Our guest, Jenifer Sapel, is a financial expert and the founder of Utor Wealth. With years of experience in the financial industry, Jen is dedicated to helping women overcome their financial stress and achieve financial success with confidence. In this episode, she will share her insights on how to overcome the fear of financial management, and will offer valuable tips and strategies to help you create a healthy financial mindset.
it’s success okay I’ll answer all 16 of those questions right now I started uh in the
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music business at Sony while I was still [Music]
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[Music] [Applause]
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hello and welcome to the show my name is Renee Hastings and I’m your host of
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Renee speaks y’all today’s guest is truly amazing
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Our Guest is a recovering overachiever who overcompensated financially after
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living with the mother who struggled financially after a divorce she describes her
childhood home as one
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that pretended tough subjects didn’t exist her drive to succeed
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curiosity and astonishing ability to problem solve helped Propel her success
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in financial services winning Awards and often being the only woman leader in the
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room she started utor wealth after tiring of long-winded meetings and over emphasis
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on products and sales quotas utor is Latin for to use to employ to
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enjoy Our Guest believes that every dollar we touch and how we send it out into the
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world is shaping both the world we live in and the one we aspire to
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every woman deserves to do it intentionally and with confidence
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that is exactly how she helps her clients y’all join with me in welcoming
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Jensen [Applause]
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[Music] sorry
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I’m happy I’m wonderful how are you I am fantastic
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it is so amazing to meet you like I know we’re not like live face to face but
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this is about as face-to-face as we can get and I can like Beyond excited can you tell me
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it’s the best way to start well I love this
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this finances some people call it a taboo topic I call it one of those
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things that you need to know if you’re gonna ever achieve anything in your life like
honestly agreed money is impactful
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some people say oh rich people are terrible well
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I I would like to be able to prove them wrong
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yeah I’ve met plenty of lovely human beings who are wealthy so yeah right right but if
you grow up
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in a family in a state of lack then and you told all these things I
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wonder maybe sometimes our parents told us having money or being wealthy was bad
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to make themselves feel better maybe sometimes I don’t know I don’t
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know there’s a lot of just general shame around money so we have kind of culturally
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tied morality to money um and so there is a lot of like if
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you’re wealthy you worked a lot harder or you’re a good you’re a better person or you’re a
worse person and same if
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you’re not if you don’t have money so there’s we culturally have a lot of just baggage
around the topic of money
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facts I mean it was like 100 so so Jen tell us a little bit about you
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and your journey and what made motivated you to pursue a career in financial services
yeah
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um Financial Services found me more than I was driven to it um as you as your intro
says my parents
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got divorced when I was 10 and life before divorce and life after divorce was different in
terms of financial Comfort uh and watching my Mom struggle
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after divorce I was like not nope not going to do that just not okay we’ll ever depend on
another person
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financially um plus I’m a firstborn daughter and I
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was generally an overachiever so anything I did I had to be the best at it I had to do
really well uh so my
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first my first full-time job I was living on one paycheck was it getting
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paid twice a month and I was living on one paycheck and I was just sticking the other
check in the savings account again
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coming from a place of fear was I was so so you knew to do that
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kind of like as your own safety blanket that from from the experience you had growing
up and watching your Mom
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struggle at 10 and saying telling yourself this will never be my story yeah and the
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way you decided that this was never going to be your story is that you made up in your
mind you’re gonna live on one
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paycheck and save the other yeah I had help right we all we all have the help we all get
help and need help along the
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way um I did I came from that place of fear and I was like I want to do something better
and I was generally like super
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responsible the 50 like living on one paycheck and putting the other paycheck in a
savings
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account was a tip actually from a boyfriend like I don’t know if it’s 18
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or 19 and he worked at a bank and he was like yeah the wealthiest people I see at
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the bank they don’t make a lot of money they just save a lot so he was like so I try
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really hard to live on one paycheck and save the other paycheck and I’m like I looked at
my budget and I was like
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shoot I can do that wow that is so smart and how lucky are you to have that
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person in your life to tell you that at 18 because I heard those exact same words like live
on one paycheck and and
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save the other after I married my husband yeah you know so I’m good and
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grown kids go on and everything before I heard that wisdom right you know right
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and that’s a great like tip for any parents listening the time to start talking to kids about
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money is when they’re three or four or five years old and not and not from you know not
a not
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a fear-based thing not a just like a matter of fact just like you talk about a toothbrush
brush just like you talk
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about you know putting your shoes on or things like that same thing you get a dollar
when you get a dollar what you do
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with it we have three jars some of it goes in the spend jar some of it goes in the save jar
and some of it goes in the
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share jar oh I like that okay so so we have a lot
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of women who watch this show and a lot of them have small children and so I
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starting at three or five yes that’s that’s seems early but um
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but I’m willing to learn new things and share with our audience so because it’s
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never too late I mean even if you didn’t start at three or five it’s never too late because I
have 18 year old
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grandkids and they’re you know still trying to figure this thing out and I’m just like okay
so let me help you yeah
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figure out what to do so that you can sustain yourself and live yes I love it
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here and here’s I think I I totally agree with you it’s never too late to start
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three and five is I mean at the time that they have language you know you’re naming
everything else in the house
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right that’s a desk that’s a chair that’s the floor that’s the carpet right they’re gaining
language they should
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start to gain language around money too that’s a dollar bill that’s a quarter right they
don’t have to know anything
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more than that just to be able to identify it and start to build language around it um
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yeah exactly ever super dirty
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my three-year-old yeah only food in your mouth then only food
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that’s so gross oh man exactly
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um and then the thing and then the easiest thing with kids is this is what we do with
money right it’s just like
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okay now we’ve named it then the next thing is this is what we do with it and it’s if you
can start Young And even if
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you start at 18 that’s okay there’s only a few things you can do with money like it’s not
you know it’s like there’s only
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a few things you could do with a car so with kids again with my kids they have a they
have the jars and it’s like
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every dollar that comes in when they get birthday cards from their Aunt Judy and they
have a five dollar bill in it we
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take turns putting it in one of the three jars if it’s like five one dollar bills then we put one
dollar in each jar
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and then they get to decide you know where do you want to put the other two two things
but they start to gather that
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like oh this is what we do with money and you know there’s two main things we can do
with it we can save it we can
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spend it right that applies to 18 year olds too
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so we can save it spend it and
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for my kids and three or 18 year olds you’ll layer in on top of that invest
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invest can invest it yeah okay is that part of the sharing or is that in
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addition to the sharing that’s so you start with the you could start with two jars then it’s
three jars ultimately
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there’s only five things you can do with money okay you earn it okay
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you save it save it you invest it give it away
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or spend it got it okay that makes sense that’s that seems I mean it’s that’s pretty big
and
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sick I can think I can I can do that I thought well that that makes perfect sense
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yeah and I think and I think that you could start with two and work your way up to five
and I think if you’re an
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adult listening today and you’re like I’m not if you feel like I’m not good with money
those five things like their skill sets
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and all five of those things just pick one and start to get better at one and then start to
get better at a different one and start to get better at a
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different one right exactly because I mean Rome wasn’t built in a day right
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and a lot of this has to do with mindset and the relationship you have with money and
what you believe about money or what
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money is supposed to be for or what it can or can’t do and so I think that’s a
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whole nother mental roadblock that some people may have to overcome it you know
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at certain points because of the stories they told themselves when they were younger or
what they
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experienced growing up or that kind of thing yeah and I love I love the way you said that
the stories stories you tell
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them you tell yourself I think Society has a lot of stories that they like to tell us about
money
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and then there’s stories that come from within or from our families or from what where
however we feel about money
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um and the thing that’s been most helpful for me I mean I’ve I’ve now having been a
financial advisor for
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20 years I feel like I’m still I’m still in constant pursuit of the money story
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and revising my money story and learning more about the money story and and the way
I show up in the world and the way I
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utilize my money in the world but the things that really have been the most impactful for
me is that
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we what we’ve done culturally is we’ve made money kind of the object and like
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the end goal so because of that we were very confused
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and we’re like oh I want to have a lot of money um I want to be financially secure all of
those things
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right it isn’t really money the end game that we really want right like if you if you ask if I
have a lot of money what
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does that mean for me coming from a fear it meant not having to worry about paying
bills not
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having to worry about buying groceries um but if you ask me today like what is having
enough money
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mean like oh it’s this lifestyle that I can describe you know very succinctly my
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family and I live here we have these options we can go to these schools so it isn’t the
money it’s what the money can
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provide it’s the value that we use that money for so I like to the more I
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the more I allow for money just being it’s that intermediary it’s that thing
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in the middle between what I have now and what I what
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I really desire the lifestyle I really desire or the options that I desire money’s just that
middle thing
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yeah it’s like the means to the end yeah and and as long as it’s the means to the
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end then I think there’s a uh there’s a lot of value in what you just said that it
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doesn’t have to be the be all end-all it’s just the thing that gets you to
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where you want to be and where you want to go it’s a resource yeah like air is a
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resource water is a resource right it’s a resource that helps you measure what you value
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so it’s the thing that you value at the other end it’s the thing that you value
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that really you’re ultimately going for and I think that’s where you know so
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much of our financial confusion comes from because you go for financial advice and
you’re just talking about that
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advice that of that thing in the middle between where you are and what you’re
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trying to get like the money is just the resource so we can talk about all the resource
things but the clearer you are
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on what value you want out of that resource then the easier it is
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to answer all of those questions about the resource right right
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yeah absolutely absolutely it’s it’s a resource that helps you measure what you
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value yes I love how you put that and that’s why it’s hearing quotes
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because that is so good all right we’re cracking
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yeah I know like it’s really party in the sky right it’s like it’s another way to think about
money but that
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that’s my like my latest iteration right after 20 years of this journey and has
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been the most helpful yeah because it makes the most sense I mean absolutely
because if you value
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something like I gave an experience um I can’t remember who I was talking to but I was
sharing uh an experience in my
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own life where my son was 13 years old and he was in his Advanced art class and
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the teacher presented him with an opportunity to go to Italy with the advanced art class
to learn all about
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the works of Michelangelo and da Vinci and all of the guys and Italian culture
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and all of that he’s 13 years old and he comes home and
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I see the paper on the table like he had no intention of giving it to me and I
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said what’s this he said um Miss I can’t even remember
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what her name is we’ll call her Miss Brown Miss Brown gave that to us she’s uh taking
the advanced art class um to
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Italy and I was like wow that’s exciting do you want to go and he was like
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mom it’s Italy and the way he said that was like
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you we could you’re a single mom how on Earth could we ever get to Italy
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you know like there’s absolutely no way on Earth that this could ever happen yeah and
so I said do you want to go or
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not good for you he was like well yeah but
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you know and I was like well fine and I signed the paper I said here give it back to your
teacher and on it was you
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know a date for a deposit I think the deposit was like 100 bucks or whatever to save
your seat and then they gave you
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some time to save up and put in the rest of the the second payment third payment
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maybe it was four payments I don’t know what it was anyways I marked my calendar
and I started numbering the days
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backwards to the trip and a calendar that we could see and we would cross off each
day and that having that Vision in
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my head of what needed to be done help me dictate where my money went yeah
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because the best believe we didn’t go out to eat nearly as much we didn’t you know buy
go shopping and buy clothes and
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shoes and no we cut all that out because our money was now having uh a plan and a
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purpose to get this to Italy so that you decide excited in that time frame you valued that
trip to Italy more than the
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trips going out to eat you know leading up to those dates yeah absolutely and it
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was a sacrifice of course but it was worth it it was totally worth it because
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within that time we started talking about investing he’s 13. and how we wanted our
money to work for us while we
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didn’t have you know why we went working and and so um there was a platform out
called buy
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and hold.com I’m not sure if you’re familiar with them
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is like 36 now but anyways so buyandhole.com was a platform I can’t
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remember who bought it out but like you know Ameritrade or something anyways um it
was one of those things you could
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actually like buy a stock and and own it hold it and whatever and let it do its
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thing um you know earning interest and all of that and the stock market or bonds are
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whatever it was and so he had become interested in that and so he made some picks
for us and we invested a few
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dollars in some things one of his picks turned out to be a really great one and
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we ended up being able to save money through that investment to help us fund
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our spending money for the trip you know so I mean it was a really fantastic learning
experience for for
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both of us to see money working for us and we didn’t have to actually be out
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there you know it was in addition to our bake sale money fundraising getting our people
on doing
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what we had to do to make the ends meet so that we could have these amazing 10
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days in Italy with his Advanced art class I love it what a fabulous story
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yeah like you did all of the things in there you did a bake sale so you earned money in
there you saved the money up
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you did some budgeting in there and you invested the only thing you didn’t do in that
story that like uh is related to
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money is gifting right unless I consider him getting spending money the gifting
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but right right exactly and then we gave it away to the people who were organizing the
trip yeah
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I love it uh the acis it was a great trip and they don’t pay me to say that
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but I’m just saying well any listener has any kid in school
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and acis Ely uh it was a good experience for your kid you let them go yeah beautiful for
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sure so Jen what would you say though to people who are you know listeners who
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may be struggling financially and and they have some Financial stress how can they
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save or deal with the uncertainty in their lives um you know if they’re already
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financially not making ends meet how do they get out of that and and be able to see
above
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water yeah to you know to not be so stressed yeah so there’s like two
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different I have two different answers for that um if you feel like you’re underwater
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and stressed and can’t make ends meet um the reality might be that that’s true
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the reality might be that for you to pay for rent or your mortgage and food
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and all of the basic uh you know monthly needs that we have and annual needs you
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might not be earning enough for those um and if you’re in that situation where you’re
earning less than what you need
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on a monthly basis um then the only thing to do is to earn more I mean unless you can
like really
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reduce your expenses but there’s a lot of financial advice out there that really wants you
to like budget your way
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out of being financially stressed month to month
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um and you can’t do that you can’t budget your way out of not making enough money so
if like basic
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needs rent and food and that kind of thing if you’re not making it month to month you’ve
gotta you have to earn more
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money um and I believe that every human deserves if you’re working full-time you
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deserve to be able to live comfortably and pay all of your bills if you’re working full-time
so if you’re working a
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job that isn’t paying you enough um you’ve got to find a different job or you’ve got to find
a way to get a raise
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or um you know move where cost of living is is and I know that like moving is
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impossible for a lot of people but you have to find a way where you’re earning enough
where you can pay bills on a
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regular basis I imagine that could be part of your audience I imagine that the majority of
your
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audience is in that camp I do just want to be really clear like you can’t budget your way
out of
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under earning um but for a lot of people
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uh you feel underwater uh but you are earning enough you’re just not being
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intentional about where that money is going on a month-to-month basis or a
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day-to-day basis um and for those people I think
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the first step to Financial Security and financial confidence is just paying
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attention and I know in the times in my life and and growing up in my house where
money
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was super stressful what what you tend to do in your if you’re in a fear mode if you’re if
your
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body is physically afraid uh is you do you know fear-based behaviors like run
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away right put your head in the in the sand
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yeah um yeah so money can relate to that yeah I
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don’t know any I like I can’t I think and if you can think of one let me know but I I rack my
brain on this question
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all the time like I can’t think of a fear-based decision that’s a good financial decision we
just yeah and we
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don’t I mean biologically when we’re in our our
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brains in that place of fear our executive function shuts off an executive function is
where good money
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decisions come from so if you’re feeling really stressed and fearful you’ve got to get out
of that first before you
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start addressing your money um there’s a good book called burnout by the nagoski
twins I really recommend
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that for like how do you get out of that kind of mode of living okay um but then you got
to start paying
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attention and the first thing is you’ve got to spend less than you make
25:05
on a month-to-month basis that’s cash flow
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there’s a lot of ways to do that go ahead no that’s not saying that makes sense you have
to spend less than what you
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make I mean because if you’re trying to spend more then you that usually means you’re
dipping into credit cards which
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it doesn’t belong to you it’s not your money and and so you’re living above
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your means yeah yeah and I and if you can make financial decisions today that
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like honor your past self that honor your today self and then that
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honor your future self if you’re every month putting things on credit cards what you’re
doing is you’re stealing
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from your future and you’re constantly today constantly having to pay for your past self
so like
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with every paycheck you’re like oh I’m still paying for my past self I’m still paying for my
past self and it’s hard to
26:00
it’s hard to catch up if a lot of your money’s going to that to that those past financial
decisions
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right um and then like getting your hands around cash flow what I’ve seen work best for
for everybody is just
26:15
paying closer attention for most people just paying attention to it is enough right for
most people like I just don’t
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know where my money’s going I don’t like the subject it feels icky so I just don’t if there’s
money in the bank I
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spend it and you know two weeks from now I didn’t realize that I had this bill coming up
and so now I’m putting on a
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credit card there’s not paying attention you just add paying attention to it that stops IT
that’s not true for everybody
26:39
but that’s true for a lot of people right I mean if you even count like those expensive
coffees that we can tend
26:48
to get and how quickly those can add up or if people have other you know Habits Like
You Know smoking cigarettes or you
26:55
know whatever these things if we cut those things out then that adds a whole
27:01
lot or even getting our nails done when I used to go get my nails done it was like 75
bucks
27:08
no time yeah that adds up that really adds up you know it was more than just
27:15
nails but I’m just saying you know when you go to this a lot yeah those those
27:21
things that are luxuries or or pampering kind of things you know as nice as they are you
know if you’re not making ends
27:28
meet you know those are not things I don’t think spending your money on Wow and with
those I don’t I haven’t seen
27:35
somebody and I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there that did stop the coffee thing
um with those things though again once
27:42
you start paying attention you’ll notice like oh I can do a coffee every day but like if I
drop this these two
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subscriptions that I don’t use at all um that that I haven’t been paying
27:55
attention to right that gets me to where I need to be or even like with dining out uh
ordering it ordering a cocktail
28:01
with your meal like that gets expensive so if you have your cocktail at home and
28:07
then and then go out and have the meal without the cocktail depending on where you’re
living right right make sure it’s
28:13
on the way they’re taking you yeah and one of the best one of the best
28:20
tips I heard and this helped for me because I I used to get my nails done once a month
um and the pandemic just stopped that
28:27
habit for me and now that it’s stopped I’m just like oh I don’t really enjoy it as much as I
used to but I read
28:33
something once that was like what is that giving you so for me the getting my nails
done was less about having nice
28:40
nails and it was more about just having an hour to myself where I could where I
28:45
like there’s no demands on me I could just sit in peace and quiet I could listen to music
or whatever the case was
28:50
so once I knew that’s what I was really valuing out of getting my nails done like then I
28:57
can do I can have an hour that does the same thing but doesn’t cost as much exactly oh
that’s so good
29:04
so good and so you have to figure out how you can still do self-care because to me
that’s
29:10
self-care yeah you know and not have it cost you you know there’s more than one
29:15
way to skin a cat well you can you can and if you look at if you look at every expense as
how much do I value this what
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was the value I got out of this and how much how much value did I get out of it so like
every dollar you’re giving like
29:30
here’s the dollar what am I getting in exchange and for coffee for a lot of people that’s
like a you know a morning
29:36
ritual it’s a time of you know peace and whatever like I don’t want to give that
29:41
up but for this dollar over here I’m spending like I’m not getting a lot of value out of that
dollar so I’m either
29:48
Gonna Save or invest that for my future self or I’m gonna spend it differently right
exactly that’s so smart so smart
29:54
and even like I love how you said that even cutting some subscriptions you know like is
it really necessary for you to not
30:02
have commercials on Spotify for ten dollars or whatever it costs or whatever
30:07
those music things are or do I need Netflix Disney Spotify Amazon Prime
30:14
right and Apple tv like I really only watch two of those things I don’t watch
30:19
all of them probably don’t need all of them yeah exactly so in the last few minutes that
30:26
we have together Jen this has been so great that I don’t even think I’ve gotten to half my
questions that I
30:32
wanted to ask you sorry conversation so Vlog isn’t helpful yeah yeah it truly is
30:39
and it’s so relatable it truly is so um I have a surprise for our listeners
30:47
so before we go I want to share something that’s super exciting uh with
30:52
you and with our listeners that we’ve got even more amazing content with Jen
30:59
sapel over on 100 TV network where she will share exclusive golden nuggets with
31:08
us uh on 100 TV network it shows every
31:13
Tuesday in starting in June at 12 o’clock noon and it’s chock full of
31:19
extra interview questions behind the scenes stories and all kinds of
31:24
inspiration and empowerment to keep you going throughout the week so be sure to
31:31
mark your calendar starting in June and addition to Renee speaks we now have Renee
speaks golden nuggets only on 100
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TV network so Jen as we get ready to grab our
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drinks and get ready to head to the green room and enjoy a cocktail uh how
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would you like to wrap us up for this show how can we get in touch with you learn more
all of the great things
31:56
sure um thank you first for having me and for listening I hope that this was helpful
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um you can find me at utorwealth.com that’s u-t-o-r-utorwealth.com
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um I do complimentary consultations 20 minutes for anybody for anything so we may
not be a good fit and that is fine
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I’m happy to point you in the right direction whether or not you end up working with us
we do offer two Services
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though one is comprehensive financial planning the other is investment management
awesome awesome that’s great well thank
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you so much and that’s a wrap for Renee speaks and I’ll see you in the Green
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Room [Applause]
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there’s like a multi-million dollar difference
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[Music] so go and be awesome
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[Music]
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thank you