[00:00:00] Ad – The Money Equation: Ladies and gentlemen, before we get going on today’s episode, I want to tell you something really exciting. On November 15th, 2023, I’m going to be having a workshop on the money equation. The time you give plus the value add equals the money you receive. We’re going to break this down for you. And I would love for you to come to my 90-minute workshop to talk about this money equation. There’ll be a live Q and A. It’s going to be a good time. You can go to DylanBain.com/Money-Equation. That’s DylanBain.com/Money-Equation. Link is also in the show notes. I’d love to see you on the 15th. And let’s get on with today’s episode.

[00:00:40] Intro: We’re saying goodbye to the rigid numbers and strict budgets and putting relationships back at the heart of personal finance. This is more than a podcast. It’s an invitation to reimagine your money story and journey with us through a landscape of intuitive strategies and abundance. Join a community that nurtures transformative financial mindsets.

[00:01:02] Dylan Bain: Welcome to Intuitive Finance. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

[00:01:14] I’ve just gotten a new job, and I am so excited to be going into this brand new corporate environment. I’ve been on the consulting track for a number of years at this point, and now I’m going to be moving from the consulting side into industry. And as part of this, I need to upgrade my wardrobe. And of course, that includes a pair of shoes.

[00:01:33] And I’ve picked out the best shoes for this job. They’re everything I want. They’re zero drop, they look great with the clothes that I have. They’re going to be something I’m going to enjoy wearing into the office every single day. So I’m online, and I’ve got my cart up, and I move the mouse cursor over to the buy now button, and my finger refuses to move. I can’t click buy physically.

[00:01:59] And as I’m sitting there, I’m starting to feel panicked. And I’m starting to sweat, and I’m starting to shake. And I — it’s just a pair of shoes. I mean, I had had all the money set aside. This was not a huge lift for me. And yet, I couldn’t do it. And I’m sitting there thinking to myself, what the actual hell?

[00:02:23] And suddenly, I realized I feel like I’m 17, and I’m talking to my mother as she explains to me that despite the fact that I was working on my uncle’s construction crew, had spent some time working on a horse farm, and was still training for wrestling, I only had one pair of sneakers and they had fallen apart. And she was angry because I had not been a good steward of my things.

[00:02:50] I tell this story, ladies and gentlemen, because our money stories are the result of our experiences. And those experiences imprint on us, particularly the ones that happened at an early age. Now in my story, 17 is not exactly a young age, but it was just the latest entry in a long standing standoff about different clothes and shoes. And it’s not even like I grew up poor. It was had more to do with the fact that my mother was working on this idea that you should buy one pair of cheap thing, and then that thing should be able to last you forever if you’re just responsible. Which when you’re buying the cheapest pair of shoes at the Payless — their white Reeboks, for cripes’ sake, they’re not going to last. Especially on a boy who’s doing so much that, like I was. This is not exactly rocket science.

[00:03:45] And yet that was a situation I found myself in, and that those experiences with those shoes — those cascaded forward into my life. Shoes are my classic example, but this is literally everything. Buying quality food for myself. Buying a car that I actually need. Upgrading my wardrobe. And as those of you who follow me on Instagram know, I’ve been going through my own weight loss journey and I’m down 45 pounds. Well, guess what? None of my clothes fit.

[00:04:11] And so in the past, I would be having a panic attack because in my own head, on an emotional level, I would have not been a good steward of my things because I should have been able to buy that pair of jeans and that should have lasted me. But now I’ve lost so much weight, they don’t fit and I have to buy new ones. That doesn’t make any logical sense.

[00:04:31] But as we’ve talked about before, the logic isn’t driving the car of our life. Our emotions are. And because of that, that’s where we actually have to go if we want to make progress in improving our life and rewriting our money stories. And sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, there’s too much there for any one person to hold. And you might need a professional, a third party who’s skilled and trained in these things to help you through that. Which brings us to today’s topic, which is kind of the idea of financial therapy.

[00:05:02] When I have people who come into my coaching practice and I ask for feedback, it is not uncommon that they will say, working with Dylan is like working with a financial therapist, or working with Dylan is like therapy for your money. And that’s as true as it’s not. So let’s be real clear. I am not a therapist. That’s not what I do. I’m not licensed. I’m not trained to be a therapist. And I’m still a financial coach. And as part of that, my in to the money world is to start with the foundational idea that money is emotional. It’s not spreadsheets and numbers. It’s not logic. It’s not this thing that we’re all trained to believe that it’s so simple to be able to do. It’s not. It’s an emotional game because your money is foundational to your life.

[00:05:48] And I’ve talked about before, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The very bottom tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are your physiological needs. Food, shelter, water, sex, those things. All of those things are going to require some sort of financial wherewithal. And you might be saying, well, sex doesn’t require financial wherewithal. I don’t know man, I’ve dated. It’s been a while, but I’ve dated. It costs money. And of course, if you’re trying to bring her home to your cardboard box, it’s not exactly a great selling point now, is it? Because money is emotional. And when your money is so foundational to getting your physiological needs met, it also becomes a survival thing.

[00:06:28] This is hitting into a part of our brains that is very, very old. It is hitting into the part of our brain that evolved first, that enabled us to survive long enough to reproduce, and therefore evolutionarily, it’s an absolutely critical part of how we think. And a big part of our ability to survive is our emotional wherewithal that allows us to be able to sense danger, to know when we have to run, to know when we’re safe. Those are emotional things. And like I said, our emotions are driving the car of our life, whether we like it or not. And because our money is emotional, that means that we’re going to make emotional decisions.

[00:07:09] I have seen people who’ve come into the coaching practice and they’re just like, we need some discipline. If we just had some discipline, we’d be perfectly fine. And that’s great. And finite objectives will get you only so far, but the reality here is it’s going to take more than that, because if you’re just white knuckling your way through a budget, you can do it for a while, but eventually you’re going to have a rebound effect and it’s going to put you in a worse position than you are right now. The good news with all of this is financial help is available. There is an entire cadre of people, and an ever increasing number of us, who are trained and specialized to be able to help you with this exact thing. And as with any industry that’s growing, and one that is not overly regulated, there’s also a lot of bad advice out there, and we’re going to go over some of that too.

[00:08:01] But let’s start out with the good stuff, because what are the benefits of combining psychology and finance? Well, number one is that we’re getting to the root of your money story. Or more particularly, whose story is it really? So often, I have caught myself saying, well I ought to blah, blah, blah. Or we should blah, blah, blah. Or if I was more disciplined, blah, blah, blah. And whatever that blah, blah, blah is, typically are words that I think I should be saying. Like I’m saying them, and I know somewhere in my mind and somewhere in my emotional makeup that what I’m really doing is trying to make somebody else happy. Of course, that person isn’t in the room and in some cases, they’re not even alive anymore. I have carried forward someone else’s money story, and now I’m letting it run my life.

[00:08:52] If you’re going to get to the root of that, you need to be able to sit with it long enough to no longer hear your voice saying that, but whose voice is it really? That root of your money story, I will promise you, came from somewhere not you, and typically will come from something very early in childhood. It has a lot to do with attachment. This is why we had people like Duey Freeman, Mark Sylvester on there because attachment is critical to how we navigate the world, and communication has an emotional impact. Those are two big takeaways from those interviews, link to those in the show notes.

[00:09:29] But stop and think about that. How many times have you gone through and you’ve done something with your money and you’re like, I don’t know why I did that. Well, it might be because you’re actually enacting somebody else’s story. This is why people will say, well, I have to have the truck. Or I have to have the Prius. Or I shouldn’t make money because money is evil. Or I have to make all the money because I have to give it to X, Y, Z organization.

[00:09:52] These are money stories that arise from individual experiences and social context. The reality here is that just like with our food and with sex and with relationships, raising kids. All of these things come together and they’re all part of that exact same structure. It’s a story from somebody else.

[00:10:13] I’ve had a woman who came into my coaching practice and she was driving a really expensive automobile. One that was — the payment on the automobile was almost equivalent to what she was paying on the mortgage for her home. And I sat down with her and I said, Okay, well, let’s look at this car. Why is it that you need the luxury version of this car when all you’re using it for is to go from Point A to Point B? What gives? And she looks at me and she says, well I — but I like the car. I said, yeah, but in any given 24 hours, you’re spending maybe, maybe an hour in it? The rest of the time you’re spending it at home, and you don’t have the things at home that you want because you’re spending the money on the car that sits in the garage and does nothing 90% of the time. And as we talked about it, and as we worked on that, and as we looked at that route, she eventually just looks at me and says, my aunts would judge me if I drive a Toyota. I’m beyond the Toyota stage of life.

[00:11:08] And there it is. Her aunts would judge her. She’s not making that payment because that car serves her, or because she’s getting enjoyment out of it. She’s making that payment to try to make her aunts happy. And I don’t know about you, but I have some aunts like that. There is nothing I’m going to be able to do in this world that will ever make them happy. And in her world, the same is true.

[00:11:31] When you start understanding your behaviors in context, Then you actually start being able to look at them and say, well, hold on a second. Why am I doing that, really? What’s underneath that? What is my fear? What is the thing that I’m looking at? Is it abandonment? Do I believe that if I don’t take her to the highest restaurant that I possibly can, every single week, she’s going to leave me? Do I feel like I’ve abandoned myself if I don’t take myself over to that fast food place and get that fried chicken sandwich? Am I afraid that I’m not going to fit in because I don’t have the latte?

[00:12:03] And this kind of gets into when you start to understand your behaviors in context, you have an opportunity to observe them and increase your awareness to the point where you’re able to do something different. But you have to first start by understanding your behaviors and then understanding the context. And there’s — this is where a lot of the bad advice comes in, because when it comes to money, how many times have you heard like, you just need discipline? And I’ve harped on that a lot in this episode, but I kind of think about this, right? I went through and I got certified to do financial coaching. I’d already been doing it for a couple of years. And I’m like, I should go get a credentials before I have my CPA.

[00:12:39] And so I went to Ramsey Solutions. That’s Dave Ramsey’s group. No shade against Dave Ramsey. He’s got a method, it works, and he gives a lot of very good advice. But something else he does is shame people. Tough it up! You gotta sell your car. Only 30% of your entire income should be going to your house. These are arbitrary rules, and just telling someone to toughen up is actually terrible money advice because you’re shaming them, which is just going to inflame any emotional injuries that you’re dealing with. And it’s normal money advice so of course, it sounds normal. Like, oh of course, I need to toughen up. Everyone tells me I need to toughen up.

[00:13:16] Well, everyone is giving you poor advice. Because at the end of the day, that’s a logical thing. Yeah, just run the spreadsheet. Just manage the budget. Just do all these other things. But you know what? After having done this for seven years where I brought clients in, and I’ve coached them, and I’ve sat down with couples and single people, people who are getting ready to be married, people who are getting ready to be divorced, people who are getting ready to retire. Not a single one of them has ever been successful at the “just gutting it out” strategy when it comes to money.

[00:13:45] They don’t come into the practice because they have it figured out. They’re coming into the practice, more often than not, because they’ve tried and tried and tried with all of the “just gut it out,” “just white knuckle your way through,” “just give yourself some good discipline.” They’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. Why does it not work, ladies and gentlemen? Because money’s emotional. Because you’re addressing the wrong thing. Because the more you try to white knuckle your way through this, the worse the rebound effect is going to be.

[00:14:14] And instead, when you’re starting to combine psychology and finance, you start to understand that the way that you move past these money stories is to start to understand you. And you start to understand yourself. And when you have those feelings of fear or anger or rage, you want to run in a hole and hide. You can just sit with it. Stop for a second. Just accept what comes up for you in that moment. And go, I know I’m good. I got me. I’ve got this professional who’s helping me with this. Let’s just explore this. Let me just get to know this part of myself. Let me observe, with awareness, these feelings that are coming up that are making the decisions for me, so that I can be in control of them rather than them being in control of me.

[00:15:08] This is now taking a more holistic approach. No more are we saying, well, you need to have a rigid budget or you just have to have some more discipline. Like no, we’re saying like — you’re a human. You’re a human and there’s no God-given reason why you should know how to manage your personal finances. There’s nothing evolutionary about this. So breathe for a moment, my brother and sister-in-finance. Let’s understand who you are and what stories you’re carrying that aren’t yours or authored by somebody else.

[00:15:37] And this process can be really, really harrowing, especially when you have another person involved. Like if you’re married, guess what? You have your marriage is a business. My wife and I, we have two streams of income coming in. And it’s not small. And so at this point, we’re running a business that is cash flowing wildly for us right now, and we have to sit down and talk about it. Because if we don’t, the business is going to fail. And if the business fails, it’s going to affect my marriage, it’s going to affect my kids, it’s going to affect everyone that I love around me. So how do I sit down with my wife and have the hard conversation I don’t want to have, and if we’re going to be entirely honest, she doesn’t want to have either?

[00:16:20] How do we talk about the hard things? How do you do that? Especially when you’re sitting there — if you’re already feeling like you have feelings of abandonment, of like, if I don’t have a pair of shoes, then I can’t be part of the group and then no one’s going to love me. Okay well, if I don’t let her have that pair of shoes, then no one’s going to love her. Well, I need the pair of shoes, but she doesn’t need the pair of shoes. You can kind of see how this goes. And pretty soon, you’re now resonating off of each other. You dysregulate because now you’re afraid because that bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has been threatened.

[00:16:50] You kind of start flipping out a little bit. You start feeling bad and then she gets scared. Or he gets scared. Whoever’s on the other side of this equation, they start getting scared. So what happens when trust goes down, people — control goes up. People try to seize control of the situation, which of course no one reacts well to. And then pretty soon, you’re in a fight. And you say shit that you regret later, that you wish you hadn’t said. And then all that does is mean the next time you’re looking at the credit card statement, and you’re like, God, I gotta talk to my partner about this, but I don’t want to fight with them, so I’ll just put this over here in the trash can and then I don’t have to look at it anymore. It’s a terrible way to manage your finances, and it’s a terrible way to run the business that is your relationship. There’s a lot of well-worn paths in helping couples communicate. And that’s where a third party professional can really help you out. So then this question becomes, how do you find one? How do you find a third party specialist who’s able to help you?

[00:17:48] Well, the very first thing that you got to look for, ladies and gentlemen, is training and knowledge. It’s a very common thing to say to somebody like, don’t take advice from somebody who hasn’t done the thing that they’re giving advice on. And this is where like, as I’ve grown my Instagram following, it’s amazing to me like, how many people come in and be like, “You’re running a scam!” And it’s like, okay but where’s the scam? Well, you’re not rich. You haven’t made a million dollars. I was like, well yes. Yes, that’s true. I don’t have a million dollars yet. Note the yet. And I’m not trying to sell you on, hey, listen to me, buy my course, I’ll teach you how to make a million dollars. ‘Cause I don’t know how to do that. I’m not there yet. But what I do know how to do, is to be able to take incremental changes in my life such that I’m creating inevitability towards the goals that I’ve set for myself. That is something that I’ve been doing for well over a decade, and I’m exceedingly good at it.

[00:18:43] This is why I’ve been able to turn around my net worth from six figures negative to six figures positive in five years. So if you’re doing the math, that’s a minimum of a 200,000-dollar change in five years, and it was a lot more than just $200,000. So do I have the training for it? Well yeah, I do, both for my life and for my education. I’m a CPA. This is what I do. I do this for large Fortune 100 companies. I look at all their finances. I figure out where we can do better. And then I have to sell it to the executives who, by the way, ladies and gentlemen — their emotions are driving the car as well. And so I’m playing that game. And as I already said, I went through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Coaching Certification Masterclass. So I have that credential too. But there’s other credentials out there. Like I said, at the top of the show, I’m not an actual therapist. So you should not be like, oh, well Dylan said, blah, blah, blah. Like no, listen to your therapist. If you have a therapist, for the love of all that is sacred and holy, listen to those professionals.

[00:19:45] But there are actual therapists who also train in dealing with financial issues. This is a certified financial therapist or CFT. It is a growing credential that’s out there that does therapy for people with their money. And I know a few of these people because I refer out to these people. For example, the woman who is telling me, well, I have to drive this car because my aunts will think less of me. It’s like, okay, this is now generational trauma. This is enmeshment on a level that I cannot handle. And so I’m going to refer out to somebody who can actually specialize that. And those people, those therapists have looked at it and said, this person doesn’t need therapy, they need a methodology — and that’s where I come in.

[00:20:28] So you can go to an actual financial therapist, that is the CFT or Certified Financial Therapist. But there’s also coaches. There’s a lot of financial coaches out there. And that’s me. I’m a financial coach. Like I said, I went through Dave Ramsey’s certification course. I’ve come up with my own methodology. I don’t advertise that a whole lot, mostly because I differ from some of their methodologies. But it’s a good thing to have somebody in your corner who is trained to be able to have these conversations, who doesn’t have a horse in the race, who’s able to point things out to you.

[00:20:59] Where a therapist is going to look at like, oh this is where you’re at, let’s go back to the past and try and fix that, a coach is going to be like, this is where you are, let’s look forward to the future. And that’s where I think that therapists and coaches really interact. Therapist is looking backwards, a coach is looking forward. And both of those are valid ways of going about this. They’re just different approaches trying to help address the same problem.

[00:21:22] Another place where you can find people who will function not as actual financial therapists — but they do a lot of emotional stuff — are financial advisors and CPAs.

[00:21:30] Now, my animus towards a lot of financial advisors is well-documented at this point, but if you have a CFP, Certified Financial Planner, those people are legally required to function as fiduciaries, and I think that they’ll do a great job for you. And the primary focus for all financial planners and advisors is to serve as an emotional cutout for when you get scared. These are the people who, if they’re smart and they’re good at what they do, when the markets drop 30% are going to be telling you, “Everything’s on sale, we need to buy a lot right now.” They’re the people who, when you call and go, “Sell everything! The sky is falling.” They’re going to say, okay, breathe. Breathe. Let’s talk. That’s what they serve as.

[00:22:13] CPAs will do a lot of the same stuff for business management and for your taxes. So if you’re sitting there going like, oh my God, the IRS is going to come for me. Okay. Well, it’s just again, breathe, and sit down and let’s have a conversation. And I’ve said before, I’m a CPA, but CPA is kind of like a term, like a doctor. You know, there’s a lot of different specialities. I’m not a tax CPA. So I hired my own tax CPA. He does my taxes for me, and I do a lot of financial analysis. And that’s what I do, is that I’m specialized in a different way than this person is. But whenever I’m feeling like, oh, I don’t know if I can write this off, or how do I structure this business thing? Or should I be reorganizing as a corporation, or whatever — I call him. I call my CPA and be like, hey, can I get 15 minutes of your time? And why? Because I need that emotional help to feel good about my decisions so that I can sleep well at night.

[00:23:05] And last but certainly not least, and perhaps most importantly, is fit. Is this person aligned with where you want to go? That’s a huge, huge question. And there are places where I’m not willing to go with a client. There are other people — there’s an entire legion of people who will go there with you. I’m not that guy, right? You know, real estate investing is a great example of this. I don’t know anything about it. So if you were coming to me and say, I need you to coach me through starting up this real estate investing empire that I want to build, great. Let me make a referral because I’m not fit to be serving you in that capacity.

[00:23:44] But if you’re like, I don’t understand why I do the things that I do. I’ve been trying so hard to budget. I don’t even know how to have the conversation. I don’t even — I feel like I don’t have the words. Well, then my brothers- and sisters-in-finance, I got to tell you, I’m the man. Because that’s exactly where I want to go. That’s where I’m trained to go. That’s where I’m best. The fit with this person who is functioning as a financial therapist or someone to help you with the emotions of money, that fit is critical. And I can’t say that enough. And especially when you’re starting to really look at your money stories and reimagine those money stories, you might have to go a little deeper. Maybe a layer down that you yourself can’t get to. And it might be difficult to handle what you find.

[00:24:30] And just like my story at the top of the show, as I went to go buy my shoes for my new job, and suddenly I’m 17 again being yelled at by mom about these shoes that rotted off my feet because I didn’t have the appropriate tools for the job. About six months later, after that incident her father, my grandfather, passed away, and I went to the funeral. And when I went to the funeral, I sat down in the church and we had the eulogy and we went to the grave and buried him and interned him for eternity. And then we all, in typical Wisconsin fashion, went to the bar. And at the bar, one of my aunts was talking about buying shoes and how hard it was to buy shoes because my grandfather never wanted to buy them because he grew up in an orphanage where shoes were a premium. And how hard it was for my aunt growing up, my mom’s sister growing up, when my grandfather hated buying shoes for his five children.

[00:25:27] And ladies and gentlemen, that was like a thunderbolt to realize my money story was intergenerational. The money story that had stopped me from being able to buy a pair of shoes to go do a job that was a huge step up in pay had actually come from the 1920s, a hundred years before. And here I was living it out.

[00:25:50] And ladies and gentlemen, after that experience, I’ve been able to buy a lot of different types of shoes for a lot of different things that I need because I started addressing the deeper wounds and issues. I started really looking at whose story is this? And I’ve been so successful in reimagining my money stories and writing a better future. One that’s focused on serving me. I want that for each and every single one of you, too.

[00:26:15] Outro: Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t end here. Please share the show with friends and make sure you keep up with all the latest updates on Instagram and Threads @TheDylanBain and dive deeper into the world of finance with me at DylanBain.com where you’ll find insights, resources, and strategies to reimagine your money story.