Believe In Your True Worth. Rachael Burns

[00:00:00] Bob Wheeler: Welcome to another episode of money you should ask where everyone has something they can teach you. I’m your host, Bob Wheeler. In this episode, we are going to explore why we do what we do when it comes to money as a CPA for the past 30 years. Wait, let me say 25, because that makes me sound younger. I have seen it all when it comes to money and emotions.

And if you think I’m talking about my. I’m not, I’m talking about myself. My relationship with money has been, and sometimes still is an emotional rollercoaster. Maybe that’s something you’re also familiar with. Good news. You and I are not the only ones. Our next guest is going to share their money, beliefs, money blocks, and life challenges as well.

Buckle your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.

 I’m so excited today. Our next guest is Rachel Burns. Rachel is passionate about helping women achieve financial independence after the loss of their partner to death or divorce. She is the founder of true worth financial planning, which offers fee only planning, divorce, financial analysis, and investment management tailored to the unique needs of newly single.

Prior to founding true worth. Rachel spent 12 years advising a fluent families under the top wealth management firms. She is a certified financial planner and certified divorce financial analyst. She has an MBA and a masters in personal financial planning. Rachel says her specialty lies at the intersection of grief and finance.

Rachel, I want to start off with that. Welcome to the show, but I want to start off with that because that can be a really harsh intersect.

[00:01:31] Rachael Burns: Absolutely. And thank you for having me on the show by the way, but yeah, that intersection of grief and finances, something that you don’t really think about. And then when you’re in it, you’re like, oh my gosh, this is really bizarre and terrifying.

And

[00:01:45] Bob Wheeler: you had your own story that sort of propelled you into really working with women and advocating. And can you say a little bit about that? Because I think that’s important for the listeners to know they see this successful woman here talking and we’ve all had our journey.

[00:02:01] Rachael Burns: Yes, absolutely. So I’ve been in the business for a long time and what I would call traditional wealth management.

And I didn’t necessarily work just with women. It was just whoever had a whole bunch of money and could qualify to work at a big firm like that. And so I found that I always enjoyed working with women most especially women who had gone through some sort of difficult transition, like they went through a divorce or their spouse passed away.

So I naturally gravitated towards clients like that. And then. I had some things happen in my personal life that kind of made me reassess everything. And about four years ago, I got pregnant with twins and found out my husband had grade four brain cancer. Like I found these two things out within a few days of each other.

Wow. So all of a sudden we go from this little family of two. Healthy young, married couple too. We’re going to be a family of four, maybe a family of three. Who knows? I don’t know what to expect with this diagnosis. Oh my gosh. I’m having two kids, not one kid. Like what the hell happened? It just totally took any sort of life plans that I had and threw them out the window.

So we got through being pregnant, got through my husband’s surgery and radiation and chemo. And things settled down. His health was stable. The kids were born. It was like this relief for the time being that with his type of brain cancer, he had a very good outcome from his treatments, but that type of brain cancer never goes away.

It’s just, that’s just how it is. And so that’s something that we just have to deal with. That’s our new reality. We’ve done pretty well. It just moving forward. As normally as we can, but going through that experience was terrifying and a lot of different ways as you can imagine. But what I felt after going through that, I was like, what if I wasn’t a financial advisor?

And what if I had no knowledge. How to manage finances and what if we didn’t have life insurance and disability insurance and a trust and a will and all these estate planning documents, like what if we didn’t have all these things? Because I would say that we’re outliers. We had done all of this preparation and had all this insurance, which is a little bit unusual for some, for a couple our age, but because of my work, I’m obsessed with preparing financial waivers.

But I’m just like, what if we didn’t have that? Like how much scarier would this experience be? If I had no idea how I would support my kids, how I would support myself, that would just take the fear and I would just be so unmanageable. And so I felt like even though we had this extraordinary misfortune of this diagnosis, I felt fortunate at the same time, I was like, we could be in a much worse situation.

My husband has a job where they were so extremely accommodating and my job was ridiculously supportive during that time. And we didn’t have to struggle financially. We didn’t have to struggle. Anything extra. We had to struggle with the normal the stuff that you would expect with that type of health issue.

But other than that, we didn’t have to worry about a lot of those things. And I felt like that’s something that not many people have. That’s something that we were really fortunate in having, and I want to be able to help other people who are not necessarily in that exact situation. Cause that’s a bizarre situation, but people who are going through something difficult.

Are not entirely comfortable with their finances and just helping them get through that transitional time, get them on track so that they don’t have to worry about the financial piece. And they can focus on the stuff that’s really important, like their families and their health and their life going forward.

So that’s where I got really passionate about helping people who are going through a transition in particularly women because women, clients. Women. I feel like don’t always have representation in the financial industry. They don’t have access to expert advice, and also being a woman. I have a special connection to other women, but that’s where that came from.

And what’s interesting is I was still in the traditional wealth management world when COVID hit. And I just. COVID had a habit of making people think about their lives. And I was like, what if I just worked with women who were going through some sort of transition? Like I could just work with those types of people and where I was before that wasn’t really an option.

You can’t just say I’m only going to work with women today. You did what they wanted you to do. But I was like, what if I just did that? And so then I just did it and it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it was. And I started my own company and I’m doing exactly that. I’m working with women who are going through difficult times and that’s been just the best decision I ever made.

I think

[00:07:19] Bob Wheeler: that’s awesome. And I wonder if you can speak to the listeners about a lot of people, men and women will say, eh, life insurance policy, I got. Oh, I’ll start putting away 10% tomorrow with women specifically, they tend to live longer, have lower income and don’t have the savings. And so older women end up in poverty, just statistically.

And I don’t think most people when they’re feeling young, that they’re thinking, oh, I could get divorced. My spouse could die. It’s that’s not happy thoughts. So I don’t really want to go there. Why do we need to talk about that? And how do you get this to land?

[00:08:00] Rachael Burns: I totally understand the discomfort with the topic because planning for the unexpected is just yucky feeling.

No one wants to think about that and not everyone has this obsessive need to prepare. Like I do. Like I don’t expect people to be like don’t you just worry all night about what happens if your spouse. Those aren’t like super normal thoughts to have. So I don’t expect anyone to do that, but I also think you have things in your life that are important to you, and you want to protect those things, whether they’re family members or whether it’s your lifestyle or whether whatever, like you have things that you can’t afford to lose and you need to protect.

And I think once you have. Your basic needs covered. You need to pay rent and you need to eat food and you need to wear clothes and you need to do some basic stuff. And you need to focus on that. And I’m not saying, okay, you need to go get a term life insurance policy, even though you literally can’t feed your family.

That’s not my advice at all. Once you get the basic needs taken care of, and you’re ready to start tackling the next level of needs. I think you need to start protecting those things that are important to you. And I know no one wants to think about this, but the odds of something bad happening to you at some point in your life are a hundred percent.

I don’t care who you are, something bad will happen to you. And I know that’s really not something you want to hear. Look at me, if you don’t believe it. I was a very healthy what I would consider normal person. And so it was my husband and our world got turned upside down in a matter of a few days.

And it’s never been the same. And you can’t expect these things and it wasn’t just my husband, by the way I had massive complications after my twins were born, that I wasn’t sure what my health situation was going to be. Long-term it was really scary for a little bit. None of us are immune from these unexpected events.

And I’m not saying you need to sit down, need to think about every possible bad thing that could happen in the world. Cause that’s not productive either, but you need to think about the major things. If you’re married, what if your spouse isn’t around for whatever reason, the odds of that happening.

Aren’t that ridiculously low? You do need to think about these things, especially if you have kids or if you have anyone who’s dependent on you, you just need to think about. What would happen in that case and what small steps can I take now to prevent some massive, horrible thing happening? I You can’t prevent the bad thing from happening, but you can prevent that bad thing from destroying your finances.

And so that’s just something you got to think about, and if you feel like, oh, do it tomorrow. Maybe you need an accountability partner, whether that’s a friend or a family member or a financial advisor. For my clients, I will just annoy them relentlessly until they prove to me that they’ve gotten their estate planning, documents done.

Like I’m like, did you do it? Did you do it? And I annoy them because they pay me to annoy them. I wouldn’t do that if I right. They want that. But if you have trouble following through, tell someone you’re going to do it and have them annoy you until you do it. That’s like a good trick, I

[00:11:16] Bob Wheeler: would say.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And what would you say to women? You do divorce analysis. And so here I am, I’m thinking about I’m contemplating divorce, and now I’ve got to maybe if it feels like that’s a path, maybe there’s some things I need to do to protect myself. Maybe I need to open a separate bank account.

Maybe I need to make sure I’ve got establish credit or maybe I do nothing, but it seems to me that if I’m going to go down that path, there may be some. That I want to be aware of so that I can plan so that the landing isn’t so harsh. Yes.

[00:11:52] Rachael Burns: So anyone who’s considering going through a divorce, that’s going to be a stressful, emotional process.

And to just jump into it, without thinking about any of the financial ramifications, you’re going to make it more stressful than it needs to be. And you could put yourself in a position where. Financially harmed. So you really do need to think about a few things before you, if you’re the one that’s considering it, you do need to think of a few things.

And there are some things that you can do to prepare. And just like you said, having your own account is a good thing. You don’t want to start taking money out of joint accounts and stepping in, into yours. Asking for trouble, but you want to have an account that’s in your name. You want to have a credit card that’s in your name.

You want to look at your own personal credit, because if you’ve been married for a long time, maybe things have been in your spouse’s name. Some people have no idea what their credit looks like until they look at it. And they’re like, oh my gosh. So just getting an idea of what your credit looks like in case you need to borrow money.

At some point, when you go out on your own. And then also just looking at your expenses and detail, and obviously your expenses are going to look different when you’re married versus when you’re single, but you need to look at what you’re spending currently and you can project what you’ll be spending when you’re on your own.

That’s something that a lot of people don’t think about. And once you split into two households, a lot of those expenses are going to double and your incomes, aren’t going to double. So you do need to think about those things and prepare for that in advance. And not that I’m saying put off divorce or don’t get divorced because you can’t afford it, but just get the facts, get your details organized so that you know where you stand and you can start doing some planning for the short-term.

To get you through that process. And then you’ll be able to do some planning for the long-term after that, but you really need to have all the information that you can get your hands on before you actually make them.

[00:13:47] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ve had a lot of clients probably in the last five years where they’ve decided to go their separate ways, but they stay in the same household or each one takes a wing of the house or each takes a bedroom, but that they’ve actually realized for them financially, it would be.

Really incredibly difficult for a complete separation. And so they just do it over a period of time knowing that, okay, this is the end goal, but we’re going to do it so that we both don’t harm each other or ourselves financially.

[00:14:21] Rachael Burns: Yeah. I friend into that too, which it seems like, oh, that doesn’t sound like fun, like living with your ex under the same roof.

Some people do it for some people, it makes sense. And some people have the type of relationship where they can do that. And maybe they have kids and you figure out what you need to do and you do it. And sometimes you have to do things that aren’t totally pleasant, but you know that there’s an end in sight.

So hopefully you don’t, aren’t going to be forced to live with your ex that if you can’t stand the sight of them, but like maybe you might have to make some compromises for a little bit to get through the tough times.

[00:14:58] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, for the bigger picture. So let me ask you this, you worked with a lot of affluent families for 12 years.

What are some of the things that you observed in working with those families that might be helpful to the listeners?

[00:15:12] Rachael Burns: So after working with people who have achieved some sort of financial success, I’ve noticed some things that were a little bit surprising to me because I hear so many misconceptions.

From people who are not in that situation. So I think when people think of wealthy people, they think of inheritances, they think someone’s dad died and left them a boatload of money and they never worked a day in their life and they’re brats and they spend money on Bentleys and private jets and stuff.

Like people see things on social media or whatever, people just being obnoxious with money, but you’d be shocked at how. Boring. I think a majority of wealthy people are in terms of what they’re spending their money on and how they got it. A majority of the people that I worked with who had millions of dollars, they didn’t have extremely high powered jobs.

They didn’t inherit money. They didn’t invent. They have pretty normal jobs. They had to be making a decent amount of money, but it’s not a ridiculous amount of money that they’re making a lot of them just didn’t spend as much as they made. And that is such a simple, it’s a simple thing, but it’s hard to do in practice.

They just saved money. And if you do it for long enough, that grows. A lot. And if you invest that money, it grows even more. And I had so many clients who were state workers and people think state workers is like not a incredibly high paying job. It’s a great job. It has great benefits, but I knew so many state workers that they just didn’t spend that much money and it just grew into a whole bunch of.

So it took some good habits and good spending habits. And it took having a little bit of restraint when it comes to spending, it took that during their working years, but then also in their retired years, they continued to have a pretty mellow spending habits. So if you’re trying to figure out, okay, how am I going to get rich?

So I can just spend tens and tens of money every year. I don’t have the answer for you. You need to invent Twitter or something. That’s Realm, but the secret to becoming wealthy is just to keep your spending reigned in because you can make a million dollars a year and you can spend a million and a half dollars a year, and you’re in a bad financial situation.

It really, it’s not what you make. Obviously you need to make enough to cover your basic expenses. And that’s a struggle for a lot of people, but if your income you get promotions and your income grows over time. If you can keep your expenses from growing along with it, eventually you’re going to be able to save a decent amount of money.

And I wish I had some like other magical way to get rich, but like it’s just simple and boring. You just saved money over time and just let that money sit there for a long time and

[00:18:09] Bob Wheeler: grow. It made me think. The Michael Jackson estate. There was so much debt when Michael Jackson passed because he was spending apparently just voraciously.

[00:18:19] Rachael Burns: Did you see all the dumb stuff in his house? He had the dumbest stuff. Oh my goodness. The statues. I’m just like, oh my God.

[00:18:25] Bob Wheeler: Got to have it a hundred thousand, 200. Yeah. And when he passed the estate, the money filled up quickly because he was spending more than he was making and he was making a law. And I think it’s, to me, it plays into this delayed gratification savings and delayed gratification.

To me go hand in hand. Because if I have to have that statue, if I have to take the trip now, can I wait six months? Could I just hold onto the money for a little bit longer? And I’m wondering if you come up against this, I find with some of my clients, they’re comfortable with 5,000 bucks in their bank account or 20,000 bucks in their bank account.

And when it goes over, I got to spend to get right back to my comfort level instead of saying, oh wait, let me get it out of my. So that I can pretend I met my comfort level and we self-sabotage because, oh, I can’t have that much money. What will people think? Or something

[00:19:16] Rachael Burns: like that. Yeah. I know plenty of people who, as soon as they get a little bit of extra money, it’s just burning a hole in their pocket and they think, oh, this is like free money.

So I get to spend it on something really silly because it doesn’t really count because it’s like extra than what I was expecting, but it’s like, all money is worth the same. Money that you get from your tax return is worth the same as money you make in your paycheck, which is worth the same as money that you find on the street in a bag of paper bag, like it’s all worth the same.

All money deserves the same amount of. So if you have this little extra amount, don’t look at it like, oh, like what fun thing could I do today to blow it in 10 minutes? Think, oh, this is a headstart on my financial goals, whatever that is, this is a nice surprise. It’s going to get me closer to whatever my goal is rather than like, how can I get rid of this?

Right this second, it’s just having a different mindset.

[00:20:16] Bob Wheeler: Do you work with people on automated savings or automated investments, trying to get people to just start with 50 bucks coming out of the bank account or whatever it is to just start that habit. Yeah.

[00:20:27] Rachael Burns: And I think people are really surprised at how quickly they adjust to that.

Especially if you’re starting small, like you don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do anything ridiculous. I’m not going to tell you, you need to save $10,000 a year or whatever. If you start something. You just forget that you have that money and you adjust your spending naturally around it, because think about how easy it is to naturally adjust your spending.

When you get more money, you just spend it. You don’t even feel the extra money that you’re making, because it’s just you just spend it. But it’s similar to. Start hiding a little bit of money from yourself. You just forget that it existed again, as long as your basic needs are met. And then once you start with that small amount, then you can increase it and you see what that feels like.

And you’re just like, oh I guess I’m not going to go shopping quite as often, but that’s okay. And it becomes this mindless thing. And if you can make savings mindless, that’s great. But if when you make spending mindless, that’s really dangerous. So set up your savings and then forget about it. Don’t do the same thing with your spending.

That’s a different story. You need to keep your eyes on that.

[00:21:36] Bob Wheeler: So let me ask you this, because for me, it’s about mindset. And we’re talking about mindset of being able to say, I’m not going to spend that or how to trick myself so that I can actually be in a better space. Is there a tip or something that you advise people to when they’re actually making the purchase?

 For me, when I spend now sometimes in the past, I’ve obsessed for I’ll spend eight months deciding to buy a TV. Everybody else is just oh, buy it. I’m like technology is going to change it. I overthink it. And in my current situation, when I’m spending money, I will think about, okay, what’s this going to do for me?

 Does this nourish me in a way that fills my spirit or is in a way that it’s something very practical, that plans for the future? And if I can’t find like I’m going to get real joy out of it or that it’s really going to help my future, I often won’t spend the money. And in the past I would have just ah, I don’t think I want to part with it.

 I’ve got to know that it’s going to be worth my spending the.

[00:22:36] Rachael Burns: Yeah, I think whatever it takes to increase your awareness. And then also just to think a little bit more about what you’re spending, whatever that takes for you to do that. And to some people it’s something different and the best example of this I ever heard.

This girl the credit cards where you can customize the picture that’s on the credit card, you can put whatever you want it. This girl had put a picture of Terry crews on it and he was making the space like scowling so that every time she’d take out her card out of her wallet, she’d think that Terry cruise was judging her.

And so she would be like, oh, I’m going to think twice about buying that thing. And I thought that was the funniest thing, but whatever. To make you think twice. And some people will have alerts that they set up on their credit cards so that any purchase over a certain dollar amount will send a text to their phone.

So that things that you have set up on subscriptions and kind of autopilot like reminds you of those things, just so that you’re a little bit more aware. Whatever it takes, or maybe set a rule for yourself that okay. If I’m going to buy anything that costs more than a hundred dollars, I’m going to have a minimum 24 hour waiting period or whatever works best for you.

You just have to figure out what would get you to think a little bit more about what you’re spending money on and whether that’s something that you actually value. It’s just trying to get your spending aligned with your values, because the point isn’t to not spend money, I’m not going to say don’t spend money.

It’s just spend money on things that are important to you that are valuable to you. And then don’t waste money on other stuff that you don’t actually care.

[00:24:15] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, I think it’s so important. And for me, knowing what it’s important to me means setting goals, figuring out what is important to me, writing it out, setting a budget, setting timetables so that when I’m spending, I can ask myself, is this in alignment with what I say my vision is?

And then it gives me pause if I’m not actually working towards these goals that I say that.

[00:24:39] Rachael Burns: Absolutely. Yeah. Some people love coffee. They love to go get a coffee from Starbucks. And that’s something that brings them so much joy. And you hear so much advice, like just don’t buy Starbucks and then you’ll be fine.

 That’s such an oversimplification, but if you’re someone who loves coffee, Go get your Starbucks, and don’t feel bad about it. But if you’re also someone who doesn’t care about having takeout food, if that’s not like a joyful experience, cause it’s, by the time you get home, it’s cold and it’s in a plastic container or whatever.

If that’s not something that brings you joy, but you just do it because you’re tired or you’re lazy. It’s spend the money on the coffee, but then go grocery shopping and have some things on hand to where you can quickly make dinner so that you’re not wasting money on something that you don’t really care.

[00:25:24] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely prioritize financial priorities and life priorities. Yes it’s definitely doable. We are at our fast five for Rachel and fast five is brought to you by cube money, which is a cash envelope system made easy real-time financial awareness without the hassle of tracking expenses and carrying cash.

For more information, click on the link in the show notes. Now, have you ever done the envelope system? Not. You’ve got a thousand bucks and 500 goes for rent, 200 goes for food or whatever it is.

[00:25:55] Rachael Burns: Yeah. I’m familiar with it. And I’ve known a lot of people that have done it. I personally have not done it, but I love the concept.

It’s a

[00:26:01] Bob Wheeler: great way. Just even if you do it for six months or even a month, it’s a great way to start to realize, oh, when I robbed from the rent money, I can’t pay, the rent has to come from somewhere. It has to come

[00:26:13] Rachael Burns: from somewhere. It’s getting taken away from something.

[00:26:15] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. All right. I’m going to hitch up with these fast five, so let’s have a little bit of fun.

What’s the worst financial advice you’ve ever been given?

[00:26:25] Rachael Burns: Not to pick on my dad, but he said one time he told me I was going to buy a car and he’s you’re going to spend so much time in your car. So get a car, get a really nice one because you’re just going to spend so much time in it.

Like just spend some extra money and get a really nice. That’s not even that bad of advice, but I don’t know that stuck in my head. And then I had this car that was really nice. It was a very nice car, but it was not super necessary. And it got to the point later where I had some changes that I wanted.

With my job, but I have this car payment. It just, it wasn’t the greatest advice in the long run. I don’t really agree with that.

[00:27:07] Bob Wheeler: It

[00:27:07] Rachael Burns: didn’t serve. You don’t tell my dad. I said that

[00:27:12] Bob Wheeler: I won’t say a word. I won’t call him. I promise. Although he’s my next call. What do you secretly spend money on that people don’t know about?

[00:27:19] Rachael Burns: I like why. I don’t have that many biases, like financial biases, just because my husband really keeps me in line. He’s like really judged. He’s like worse than Terry crews. If I had his picture on my credit card, I’d never spend money, but I like to go to the grocery store and oh, that wine looks really nice.

It’s really like dumb stuff like that. Just wine and groceries that I don’t necessarily need.

[00:27:48] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. That’s why they put them at front. That’s why they put them up front. They tempt you. They do. What is your financial situation?

[00:27:57] Rachael Burns: I could see the future because I’ve worked with so many people at different stages in their life.

I know if you’re going to keep doing this is what that looks like in the long run. Cause I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. You see it over and over again, you can pick up patterns. So when I see what someone’s doing now, or when I look at what I’m doing now, I feel like I can see into the future.

I know what that’s going to look like in 20 or 30 years, that’s my super.

[00:28:23] Bob Wheeler: That’s awesome. If you had the ability to travel back in time and change one financial decision you made in the past, what would it be?

[00:28:31] Rachael Burns: I would have started investing when I was a year old. Yeah. Instead of toys, I would have said, no, please make deposits into this investing account and just forgone presence for the rest of my life.

No, I don’t know. Some presence, not the one, but do you notice a lot of the affluent families that made sure their kids had payroll so they could put money into IRAs starting at a young age? No, not really. Really. We do that a lot with our clients with small businesses. We’ll put the kids on payroll and make sure that all the kids are funded so that by the time they’re in high school, they’ve got 30,000 bucks.

[00:29:07] Bob Wheeler: There’s

[00:29:08] Rachael Burns: certainly some tax benefits to having the kids on. And I’m not saying that’s not good. I’m just saying the people that I’ve known haven’t really, I haven’t seen them do that too much. It’s hard with kids to have a super long-term perspective because the younger you are, you’re looking at stuff that’s right in front of your face.

And you’re not thinking about two minutes from the future. Like it’s so hard for them to conceptualize your saving for retirement. Like just getting them to save money so that they can spend it on the weekend is like hard enough.

[00:29:38] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever purchased.

[00:29:42] Rachael Burns: Oh, I don’t know.

I don’t know. That’s such a good question. I’m sure I’ve done something really

[00:29:49] Bob Wheeler: weird, a crazy lamp or some geez.

[00:29:52] Rachael Burns: I don’t know. Oh, I bought an Elvis painting from Ross one time and I get so many compliments on it and I’ve had it for so many years. It’s come with me to every move and he lives in the laundry room.

So he’s like Elvis, the patron Saint of laundry. And it’s really just a bizarre. But I get a lot of anyone who comes to visit my laundry room. They definitely notice it and they compliment

[00:30:18] Bob Wheeler: me on it. I love it. Yeah. That’s awesome. So as a velvet, it’s not velvet. That would be way

better than, yeah.

 He did a lot of velvet. We are at our M and M spot, our money and motivation. And I’m wondering if you have a financial tip or a piece of wealth wisdom you could share with our listeners, that’s something that’s worked for you.

[00:30:37] Rachael Burns: So the best way that I have increased my knowledge about finances or about whatever topic I’m interested in, I don’t try to sit down and learn something giant.

At one time, I take it in little pieces at a time and the best way that I’ve done that. And I’m not just saying this, kiss your ass. I think listening to financial podcasts is the best way that you can learn. You can pick up these pieces of information and it’s all it takes. Everyone’s in the car for 20 minutes at some point during the week, and you find some good podcasts like this one, for example, but it’s not taking up any of your time.

You can listen to it when you’re doing other things. And that is how I have learned. I have learned more in the past couple of years since I’ve started listening to. Then I learned from going to college for however many years, it took me to get through college, but that’s the best way to take a big topic.

That seems scary to you. Make it approachable by just taking a little bit at a time, listen to a couple of podcasts here and there, and you’re going to learn. You’re going to learn so much quicker than you ever would have imagined.

[00:31:44] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, I think that’s so spot on because there are podcasts that will just tell you what a stock is, or they’ll just tell you what compound interest is like basic things where you might feel like that’s a stupid question, but people are talking about it.

And for me, just having these conversations about. Is just getting it out in the open so that maybe there’s a better way or somebody has a great suggestion or automated savings, something like that. And, oh, I can do that. That’s a great

[00:32:09] Rachael Burns: takeaway. Yeah. And there’s a podcast for everyone. If you want someone who is similar to you, they have like finances for women or whatever.

Or maybe if you want someone funny, like you listen to this one and it’s just whatever you’re into, you can find a podcast that’s made for you. If you haven’t found the right one, ask your friends for some recommendations. There’s some awesome podcasts out there.

[00:32:35] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Or Rachel, this has been a lot of fun and it’s been really insightful.

And for me, and why I was excited to having you on is I liked the fact that you’ve made this decision to advocate for women, and you’ve really narrowed specifically the women that you want to help. It’s not about maybe that it’s being practical and planning like a hundred percent, something bad will happen in our lives.

 It’s just a matter of when it doesn’t mean we have to worry every night and be anxious, right. Still live and get on and prepare for the inevitable that something may come along. And if it doesn’t fantastic. But if you prepare, if you get that term life insurance, if you start putting away some savings and don’t spend that little extra money that comes in as a, oh, it doesn’t count right.

That if we start to actually be really intensive, And focused. It doesn’t mean we have to give up fun. It doesn’t mean we can’t go secretly buy a couple of bottles of wine at the last minute at the grocery store. It just means that we’re probably going to be in a much better place financially and emotionally, because we won’t have so much anxiety because we planned and we’re prepared.

And so I love that. It’s not about shaming. It’s not about anybody doing it wrong. Have your cup of coffee, find what feeds you. Just be real, intentional and conscious about it. Absolutely. Let us great. Where can people find you online and in social media?

[00:34:00] Rachael Burns: So you can visit my website. It’s true. Worth fp.com F as in financial P as in planning.

So true worth fp.com. There’s information about my services. And there’s also links where you can book a free strategy session with me. Talking to anyone. And so you get a free half-hour with me, even if it’s not a good fit, I’m totally happy to send people away with some nugget of wisdom or some tips or some referrals to some other thing or whatever.

Like you will get something out of talking to me, even if you don’t want to work with me, I won’t force you to work with. But I would say go there. Take advantage of that. Absolutely. And then a really good way to keep in touch with me is on social media. I’m on Instagram. I’m fairly active on Instagram. So it’s at true worth FP.

I’m on LinkedIn too. It’s under my name. Rachel V. Burns, but I would say Instagram, I’m always putting stuff all over there. So that’s a good place to come. Come chat with me.

[00:35:00] Bob Wheeler: Awesome. We’ll make sure we put all that up and we’ll get people to come and chat and give you a call. Rachel, it’s been such a pleasure.

Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your journey and your wisdom. Thank you

[00:35:11] Rachael Burns: so much, Bob. It was great.

[00:35:21] Bob Wheeler: we hope you enjoyed this episode. Did you learn something new about your relationship to money today? Maybe you have a friend who has some financial blocks or beliefs that are holding them back. Please share this podcast. So they too can get off the roller coaster ride of financial fears and journey towards financial.

To learn how to have a healthy relationship with money. Visit the money nerve.com. That’s nerve not nerd. We’ll be back next week with another perspective on money and the emotions that bind us. .