most advantageous for them, for the

shopkeeper. And so it was a full year after I came home, before

the last credit card bill came in. My mom was like, Okay,

that's it. We haven't gotten one in three months. I think we're

good. I think that's it. It had been a full year since I had

been there when that last bill came in. Other people are like,

how did you do that? Well, you know what, where there's a will,

there's a way. Have you ever heard that, where there's a

will, there's a way. I decided one time I wanted to have money

in a savings account and it would never drop below a certain

amount, because I wanted freedom and flexibility, I opened my

first savings account when I was six years old. People, I told my

dad, I want to go down the street to the Village Bank, and

I want a bank account. I want a savings account. My dad said,

Why do you want a savings account? You're six years old? I

said, Well, I have $20 and I want to put it in a savings

account. Why I saw my parents save money? You don't have to

have seen your parents save money to know it's a good idea

to have money put back for a rainy day. Identify the stories

that serve you well, and you can hang on to those. But if you

have any story that's negative that makes you feel kind of icky

in your gut, you may not need it. I can't afford it. I'll

never have enough. I can't retire. I was fortunate enough

to be able to retire early, but I see people struggling to

decide to retire enough or not, and they really want to go, but

then the question is, do they really want to retire? If they

wanted to, they could. How much money is enough? I love earning

money. I love seeing deposits go into my account because a new

client signed up. I love that. Why? It gives me freedom of

choice. I can choose what to do. I can choose if I want to go

back to Spain. I can choose if I want to go to a different

country. I can choose if I want to just stay home. I have

choices. I have freedom. And that's what having money and

accumulating wealth can do for you, if you have stories running

through your mind and any of this like clicked with you, I

want you to write down that story, and then I want you to

consider, is it true for you? Is it true for you? And if you no

longer want that belief, if you no longer want that story

driving all of your decisions, rewrite it in a way that feels

good to you. Have you ever heard of the story of the young woman

who had recently married and she was cooking a ham for dinner,

and every time her mom cooked a ham, she cut the end off and put

it in the pan and then cooked the ham, baked it in the oven,

and the newlywed called her mom and said, Hey, I'm getting ready

to cook this ham. Why don't we cut the end off? And the mom

said, Oh, I don't know, but your grandma always did that. Why

don't you call her? And the young newlywed called and said,

Hey, Grandma, why don't we cut the end off the ham before we

bake it. And the grandma said, Oh, honey, I didn't have. Pan

big enough to hold it, I had to cut the end off. There's

probably a valid reason way back last century that whatever story

you heard about money was true,

but it may not be true today, so I'm just putting out there you

have the choice. I'm not telling you what to do, but I'm telling

you what to do. I implore you to write down your money stories

and decide if they're true for you or not. And if you need a

little help with this, Hey, I'm happy. I'm happy to help go to

your success call com. Book a call with me. Let's talk about

it. And if you are not a member of growth day, I'm going to drop

that affiliate link in the in the show notes on growth day

every other Friday, I host a meetup called, let's clear

what's holding you back, and you can join that for free, and

you're gonna have to do some finagling and searching to find

the link to come to one for free, because, like, they change

every other week, every time I host one, but reach out and I'll

give it to You. It's really not that hard. But in the show

notes, I'll actually drop the link if you want to actually get

a free seven day trial of growth day and see if it like if you

like it, if it's for you, because it's really a phenomenal

personal development personal growth tool. But you don't have

to stay in a money story that no longer serves you, and if you

want to get out of it, reach out. I'm Jennifer Takagi with

destin for success, and I look forward to connecting with you

soon. You.