Podcast host Jen Pestikas of Brave Women at Work, interviewed me on why women feel anxious about money, and how to overcome this stress. We dove into what money fog is, and how money is really a form of life energy. And we talked about living our values in money. We even hit how to escape “golden handcuffs” — when we don’t like our jobs.  This is a jammed packed interview that covers our money beliefs, and how to create a nourishing spending plan that literally helps you architect the life you truly want. (And at the beginning, I share how I got into the field of money coaching.) Enjoy it.

Podcast: Brave Women at Work: EP: 107 Get Out of Your Money Fog with Mikelann Valterra on Apple Podcasts

Most of us want to enjoy our retirement someday. And money plays a role—an emotional role. So if you are curious about the emotional side of money, this podcast episode is for you.  Joe Casey, from the Retirement Wisdom podcast, dove into exploring our money beliefs and analyzing where they come from. More importantly, how do they impact us? And how does one develop a healthy relationship to money? We talked about the two most common money personalities, and what happens when they marry each other. And on a practical note, that is also emotional, how do we handle “retail therapy?” And what about retirement? How does the emotional side of money impact us when we become “work optional?”  People have more time in retirement, so having the resources to put into personal interests is key to happiness. And last, what is money coaching and how is it different than financial planning? So listen in, for a deep dive on emotions and money.

Listen here

Listen to this saucy conversation on women and money, as host Denise Vivaldo chats it up with Mikelann Valterra.  They hit it ALL, including what  really motivates spenders vs. savers, stories about how siblings in the same family are so very different with money (and why), and stories of women underselling themselves until Mikelann and Denise show them a different way. Mikelann also talks about the power of simplifying your finances so you are less stressed. Plus:  what happens when “opposites attract” get married, and then money comes up? Oh boy.  This is a super fun conversation to listen to as these two bold women have a no-holds barred conversation about what money is REALLY like for “women of a certain age”.  And it’s loaded with ideas you can use. Enjoy!

https://womenbeyond.podbean.com/e/beating-financial-anxiety-with-mikelann-valtera/

My own first money coach, Karen McCall, wrote in her book, Financial Recovery, “Chronic overspending comes from a deep internal state of longing. The spender keeps trying to fill an emotional void by buying things.”

Have you ever bought something you didn’t really need or even want as a way to lift your spirits, feel a little better or fill a deeper need you couldn’t readily name or immediately satisfy? 

We all do.

And when we do, we have the perfect opportunity to stop, reflect, discover what our deeper need really is, and make conscious choices about how to spend our money.

Rachel’s Rhinestone Earrings

Like my client, Rachel, who went shopping for a new dress for an upcoming office party. After trying on a few different things, she selected a pretty jewel-toned dress. On her way out of the store, she wandered over to the jewelry department, just to see if there was something there that might catch her eye. Sure enough, there was a pair of expensive rhinestone earrings that went perfectly with her newly purchased dress. 

She bought them. 

While the dress was a part of Rachel’s monthly spending plan, the earrings were not. So by the time Rachel got home, she was perplexed. Why had she bought those earrings? She certainly didn’t need them, and buying something that expensive had fouled up her spending plan.

“I bought them to look good for the party,” she thought.

But she knew it was more than that.

“What’s so important about looking good for the party? Why am I so concerned about looking attractive?”

Then it came to her.

Before she’d left the office that evening, she’d had a conversation with her brother. He’d told her of his plans to buy a diamond necklace for his wife for her birthday. She realized, in hindsight, that this revelation had made her so much more aware of being alone, of not having a partner, and her deep desire to have a relationship like her brother had with his wife.

As she processed how she felt, she realized she’d bought the earrings not to complete her party outfit, but rather as a way to feel more attractive, more dateable, more desirable. 

And less lonely.

Spending Your Money On What Matters

This happens to all of us. We spend money on something we think we want (like Rachel’s rhinestone earrings) when what we truly desire is something else entirely. 

As you begin to explore your own experiences of overspending, ask yourself the question, “What was so important about buying that?” 

As the answer emerges, ask yourself, “And why is that so important?” Continue to dig down until you uncover the deeper emotional need you were trying to meet by buying something you didn’t need. You’ll discover what your true needs and wants really are. 

This is one of the first steps to identifying your true needs before your wants, so you can focus on spending your money on what matters. Once Rachel got clear on the need she was trying to fulfill by buying those earrings, she decided to invest in one of the nicer online dating sites. 

“Who knows if it will work,” she told me, “But I do know that buying those earrings wasn’t going to bring me any closer to what I truly want. And now I can choose to spend my money on something that might!”

The airwaves took me to Australia this month where I guested on Financial Advisor and Money Mindset Coach Amie Baker’s podcast, Centsability. Listen to this lively conversation where we cover it all. Why do women stress over money? What do our childhoods have to do with how we feel about money? How can we feel truly abundant? This is a deep dive and you’ll love it.

Dealing With Financial Anxiety | EP38 (podbean.com)

Dare I say there is a silver lining to divorce? Well, there is.  You get a fresh start in so many ways. And your relationship to money is one of these “fresh start opportunities”.

Now that you are single, you get to do money the way YOU want to. However, we all know that post-divorce, you may be stressed about money. There is sometimes less money, different expenses, potential career changes, and houses that must be settled. In the midst of so much chaos, you may think, how can there be anything positive? The positive is that this new life is YOURS.  You can set up fresh accounts at your own bank, pay bills the way you want to, and spend on what matters to YOU.

More than this, divorce gives us an opportunity to engage in “conscious life design”. That’s my way of saying- create a life that YOU love- a life of your own making. 

Creating Your New Life

I have studied psychology and how to create a life of your own choosing, for many years. There are wonderful tools- from vision boards to all sorts of ways to “desire map” your life. (Danielle LA Porte’s “The Desire Map” is on my favorite book list.)  But what is often missing from the conversation about “how to create an amazing life” and “how to manifest your life goals” is the money piece. When you infuse money- how to handle it, think about it, use it wisely– you really CAN create a life of your choosing.

Money is the ultimate tool for designing a new life you love.

I wish so many of us didn’t have to divorce to get to this piece. But so many people marry young, and create busy lives with years full of children, career and our marriage partnership. And money is often a topic of frustration between couples with differing styles, so years can go by without people looking at it clearly, let alone getting a good handle on it.

But now everything has changed. And you can use learning about money as a personal growth opportunity just for you. You can take the time to examine your emotions around money, your history around money, and your early money beleifs. Money IS emotional- and being able to examine our feelings around money- feelings about spending, earning, how much money there is, what we wish we could do, etc, is a huge game changer.

 Women are creative in this phase of life.

 We are creative beings. And women in this phase of life are extremely creative. On the other side of divorce, we are freed up from the drive to “have children” and sometimes we are freed up in other ways as well.  We look at everything with fresh eyes. Why? Well, we have to. Everything HAS changed, so it forces us to assess everything. We end up assessing our friendships- old ones strengthen, some friendships wither away, and new friendships come into being.

We often think about how we are dressing and taking care of ourselves, now that it is just us. We think about what WE want our homes to look like and feel like. We find fresh energy for our careers. We engage with our children in truly thoughtful and meaningful ways, as we help them weather a family divorce as well.

Divorce shakes us out of ruts. I don’t mean to make it all sound fun. Heck, it’s hard work. But none-the-less, like the phoenix rising from the ashes, we are reborn into a new life. So learning how to handle money in a lovely and easy way, ensures this new life is one we consciously create. Not just something that happens to us.

A tip for you- keep things simple

Here is a tip- use this as an opportunity to clean up accounts and start fresh- keep things simple and elegant, so you have an easy time seeing where all your money is going and coming from. Open up new accounts all at the same bank, and keep it simple. I recommend opening one checking account, one attached savings account and one credit card account at the same bank. This way you can log onto one interface and see all your accounts in one place. And refrain from opening up multiple accounts. Again,  keep it simple.

Here is a video I recorded on how to simplify your financial life. It’s perfect if you just went through a divorce. (Three minutes)

And here is the accompanying article I wrote on the art and magic of simplifying your finances. 

You can do it

You really can create a new life that you love, during this pivotal transition.  This is an opportunity to hit the reset button on your relationship to money. You can let go of unhealthy ways of relating to money and really befriend it. Truly.  And since it is just you, you can create a relationship with money that suits YOU.  

The process I coach people on is perfect for women post-divorce. It is about how to create a life you love, using your relationship to money as a way to craft it. It’s about getting a handle on expenses, and learning to plan where your money goes, so you don’t create debt. It’s about learning how to manage your cash flow to avoid financial stress, rebuild  savings and move into the future so you can work on growing your net worth. If you are curious about the tool I use and recommend for tracking and planning, it is www.moneygrit.com

Once it is just you, you can really give everything a fresh shot. There is no one telling you what to do. There is no one to react to. You get to spend the way you want, you get to decorate the way you want, you get to sleep in the middle of the bed and hang that picture he hated. 😉

So- since we have to “deal with money” anyways, why not use it as a vehicle for personal growth AND a way to create and design a life you love?

Back in 2017, I attended a tango class for beginners – and low and behold I fell in love with this complex and beautiful dance between the sexes.  It started as just a weekly dance class, but as time went on, I become more deeply involved, until it blossomed into a passion that consumes a lot of time.  Ah, such heaven. But it also consumes a fair amount of money…  From classes, to dances, to private lessons to travel to shoes…

Many of my clients also have engaging hobbies- horseback riding, mountain climbing, drag racing, bee keeping, sailing, oil painting… The list goes on.  It’s actually one of my favorite parts of my practice- learning about and supporting people’s different interests. And I consider it a sacred duty to help people find the money to pursue interests that they fear they can’t afford.

Having a passion, or an engaging hobby, adds such zest to your life. It’s about enjoying life in the now and living fully in the present.  We can’t live only for a future where debts are paid off and retirement is funded. We have to also live in the present and enjoy the life we have right now.

So- the question is- how do we live our financial lives in balance and make sure that we are also attending to the future needs of retirement, as well as taking care of life necessities like home maintenance and the needs of dependent children? The answer is to work with a nourishing monthly spending plan, protect your needs while also naming your wants, and then develop an annual plan to create the lifestyle you want. Read on.

Naming our passions is powerful

I could write a book about the power of creating a monthly spending plan process, but in a few short paragraphs, a spending plan is about creating a plan for where you want to spend your money, and making sure that what is important to you, is protected. It also allows you to see how to reallocate your resources from places that are less important to places that are more important- like your passions. 

It is important to give your interests room in your money life. Don’t deny them! And the best way to protect them is to fully name them in your personal spending plan. A colleague of mine, Bari Tessler, author of The Art of Money, calls this “values-based bookkeeping”. Giving your values a personalized name, helps ensure that you not only name, but claim what is important to you. And a plan gives you a roadmap to actually make it happen- it ensures that when you decide where your money goes, the money goes to tango class and doesn’t leak out the door to things that may be nice, but don’t bring you as much JOY.

Each month I create a monthly plan and within it are predictable things like bills, the mortgage payment and other life necessities, as well as my tango plan for the month. You would see my plan for classes, and dances and of course shoes. I may see I need to spend less money eating out to protect this dance passion. Which brings us to the hot topic of needs vs. wants…

Creativity in Spending- Needs Vs. Wants

We often confuse our needs and our wants. And in things that we are passionate about, we simply don’t think clearly. It feels like a combined NEED/WANT/DESIRE.

Discerning needs from wants is a core tenet in creating a healthy relationship to money and in creating a healthy life. To put it simply, we want to make sure we fund our real needs first, before we spend money on our wants. As my colleague Karen McCall writes (author of Financial Recovery– developing a healthy relationship with money), faulty electrical wiring in the walls should be taken care of in our home before we cover the walls with pretty wallpaper! 

However, when we think of our passions as “just wants” we begin to fear that we can’t afford them or shouldn’t spend money on them. We may feel they are a luxury. Indeed, some people feel like everything outside of basic housing and food is a want. And yes, it can feel confusing when there are people in the world starving while we have plenty to eat. So who are we to say that dancing, or horseback riding, is a need?

It is different for everyone, of course, but many passions are good for our emotional, physical and/ or spiritual health. They are part of how we enjoy the life we have. They keep us anchored to the present instead of always waiting for the future to arrive. 

When I ask my friend Ken if he wants to go out dancing, he will often respond, “I NEED to go out dancing”. Dancing regularly is key to his physical health, as well as keeping him anchored in community and friends. Name and claim this need.

But of course there are wants too. I may “need” to dance, for my own health and happiness as well, but I also want nicer dance clothes, more dance shoes and travel to tango festivals in faraway places. So it helps me to differentiate between what I need vs. what I want. To help you think through your own needs vs wants conundrum, I will share some of mine:

• I need to dance. I want to dance in Bueno Aires.
• I need good tango shoes that support and protect my feet. I want five pairs of glittery shoes in different colors.  
• I need clothes that don’t make me feel self-conscious. I want new pretty clothes from fancy stores. 
• I need community and time with my friends. I want to eat in nice restaurants before every dance. 

Darn those needs vs. wants. But once I thought through it, I saw I could meet the needs- and even some of the wants- by getting creative. For example, I could see my friends (need) by only meeting them for drinks instead of dinner, or inviting my friends to my house for a potluck meal. I could buy my first tango shoes in a neutral color that go with everything (tan). And I could switch to consignment store shopping to afford all the fun clothes I now wanted. (I quickly realized that all my tango friends already figured this one out.)

What about you? You may need a decent saddle but want a new fancy one. You may need art supplies but you may want a LOT of art supplies. You may need to sail but want to buy your own boat. And so it goes.

(For a deeper dive, see my post on how discern your real needs and heal deprivation.)

Life Style Decisions

And what about traveling to Bueno Aires? It’s a rare tango dancer who doesn’t think about that one.  And this brings us to the last subject: working with an annual plan.

I have an annual plan (budget) and that is where I dream and debate the big picture. Annual plans are the place to make decisions and see what you really can and cannot afford. They are where we strive to create a balanced lifestyle where our spending is under our income. (I use and recommend MoneyGrit. for creating both monthly and annual spending plans.)

So could I afford to go to Bueno Aires? Well, when I added up all the tango related expenses that I wanted to protect, as well as some travel to smaller festivals, Bueno Aires did not work. (Obviously, my annual plan has many non-tango related expenses as well, like helping my son with college.) Alas. So next year, I will definitely strategize how to get it in. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy local dance festivals and time with friends.

What do YOU want to protect?

I have many priorities, like funding retirement, but I really do want to protect tango. So what interests and passions do YOU want to protect? If you name what gives you joy, and prioritize this, you can protect it. Even if you have to find creative ways to enjoy your interests, your interests deserve time and attention. They are part of living a well-balanced- and a well-lived- life. 

I’m off to dance. 

We’ve all heard: “Follow your bliss.”  

 And how about the famous saying, “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” 

Does it? If you do what you love, will the money follow?

Maybe.

I do love the idea of following my bliss. Who doesn’t?!

The dilemma with these beliefs is that they can abdicate responsibility about money. It says “don’t you worry about that money stuff. Just focus on what makes you happy.” And of course, we want to believe that, because who wants to think about money? Isn’t it comforting that we don’t have to think about all this money stuff?

And I admit, it does sound lovely, and I wish it were true. The premise is good—it says focus on using your talents. But a lot of times it doesn’t work because people don’t realize that just because you are talented at something doesn’t mean you will make money. There must be a demand for what you do. Ouch.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that women fall prey to these beliefs more than men. Yes, men want meaningful work and work they enjoy. But they rarely divorce their work aspirations from money. They often believe they need to earn enough to support themselves as well as a family. Women often grow up still believing that we only need to earn enough to support ourselves. I rarely talk to a woman who grew up thinking she had to earn enough someday to support herself, her husband and two possible children.

Women often believe that meaning is everything, and focusing on money may somehow degrade the deeper meaning we seek.  We may also believe that bringing money into the picture makes us appear greedy or more self-centered. This is perpetuated by our common belief that one can have meaningful work OR make good money.

But what if it wasn’t either/or?

I always tell people that instead of saying, “follow your bliss and the money will follow”, say “How can I make money following one of my blisses?” The difference between these two questions is huge.  Or perhaps a better way to say it is:

“How can I make money doing something I like?”  This opens the field to many possibilities. It is about trying to balance both money and doing what you enjoy.

There are many things I like. However, some of these ideas will earn me more money than others.  Not all hobbies or passions can be turned into lucrative careers. And sometimes trying to monetize a hobby or passion takes the joy out if it. Passions are the spice of life. It may be better to create a career that gives you good work life balance, so you have time for your passions and interests.

When you think about work and career, look for the intersection of these three things: Work you enjoy, work you are good at and work that pays well (other people value financially). What type of work sits at the intersection of these three things? 

When we say, “follow your bliss”, and disregard money, we are not living in balance.

A life lived in balance means we balance what we like to do with the money we need to earn to live a healthy and happy life.

Ready to earn more and step into greater freedom? Click here to be notified of the next time Mikelann offers her 8 week Unlock Your Earning Power course.

Recently, I went to a large chain bookstore and stood in front of several shelves of business and career development books. From how to write your resume to how to decide what you want to do with your life, it was all there. Everything, that is, except money. 

I grabbed a pile of the most promising career/ professional development books and sat down to study their indexes, looking for the chapter in each book where they talked about money. You know—how much money you wanted to make and how much various careers paid etc. I found nothing. The closest thing was the perfunctory chapter on salary negotiation. There was nothing on deciding how much you wanted and needed to make, and nothing on how to match your income desires to different careers. There was nothing on the financial pros and cons of various fields and no talk of the incredible wide discrepancy in pay between fields.

What did I find?

Personality profiles. All the career development books were devoted to helping you analyze your personality and then find a good match with a satisfying career. Now mind you, I am not saying that a good match is not important. It is incredibly important. You spend far too many hours working to not enjoy what you do. But money is incredibly important as well. It is one of the main reasons people work in the first place! And yet it is hardly even mentioned in the many books designed to help you find the right “match”!

One of the better books out there on job change is the annual updated What Color is Your Parachute series. This series is about how to do a “life-changing job hunt”, and is full of useful and practical information on how to job hunt in real life, using what Richard Nelson Boyles and Katharine Brooks describe as non-traditional techniques. (For example, they think that resumes do very little to help us land the next job.) 

In their annual edition, they list out the most common reasons that people pursue a major change in their career. I was fascinated to see that only one had anything to do with money and compensation. It seems as though work is rarely related to money, and I believe this “disconnect” has far reaching repercussions for everyone, but especially women. As you’ve seen, a life time of not earning at one’s potential, of not really taking one’s earnings seriously or trying to maximize what one can earn in a given position, wreaks havoc on your future financial stability. And I can virtually guarantee you that the person you will be in thirty years is going to wish you had paid more attention to this whole “money” thing, in the present.

The disconnect in our schooling

As I mentioned, the disconnect between work and money starts even earlier then when we enter the job force. It starts in school, where money is rarely acknowledged or discussed.

Why does no one ask us when we are in school how much money we would like to make? It seems almost a crass question, so it is rarely, if ever, brought up. And since it is not brought up in the schools, people generally do not bring it up themselves. A school’s silence on making money somehow sanctions ones continued reticence in asking the question ourselves. 

Even when we are growing up, most girls dream of doing many things, but very few of them envision how much money is attached to these fantasy occupations. There is still an ingrained sense of reliance on something outside themselves. Women do not have the basic assumption that it will be up to them to take care of both themselves and a family. Therefore, they have the luxury of not thinking about this whole money thing. 

But what if we did think about it?

What questions would we ask ourselves? Perhaps we could start by asking how much money we would like to earn someday. Then when we are in school we could ask questions like,

“How much money could I expect to make if I study this”? 

This single question is so important, yet it is almost never asked. Women pay a high price for not asking questions like these. Years later, after decades of low earnings, they may wish they had asked themselves more questions. 

Ready to earn more and step into greater freedom? Click here to be notified of the next time Mikelann offers her 8 week Unlock Your Earning Power course.