I’m speaking with certified Financial Coach, Keina Newell. She makes money approachable, empowering, and I’d go as far to say, enjoyable! As she says, women would rather talk about sex than money.
Keina is the owner of Wealth Over Now, where her mission is to empower and educate professional women on the value of wealth over the present gratification of now. Through financial coaching she transforms her clients relationships with their money. To learn more about Keina you can head to: www.wealthovernow.com
We cover so much in this episode including:
- The difference between a budget and a spending plan, and why that is important
- Why your money mindset matters
- How you can change your relationship with money from dread to one of empowerment, even if you aren’t swimming in the stuff
- And all the other things.
Keina has a podcast series called Money Files. She also leads a group coaching call for her audience called Mimosas & Money Matters. To find that, head here: www.wealthovernow.as.me/mimosasandmoneymatters
To find Keina on instagram check: https://instagram.com/wealthovernow
Full text transcript below.
#145. Keina Newell on Cultivating Financial Well-Being
Keina: If your finances don’t take up mental energy for you anymore what else could you be focused on?
Kate: Hi Here to Thrivers. I’m really excited to bring you this episode with Keina Newell. She is a Certified Money Coach, a financial coach and we’re talking adulting as our current theme and what better way to take responsibility than to change the relationship we have with our money. Now you can find more about Keina over at her business website Wealth Over Now. Her mission is to empower and educate professional women on the value of wealth over the present gratification of now. Through financial coaching with her clients, she transforms their relationship with money. We’re talking all about how she does that in this episode because I was fascinated. I was like “How can we change our relationship with money so that we feel more empowered?” Keina, like, legitimately has answers for that kind of thing. We cover a lot of things in this episode including the difference between a budget and a spending plan and why that matters. How when we can take the money stress off our plates, we open ourselves up to a new sense of freedom and how it is truly possible to change our relationship to money even if we’re not swimming in this stuff. You can find Keina over at her website as I mentioned Wealth Over Now. She also has her live group coaching sessions called Mimosas and Money like who doesn’t want to show up to that, and she works with clients individually. She actually has a little podcast series called Money Files so you can go and check that out if you enjoyed this episode and want to dive in deeper. And finally, you can find her over at Instagram at WealthOverNow. But enough about talking about Keina. Let’s just get this party started and seriously, this is a money conversation that I thoroughly enjoyed. And I would just say if you’re anything like me, don’t be nervous to listen to this because she really left me feeling empowered so here we go!
[Intro] Welcome to Here To Thrive. I’m your host, Kate Snowise. This is a podcast for people who are ready to step up and live a happier life. It’s for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life. It’s a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought always with a focus on practical advice so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don’t believe we’re here to merely survive, I truly believe we’re here to thrive. So let’s get going.
Kate: Keina, welcome to Here To Thrive. Thank you for being with me today.
Keina: Thank you for having me. I’m as excited to chat with you!
Kate: I want to know so many things. I feel like I’m not even sure where I want to start with you. Obviously, you are a financial coach. I’m intrigued at what drew you to that path. How did you get to financial coaching?
Keina: By accident.
Kate: [laughs] I love it! You’re like “This was not the plan. It’s working out okay.” Tell me more!
Keina: I am like a super type A person but I feel like ‒ I was like “Guess what, I was sense of humor. Let me mess up your entire life.” So I actually to, like, go all the way back to college. I majored in Management and Finance, thought that like that’s what I would do in some type of role but I actually ended up joining an organization called Teach for America and I became a teacher because I like have this heart that always centered around, like, how can I work with people in a way that’s, like, purposeful? I always wanted work that was meaningful for my life and, like, meaningful for others. So in my own personal like money story, I came out of college with $75,000 worth of debt and I was making like $33,000 dollars a year and really in that place of like “How am I supposed to pay all this debt?” because I don’t get paid enough and with an education, you know, they’re not really high paying jobs and so I had to really like lay in the ground, work for myself like how I could pay off my debt? How can I save money and also still live while also being, like at that time, twenty two and do the things that, like, you want to do with your friends? And my own, like, personal journey with my finances above me into talking about money with my friends. They joke to this day that “If you talk to Keina in any given conversation, we’re gonna be talking about money” because I’ll find some way to bring it up and I help my friends budget often on. And fast forward a decade or so, I was still within education and I was having a conversation with my financial adviser and we were talking about, like, people within millennial age, I would say like late twenties to early forties. I just don’t have money saved and so he was asking me, like, how I did it and I was like “You know, through budgeting, how you’re supposed to make it your money.” And I became really curious because I wanted to help other people do what I done. Like if you can manage your finances, your day to day finances, then you ultimately have more money to contribute towards your retirement and so I started looking for, like, other career paths. I knew I didn’t want to be a financial adviser because I didn’t want to work on the investing side but really ‒ what really intrigued me in my role then at that time was, like, a vice principal as I enjoyed coaching teachers and I was like “Oh, I could like coach people around money. I wonder if that’s a job.” And I stumbled upon financial coaching.
Kate: I love it! “I wonder if that is a job.” Like ‒ and all the way back to college where you’ve obviously always had this interest in finance because you majored in it, but then you want to be in purposeful work. The marriage couldn’t be more perfect.
Keina: Oh yeah. I tell people, I’m like, it’s a perfect, like, intersection of my passion and my purpose because I think on the outside, for anyone who doesn’t know what like a financial coach is or what I do is like ‒ they’re like “Oh you’re gonna, like, help me make a budget?” I’m like “Yeah…” but that’s like, I don’t know, five percent of the work? Because what we’re really going to do is work on like the emotional side of money and the mindset behind how you think, how you feel, how you relate to your finances, and that’s where everything can change for you because the people that I worked with, before working with me they were on ‒ in that cycle of like “I don’t wanna look at my numbers.” “I’ve tried this before, it’s never worked.” “I have to be disciplined, I can’t be disciplined.” And on the flip side now of my clients, I actually ‒ I have the Money Files podcast and one of my clients was like “Yeah, and I’m just disciplined and committed.” And so like that’s the change that I love to hear people talking about and just even when everything isn’t seemingly perfect with how you managing ‒ how you manage your finances, like, oh you went over groceries or you bought that shirt that you didn’t save for, like those aren’t the things that are getting my clients off track because they know how to manage their emotions and their mind when it comes to managing your finances.
Kate: So Keina you were talking about being twenty two coming out making $33, 000, having this day, which I’m thinking so many of us are like “Oh yeah, I hear yah”, were you just born responsible because at twenty two I was not thinking about how to get a grip on this. I was like “Let me put my head in the sand and I’ll think about that when I’m forty something.”
Keina: [laughs] I think it’s probably because I’m ‒ I like to be in control.
Kate: [laughs] I love it!
Kaine: I think, like, that’s how it ‒ how it manifested. And for me budgeting was like ‒ it was like a puzzle that I could solve, right? Like, if I do this then, this could be my outcome and so I could put the pieces together. I also just knew what kind of life I wanted to live and I might be a rare breed but yeah I guess I just kind of came out the womb that way because I actually have two older brothers and we manage money completely differently. Like if you look at us at twenty two, all very different stories.
Kate: I’m hearing you talk a little bit about this money mindset so I take that as the relationship we have with our money, which might as the head-in-the-sand relationship and I’m gathering that ‒ I’ve mentioned to you we’re talking about adulting on the podcast this month, my head in the sand approach, I don’t think really goes with the whole responsible money management thing. So how do we change our relationship with money? Obviously, you do this for coaching with your clients but is it a shift?
Keina: It is a shift. Even hearing you say like “responsible money management” like that sounds very stiff ‒
[Kate laughs]
Keina: And I think that that’s like how we talk to ourselves about our finances, right? Like we talk to ourselves and imagine like that, like, corporate” kind of picture and so it becomes something that’s like not approachable and even when I hear clients or anyone that I’m talking to and they’re like “I need a budget.” I’m like “Okay. How does that make you feel when you say I need a budget or I’ve never been good with money?” And so it’s being really mindful of the language that we use around our finances and about our finances and it’s choosing to identify, like, intentional thoughts that will move you forward.
Kate: Is this kind of along the lines of we can fall in love with our money? Or is there ‒
Keina: Definitely, yes!
Kate: I was like “Or is that a bit too warm and fluffy?”
Keina: No! I’m like I hear my clients start to talk about, like they get excited to actually, like, look at their budget on a week to week basis and they never had joy about their finances before we started working together. And I don’t think I’ve ever said, I mean, maybe someone will go back to my content and look for this but I don’t think I’ve ever said “Fall in love with your money” because I’m not incredibly woo but ‒
[Kate laughs]
Keina: I do definitely like ‒ one of the thought that I would offer to your listeners and that I offered my audience as well is like you can tell yourself “I’m good at managing my finances and still be in debt and trying to figure out how to save money.” Because you’re choosing that intentional though so now it’s like “Now, let me build my case for “I’m good at managing money”.” Maybe today you chose to like cook at home instead of eating out, maybe today you chose to go to the mailbox and you know actually open it up because you’ve been avoiding it, or today you chose to look at your bank account, or you chose to call about a bill that, you know, has been looming over your head. It’s those little things that make you good at managing your finances and I think that our culture suggests that you’re only good at managing your finances if you’re on track for retirement, if you have a three to six months emergency fund. There’s like ‒ they’re like these huge attainable goals that people don’t see as being realistic for themselves so you have to be able to take into account what’s happening for you right now and how are you showing yourself that you’re good at money, and that you’re good at managing your finances.
Kate: I think that’s a really important point because like you’re saying, there’s these huge unattainable goals that when you are young, one, seems so far away and two, do seem outrageous and so it’s very easy to kind of throw your hands up in the air and be like “Well screw it, I just ‒ I’m just going to ignore it.” But what I’m hearing you say is you can change the definition of success and kind of bring those calls down and make them more manageable and meaningful for you.
Keina: Yeah, because I love the book Atomic Habits and he talks about like the summation of habits basically create your results, and so, right, like if you’re the person that has your head in the sand and you don’t want to open up your bank account, well you start open up your bank account and then you may get curious and say like “I wonder if I could be saving a little bit more money.” And then because you get curious about that, you have your first $1000 saved and now you’re like “Oh this actually really works.” And so you become that person that you started to tell yourself about, and instead of like your goal being that you need a budget in the very beginning, you now have a bigger goal because, like, that was really just your starting point and your baseline and now you’re getting ‒ now you get to evolve that maybe you’re thinking about like “Oh, I actually want to buy a home” or “I want to max out my retirement.” So I see it just as like the snowball effect. If you can really shift your money mindset and how you think and feel about your finances.
Kate: Oh, I could talk to you all day about Atomic Habits. People, if you have not read that book yet, you absolutely should get it. And Keina I don’t know if you’re signed up for his newsletter but it’s one of the only newsletters I like on the internet, too.
Keina: Oh it’s so simple and clean and you’re like “Oh, I can use that.”
Kate: Yeah, I can use that. Okay, you’re talking about that word budgeting like ‒ look at me even when I say that, I’m like “Ehh”, what is that main tier and do we need to be afraid of budgets because I think budget and I’m like “Oh my gosh, I’m going to sign up to work with someone like Keina and she’s gonna tell me I’m not allowed to buy latte because it’s not in my budget and that makes me feel sad.” So can we talk a little bit more about budget? How it can work for us? Because I’m hearing you say that sometimes it’s about just getting the momentum going where’s budget feels scary to me.
Keina: Yeah. So I always want my clients to operate from, like, the sense of curiosity. I think that that serves you a lot better and I actually don’t use the word “budget” with my clients, I use the word “spending plan”.
Kate: Oh, I like it! See? One less scary [laughs]
Keina: It’s the difference. You’re like “Oh this man playing? Just spend my money?” And I do that because I would want people to approach the conversation with curiosity like “How can I be using my money to do the things that I desire?” Right? And what your desires can look different. Everybody’s desires are going to look different, but you’re gonna be able to identify “Okay, I want to be saving $200 a month. I do want lattes, right? Like, let me factor that in.’ And so you can actually make a plan. I have a joke with one of my clients because she has botox in her spending plan.
Kate: Love it!
Keina: And so what ‒ what I think like having a spending plan allows you to do is actually have more freedom and flexibility because you actually know where your finances are going from month to month and you move beyond that stress. So, right now you have a false sense of freedom that you don’t look at your numbers and so you’re like “I can do what I want because I’m not looking at my numbers” and that’s the very thing that’s also holding you back from obtaining your goals or even like going back to the stress peace because stress is real when it comes to people managing their finances and it can be prohibiting you from like sleeping at night, or one of the things that ‒ one of the like SEO people that I work with, they’re like “What are your people shame googling at night at two and three in the morning? Trying to figure out how can I pay off my credit card? Will I ever be able to retire?” So when you actually start with like a solid spending plan, it’s going to be able to drive your progress and I also think that when you get your finances in order you walk the more money into your life.
Kate: Isn’t it amazing just the shift from calling it a budget to a spending plan because that makes me feel and[inaudible] and inspired. And also when you talk about that false sense of freedom, when we’re talking about a spending plan and say wanting a latte or botox, I don’t ‒ I don’t personally have botox but you know I’d want nails in their because I do want to have nice nails ‒
Keina: Yeah…
Kate: But when we talk about that, it’s almost like I immediately feel that some of the guilt that you might have from doing these kinds of things for yourself goes away if you’ve made a plan for it.
Keina: And you also like ‒ you just get so much more agency you get to be in control, and at the end of the day it comes down to you have the freedom to make choices. So ‒ I mean any of my clients would tell you that I provide them a plan that allows them to be really flexible so like you were just mentioning Kate that you want to go get your nails done, so you would go get your nails done. But then maybe you also want to go to brunch three times this month or whatever it looks like and so you get to like look at this spending plan that I will tell you, it’s not just something you create once and then just tuck it away but you’re actually adjusting it each week so you know like where you are in relation to your goals, but you can make that decision of like ‘Do I want to choose to spend money on three brunches or would I rather wait because there’s another opportunity that I want to take advantage of more?” So you, like I said, get to make ‒ you move from being like impulsive to intentional with your spending.
Kate: I was just going to use that word “intentional” which is one of my favorites when I talk about how we can live a good life and so much of how we can live a good life is really comes down to intentionality and being conscious about the choices that we’re making. And obviously talking to you, this is just an extension of that that moves into money and yeah, I’m fascinated, Keina. For a subject that I’m kind of like “Oh, money”, now I’m like “Ah, money.”
Keina:Yeah, I mean like I want to make money fun and joy-filled because I think about the work that I’ve done with my clients and like, yes we start with a budget right? And I’m like “Okay, I get really curious how much more money would you like to actually make at work?” Right? And so if you earn more, what would you use that for? And so it ‒ especially, like, when you think about women and the gender pay gap just like ‒ then I start to be really, like, curious about their jobs and we start talking about “Okay, when’s your next performance review? What kind of conversation you want to take up so you can go for making, you know, 60k to 80k? Or do you actually want to change jobs because you see that that would be more beneficial?” But their numbers I think inspire them to show up in different ways that they wouldn’t have shown up for themselves because like ‒ it’s just like you have it, a new sense of confidence, and I’ll use that word agency again.
Kate: Hmmm. You’ve also talked about the relationship between money and stress and in truth, I do a lot of work in the stress space, it’s one of my great passions, and the reality is that so many of us are lying in bed at night and financial security and financial stress is one of the most overwhelming stressors for most people. And so I see our financial well being has massively contributing to our overall well being. I assume you say it in a similar lens that this is like a foundation stone for our overall well being?
Keina: Oh, definitely. I mean money touches so many different aspects of your life and how you choose to show up like I immediately what comes to mind is like how people show up. I work with a lot of women that are like dating and they don’t want to get in a relationship because they don’t feel like they measure up and it’s their finances better prohibiting them from feeling like they can go confidently into a relationship, or when I worked with like married couples ‒ I just finished working with a couple and I was asking them what’s one of the things our work together and helped you with and they were talking about “Well now we don’t have anything to fight about since we’re on the same page to our finances.” It’s all of those things and so, if your finances don’t take up mental energy for you anymore, what else could you be focused on?
Kate: Oh, that is so good. If your finances are not draining your mental energy, where can you put that energy?
Keina: Yeah.
Kate: Oh!
Keina: And it’s a gift like the work that I do with clients, I tell them all the time this is a gift that will continue to keep on giving. Or earlier when I was thinking about purpose, like I work with my clients for like a five-month partnership but they have the skill set for the rest of their lives and so they can teach their friends, they can teach family members. They are going into a partnership, they can actually feel confident in that conversation, if they have kids like it’s just like there’s no ‒ there’s ‒ the results I think are endless to the work that I do and yeah, I get really excited about that part of my work because I’m actually ‒ this past year I’ve actually worked with a lot of divorced women and being able to see like a woman who’s going through a divorce whether she has kids or not being able to help rebuild and see herself in a different light because she got her finances in order, it’s just really inspiring and I want to create more of that in the world. Or even I have another client who ‒ she and I started working together maybe about seven months ago and she was like been wanting to leave her job but of course you can’t leave your job if you have debt and no savings, and we’ve been able to work on like building her savings but she also has a business on the side and so we’ve been able to talk about her business finances as well, and so now like the trajectory to leave her job is this summer. So just like thinking about, like I said, we start with a budget but really there’s so many more opportunities that come out of the work that I do.
Kate: I’m really fascinated because obviously I’m a coach right? This is ‒ this is my area of work yet until I’ve spoken to you Keina, I’ve kind of been like “Financial coaches, yeah what do they even do?” And I feel like I finally have some really great clarity.
Keina: Well I’m glad, and I can’t say what all of us do.
[Kate laughs]
Keina: But I know that that’s like what I ‒ what I want in terms of like results for my clients is like I want ‒ I want their lives to be better as a result of working with me.
Kate: Hmmm. I want to touch on ‒ you mentioned that the work you do with your clients, it impacts their lives and potentially their families and I just think of the power of inter generational change when you talk about that. Some of us may have come from a background where we didn’t learned these skills from our parents, that perhaps our parents were just making ends meet or even struggling to make ends meet, and we didn’t get a good picture of what it’s like to feel the sense of financial security or even financial competence, if you like. And I’m just thinking of the power that you have to be someone in your own family to sort of go “Okay, so I didn’t get these skills but that doesn’t mean that I can’t learn now”, and the power that that can give people as they move forward.
Keina: Yeah, I think one, like give yourself grace for not knowing because it ‒ finances aren’t taught. And one of the things I actually like to do a lot is invite people to have money conversations, which I feel like people would rather tell you how many people they slept with last week ‒
[Kate laughs]
Keina: ‒ or like talk about money but I want more people to be having financial conversations because it’s not just about like how much money you make or how much debt are you in. You can have a conversation about “Hey, what was your first money memory as a kid?” Or “What’s something that you would have told yourself in your twenties that you wish you hadn’t known in your thirties? Or “Oh, you bought a house. Can you, like, walk me through that process?” Or you’re going through and your refinancing your mortgage ‒ like those are just all entry points into money conversations and I think that when we have more money conversations, it normalizes the fact that we’re really all in this together and we’re learning together.
Kate: Hmmm, yeah. I’m with you. I wish that they had taught us sort of like a life skills class. When it comes to adulting, I’m like why are we not learning about money in high school?
Keina: Uh hmm.
Kate: Seriously. In terms of Covid, obviously there are so many people right now that have felt the financial sting of what has been an incredibly chaotic year. I mean women having to reduce the hours or pull out of the workforce, and I’m not saying it’s only women but the statistics are suggesting that women have been impacted more in terms of pulling out of the workforce to take care of children. People losing their jobs across many industries, and I was shocked to when it all started to happen, it was very clear, very quickly just how much of this country is living paycheck to paycheck, and how do we get out of that? Is it something that we can, with intention and forethought, kind of crawl our way out of?
Keina: Yeah, and I don’t think you need to crawl. You see there’s the end, there’s those aggressive words.
Kate: Yes! See this is like my own money mindset. Keina’s all over me. She’s like “Kate, we’re going to work on this money mindset.”
Keina: Yeah. But you want me to crawl [laughing] [inaudible]
Kate: So, doesn’t have to be brutal to get our way out of it.
Keina: No. I think like the hardest part is getting started. That’s the hardest part, and I would say, like for someone who’s looking to get out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle, is you have to know what your numbers are, so start with the spending plan. How much are you spending on your, you know, your mortgage or rent? You have a car, you have different subscriptions, like you want to get all of those things on paper so you can see what is your starting point. And most of the time, the people I work with they’re like “Oh Keina, it is not even as bad as I thought.” Right? Because you like built it up to be this, I don’t know, monster in your head? But from there, you can well, one, for people that have lost their jobs, if you have a spending plan you’re able to identify, like, what are your essential expenses. “What do I need to live?” And you can kind of get to that like bare bones. You want to make sure your lights are on, you want to make sure the mortgage is there, and let you know what the gap is and in even more so helps you, I think, feel in control because if you are getting any type of assistance or you were able to secure some ‒ some new level of work, you know what that minimum number is instead of just basing it off of like what you used to make or what you hope to make but being able to, once again, make a ‒ like an intentional decision about that. And then in terms of getting out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle, when you know your numbers, you’re going to be able to plan for the things that are expected and unexpected and my goal was to always get my clients to a point where they’re paying this month’s bills with last month’s paycheck . So we’re in February right now, if I had February bills, I would want to be paying that with January’s paychecks and that comes from managing your spending plan from week to week, which is actually Kate a lot harder for me to kind of like describe via just words right now but my every single paycheck, I know exactly where my money is going. So, like my mortgages twenty two hundred dollars and I, out of every single paycheck, I set aside eleven hundred dollars. And so when it’s time for my mortgage to be due, they’re two paychecks prior are already ready for the mortgage that is in front of me at the first of the month.
Kate: Makes sense. I am so convinced that practically every human in the world needs a Keina in their lives now, at this point. I’m like Oh my gosh I’m ‒ okay. So, coming back to you mentioned, that was so brilliant, you mentioned that your SEO guy said to you what are people shame Googling in the middle of the night, I love it. What are people do you think shame Goggling in the middle of the night?
Keina: How to budget? How do I get up ‒ get out of debt? How can I save more money? How can I raise my credit score? How much do I need to save on an emergency fund?
Kate: Yeah, I hear you. So what makes someone actually seek a financial coach out?
Keina: My clients, they come to me ‘cause they’re like tired of being bad at money, and like that’s ‒ that’s literally some of the copy that I can pull from people that have applied to work with me but I would say like honestly it’s like they’re ‒ they’re fed up with their ‒ how they currently feel when it comes to their finances. Usually what’s sparking that is some type of life change, so whether it’s like “I’m getting ready to turn thirty and I think I should be doing something more with my money” or “I’m in my mid thirties, I think I should be a better adult than I am right now”.
[Kate laughs]
Keina: Or like, you know, “I’m actually ‒ I’m dating someone and it’s getting really serious. I want to get my numbers cleaned up before.” Or I told you that I’ve worked with a couple of women that had recently gotten a divorce. I’ve also had some women that I worked with that have filed bankruptcy within the last year to two years, and there are ‒ I mean it’s all about, I would say like, freeing themselves from fear, guilt, shame, and overwhelm. And I actually, I feel like I have been talking about personal finances on this side but I actually work with business owners as well, specifically solopreneurs, and it sounds like it’s drastically different but it’s not. People that are on the business side that are coming to me is like they have this fear of numbers and they tell me “I’ve never been good with math” and I tell them “I used to be a Math teacher” not that you’re not allowed to say that but ‒
[Kate laughs]
Keina: [laughs] but yeah, it’s helping. Like I want money to be easy for people and it’s helping them to understand that it can be easy and you can operate from a place of abundance instead of lack and scarcity, and I can show how.
Kate: Talking about your own journey, you’re obviously transitioned yourself, right, from being a full time employee in education through to now being a full time financial coach. I assume that the skills that you applied to the people you work with are the very skills you applied to your own life to do that.
Keina: Very much so, and because I really want to make sure every number is a right, yeah I’m running numbers all the time. Like when I left my job, I actually just quit another full time job maybe three weeks ago.
Kate: Very cool! So you had two full time jobs Keina.
Keina: Yeah.
Kate: So you like scaled up because I talk about this with my clients, right, when they are going out on a journey to entrepreneurship or solopreneurship, I’m not a believer in that you should jump off a cliff. I’m not a believer in that you should have this dream and then be like “Yey, I’m gonna fly off the edge of the cliff and something will catch me.” I’m like “Can you get a better plan than that?” So what I’m hearing is that you did not jump off any cliffs your had a solid plan.
Keina: Well I jumped off a cliff in the beginning. So in 2018 I left my job and I just decided I wasn’t going back, and that was like June of 2018 and I started a website like started my company in July of 2018 and I just basically sat and waited for clients.
[Kate laughs]
Kate: How did that go by the way?
Keina: And I was like “I have an emergency fund. Someone paid me $40 like two months later.”
[Kate laughs]
Keina: I sat there ‒ I had a really pretty website and I sat there and just waited for people to come knocking.
Keina: [laughing] I don’t even think the website was pretty, that was the sad part. So yeah, I did jump off a cliff but I did have a safety net in the sense that I like had an emergency fund and I was like “Oh this is clearly an emergency [inaudible]. And at that time I was like doing ‒ because I was in education, I was doing some consulting as well. And then probably it was about a year later, I took on another full time role to actually do leadership coaching and they gave me flexibility. In addition to one of the things that, like, I really wanted was to be able to contribute to retirement. So, I had both simultaneously for about a year and a half but like the goal was always like to build a runway for myself to leave, that my business, like, I would have on a business emergency fund separate from my personal emergency find that could pay me for at least three months if I make no more income in my business. But then also being able to work the numbers, like I told you retirement was near and dear to my heart but creating a plan and a strategy to make sure that I could invest in my own retirement in addition to like pay my healthcare and not that stuff coming out of my savings but for my business to be able to do those things.
Kate: This is a little bit of a side note but what changed between that you making forty dollars and we are at now because I know you’re a successful financial coach so what shifted and changed in that period?
Keina: I would say, like, the best investments I made in my business were coaching. I like wholeheartedly believe in coaching and so I worked with a couple different coaches for different things but I would attribute my number one shift in my business is working on my mindset.
Kate: So you did change through working on your mindset. I assume that you stop just waiting for people to knock down your website doors.
Keina: Oh, yeah, yeah. But I was only waiting back then because I don’t know what else you were supposed to do.
[Keina and Kate laughs]
Kate: Yeah right.
Keina: Yeah. I’m like “Do you boost ad on Instagram? Is that how you get people? The mindset piece was more so like working on like my belief in myself, my belief in my service, and being able to be more confident in how I talked about those things with people that I met, and being able to like have clarity around what I do as a coach. So I think that’s where mindset came in, in addition to like I raised my prices, you know, did some of those other things that you should also do. But yeah, it was all definitely mindset work.
Kate: And I will Keina, your website is beautiful now. So just ‒ all people should go look at Keina’s website because I have, like, website envy. I’m like ‒ oh I think you have one of the nicest websites I’ve seen on the internet, Keina.
Keina: Well I appreciate it. I like when people ‒ when they land on my website I wanted them to know that, like, I can help them. I wanted them to feel very comfortable and have, like, a calming presence about the fact that you’re reaching out to ask for help becauseI don’t take it lightly that people reach out to me and ask for help. Like, I know that that’s a huge step and so yeah, I wanted people to feel comfortable. And the girl that did my website, I think she did a phenomenal job at conveying that ‒ that vision that I had and how I wanted to make clients feel.
Kate: For sure.Like you said, people would rather talk about sex than money so it’s going to be approachable. I think you certainly managed that. Speaking of, like, diving a little deeper with people, Keina I ask all of my guests some just really nosy questions because why not?
Keina: Okay.
Kate: Are you a morning person or night person?
Keina: Morning,
Kate: Tell me more. Always been a morning person?
Keina: I don’t know if “always” goes in there or not but I really ‒ so unfortunately I’ve been up since about 3:30 this morning because I couldn’t sleep and once I wake up, you know, if anybody knows about like Rem Cycles it’s just my bias like now. I have the most energy in the morning to do the things that I, like, want, like my brain is fresh. At night my brain is like tainted with all the worries of the day so…
Kate: But I’m just making sure you didn’t wake up at 3:30 AM with like money panic, right?
Keina: No, no, no. Not any money panic. I was like laying there holding holding my eyes real tight [laughs] trying to go back to sleep. I even listened to a sleep meditation and my body was like “Nope”.
Kate: I love it as long as it wasn’t like the money sweats then I’m like that’s good, right? Because Keina is not stressing about money anymore, people.
Keina: Not at all. I got up, I worked out, read a little bit, so yeah. I felt like I’ve conquered the entire day. I’ve been up for eight hours already.
Kate: Oh my gosh. We’re connecting in the morning people So Keina’s already live a whole day. What is on your bedside table at the moment? You’re probably staring at it last night at 3:30 AM.
Keina: Oh, there’s a container of pins cause I really like pins and there’s some flowers.
Kate: Oh very nice. Fresh flowers?
Keina: Yes.
Kate: Ohh. Say so when I ‒ have when I have contemplated budgets slash spending plans in the past, fresh flowers are always in there for me. I just buy myself a little bunch every week because oh my gosh, the way it makes me feel and how it brightens up my home, oh…
Keina: It’s amazing. It’s like ‒ I think it’s a must have. One of the gift I gave myself this year was to do a bi-weekly subscription ‒
Kate: Ohhh.
Keina: I’m like, “Yup, this will be my treat for myself.”
Kate: Yes. So you have the fancy flowers. I have like the supermarket ones but ‒
Keina: [laughs] But those‒ I don’t ‒ yeah. Here in DC there’s a store called Trader Joe’s and they’re like four dollar little bouquets are amazing so I support it.
Kate: Do you know that this is again off on a tangent but I have never been into Trader Joe’s. So I have lived in the States for eight years and I drive past one daily now on the way to my kids school. I really need to go in to Traders Joe’s cause people always speak so highly of it.
Keina: It’s the most amazing place.
Kate: Oh! This literally lines outside the one in Minnesota when I go past all the time.
Keina: Yeah and I think it’s like a requirement that you have to be nice to work there.
Kate: Ohhh.
Keina: Because I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Trader Joe’s where there’s terrible customer service ever. Now the people shopping there may not be very nice ‒
[Kate laughs]
Keina: I’m just gonna have to go check them out not just for their flowers. I’m gonna go.
Keina: Oh, their flowers are amazing. Yes, please head to your local Traders Joe’s.
Kate: Everyone, head to your local Trader Joe’s. What is your favorite self care activity Keina?
Keina: Oh. I probably should do more self care. If we weren’t in the middle of the pandemic I would tell you going to get massages. And my cop out would be like working out even though it takes me a lot of like struggle in my head to get myself to do it but I feel like it’s ‒ it definitely always puts me in a better mood and I just ‒ I know that like I am taking care of me by doing that.
Kate: Do you have a book that has touched you at an important point in your life?
Keina: So, one of the book that I read when I was going into entrepreneurship was Dream Year and then other other book is escaping me. I think it was called, like, Design Your Life or Designing Your Life. I actually didn’t read the whole thing, I cheated, and listen to like the Ted Talk and got like a blink of kind of summary but it overlapped with the Dream Year and it helps me get really clear in a point in my life where I was trying to figure out back to your adulting kind of topic, like, what do I want to do next and that’s really the thing I think that sparked me to better myself and start my own business.
Kate: I’m gonna have to check out Dream Year and do you know what’s hilarious is on my desk right now is the other book you’re referring to. It’s called Designing Your Life: How To Build A Well-Lived, Joyful life.
Keina: Yup, that’s it.
Kate: Ah, [Dream Here] okay, on my list. What is a life lesson at that took you a good long while to learn?
Keina: Oh man.
Kate: I know I didn’t say they were easy, Keina.
Keina: I know. I think like ‒ I feel like it’s the saying that your mom tells you as a child like you’re enough, but in your twenties like your seemingly trying to still figure yourself out. So if I could like go back and tell the younger version of myself is like “You’re enough. Everything’s gonna work out” and not to be like looking for whatever it is that you think you need at twenty five or twenty four because you think you’re getting older and life is going to end without you.
Kate: Oh my gosh how true is that. Do you know I can remember watching something where Oprah said that that’s the one common thing that she has seen over all of her years of interviewing and doing what she does is that there’s this universal desire to know that we are enough.
Keina: Uh hmm.
Kate: Oh. What is one thing in your day that you can’t do without.
Kein: Coffee. Hands down.
Kate: I’ve already had two. If I have any more then I stop bouncing off the walls.
Keina: I will say after a certain time in the morning, I don’t want it anymore. Like if it’s past ten o’clock then I’m over it but it is the thing like when I go to bed at night, I’m excited. Like you know how you tell little kids like “If you go to sleep in the morning then ‒ like when you get up in the morning, they’ll be this, this, and this. So that for myself would be like if you go to sleep right now, you’re to wake up in your coffee.
Kate: [laughing] That is so good and I understand because I do a morning gratitude list Keina and quite frequently on my gratitude list is my morning coffee.
Keina: Oh gosh. It’s like ‒ it is just the best thing ever and I am a coffee snob and so I have my French press and all I need ‒ like you can keep your sugar just make sure I have half and half and I am happy, very happy.
Kate: Yes, definitely. I love it! I love that picture of like a little kid going to sleep, coming in the morning you can have coffee!
[Kate and Keina laughs]
Kate: How would you describe the soul Keina?
Keina: Explain a little bit more when you say soul. What do you mean?
Kate: Well I think it means different things to different people. So, if you were considering soul, just the concept of soul, what does it mean to you?
Keina: I think for me when you say soul, I think about like connection to my faith.
Kate: Hmmmm beautiful.
Keina: Yeah.
Kate: And so it’s the soul part of you that has the connection to your faith?
Keina: I think so [laughs]
Kate: Like pretty sure. Pretty sure that that’s what’s happening there. [laughs] So good. Keina, what does fulfillment mean to you?
Keina: For some reason the two words come to my mind: contentment and calm, like a peace. Because I thought like when you have fulfillment like those are ‒ those are the things that like I picture and I grew up like I would definitely say it shaped my money story for sure but grew up in a household where we were taught to be like very thankful for what we have and not necessarily always pushing for this drive to like want more. And I will say like being an American right, like, there’s all these things like I think about all the clutter in my house and I’m like why do I have all this stuff. And so just being able to have that fulfillment and not necessarily with like material things, but being able to be fulfilled with like memories and experiences and relationships like, yeah being grateful.
Kate: Hmmmm.I love those two words by the way, content and calm. Love them. Well, that’s enough of the interrogation. Okay back on topic for you. Keina, wrapping things up, when it comes to taking care of ourselves and our money, what are a couple of actionable tips that you would tell people to start with?
Keina: I would say like commit just even if you commit to ten minutes a week looking at your numbers. Like you know what you need to look at whether it’s how much money is in my bank account, how much money did I spend this past month and this past week, what’s coming up for me next week, and that ten minutes hopefully evolving for you and being able to sit down and like creating a spending plan, and then that spending plan becoming the thing that drives your decision making about how you desire to be intentional versus impulsive.
Kate: Uh hmm. Eyes on your many people. Get that ‒ get the snowball moving, right?
Keina: Yeah. Just in ‒ and adopt like a thought that serves you like this can be easy, this can be fun, this is gonna serve my future self. Whatever it is that is ‒ maybe you need to find a feeling first like how do you want to feel about your finances and then think about “What do I need to think if I actually want to feel that way.”
Kate: If you can leave us with one thought today Keina, what would it be?
Keina: Oh, I’m gonna still going back to get a spending plan.
Kate: Get a spending plan, people. Get a spending plan. I really am getting that though and I feel having had this conversation with you Keina, I feel more confident about the idea that that is not scary and that that’s actually a path to freedom.
Keina: Uh hmm. And it is.
Kate: Oh my gosh. Well, I’m sure you can feel my enthusiasm and excitement through that podcast episode. I mean now I feel like I have a good understanding what a money coach does and why on earth she is a God sent. I can see it now. I can see it. Honestly, after having this conversation with Keina, I have caught myself and my unhelpful habits of not wanting to look at my numbers and I reminded myself that it’s actually empowering to do so. Just before I recorded this outro, I went and cleaned up my quickbooks and made sure everything was appropriately categorized and got my profit and loss and was very happy for the start of the year. So just like Keina see it, there is power in knowing where we’re at with our money so I’m converted after that episode. I’m converted.
Now if you wanna go and track Keina down, you can find her at WealthOverNow.com. She is also Wealth Over Now on Instagram. She has her podcast series which is some conversations about money so check that out on Apple or where you listen. It’s called Money Files with Keina Newell, and I think I’d mentioned it in the introduction but she works with clients in a one-on-one capacity or she also has her group coaching program called Mimosas and Money, so check all of that out.
So those were our two episodes on adulting. Next we’re moving to connection and talking about how we can show up for both ourselves and connect in a warmer and more authentic way with the people in our lives. So, next week another episode drops with me talking through a few pointers, thoughts, and tips before I have Johnny Dzubak from the Art Of Charm coming to join me later in the month.
If you’re not already aware, Here To Thrive has a new website home: heretothrive.com and I’m releasing just a once a month resource newsletter. I like to call it a resource because I’m putting in like freebie usable tolls in every single one. Come and sign up for that if you have not yet over at heretothrive.com. I also wanted to give a little shout out for the Here To Thrive community on Facebook. Now, I’m a bit tatty because I did take myself off Facebook because, you know, sanity people and all of that, but the Here To Thrive community on Facebook, the group it was actually there before I started the podcast and I always envisioned it as a community but you know with Facebook groups, that can get a bit like meh and I was so thrilled to see a couple of streams of conversation between Here To Thrive listeners on there over the last few weeks. So that’s what I wanted to be for. Yeah I’m there, yeah I will chime in but I really would love that his group of listeners connect and use that space amongst yourselves. I’m not for promotion like if you promote something in there, I’m gonna, like, scrap it out as fast as you can put it up but for connecting with one another, okay? So please go over the Here To Thrive in Facebook groups. I think ‒ yeah just search Here To Thrive, it should come up and I will let you in.
All right, beautiful people. The year is off with a hiss and a roar. I’m sure you can still tell I’m excited. Four podcast episodes this month of February bring it on, new web home like wohoo people. We are kicking ass and taking names over here. I hope you’re feeling enthused, inspired, excited. And before we come back again next week, just keep thriving.
Keep thriving, beautiful people. Keep thriving.
