How to Master Your Money in a Way that Feels Good with Amanda Steinberg

Hey. It’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. You know, in these uncertain times, financial security can feel a bit elusive. If you wanna get a better grip on your money life, my guest today is here to help.

Amanda Steinberg launched DailyWorth to bring a fresh voice and an outsider’s perspective to personal finance. Today, DailyWorth’s newsletter reaches more than one million subscribers. Oprah selected her for the exclusive SuperSoul 100, and Forbes named her one of 21 New American Money Masters.

Amanda has also appeared on GMA, Today, CNN, and MSNBC. She’s the author of Worth It, Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms.

Amanda, thank you so much for making time to come on the show today.

Oh, Marie, I’ve been so looking forward to this.

You know, I love talking about money. You love talking about money. This is like one of my favorite topics. So, before we get into it, for everybody watching, even though Amanda’s business generally is geared towards women, every strategy that we’re gonna talk about today, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or you’re a woman, or your gender identity. This is money strategies for humans. Right?

Humans.

Humans. The other thing I wanna say is that everyone in our audience, you know, it, they really run the gamut. We have folks, I’m sure, who consider themselves very wealthy, and I know for a fact, because I get the emails, some of our folks are homeless right now, or they’re in a shelter right now. So, every layer of the economic strata is covered, and we are gonna do our best to give advice and ideas that will help you no matter where you’re at. Yeah?

Absolutely.

Okay. So, for everyone who is watching, and to set the stage for us, I wanna start off with some stats so that anyone listening right now, who may feel that they’ve neglected their financial life, does not feel shame or guilt about it. Ready?

Ready.

Okay. Here’s what I found in my research. Two thirds of Americans would struggle to find $1,000 for an emergency fund. In a 2017 report, it was found that half of American households currently live paycheck to paycheck. Anyone relate to this? Not surprisingly, 49% of Americans are concerned, anxious or fearful about their current financial wellbeing. And obviously we have folks who watch from all over around the world. I know you have subscribers from all over around the world. I don’t think this is just an American thing.

Definitely not.

So, um, let’s get into it. Why are you so passionate about money? What’s your money story?

My money story is that I always wanted to be wealthy. I was raised by a single mom who raised me from a little kid saying, “You will never depend on a man. Money will be something that comes easily and naturally to you.” So, I started working really young. I became a computer programmer, which was really really lucrative, but, and I thought I was doing everything right. At a young age, I bought the house, owned a software company, got married, had babies, had, bought stocks, and then it all imploded. And I was like, “Huh, how is it that I’ve been doing everything right, and I actually landed $100,000 in debt,” not because I was overspending, but because I took on so much risk that I didn’t understand, that my assets became liabilities.

And so, I became really interested in the subject because I realized that even when you try and do everything right, that sometimes it can still go wrong. So, how is it that you make money work for you, no matter what, even if you’re not good at budgeting, even if you don’t think of yourself as someone who’s highly disciplined? How do you make money work for you?

You know, you and I have a similar story in that regard. You know, my parents got divorced when I was pretty young. And, my mom had taken me and she shook me and she said, “Don’t ever make the same mistakes I made.”

It’s exactly what my mom, yeah.

Yeah.

Precisely.

And “you have to have your own money.” And it was such an emotional event, so young in my life, that I am 100% certain that it has shaped who I am and who I continue to be in the world in a really great way. So, I’m appreciative that you shared that story. And just to be clear for everyone watching, it was like you had graduated. You had gotten a great job. You had a big house. Right? You had marriage. You had the kids. And, but $100,000 in debt, like, that’s, that’s big.

I was in debt. It wasn’t as much as you are, but it’s a wake-up call. So, I’m curious. When you found yourself in that position of going, “Holy sh- This is not working from a financial perspective, and, and other perspectives as well,” what turned it around for you?

Well, what turned it around for me was I got invited to a money seminar by two women I had known for a while. And I was like, “Oh yeah, I definitely gotta do this.” I remember I was like seven months pregnant and I got on the train from Philadelphia where I lived to New York City, um, waddled onto the train, this really hot day and went and sat in this seminar and realized that I’d been telling myself a story that I’m great at earning, but I’m also a spender. But because I’m great at earning, that eventually I will have more money than I spend, which really doesn’t make a lot of logical sense, but it had been driving my whole life. And I was so sure that I was a spender, not a saver, that I never even questioned the idea that maybe that wasn’t true.

So it was during this seminar, that I decided to start calling myself a saver, and realized how that was actually gonna change everything, no matter what the financial reality was of my life. Until I changed that, nothing was gonna have a prayer.

So, did you have any financial understanding at that point? Like, what was your level of education when it comes around personal finance? Like, were you balancing your checkbook? Were you making any investments for your future? Just curious.

I had read lots of books about personal finance. I had bought a few stocks and I thought I knew about money, but really all I knew was earning money.

I actually didn’t know anything about managing money and I had tried to budget many times, and failed in doing so. So I would say it was pretty pretty low aptitude in terms of knowing anything about money.

I find, whenever I talk about this topic, whenever it comes up on this show, or I love talking about money with friends, or with people that I know, and I’m probably one of the unique cases. And a lot of my friends come to me, ’cause they know it’s a safe place, like, I’m not gonna judge them and I always love to talk about these things but when I talk about it publicly, and I look at the comments, a lot of people are so afraid. There’s so much fear. Like, they don’t wanna even look at it.

And I’m certain that there are people watching or listening on the podcast right now that might find themselves in that same position where there is so much fear around it. They don’t know what to do first. What would you suggest for someone who’s in that position?

Well, first of all, it’s very normal to feel really intimidated by money because a lot of us were raised by parents who also didn’t understand money. And you can see the implications of that in your life, and perhaps you don’t want to repeat that. So I think that the first thing that is important for you to do is – I treat money like a video game. When I was a kid, I played lots and lots of video games, and the reason why this was useful was I would play a game and either I would win, or I would lose, but regardless, I could always hit that reset button and start over.

And that’s the thing with money. Sometimes you’re going to say, “I’m gonna save $200 or I’m gonna go into the supermarket and I’m only gonna buy what’s on my list.” And, sometimes you’re successful in whatever that is that you’re trying to do, and sometimes you fail. Sometimes that’s because you didn’t do what you said you were gonna do. And sometimes that’s because life circumstances get in the way. What happens after that for, if you’re intimidated by money, is you’re gonna start to make that mean something about you. “I’m bad with money. Money is evil. I’m out of control,” all those stories that we have around money.

If you can choose to look at it like a video game, then you can say, “You know what, I’m gonna hit the reset button and I’m gonna try again because I’m not gonna make my experience with money mean something about who I am as a person.”

I love that. So, it’s really about reframing it. It sounds like, correct me if I’m wrong, taking some of the emotion out of it, and disconnecting it from your own self worth. Like our self worth isn’t our net worth. And if you’ve made mistakes around money before, or if you’re terrified of it, that there’s always an opportunity to start fresh.

There is always an opportunity to start fresh. I mean, I have seen people go massively into debt, and get out of it, and then go massively into debt again, and then get out of it again. I mean, there is, uh, there is extraordinary … I know victims of Madoff. I know multiple victims of Madoff, and two of them who’ve recovered unbelievably from zero.

That’s so great to hear.

I know.

Jeez.

Others who haven’t. But you know, it’s yeah. That, that’s the – can there be a playfulness to the extent where we treat it as something that isn’t, you know, life or death.

Yeah. Which is hard, I think, ’cause a lot of people are living on that financial edge, and I have certainly been there in my life where I was in debt, was opening that checkbook. It was terrifying, didn’t know how I’d make it there. So, I think even if, for anyone listening, saying like, “Oh, it’s easy for you guys to say that,” take it from Amanda and myself. It’s like we’re encouraging you to give yourself the opportunity to maybe perhaps think about it in another way. Right? Just to kind of take the emotions out of it, so that you can give yourself a chance to look at it fresh, to learn, and to grow from it.

So, for someone who’s like, “Okay, I’m ready.” Right? Even though it’s a little scary, even though “I don’t know what I’m doing,” what is my first concrete step to take, if I want to get a better grip on my financial life?

So, the first concrete step to get a better grip on your financial life is about understanding your net worth. Now, if you’re anything like who I was in the past, or like most people I meet, you wake up in the morning and you say, “If I earn more, I will have more.” Unfortunately that actually puts you on a hamster wheel of never-ending chasing after earnings, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you have more. It actually means you might have less, for various reasons.

So, the first concrete step that you wanna take is calculating your net worth.

And how do we do that?

So, how you do that is you figure out how much you own. When I say how much you own, I specifically mean what’s in your savings account. Do you own a house? What’s its value? Do you own any retirement funds? And anything else that has a value in the market.

Or even their checking account, right?

Even their checking account, yes. Cash is a part of your assets. Then, it’s how much you owe, what’s your credit card balance, your student loans, your mortgages, and any, and what you owe your mom and you sister.

And then you subtract what you owe from what you own. And that leaves you with a single number and that single number is super super important, and can be a north star for how you make all your financial decisions. So, sometimes you’re gonna have a zero net worth, or a negative net worth. Or you might have positive net worth. There’s a whole range. I mean, there are people I know who make millions of dollars but still have negative net worth. The reason why net worth, yeah.

I wanna pause you there ’cause I think that’s really important for people to digest, because I know, and I can, I have developed the sixth sense of hearing my audience in my mind as I’m talking and as interviews are happening. I think a lot of people would perhaps be surprised to hear that, and thinking that if they are under-earning right now, if they are not employed right now, they may look at others who are employed or perhaps very high earners, and imagine that they’re better with their money. And it’s not necessarily the truth.

So, that point, you could be earning millions per year and you know people that are-

Absolutely.

… and that have a far negative, or their net worth is in the negative.

Yep.

Yeah. I think it’s just, I just want to highlight that. Keep telling us why it’s important to know that number.

Yeah. It’s important because, you know, we don’t wanna work until we die. That would, that’s a nice goal. And the way that you don’t have to work forever, or don’t have to work as hard forever, is by building assets. Because assets investments, whether that’s owning a home, or owning retirement accounts, or other types of assets, that is how you can ultimately produce income in the future, without having to work for it.

Yeah. It’s kind of having those dollar bills do the work for you. You’ve earned them, and now they get to earn you more.

Right. But if you still have as much debt as you do have assets, those assets are already accounted for, because you owe them to the debt.

That’s why net worth is important because you wanna really have more assets than you do debt eventually.

Yes. Okay. So, let’s say somebody watching right now, they’re like, “Okay, Amanda, Marie, I get it. I understand my net worth.” They might know that number. Perhaps it’s positive. It might be in the negative and they’re in debt, which I think a lot of folks are. When it comes to turning your money life around, from your point of view, what’s more important to focus on, if they are in that position where they’re in the negative? Is it paying down the debt first, or is it starting to save, or is it a combination of both?

It is absolutely about starting to save. Starting to save is the most important thing. We think of debt as like a disease that we have to get rid of. That’s how it’s treated. And, and I know before I really learned about money management, every single time money would hit my bank account, I would try and throw it at that debt as quickly as possible.

I did that too.

So, it was like, I have to get rid of it.

Yeah.

But the problem with that is that you’re then just exposed to more debt. So, it just becomes a perpetuating cycle that you never get out of.

And how are they exposed to more debt?

Because you don’t have any cash for those curveballs and those unexpected things that come up.

Which we’re gonna talk about in a few minutes, people. So, I just wanted to make that clear. If someone’s like, “Wait a minute, how am I exposed? I just wanna get rid of this thing as quickly as possible.” That, that’s where I was.

That’s, that’s, you know, what a lot of the media tells us to do, is to get rid of debt. And debt is like this shameful thing, even though most people have it.

Yeah.

And not all debt is bad debt. Like, I, you know, I’m paying 2.7% for my car loan right now. That’s like incredible. That’s practically free money, that frees up cash flow over time. So, you know, once you start to learn the intricacies of debt and how to optimize it, that, again, it’s like a game. You know, you’re just trying to figure out how you get more gold coins.

Yeah.

So it’s absolutely about saving at least one month, and, and that, that statistic you brought up about, you know, half of this country doesn’t have $1,000 in their bank account …

For a rainy day, or for some emergency.

Yeah, for some curveball. That, you know, it’s interesting. In DailyWorth 70% of our subscribers have a 401(k) but barely no emergency fund. So, the problem there is, yes, you’re, you’re investing for your retirement, but you’re probably also going into debt at the same time, so your net worth is going down. That’s not actually helping your future security unless you also have that cushion.

I think that’s such a huge point, because there’s definitely folks listening right now who are, they’re funding their 401(k)s but if they don’t have that cushion fund, which we’ll talk about in a few minutes more of why that’s important, to even imagine that, “Wow, I’m investing for my future and my net worth is still going down.” I think that’s a big wake-up call.

Yeah. It absolutely is.

So, let’s talk now, because a lot of folks, so we have people watching MarieTV, where they might have just started a business. Right? Or, they’re a freelancer, or they’re just in a position in life where their income is not predictable right now. If someone’s saying, “Okay, this all sounds great, you know. I would love to save. I would love to start investing for my future, but how do I do this if I don’t have a steady paycheck that I can depend on?”

Ugh, it’s so exhausting when you don’t have a steady paycheck. And it is impossible to plan when you don’t have a steady paycheck because you can have the best of intentions but if the money isn’t there-

It’s not there.

… what are you gonna do?

Yeah.

So, what’s crucial, even if you’re a freelancer, even if you’re just getting started, that you create a separate checking account for your income which, if you’re self-employed, is actually revenue, not income. And then work towards creating a consistent draw from that business checking account into your personal checking account. And ideally being able to leave some in your checking account of your business, so that on the months when you have less revenue, that you’re able to still give yourself that consistency.

And the second thing is, if you’re going on for like years and years of not having enough coming into your business, to be able to do this consistent draw, you gotta get a bridge job. You gotta get a 50% job. I’ve always done it. And it’s like, it’s not always a job that I love. Oftentimes it’s better when it’s a job that’s like kind of mundane.

Yeah.

But, you need that consistency. Otherwise, it is gonna be impossible.

I wanna highlight that for a minute too, ’cause we’ve talked about bridge jobs many many times on this show. And, if someone’s listening or watching for the first time, it was the first seven years of my business that I had multiple jobs.

You know, bartending, waiting tables, being a personal assistant – you could consider fitness in a certain degree, you know, there was steady income coming in from that. But it was the best thing ever for me. I think there are some humans out there, and I want them to know if they’re listening. You know, some people have to kind of burn the bridge, and have no income coming in, because that’s just how they get lit up, and that motivates them to bring in that revenue.

But there are many of us that aren’t wired like that. And I happen to be one of them, where as long as I have some consistent income coming in from a bridge job, or a side job, that’s what allowed my creativity to flourish. That’s what allowed me to have the peace of mind and the settlement of stress to be able to be really smart about growing that business.

Slowly, grant you, but it’s what made everything work. So, I love that you say that. You know, it doesn’t mean that you’re a failure, you know. If you’ve been trying to work on your business for a while, and the revenue just isn’t there yet, getting a bridge job, or a 50% job or whatever you call it, to be able to take care of yourself financially, man, that’s a win. That makes you strong, not weak.

Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s just like, you can sleep at night and, you know, maybe even get a job in a related industry to your, to your personal venture, that’s going to bring you clients and leads that way too. I mean, there’s all sorts of ways to make having that 50% job work for you on many levels.

Yeah. And then a third thing that you mentioned was reducing expenses dramatically, which I think is smart. You know, I grew up in a family where my mom, she’s amazing. But she knows how to, and I say this often, stretch a dollar bill around the block like five times.

Yeah.

So, frugality is in my nature. But tell me about your experience with reducing expenses dramatically, or anyone in your community who’s really done a good job at that.

Yeah. It’s, it’s again, because I’m on a public platform and teaching so many people about personal finance, I use my life constantly as an experiment. And like, “well, if I’m telling people to do that, I’d better be doing that myself.”

Yeah.

So, I have just gone through a major cost reduction where I am working toward getting my personal expenses to total, be 50% of my net income, so that I can save the other 50% of my net income. That’s what I’m working towards right now.

That’s exciting.

It is. It’s so liberating too, to have that cashflow, I gotta tell you.

And, tell me more about, like, were there any – have there been any surprised as you’re kind of investigating all these pockets of spending?

Yeah. I mean, really it comes down to your big overhead. What I just did was I just moved with my two kids into, from a house into a tiny apartment. And it was really hard for me at first because we grow up with these ideas of what, like, life is supposed to look like-

Sure.

… when you’re 40 and you’re a mom and you have two kids. And it was not living in a tiny apartment like this. But you know what happened? We all end up in the same room together. My kids aren’t in screens in different rooms. You know, they actually sleep in a bunk bed now, and they have not complained once. It’s like, they’ve gotten closer.

Wow.

And, I can clean the whole place in like 15 minutes.

That is … that’s one of the best things ever. A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I love tiny, like I love small houses.

I didn’t know that, yeah.

No, I really really do.

And I was thinking about this the other day, because I was having friends come over. And, I don’t know why, but there’s just like dust bunnies that –I also love cleaning.

And I was so excited because I have friends coming over and I vacuumed my entire apartment, and it was like, “oh that took me 10 minutes. I was like, this is fantastic.” It was awesome, so, congrats to you.

Yeah. I don’t have to rake leaves. I don’t have to drag trash cans up and down. You know, so there’s all these interesting, like, benefits where we thought that that’s not what life is supposed to look like, but it might actually be better.

Yeah. And I love the screen time too. I love that your kids are spending less time like this.

And less time alone, like they used to go into like different rooms.

Yeah.

And like we wouldn’t see each other. And I’d be in the kitchen, like on my laptop. Now everyone’s in the same room.

That’s awesome.

That’s great.

Good for you.

Yeah.

So, for those who are listening who do have predictable income and they are like, “Okay, get it. I’m on board. You know, I know my net worth.” Maybe perhaps for them, they aren’t in debt but they still know they could be doing a lot more to boost their financial life. What should they be doing? What should they focus on next?

So, I think the first thing that they should focus on is that savings account that we were talking about, just because so many people, even high earners who have retirement funds and all of that other stuff, still don’t have savings. Cash is just the best. The second thing is figuring out what is your primary root, your primary asset going to be? What’s the one that you’re really gonna understand, the mechanics of how this investment works?

So, for example, many of us buy houses because we think real estate is an investment, but it turns out real estate is not always an investment. Sometimes it can become a liability.

Yeah.

So, as a result of that, if your house is going to be your primary investment, understand the difference between a 30-year mortgage and a 15-year mortgage, ’cause if you’ve got a 30-year mortgage, you’re paying so much interest in that first 10 years that you’re not actually building equity in the house nearly the way that you think you are. So you’re … That money might actually have done better in a retirement account.

So, figuring the mechanics of those, you can also have a 401(k) that’s horribly under-optimized and not growing with the market.

Yep.

So, figure out, is this investment working the way it’s supposed to be? That’s absolutely vital.

Yeah. You know, I wanna comment on that, ’cause when I was little, one of the things that my parents showed me, specifically my mom, was the way to kind of beat the banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars with the mortgage by paying double principal.

And, she would love it. She’d take the highlighter out and it was one of the things that when I became an adult like, I’m gonna do that too, ’cause then I started researching and understanding, like, OMG. If you have a 30-year mortgage, and you just pay your mortgage payment, you wind up spending three times the amount of what you thought you purchased your home for.

Yeah. And if you sell it before seven years, or ten years or owning that house, it all depends-

Yeah.

… chances are that you actually didn’t even make a return on the house.

Even if it appreciated and you sold it for more …

Yep

… you actually then make a return. So, it wasn’t actually an investment. I mean it’s, uh, it’s fascinating. I’ll tell you another story. Do you know how banks calculate the minimum payment on your credit card?

How?

They most, this is most banks. Most of it is just the interest that you owe, and then between two and five percent of principal.

Wow.

So, that minimum is set up to basically just keep your debt where it is.

Oh, that’s like a punch in the gut.

Yeah.

I think, well this is what’s so exciting about this conversation though, because my hope is, for anyone listening who either is outraged, appalled, confused, something, I wanna stir you up so that you’re like, “Wait, there’s another way to do this?” So you can investigate. I mean, Amanda has an amazing book called Worth It, which we’ve talked about, we’ll talk more about, which is awesome but right, there’s so many great resources. It’s like, we have to empower ourselves and go research and learn, and execute.

Okay. So, finally, speaking of your book, you talk about six money habits that we can start to adopt, to help ourselves really feel good and get on this plan of growth. There’s two I wanna highlight.

Yeah.

The first one is, “live as far below your means as possible.” I know we kind of mentioned this, but I still think, you know, I’m always looking at my credit cards personally and business wise, and going like, “Is there a subscription hiding in there that I thought was useful, may have been useful, is not useful anymore? Where are the places where I’m spending more money that I don’t have to?”

I’m curious, besides downsizing, which I love, but is there anything else that’s helped you live as far below your means as possible. And why should we do that?

Well, you should live as far below your means as possible because the pressure everywhere is to live as far over your means as you possibly can.

Yes.

So, I, I say it that way because I often heard growing up, “Live below your means.” But to me, living below my means was, you know, little tight, I always misjudged that one, that like never really worked, ’cause I never seem to actually get below my means and then I got massive tax bills.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it’s not precise either.

Right.

Yeah.

And so, that actually doesn’t work. If you start to try and live as far below your means as possible, you start to question the fundamental things that our society teaches us you’re supposed to have, which is what, like the type of car you’re supposed to drive, the type of clothes you’re supposed to wear, and all those things which is what cause money to be so frustrating all the time, and go, “Is that because I really want that house or I really want that car? Or is that because I think I’m supposed to have it?”

Because society has brainwashed you.

Because yes, because society’s totally brainwashed you.

Yes.

Or your family, or you have certain expectations about what someone in your job is supposed to look like and supposed to do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah.

So, um, living below your means as far as possible. Like, right now I am in the process of going silver in my hair.

Yeah.

I’m not sure I’m gonna stay there. I’m not sure how it’s gonna look when it’s donel, but that’s because I am so sick of paying for and spending all the time dying my hair when I’m like, “I’m not even really have brown hair. I actually have like white hair now.”

Yeah.

And at 40, I’m not quite sure how that’s gonna go over, but I wanna-

You’re gonna experiment.

… try it.

Yes.

And that’s why my hair is blue right now, which I thought was kind of a fun side benefit, not intentional.

I think it’s cool though too, because learning in your book that you were kind of a punk rock kid, I was like, this is kind of taking you back to a cool rebellious stage. I like it.

I know. Well the, the woman who was coloring, who was bleaching my hair to put gray streaks into it, she was like, “Oh no, I’m so sorry. Your hair is blue.” And I, it was like, actually, that’s kind of exciting. I’ll keep it, thank you.

I think it’s cool, but getting back to this idea of living as far below your means as possible, it kind of brings in that game and that experiment element again, where it’s like, “Oh, what if we try this?” You know? It may not be about downsizing right now, but, “Oh, what if we try to eat this way versus this way? What if we cut out cable? What if we cut out X, Y, or Z and start playing with the numbers?” ‘Cause let’s face it, you could always go back up. You could always keep spending again.

Always go back up.

But, what can we learn by experimenting and by treating this, like, you know, what can we discover from doing it? I love that.

Yeah. I think it’s actually may even be better than that. I believe that so much of what we do is unconscious because we’re going – playing through certain emotions and once you start to challenge your core fundamental beliefs about what’s important, you might discover joy of what actually matters to you, and being able to separate – what are the things that I am doing because I think I’m supposed to, and then what are the things that truly, truly matter to me? And when you start to engage in these exercises, you become far more interested in what matters to you, as opposed to going through the motions because you think you should.

I love it. And then the second habit, which I try and plan for as much as humanly possible, and I love that you mentioned this, is “expect curveballs.” What does that mean?

So, curveballs are normal. You know, one of the things that I realized about budgeting for me that was consistently frustrating was, your phone breaks. You get a bill from the dentist, you know, all those things. Right now I know, like my tires need to be changed on the car. And those things never go in a budget because they’re unexpected.

So what I, one of the things that I recommend is that you set up a curveball account which you always put, you know, $100 with each paycheck into this. This is not your emergency fund. This is a curveball account that you get to $500 and you expect it to get wiped out every three months. That way you don’t feel like you’re breaking your budget.

Yeah.

And, you anticipate the curve balls. These days, I’m like, I think my curveball account needs to be, like, two grand, you know, as life gets more complicated and, and kids et cetera. Uh, but that is, you know, curveballs are normal.

Yes.

And curve balls are where everyone feels demoralized, so if we plan for the curveballs and we have a system for the curveballs, then we’re like, “Oh, there’s the curveball,” and then you’re like, “I got this handled.”

We talk about it on our team often as “life tax.” Like, anytime I’m talking with any of my team members, and I’m like, “Hey, what’s up?” And it’s like, “Oh, dog got sick. You know, oh, the roof’s leaking.” Like, someone, you know, something’s happening. Like, yep, life tax.

Yes.

‘Cause it, they come for all of us, and I love planning for it so you don’t feel like you’re constantly being knocked off track with your emergency savings, or your budgeting, or whatever else you’re doing to get yourself on a stronger financial footing.

Anything that you wanna leave us with today, before we wrap up? This was so fun.

Yeah. Just that, you know, everybody has a different personality when it comes to money. And everyone has different motivations. And, maybe you are motivated by having more money. Maybe you’re motivated by having a bigger impact on the world. Maybe you’re motivated by taking care of others. Just remember that no matter what that is, there’s no right or wrong way to think about money, but the more you take care of yourself, the more you’re able to take care of others.

So, don’t see thinking about money as greedy, or selfish, or something that someone else is supposed to do. Think of it as what makes a stronger you, so that you can be a stronger somebody for everyone else.

Amanda, thank you so much for coming on today.

My pleasure.

Great job, love you. Thank you for all the work you do in the world, and I’m sure you’ll be here again soon.

I hope so.

Now, Amanda and I would love to hear from you. So, we covered a lot of ground today, but I’m curious, what’s the one insight that you’re really taking away, and most important, how can you put that into action right now to take better hold of your financial life? Leave a comment below, and let us know. Now, as always, the best conversations happen after the episode, over at MarieForleo.com, so go there and leave a comment now.

And while you’re there, if you’re not already, you need to subscribe to our email list and become an MF Insider. You’ll get instant access to an audio I created called How To Get Anything You Want. It is so good. You’ll also get some exclusive content and special giveaways, and some personal updates from me that I just don’t share anywhere else.

Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams, because the world needs that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll catch you next time on MarieTV.

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So some of us find savings easier than others, but for those of you who don’t find savings so easy, here is how you get into the savings game.

So let’s say you’re at the store and you got the twenty dollar item and you got the ten dollar item, and you chose the ten dollar item instead. You may think in your mind that you’re like “Oh I just saved ten dollars.” But actually you didn’t save that ten dollars until you move that from your checking account into your savings account. But don’t stop there.

When you do that movement of that ten dollars from your checking account to your saving account, you’ve got to do the saving slide. And this is how you do it. This is the saving slide. Every time you move money into your savings account. That way you get the dopamine rush that gives you the excitement and thrill of saving and you’re gonna want to do it more.
I love it, alright. So we just saved some money. And we go …

Save and slide.
Save and slide.

I just saved myself some money.

Save and slide.

I’m gonna make up a whole song.