Shattering Myths About Wealth Building With Nicole Stanley

Welcome to Let It Be Easy with Susie Moore.

Susie Moore:

I absolutely loved this conversation with Nicole Stanley. I met Nicole because she discovered my work and entered my world, and she's a thrill to get to know. In this conversation about money, we spoke about the four pillars that we need to look into and be conscious of when it comes to being really, really good and successful with money. No matter how much anxiety we might feel when it comes to looking at our bank statements, when it comes to looking at our savings or lack thereof. I mean, if anyone can approach the topic of money with ease, with calm, with a sense of control, it's Nicole. And look, I know that money brings up a lot of stuff for people, and I led this conversation thinking and thinking and thinking. I think you might too. Nicole's the founder of a Rise Financial Coaching, and in her twenties, she shares very openly that financial anxiety rules her life.

So she set a goal to be debt-free in five years, and by the time she turned 27, she turned her $56,000 income per year into a net worth of over a quarter million dollars. Over a quarter million dollars for her family of four. She loves helping others conquer their money, stress in a really, really practical way. And she launched a Rise Financial Coaching in 2020, helping people save women specifically over $20,000 or more. Her goal is really to transform financial anxiety, which I think you can have no matter your level of income into confidence and success. I tell you, this conversation wasn't one that I knew that I needed and I loved it. I give you Nicole Stanley. Nicole Stanley, welcome to the Let it be easy podcast.

Nicole Stanley:

My God, I am so excited to be here, Susie.

Susie Moore:

Oh, I'm so excited to chat with you on all things money. Even though money and anxiety is like, Ooh, it's not the easiest subject, which is why we need to talk about it. And I'm thrilled to know you, Nicole, in real life. You're part of our world, part of our community, a member of Superstar Sessions. How thrilling to bring your advice to my people.

Nicole Stanley:

I can't wait. I know that when we're always talking about how to make something easy, I've been dying to come on here and talk about how your listeners can start to make their money easy because it doesn't always feel that way.

Susie Moore:

It really doesn't feel that way. And one thing I know that you share, Nicole, which is so interesting to me, is that women, even when they're earning more than they've ever earned, they can be more anxious and stressed out than ever. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't we be able to kick back and go, oh, look at me. I'm doing great. Why are we so stressed out, Nicole, even when we're doing well?

Nicole Stanley:

I love this question because I think it's something we never talk about. It's just like, well, you're either you don't have any money, or if you do make money, therefore you're not stressed. Where there's this whole population of high achieving women who start making more money than ever, they're killing it at their jobs, and then they're getting all this money and they're wondering, where is it going? What am I supposed to be doing with it? Oh my gosh, I have to start investing. What I find is that women actually feel more stressed about money when they start earning more because suddenly there's a lot more decisions we have to make. So instead of thinking to yourself, well, okay, my paycheck is great, therefore I shouldn't be stressed, I think that one of the best things you can do is actually normalize the fact that now you have a whole new list of problems to solve, which is, okay, how do I keep more of this money?

How do I make it go to the things I care about? How can I start investing it and growing it so I don't have to work as hard and bust my butt at this corporate job or in my business? It's a good problem that you start to have, but many women try to pretend, oh, this isn't a problem I should have, or I shouldn't be struggling with this. When really it's absolutely natural that when you're making more money, you start to wonder, okay, now there's this whole new slew of things I need to figure out,

Susie Moore:

Right? Yeah. I guess I never thought about it that way. The fact that when there's more, there are more decisions, there are more options sometimes too. I think that, and actually I was speaking to somebody I know about this recently, she earns a lot more than she earned say, two or three years ago, but she doesn't feel better off whatsoever. In fact, perhaps the opposite. And I don't know. I was like, Hmm, are we jumping straight into overspending? Is that what it is? What happens to us, Nicole? What is going on? If we were in that? Because I remember, can I just tell you, and I was in my twenties, thirties, I've always been a saver. I was earning 28,000, then 35,000, then 45, then 60, then 90, and so forth and so forth. And I know that your lifestyle changes each time. But yeah, I don't know. Saving for me has always been a priority. I mean, is this coming into it? Is this commonplace these days? Tell us what's happening if we're earning more bit by bit, but our lifestyle is just feeling like it's getting more and more kind of scary to us or not. We don't feel comfortable day to day with what's going in and what's coming in and what's going out.

Nicole Stanley:

Well, I think it's funny because what everybody experiences is completely subjective to the way that they manage their money when they made a smaller amount. What I find is that as women increase our pay, typically we keep the same habits. So if you were somebody who at 28,000 you were saving and you prioritize that, even if it was less, usually as your income grows, you're going to find that same pattern. What most women think though when they're making 28 or something lower is they say, well, once I make more, right, once I make more, then saving will become easier for me. Or once I get this expense down, when really what I find is the habits we have today, even with a hundred dollars are the same habits that we have with a million dollars. So one of the best things you can actually do is focus on what financial skills am I building today?

Or what financial skills do I need that are now apparent now that I make more money that maybe I didn't have to think about when I made less because there wasn't as much money to invest. So I wasn't thinking about how do I learn to invest? So I think that it's how we manage money today is often how we manage money when we have more of it. And I think a lot of women that I talk to, we believe that we're overs spenders. I haven't found that many women where that's the case. I found quite a few that can say, oh, I can trim back a little bit. But a lot of times, women, we have this narrative that we're told by the financial industry that we are just crazy overs spenders. We are just frivolous everything with money. We just need to focus on tightening that belt where men are talked to about how do we grow our money, how do we be strategic with our money? That's not the conversation that most women are invited into. And so I want to bring that up because I can't tell you how many women I talk to that just assume that's them, when a lot of times it's not. It's about their strategy, it's about their mindset. It's about, oh, I just realized I didn't know I could start investing, and if I just started investing, that would be easier. But I thought I wasn't there. I thought I still needed to be slapping my wrist at Target, right?

Susie Moore:

Yeah. We shamed. We shamed,

Nicole Stanley:

Yes, for our spending.

Susie Moore:

So it's like, oh, the spend, the thrift wife, the spend, the thrift woman. Whereas men, it's like, what can I invest in to make my money grow? So I can just kick back.

Nicole Stanley:

Oh, go ahead.

Susie Moore:

Yeah, Nicole, I love talking about this. I mean, you are right. That's how it is portrayed. And it is so easy to slip into that position and for us to judge ourselves. And that doesn't help.

Nicole Stanley:

And it's funny because a lot of women think it's us. We're the reason why we think, oh, I just have low self-esteem, or, oh, I'm just not good with money. But actually this is a widespread experience of women. Statistically, we believe that we are worse at math. We're not good with investing stuff. Where they've actually seen that young girls who score or who write the same answers as young boys on math tests are scored wrong for the same answers as boys. So the concept of men being better at math is actually something that we are told as young girls, we're not as good in these things, but statistically, women are better investors than men. When women learn how to invest, we have far outperforming results than our male counterparts. So it's not that women aren't good with money or that we're not good with math.

It's often that we believe we can't learn. And that's something that we've been told. So one of my favorite things to tell women listening is, Hey, think to yourself when you wonder or you say, oh, well, I'm just bad with money. I'm just an overs spender. I want you to ask yourself, are you really, what evidence do you actually have of that? Because I can't tell you how many meetings I have with clients. We get in, especially couples, and the husband will say something like, well, my wife, she spends so much money. I go in there and I see, oh, okay, so why she spends two, $300, but actually we've got this golf habit, it's costing us about 1200 a month. Or, oh, we have this really expensive truck with a 15% interest on it. It's 60 grand. Are you a farmer? I didn't know.

Sometimes it's like, oh, no, I just wanted this. So we have this idea that women are always the one overspending, but it's not always the case. And I want women to ask themselves, is this actually true? Where am I getting this idea? Am I actually bad at math? Am I actually bad at investing? Or have I never tried to learn before because I believed it was too complicated? And that's something that the financial industry wants women to believe, because if they believe, if we believe as women that we are not smart enough, we're not good at this, guess what we'll do? We will hire someone else to do it for us. And when we hire someone else to do it for us, that makes the financial industry a ton of money. So one of the most rebellious things that women can do is literally just say, I'd like to try to learn.

Susie Moore:

I love rebellion.

Nicole Stanley:

Yes,

Susie Moore:

Yes. So I was like, okay, so okay, I've got so many questions and I'm loving this. So say that there's a woman who maybe isn't that confident who's like, well, my dad used to manage the money and my husband, he's in charge. And often too, I've noticed, even in financial discussions, people will look at the man, even just the engagement. It's so interesting, even if the woman's the one kind of bringing in the dough or is a breadwinner and a career situation. So where would someone begin? They're like, okay, so I'm making six figures or whatever it may be, and it's going okay, but I'm scared to, I don't even want to look at all the go into all, use all my passwords. Look at, it's also overwhelming. Is it going to require years of my life to figure this out, or can we just, where do we start, Nicole?

Nicole Stanley:

Yeah, I think that's a great question and I love how you bring that up about in financial situations, the male is usually talked to, I dunno if you've experienced that with your husband, but that happens to me. You would not believe. Whenever my husband and I are shopping for a car, they'll talk to my husband and literally my husband will sit back and be like, she is. She's the one leading this conversation because don't mess

Speaker 4:

With this one.

Nicole Stanley:

Yeah, she's in charge with investing, and I mean, we make decisions together, but he knows it's one of those things that just gets under my skin. You just assume I'm not a decision maker in this. So the first thing is I think women should outlaw the phrase, my husband is better at that he's not. Okay, outlawed. And the reason is because that phrase is something we probably heard our husband or our mother say, or our grandmother say, or our friends say. And so it just becomes this common narrative. Women don't need to be a part of the financial decision making. So if you hear yourself say that, I want you to actually question that and say, why is he better at that? Because money is a skill, but money is how your life is lived. So if your husband is better at it or your partner is better at it, then that's effectively saying, well, I don't actually care as much about where I live or what I do for fun or where I go on vacation.

I'm not an important decision maker in that when girl you are, you're half, it's a partnership, it's half and half meaning the decisions that he makes affect you, which means you are a decision maker. So first thing is put yourself back in the decision maker mode and challenge your partner. If they also agree that they're better at that. I've noticed with partners that want to maintain control, they often will be like, oh, honey, I got this. I got this. And that's sometimes just a way for him to be able to make the decisions, and it may not be intentional, but I want to encourage women to say, yeah, and I want to help you with it because it's our life. So first thing is put yourself back in the decision maker. Stop taking yourself out. Put yourself in because those decisions affect you. The second thing is I want to encourage you to focus on one thing at a time.

Because often that feeling of overwhelm that women experience, it's because we think we should just either know money or don't. When money's a lifelong journey, it's a huge, huge topic that we can't just tackle one night. And most women think, well, if I don't know it, I'm out. When nobody taught you how to do this, nobody, most of us did not grow up in a house where our dads took us into their office and said, Hey, honey, I want to show you how I invest. Do you want to learn how to invest? Let me show you, or I'm going to do my taxes right now, sweetheart, let me show you how I do my taxes. Now, if you had a dad or a mom like that, that's amazing, but most of us didn't have that. So we become adults and we realized we have to figure it out for ourselves. So instead of feeling shame that you don't know, I want you to just say to yourself, it's actually okay that I don't know, this is square one. Second or third after you give yourself permission to learn about it, is to focus on one thing. So there are four parts of money. There's how you make money. That's its own skill. So some people are right here where it's like, we need to figure out how to get your income up because your income can't support your lifestyle. That's one skill,

Susie Moore:

Which is a very fun conversation in my opinion. Yes. Yeah. How to make more. Yes, number one, but that's only one part.

Nicole Stanley:

That's only one part. There's four parts.

Susie Moore:

Yep. Okay, second part.

Nicole Stanley:

The second part is you need to learn how do I save some of that money? That's the next thing. So I've made money now, so how do I keep some of it? Third is, okay, now I've learned how I can keep money. IE save money. How can I spend money in a way that feels good? I don't know if you've experienced this, Susie, where maybe you spend money and you regret it. You probably don't feel this way. You're so happy. I love your energy and who you are. You always have a mindset shift to help somebody think about something in a new way. But a lot of people, we spend money and it's like this frustration, this anger. It's an anger. When we pay our bills or we pay our taxes or we buy something for ourselves, we feel regret. That's a whole skill to learn how to spend money in joy and in good energy. The fourth skill is you've made money. You've kept money, you're spending money in joy. The fourth one is how do you grow money?

That's its own thing. So that's a whole amount of time to spend on each and every one. And you might be doing great in one and really bad in another or struggling to grow in three of them. It's okay because it's one thing at a time. If you can focus on what is the biggest obstacle that I'm running into right now, maybe for these high earning women, it's how do I save some of it? Maybe some of them. I actually don't let myself enjoy any of it. I'm a bit of a hoarder because I'm so afraid of the future. So I don't know what our listener might be experiencing, but I know that one of these is probably popping up as this is an area of growth. Let yourself work on one area for a quarter.

Susie Moore:

And so making more money, saving money, spending joyfully or in integrity with what you desire and what's right for you, and then growing your money, what's the biggest, what do you find dominant out of the four? Are people mainly like, oh my gosh, I need to grow my money, or is it number three? What's coming up the most for you?

Nicole Stanley:

I think it's all of them. I really could not tell you what the biggest problem is because I would say a handful of my clients, they don't allow themselves to enjoy their money. That's a whole process,

Susie Moore:

Another part. Can you talk about that a bit more? Because I find that interesting. Yeah. So why do you mean some people that they're clinging to their cash, like, oh, I could lose my job, or something could happen, and so they're, I'm going to scrimp and eat that old tomato in my fridge, even though I could easily get myself. Is that what you mean?

Nicole Stanley:

Yes. Yeah. That was actually me, Susie, and some people on my team, a lot of people that I work with, and as they make more money, they still have this scarcity mindset about money, which is fear. So I mean, I'll give you an example. I used to take 15 minutes when I was looking at a menu at a restaurant, not because I didn't have money in my checking account, not because I didn't have money saved and I wasn't investing, but because I was overthinking. Should I get the chicken or should I get the steak? Well, okay, the shrimp is more I shouldn't spend on that. That's wasteful. That's an extra $9. I don't need to do that. That's a whole cycle. And it's not just going out to eat. It's my phone bill, my mortgage or my rent or my down payment, or I'm going out to to a vacation and should I do this excursion or should I do this?

Or it's like every time you have to spend money in your life, you second guess yourself and you feel guilty. And that's a lot of women because we've been taught as women that, especially moms, that's a whole nother thing. Our children deserve everything. If we spend on ourselves, that's greedy. If I ask for a raise at work, that's greedy, right? A good woman isn't like that. She doesn't care about money. That's the biggest lie. Women believe about money is that our investment balance, our job has anything to do with money. It doesn't. When we make money as women, we naturally pour into our communities. We pour into our life, we show up more vibrantly. There are so many positive effects when women have money, they've done studies about areas that are stuck in poverty. And what they found is if you give women, if you loan them money, naturally the entire community raises around them because women we're naturally not selfish.

We're naturally people who think about others. But we've been taught to believe that we have to be small about it. And so what I want to challenge women to think about is it's not greedy when you focus on money. It's not greedy when you set financial goals, when you ask for a raise, when you spend money on yourself, you buy a shrimp, right? Because it puts this mindset in you that you are allowed to be abundant. You're allowed to feel confidence in your future. That's revolutionary for women who don't naturally feel that way about themselves, which is why I find that money is often a gateway for people's other growth. It's just a symptom. When they experience this anxiety around money, it's often an anxiety they feel about their own life. And that's what I found for me, was that I was afraid about so much more, and money was just the manifestation. So as I built financial skills, suddenly I realized, dang, I can actually do more. Oh my gosh, I can have a bigger impact. I can have a bigger life. And money was just the key, the little symptom of the greater problem.

Susie Moore:

I completely agree with you and our mutual friend Adam shares often that our relationship with money so much to do with our relationship with our own self-worth with our belief, whether or not we're enough. And isn't it interesting that you'd sit with a menu going nine bucks, seven bucks, more this more that? I know you're not alone in that. And Nicole, I grew up with very little, very, very little on welfare, living on church donations, and I've really had to trade myself to enjoy things and to have what feels like a luxury, a common experience. So I'd go stretching out things using things till the very end. It's one thing to be responsible and practical, right? Correct. I think that feels wonderful. But when it comes to, I see it too though, even in my family, people I know we are so stingy with ourselves.

We don't have to be. In fact, when I went on a trip maybe a year ago, I live in Miami right now, so I don't really need warm clothes here. So my New York closet's kind of gone and old, and I was going somewhere cold, and I don't have some basics that I kind of needed. And I thought, maybe I can get by without them. Maybe I can just be kind of cold. And I remember thinking, I've got the money. But it can creep in though. It can be this. Can you talk to us about that a bit? Because like you said, it's not really to do with how much money you have in the bank or your income, but there can be this story or this familiarity to No, no, no. Or I see women all the time, their kids can have everything more than enough, but I'll just have my lunch at home or don't worry about my haircut. I'll let it go until it's absolutely just until I can't deny it anymore. Can we speak about that for a second? Because I think we don't go there that often, including people who are able to spend.

Nicole Stanley:

Yeah. I think what I love about that story specifically with buying new clothes is what I've found for women is it's like a whole slew of things building on each other. So there's the first concept, which is we believe I can get by with less or I should have less, or I can do this, pull myself up on my bootstraps mentality. All women were like that, most of us. But then the second part is actually this ambiguity. So because we feel overwhelmed by our money, we don't look at it. We keep it really far. So when we say, I think I have enough money to buy the coat, we don't actually know if do. So what that means is whether we buy the code or not, it's a catch 22 because we're not confident in the decision because we buy it. And then we tell ourselves, gosh, I'm such an overspend. I don't have the money to do that because we don't have a financial spending plan. We don't have an idea of where we're going.

Susie Moore:

It's number three. It's number three of your four pillars, right?

Nicole Stanley:

But then if we don't buy it, then we're like, I'm the worst. I never treat myself. And so the real problem is not actually, yes, it's not actually whether or not we spend, it's the fact that we never allowed ourselves to make a plan around it. Because what I find is that when women have a plan, a girl with a to-do list, a girl with an idea of where she's going, she can't be stopped. That's the first part because that plan tells you, no, I've got the money. And not only am I buying the coat, I'm also enjoying my trip by doing something really fun, a once in a lifetime experience, and I know money is still going to my investments this month. That's financial confidence. You're doing both at the same time. You don't feel like you have to forego one or the other. You're not feeling a big question mark. It's figuring out, okay, what's my plan? How can I do it all? And really, I think that great financial planning is about asking yourself where is the, and how can I buy the coat and save money? Not should I buy the coat or save money? And

Susie Moore:

So we can have it all. We can earn more, we can save more. We can spend and we can grow our money. Can we do all the things or one at a time?

Nicole Stanley:

Yes. And it's not overnight. So there's no magic pill that I can give you overnight, and that's why I think financial coaching is growing so much as an industry is because people realize that they want to invest in that area of growth just like their health. You hire a health coach because you know that they're not going to just tell you, Hey, just eat less and work out more. That's what most personal finance advice is. Hey, just spend less and try to make more money. It sounds like it's super simplistic when really what we run into in life is not just how do I spend less and invest more and make more? We're wondering, okay, well how do I do that with the situation I'm in right now, which is the most important for me? How do I actually get a raise in my industry?

How can I negotiate that? Can I role play before my negotiation call or I'm drowning in medical bills? How can I get these lower? That's what a financial coach helps people do is they walk with them today, what are the bills we've got today? What's the job we have today? What's the mindset that we're struggling with today and how do we get from here to here? And it's not going to be in the next week? It you'd be amazed at what can happen in six months or a year or two years of focus where people can completely change the trajectory of their financial life. And I think that's why financial coaching is growing in popularity is because people don't want to just say, oh, I have my accountant, or, oh, I just give money to a financial advisor who just moves around my money. They're saying, no, I'm actually investing in myself and my own financial skills in all four of the areas, which is lifelong, right?

Susie Moore:

Once you're good and confident with money and there's some clarity around it and you're not hiding, that's a skill forever, right? Yes. It's not like, oh, make this year easier. It's like, oh, no, this is something that belongs to me. So I have to say, I do know a lot of people with financial advisors and I hear mixed things. Some people are like, I love mine. Some are, like someone told me recently, there's made a big mistake. There was a big mistake that she caught and she was very emotional about it. So when you speak about pillar number four growing, I think that it's very easy to jump to. Well, someone has to help me with that, right? I'm going to have to bring someone in, pay them a commission or a fee, some type of retainer to get me started and to explain it all. How do you approach it, Nicole?

Nicole Stanley:

Yeah, I think that I don't want to shame an entire industry because I know so many amazing financial advisors. However, I do believe that the consumer, IE us, the person who's engaging, we often are not given all the information about how fees work, what our options are. And so one of the things I actually focus on in my coaching, I do a investing class for women typically every few months. I'd love to do it more often, and it's our most attended class where we walk through, okay, what options do I actually have as a consumer? Meaning I can hire someone and I can pay this type of fee or this type of fee or this type of fee. There's actually a whole slew of them, and most of us don't know that. We just meet with our dad's friend who managed his money, and what usually happens during this meeting is they talk to our husbands or they talk to us like we're stupid, which I hate because the reason is that's actually the sales tactic.

I know for a fact that advisors are told, use big words, use words that they don't understand because if we believe it is too complicated for us, we will not ask any questions about the fees. We will not ever try to learn about how we can save. And this actually costs the American consumer, not just women, hundreds of thousands of dollars over our lifetime because we do not know how to interpret fees. So one of my missions as a woman is to help educate the consumer, which is, Hey, you actually don't have to pay a percentage of your assets to an advisor. Now, does that mean you shouldn't ever hire a financial professional? No, you should, but you can actually hire people hourly. Hourly

Because those fees cost you hundreds of thousands of your money over your lifetime. So a lot of people are nervous about that. It can be a higher upfront cost, but there are fiduciaries, there are CFPs who charge you hourly, and they don't make a commission off what they sell you. There are investments that didn't exist 30 years ago. So those expensive funds that they're selling you into so that they can get paid for the rest of their life, there's actually options that you can buy on your own that are invested, that are diversified, that cost you, like I said, hundreds of thousands of dollars less over your lifetime. But the problem is the financial industry does not want you to know that because if you know that, then how will they make money? So the industry is changing and there's books, there's courses, and it's growing in popularity.

One of my favorite creators can actually, everybody can follow him right now. His name is Jeremy Schneider, and he loves to just educate people about this, and they're starting, they're hiring other CFPs who believe in how do we give more power to the investor, the individual American investor? How can we stop disempowering them by just telling them to pay us a commission? How do we keep money in their hands? They need it. It's our money. So there's a lot of financial professionals who are actually totally in alignment with your best interest, but I would encourage women, don't hire the first advisor you meet. Ask about fees, learn about fees. Pull up those fees. When somebody says, I charge you a percentage of your assets under management, I want you to go Google assets under management calculator. I want you to put in your numbers and see what that will cost you, right? Women, we don't often allow ourselves to do this because we haven't been told and we don't know. There are other options. If I could scream into the void, I want every female to know you have other options, and you don't have to lose a percentage of your assets to someone else.

Susie Moore:

Oh my gosh. Especially over time, like you said, hundreds of thousands. It doesn't happen in one year, but over time, over time, you earn more, you earn more. You don't ask questions of those big words, and you don't want to look silly, and everyone else knows what they're doing and what do you know? You are just an overs spender. I got someone to guide

Nicole Stanley:

Me. Exactly. And you're bad at math.

Susie Moore:

You're bad at math. What's so interesting, I think that we're in a time of reckoning now, Nicole, in so many ways. I see the same in the healthcare industry, right? So what the heck? What? How do you, oh my gosh, I see the same in the media world, right? It's like people are realizing now you can get it yourself. You don't need to rely on people, and you are not getting the full picture anyway. You're not understanding that the landscape, it's for you. If you're a person with money, welcome to the world. This is the world we live in. It's material having this skill. It's available to you. It's just this belief that I've got a money person, or maybe we even feel guilty thinking if I'm focusing on money that feels very greedy or that just, or maybe I should just be focused on loving my kids, not looking at my portfolio or figuring out E-Trade.

Nicole Stanley:

Right? Exactly. And that's as women, we believe it's the either or when it can be the, and this is the way I love my kids. I love my kids because I'm setting them up for these opportunities that they didn't have, and I'm not just blindly saving money for them so that they can go lose it, right? They've found in studies of millionaires that wealth, when it's given to younger generations when they don't have financial education, it's gone in a generation. So it's not just how can I give my child money, but it's how can I give them skills? And unfortunately, children catch, right? They learn from you by observing more than what you tell them. So the best thing you can do for your children is to become the best financial version of yourself because then they learn from you, they observe you, and all of a sudden you are giving them a better opportunity than you maybe had growing up, which is incredible. What an amazing way to love your kids.

Susie Moore:

What a gift. I know. So I have two friends, Nicole, I want to hear your perspective on this. I'm not sure if you lean spiritual ever when it comes to money and the flow and ease of it, but I spoke to two friends, both who earn a great living, and one is she has a money date with her husband. Every week. They track everything. It's all very transparent off the top of their head. They know their numbers. And my other friend, she's just like, I just track. And she does. It's almost unusual. I'm like, wow, her numbers are really something. And she's like, I don't even know I hired this person. I felt this intuitive hit. And somehow that's working for her. We never really know the behind the scenes of anyone's life, but I'm like, do, maybe this is a term where you're like, I don't know. I don't know about the spiritual side of all this, but is there one?

Nicole Stanley:

Oh, there is. Now I'll tell you this. As a financial coach, I believe in two parts and that they have to work together and you just explain them perfectly, which is the strategy of your money. So strategy is those money dates. It's looking at the spending plan. It's taking a look at your investments. It's sitting down and reading a darn book. Like that's strategy, and that's its own skill, but it can't exist on its own. So that's classic for the people who are like, I know my numbers. I've done every budgeting app in the world, and I'm still in a life I hate. That's a classic example, somebody who's all about the strategy and not about the mindset. The other part is the relationship with your money. That is the energy of how your money feels. You could be making great money, Susie, but if you hate what you do, that's negative energy, right? I agree. You're earning money in anger. You're earning it in stress. You're coming home to your family at night. We all know people who make a ton of money and they come home and they're the angriest people and they're

Susie Moore:

Drinking too much or they're whatever it is, you see it show up in other ways. They take it out, correct.

Nicole Stanley:

And then there's people who make a ton of money. I don't know if you've probably met tons of these people who make incredible amounts of money and they're so generous and they're so happy and they're calm. That's your relationship with money. Those two things have to work together because you might have the best spiritual relationship with money, but if you have no strategy, I can tell you there's more in your life you could be doing. There's more impact you could be having. There's more enjoyment, there's more opportunity for you. So both have to work together. They don't exist in silos. So I believe in the together situation, not that there's one or the other, but I've seen people who make tons of money but are still trapped in an unhappy relationship with money, and that's a tragedy in itself.

Susie Moore:

Oh my gosh. I always think too, because people ask, how much money can I make? And I'm like, it's almost not even the right question. It's like, what do I want to do? What feels amazing and is fun? And what would be a dream month that you can have every month? I mean, we don't even need necessarily specifics, but it's like, what do I love? Because imagine a God, I can't even imagine me being a lawyer in an office with people working till midnight, no matter how much you make. No thank you. Exactly. I'd rather work in childcare or something. That'd be so far, right? Yes. But you are right. When we make money angrily, I've experienced that too in a corporate job where you're in the structure and so forth, but when it comes to working with a coach, you what's like a before and after. So if someone's like, okay, I'm scared. I'm hiding from my numbers. I think I'm earning enough and I'm putting money aside. I haven't really figured out investments yet because no one showed me how, or I haven't spent the time really researching what kind of before and afters do you see? So someone comes to you got some question marks a bit nervous. I tell you, Nicole, speaking about sexuality, death is easier than money. I find as a life coach, money brings up stuff.

Nicole Stanley:

Oh, yeah. Well, and the reason is because it's our energy. Money is an amazing book. There's so many. I'm sorry. I just have so many influences, but one of my favorite books is called Your Money or Your Life, and she talks about the energy of money. And really when you say, when you talk about money, so much comes up. The reason is because money is our life. The way we earn money is how we spend half of our life. The way we spend money is the other half, right? Our money. You are right. Yes. So really when we talk about will we do with our money, this is where we overlap. You're a life coach. I'm a money coach. When we say, oh my money, I can't do something that's about our life. It's emotional because when we can't agree with our husband or our spouse about money, it's our life that's in question.

The stakes are high, Susie, right? Yes. The stakes are really high, and for most of us, our life story comes back to what did our parents tell us about money? Psychologists have found that our money mindsets are set at age seven, which means we're living our parents often, most of us haven't thought, can I update this? Is that actually true? What I believe we're just operating in this kind of habit. Well, my mom did this and I do this, or I don't want to do that. My mom did that, and our parents were often doing the same thing, and their parents and their parents. And so one of the most radical things you can do is as an adult, say to yourself, okay, well, if I didn't trust my 7-year-old self, how would I rewrite this? Can I rewrite this? Chances are you probably can because you're not seven anymore.

So I think you're a lot smarter now, but also we often don't think we are. It's possible. So the first thing is believing. Is it possible for your money to be better? If the answer is no, then there's nothing I can do to help you, right? Because that's it. That's it, right? Or there's this crazy possibility that it could be better, and that is a dangerous feeling. So the first thing that I always tell people is the first, it always starts with that belief. Can it be better if it can? Suddenly, there's a world of possibilities in front of you,

Susie Moore:

And it's scary, and that's okay. Yeah.

Nicole Stanley:

Yes. And that's exciting. And then really it's deciding how do you want to change things? So I have this steps to success platform or this process that I've found over the years, I've worked with over 600 clients, helping them go from feeling financially stressed and anxious to helping them feel confident and successful with their money. I've noticed there are these stages that they go through, and along the stages, there's different mindset stuff that everybody goes through. So I couldn't tell you, well, you're going to go from this to this. I don't know how you grew up. I don't know your life story, but chances are your life story is impacting your financial results. So let's figure out how it is. But what they have to do is kind of go through. The first thing is, can I confront my money? Can I have clarity? That's that first stage of I'm afraid.

I don't want to look at it, right? We're afraid. Am I an overs spender? Am I not making enough money? I don't know, right? First step is let's, let's take a look and make a plan. So most people find that that's where we have to start. Then what I often love to do with clients is we take a look at everything. That's actually an intensive session I do with people where we see everything going on and we see, okay, where are opportunities? What do we have that we can overcome? Where's there room to cut back? Where are you fudging? And you should be spending more? We take a look at it and we decide what are the most important things to do with your money? What I find for women is that we feel overwhelmed. We Google, how do I save money and what are the answers?

A million answers on the internet. So sometimes having that mentor, that person who's done this over and over, can help you figure out, okay, what's a realistic plan that you're actually going to be excited to stick to? Not one you feel like you have to cheat from. And most women, when they make their own plan, we make this super restrictive. Like, I'm not going out to eat and I'm going to stop going and shopping on Amazon. And most of us give up on that in about two minutes. So we make our plan, we get the clarity, and then we just see where you're at. So you might be in a place where you've got a ton of cash and you're afraid to learn how to invest. That's where we start. Some other women might feel like, I really want to afford this type of home, and right now I can't.

So what do we have to do? Okay, let's take a look at how you're earning money. Are you satisfied in the workplace? Do we need to look at a rebranding of your career? Do we need to negotiate a race? Other people find that there are these holes in their financial boat that they don't even realize. They're like, well, isn't this what everybody spends on medical? And it's like, no, no. We need to negotiate this. We need to get you a new health insurance plan. This is one of those areas that you didn't realize it's siphoning. It's sucking you dry like a vampire, right? So what comes up is totally dependent, but what I find is we find out what is the biggest needle mover, and then we focus on that, and then it just builds confidence of what comes next, right? We've invested, is it early retirement? Is it this home purchase? Is it radical generosity? Is it starting a business, right? Your money is how you live your life, getting more control over. It allows you to live your life in a way that's more authentic to you.

Susie Moore:

Oh my gosh, I absolutely love this conversation, Nicole. In a way, what's coming to mind is how much of a game that it can actually be too, and by meaning. Well, first of all, it is a game. I actually read a long time ago, you probably read it, Tony Robbins's book, money Master the Game. Yes. And he was like, look, it is a game. He's like, people are investing. They're making money. And he speaks about a postal worker who retired with a million dollars because of his investments, and people didn't believe it. And this was years ago when a million was, now that's 10 million or something else. But I remember thinking, wow, we are so afraid to play the game. We don't enter it. It can feel so shaming, so judgy, so overwhelming and confusing. Even recently, Nicole, my phone broke and I went to get a new one.

It was time for an upgrade, and they said, oh, you're on this plan that's old, which allows for hotspots. I've never even, and they're like, you're paying for that every month. And I felt really annoyed with myself because don't you find Nicole, even though it's not massive, we work so hard to make our money. We pour our heart into our work and then to not even track necessarily or to kind of have this kind of absence of attention, whereas just some focus time, some love getting into the game a bit more. I think when we can reduce the feeling of fear around something by going, well, look, it really is just numbers. Numbers and emotions, right? It's true. The emotions we can handle, right?

Nicole Stanley:

Yeah. I love that we can handle, because you're right when you say that people are afraid to play the game. I often talk a lot about my story, which is I wasn't making a ton of money. We had a normal amount of debt. We had about 30 K of debt. We paid it off in 10 months, on 56,000 a year. And then within a few years with children, we were able to build up our net worth to over a quarter of a million dollars, and we were able to save our first six figures in the stock market, which meant that even if we never invested another dollar, we would still retire multimillionaires, which is crazy to people. People say, but Nicole, how the heck did you do that? You were only making this amount of money. What did you do? You must have found some hot stock option, or you must have done something crazy. And what I always tell people, oh,

Susie Moore:

You got an inheritance. Tell the truth.

Nicole Stanley:

Yeah. You're like, no inheritance. Yeah, no inheritance whatsoever. Just a normal family. What did you do that was so different? And I always tell people I didn't do anything but just start. The only difference was that I decided that I would start at age 20. That's it.

Susie Moore:

Nicole got in the game.

Nicole Stanley:

I wanted to figure it out. Yeah, you got in the game. I invested a small amount every single month when I've met with my first advisors. I didn't know that I didn't need an advisor, but I remember them laughing at us in the chair as young 20 year olds saying, okay, so you're going to start investing 200 a month. Okay, well, we manage 250 plus, so you can come back to us when you have this amount of money and feeling small, because that's how we're made to feel. But what I want to tell people is if you can get over that hump that you're not small, that it's okay to start. That's the difference between you and the person who is less successful, is that if you start who's out of the game, it's easier, right? Yeah. This is what we know.

Susie Moore:

It compounds Itself. I remember Warren Buffet said this years ago, I used to teach specifically how to get a raise of the script, and he said three things, made him wealthy. I hope I can remember them. Number one, having good genes. So living a long life. Oh, yeah. Because it takes time. Like you said, you can retire, right? It won't have be today necessarily, but you'll retire with a lot. He said, good genes being born in America, right? The opportunities afforded here. And he said, compounding interest.

Nicole Stanley:

That's it.

Susie Moore:

He was like, those are the three things. And I'm like, well, hopefully we get to live a long life. And ideally we have access to being able to invest and so forth. And then compounding interest. That's for everyone, right? Compounding interest isn't like, no, not you. You're a woman. No, not you. You're only 20. It's like it's neutral. It doesn't care about you.

Nicole Stanley:

Yes, but we don't get in the game.

Susie Moore:

Yes.

Nicole Stanley:

Just get In the game.

Susie Moore:

So Nicole, I want to just repeat what you said because it's powerful. You said you can. So you started young in your twenties. You once you put a hundred k, say in the stock market, you can retire after a certain amount of time, good old interest millionaires.

Nicole Stanley:

Oh, yeah. And now, today, people don't believe this, but it's crazy. If I was to never touch my money, so let's say I just didn't touch it. Let's say let it sit. I'm 30 years old. I have 30 children. I will be a Deca millionaire in my lifetime.

Susie Moore:

You will be a millionaire in your lifetime.

Nicole Stanley:

Deca millionaire.

Susie Moore:

What does that mean?

Nicole Stanley:

10 million?

Susie Moore:

What is it? A deca millionaire? I've never heard that.

Nicole Stanley:

Yeah, a deca millionaire. Again, this is not a crazy amount of money. This is not. It's getting started. And that amount, like you said, having a hundred thousand invested, that number goes up every year that goes by in your life. So every year you wait to get started, it becomes more and more difficult for compounding interest to give you the benefits. So that's why I tell everyone, the best thing you can do for yourself is believe that it's possible and start right.

Susie Moore:

And you don't need an inheritance check. You don't need a big bonus check. You mentioned $200 a month, right? I mean that, that's two dinners out. You eat like me sometimes one,

Nicole Stanley:

But it's a lot, right? It's a lot. We've got so many things going on for women that often we can think, well, if I just do this, if I just do that, I like to encourage people that it's okay if it takes you some months of focus. It's an important enough thing in your life to take the time to learn about. There is no get rich quick pill that you can take. And even if you get your big business idea, the financial skills that you invest in for yourself to learn, I know how to save money. I know how to spend it joyfully. I know how to earn it in integrity, and I know how to grow it. As you increase your income, as you increase your impact in life, it grows together. And those skills are something you refine over time. So give yourself permission to be a learner and to trust that you're smart enough and not say to yourself, well, I'm bad with that. And my partner handles that, and I have a guy, my dad's guy, he manages everything for me.

Susie Moore:

And I don't check in ever. I just get an update.

Nicole Stanley:

Exactly or I don't understand what I'm invested in. I don't understand. I just invested in the 401k, whatever the option was. You are smart enough, ladies.

Susie Moore:

I'm telling you, we are smart enough, Nicole. Oh my. Someone listening to this conversation, I tell you, where do we go to learn about you? Because Nicole, you've got the wealth of info. You work with people, you've got the investing class. Where do we go? Tell us.

Nicole Stanley:

Oh, I love it. Well, if you want to learn more about investing, if you want to feel more confident with your money, follow us on Instagram. We put out free content every single day just to help you feel more empowered to de bust myths. And we do it in a shame-free environment just for women. And then you can go to Arise Financial. So there's no.com. You go to Arise Financial. We're always hosting free classes to help you feel more empowered with your money. And that's where you can apply for one-on-one coaching or one of our group programs to get that help that you need. You say, you know what? I could spend a few years doing it alone, or I could partner up with somebody who can help me do it faster. That would be a great reason to reach out and find out more about financial coaching.

Susie Moore:

And as you said, the sooner you get started, the sooner. Not only do you feel more calm and in control, but the sooner your money's working on your behalf, let it do the heavy lifting, let you hash, do the heavy lifting. However much or little you have, it wants to work for you, right? Yes. Are you in the game? Are you out of the game? Right? It's like we love games.

So truly, this is a let it be easy message. No matter how much you avoid something, it just gets bigger and bigger. Avoidance. It can feel like short-term relief, but we know it never gets us anywhere. It's almost like anything, right? There's a relationship that you're in. You just know it's bad, but you stay in it. You're like, it gets worse and worse until we don't have to wait until there's a reckoning moment. This is a self-love act. So last question for you, Nicole. Imagine you had a group of say, 18 year olds in front of you, and you could only say one sentence. There they are. They're standing there and you're like, wisdom according to Nicole, remember? And they'll etch it in their minds forevermore. No pressure. What would you tell them about money? Or maybe it wouldn't be money. What is it you would share with them?

Nicole Stanley:

If I could tell 18 year olds anything, I mean, it's going to be a compound sentence, and I'm sorry about that, but it would be, your money doesn't have to be hard. Your money doesn't have to be hard. And you are smart enough to learn how to make your money work for you. I would tell them that they are smart enough and that if I could give them the confidence to trust themselves, that will open up opportunities for them. Because I know that they can learn to read the books, they can learn how to do it. They can learn how to make money. But if they believe that their money's always going to be stressful and they're not smart enough, there's the end.

Susie Moore:

That's the end of the whole game, Nicole. Okay. Arise Financial. What was your Instagram handle?

Nicole Stanley:

Arise Financial coaching. And you can also find me on TikTok just started out there, but it's a fun place to be.

Susie Moore:

Nicole, thank you so much. What an incredible, important conversation around something that can bring up a lot of stuff. Thanks. Letting it be easy, sharing your wisdom and being with us today.

Nicole Stanley:

Thank you, Susie. I love it.