Why Your Relationship with Money Matters.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Wake that I love talking about money. So when Billy Zarillo and I were brought together by the Instagram algorithm and started chatting about our love for talking all things money, I just knew we had to jump on to share our thoughts about how people's relationship with money can shape many aspects of their lives. Billy is a financial advisor whose passion is helping women, especially women who have experienced divorce, answer tough financial questions and gain their purpose back. I just love his approach. So I hope you all enjoy. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Billy. Happy Friday. [00:01:08] Speaker C: It's Friday. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Oh, it's the best, right? It really always. Some people, when I talk to them about Fridays, like, what do they do on Fridays? What do you mean? I do my job on Friday. It's like I go into the office, I'm still working, and I'm like, oh, that sucks for you. Fridays are my day of inspiration. I do still work. I was still coordinating with my team, but it's my day to catch up on work, catch up on admin, business stuff, work with my business partner, do some creative work for our business. And I think when we spoke last, you kind of do the same on Fridays, right? [00:01:41] Speaker C: Yeah, today is my creative day. It's the day when I. Because throughout the week, I don't try to be as creative, try to be more technical. Right. And so I have a whole notebook of all the ideas that I have. I just write them down. I'm like, okay, that's for Friday, right? And so, yeah, that's what today is for. Is fun. Friday, I call it. Yeah. [00:02:01] Speaker B: And it's important, especially for business owners to have that time, because we can get so into the grind, Monday through Thursday, of helping clients, managing the business from a day to day operation. And you have to have time to step back. So I feel really lucky that I have that ability to make that decision and then give myself some flexibility on Fridays as well, to do things like this, which is very fun as well. [00:02:29] Speaker C: Yes, I love it. [00:02:31] Speaker B: So we met through Instagram, the lovely realm of social media. But I really enjoyed getting to know your approach to wealth management and money mindset. And so I want to share with the listeners a little bit about your background and how you kind of decided to cater to a very specific niche of people, which you're going to share with us right now, too. [00:02:56] Speaker C: Yes. I've been a financial advisor for about almost going on six years now, so it's been a while. And it's still kind of funny to say that, because going to college and stuff like that, I never thought I would be a financial advisor. Right. But I'll get into it here in a second because there's so much beyond just numbers when it comes to financial advising that I found out. But, yeah, you alluded to the niche market, or niche or however you want to say it, potato, potato. [00:03:37] Speaker B: Right, yeah, exactly. [00:03:41] Speaker C: I work specifically with female entrepreneurs that are getting divorced in some form of divorce. [00:03:49] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:49] Speaker C: Whether it be post, pre or in the middle of it. Right. And I always like to share the story, kind of why that is the case. So when I first got into financial advising, I'm sure you were the same way. Right. You're going to help whoever is going to take an appointment with you, right. You're going to talk to them and see how you can help them. And I've really started to focus on the last year or so, like, who do I want to help? We're going to talk about this. Right? Your past with money. And my past with money was my parents got divorced. Right. And I remember the thing that they argued about the most was money. Now, they probably argued about a lot of things, but I was also ten at the time. But I distinctly remember those conversations, and they weren't conversations. Right. They were arguments. I had a real negative outlook on money. I had a very also scary outlook on money. There was something to be feared. Right, right. And so I started to get into a couple of areas where I started working with females who were in some form of divorce. And it was kind of string of them. It was like seven, eight or nine of them. And I was just like, what is going on here? Why am I in this realm all of a sudden? And I just remember hearing their stories and it kind of all started to come flooding back to me as like a. I saw my mom and a lot of them, like, just the struggles that they were going through and everything. And it just dawned on me as, like, these are the people I'm supposed to help, right. These are the people that need kind of my particular skill set as far as an advisor. I think with all the self development that I've done over the years, just trying to get myself straight right after that type of event, I think all that work that I've done has helped me to help the people that I'm serving now. So hopefully that made sense. [00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. You and I have talked about this topic before. I think this is what got us kind of both excited about collaborating together, is that we see the value in people sharing and articulating and talking about their relationship with money, which includes stepping back and figuring out what are your earliest memories around money? What did you observe from your parents? What did you learn from your parents as far as the value of money, how you spend, how you save? Did you work as a kid? Did you actually have to manage all these things on your own from an early age? All these different things that impact the way we spend, the way we invest, the way we work as adults. And so I want you to talk a little bit about how you walk your clients through helping them define their relationship with money and kind of address it. [00:07:08] Speaker C: Yeah. And this has definitely shifted over the last year or so. I have a process that I take all my clients through, and it's called the purpose power plan. Right. And it's really geared towards figuring out who somebody wants to become. But I always tell people that it's nice to dream about who you want to become and the person that you want to become and the things that you want to accomplish, but you really can't do that until you've confronted the person that you are and where you came from. And so one of the first things that we do is we have a conversation. It's called the history of money, and we talk about, what was it like growing up as a kid with money? What were your earliest memories? What were some of the things that happened that you remember that could have impacted your money? And I think this is kind of different. I like to think so. This is kind of different in the sense, like, before that client ever talks about their history with money. I share my history with money. I share what I just shared with you, that my parents got divorced, and we went from living in a five bedroom house, two and a half acres of land, successful family, to living in a trailer. Right. At ten years old. That's a huge impact on a kid. [00:08:39] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:39] Speaker C: To automatically go from this lifestyle to this lifestyle mixed with the negativity that I was dealing with throughout that divorce, but then dealing with just now, my new mindset around money. I'm supposed to fear this? It's a negative thing. Look, we don't have any money right now. We're in this situation. And so I share that with clients because I want them to a know, hey, this is a safe space you can open up. [00:09:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:08] Speaker C: I want you to open up because I can't advise you on what you need to do if I don't know how you think about things, because you mentioned it before, how we grew up. Regardless of. It's not really a conscious thing that we're thinking about. It's subconscious. Right. It's something that's just wired in us to think like that. And until we expose some of that wiring, we don't know what we need to rewire. [00:09:42] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:42] Speaker C: We don't know what we need to fix yet. And so taking them through that process, and I'll tell you this, my first couple of years of advising, this never happened. But when, like I said, the last couple months and even to the year, I've had people break down and get emotional in meetings, and they always apologize. They're always like, I'm sorry, I'm crying. That's what I wanted. Money is emotional. It's not a logical thing. It is, right. If we all thought logically, we'd all be millionaires, but we don't. Right. [00:10:19] Speaker B: Right. [00:10:23] Speaker C: I want to expose that emotion so that we can call it out and we can say, do we want to be this person anymore? If the answer is no, then we can begin to put in habits and new thinking and new mindsets around how you get from person a to person b. Yeah. [00:10:42] Speaker B: So let's talk about that a little bit. You talked about kind of your, what is it, purpose, power plan. What kind of questions do you ask your clients to kind of draw out this information, especially ones that are making them emotional. [00:10:54] Speaker C: Yeah. So again, we ask them, what's their history of money? [00:10:58] Speaker B: Right. [00:10:59] Speaker C: That's the first question. And then we ask them, what does money mean to you now? And at this point, usually most people that you're sitting down, right, they're old. They're a little bit older. So they have, I like to say they have experienced life, right? They have seen some things. And so maybe they have kids or something along those lines, and they start to talk about what's important to them now, when it comes to their money. And they start revealing emotions. People don't say like, oh, I want to be a multimillionaire. They start revealing emotions. Well, everybody wants to be a multimillionaire. But sure, people reveal emotions first. They say, I want to feel secure. I want to feel confident. I want to feel not fearful anymore. I want to be proud of myself. They start saying these things. I want my kids to be proud of me. All these different emotions start to come out. And when they say these things, it's not about that. That's often I find as very surface level answer. Right. When somebody says, I want to be secure, well, I want to probe into that. Right. I want to say, well, what does it mean to you to be secure? And they start to tell me the things that, why they want to feel secure. And I ask why? Again, those are important to you. We need to get to the root of what it means for you to be secure. And we're doing all this because we're developing what I call the statement of financial purpose. And this is what we're going to build your entire financial plan off. Is this one purpose? Because this purpose is going to be in alignment with your goals and your action steps. And we all know something that's not in alignment, it's really hard to accomplish. But when everything is in alignment, it's a lot easier to accomplish goals because it's in alignment with who you are, what you value. So those are a couple of the questions that we get into. We obviously get into some other questions. Like, I actually just made a post about it the other day. At the end of the first meeting, our awareness meeting, I turn around on them and I say, hey, do you have any questions for me? And I love to ask the question, what do you think an advisor does? I get some wild answers. The first meeting is we hardly talk about money in the sense of dollars and cents. We really talk about money from an emotional aspect of things, because honestly, the other stuff, the technical side of money, is honestly the easiest thing to do. [00:14:04] Speaker B: Right. [00:14:04] Speaker C: There's basics behind that. The hard part is figuring out the emotional side of money. [00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I feel like the difficult part, right. Is kind of navigating people through shifting their mindset so that they can get to a point where they can either set themselves up for a better financial future or reach certain necessary financial goals to help them be financially stable. And that's just kind of like you said, that's the hardest part. It's not the dollar and cents, because people's earning potential is what it is most of the time, yes. Does that change for people a lot? Does income increase? Do opportunities increase? Sure. Especially if we're talking 25 to 45. Right. There's a lot that can happen. But generally speaking, once you're settled in your career, your earning capacity is kind of where it is. How much money you're bringing in is what it is, but it's what you can do outside of that that's going to benefit you. Changes you can make. So what type of work do you and your clients do? And I say you and your clients because, yes, you're guiding them. They have to want to do it to help shift their mindset into the places they need to be to help them reach their goals. [00:15:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a really good question. So shifting their mindset again, it goes back to, that's the hardest thing to do. And I let them know. I'm like, this is going to be the hardest thing that you do is shifting your mindset to money or shifting your mindset against where you used to be. And the work that we do is, one of the exercises that we do is we have them do a values exercise and we have them pick out between five and ten different values, right. There's a web based thing that we use that they can pick and choose the different values. And then when we come back to our blueprint meeting, which is after the awareness meeting, we start to look at those values and we start to ask questions around that, because ultimately that's going to help us build our financial statement of purpose. What I was talking about first, when we're kind of uncovering the past and we use all that to craft that statement, because that is how I'm going to help you change your mindset around money, because we have to focus on where you're going. Right. We have to recognize that that was who you were, and then we have to ask the question, is that who you want to be anymore? And then I ask the question, if that's the case, if you're saying no to that old version of you, what are you saying yes to? Right. And vice versa. If you're saying yes to the new version of yourself, what are you going to have to say no to? [00:17:16] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:17] Speaker C: And people kind of sit back when I ask that question, and I don't really try to some questions, I'll help you along. [00:17:28] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:29] Speaker C: That question I can't answer for you. Right. And so listening to people telling me what they're going to give up, what they're willing to do, I've always found that if they say it, it's 100% correct. If I say it, that they need to do something, it's 100% wrong. Because when we can tie emotion to their new goals, the chance of them accomplishing those goals goes up dramatically. [00:18:05] Speaker B: Right. [00:18:07] Speaker C: And so it's a combination of different things. And I tell them, too. My process is three meetings. Right. The first initial three meetings, the work is really done in the quarterly meetings. Right. The education that we do on a monthly basis, that's where the work is done. You might be motivated after the first three meetings to change your life, but we all know motivation only takes us so far, right? It's doing the daily tasks and giving them tasks that they can accomplish. For instance, we look at financial vital signs when we're helping somebody become financially healthy. And one of those vital signs is a savings rate, right? So it's the amount of income that somebody's saving related to their. The percentage of income that they're saving related to their income, and we'll have people not saving anything, right. And I always tell them, like, hey, a good, healthy savings rate is like 1520, 25% of your income. I don't expect you to do that today, but could you get to 1%? So it's establishing those small goals so that they can build confidence, right? Like, whoa, I saved one. If I can do one, I can do three, I can do four. And before they know it, six months, a year down the road, they're saving 10% of their income, and they didn't even realize it, right. And that's when they really start to gain some traction, because it's like, I can do this, I am doing this. And so it's not just one thing that we do that helps somebody shift their mindset. It's a continuous rewiring, reworking, and having conversations and open conversations around money. [00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah. You were kind of talking about who people were before and how they viewed their relationship with money and where they want to go and what kind of person they want to be and how they shift their mindset. I'm sitting here going through all my different chapters in life, right, about how I viewed money both, like, I think of my teenage years. I went to a private school with a lot of affluent people, and kids just kind of had access to money. And I was like, oh, I never realized that maybe I didn't have as much access. I felt very comfortable and taken care of. My parents did really well, but it was a whole different level from the cars in the parking lot to just the accessibility of what they were able to do, clothes that they wear, all these different things that I never even thought about before getting to high school. They were not even on my radar. Name brands, things like that. They were not even on my radar at that point. And you get to high school and you're in this new environment, and there was that chapter, and then I left that and went to college in a really small town in Florida. I played college sports, so I was on scholarships, so my income was very limited regarding what I could actually do. But again, I don't remember feeling like I didn't have enough. Right? I had just enough. I had fun. I was taken care of. And then you start working, you build a career, and you go through these different chapters. For me, I had periods of time where I was making good money but not really reaching the goals I wanted to reach. And then when I opened my own business, things changed substantially for me financially. And I had, like one year where my husband and I were kind of just like, all right, we're going to spend. Right. This year is not like I was still, I think I was like, 28, 29 maybe. I was like, you know what? We're going to go on the trips we want to go to. We're going to buy the things we want to do. We're going to do what we want this year. We still have plenty of time to reach our goals. And this was not us spending and going into debt, of course. It was just spending a little bit more, and it was really fun, but it was short lived after that. Then we bought a house and your commitments changed. Now we have a child and our commitments changed. And the things I care about now are so different. I don't care about a lot of the things that money used to buy me. Now when I think about money, I'm thinking about the type of time freedom that I can have, the extra ability for me to be able to dictate my time with my child, my husband, my family, the activities we get to do, the experiences. The stuff is so much less important than it ever was. And I think that's kind of, as you get older, that's somewhat common. Not for everyone. I know plenty of people where that's still important to them. I'm not judging. It's just different. Right. Again, relationship with money. [00:22:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I was going to say everybody's motivation around money is completely different. And that's what makes this process just different, because everybody has a different mindset. And not to say one is wrong. Better than the other. No, but what, I loved what you were saying, and when you were talking about your shift, right. Your shift from your early 20s into your stuff like that, it's like you became more intentional with your money and you became more cognizant of what money can get for you, not from a material standpoint, but from a time experience standpoint. And that's a lot of the times when I'm talking to somebody and I see that they have debt and I see all these things and they're like, yeah, I had a lot of fun, but now I'm in a situation where I want a legacy for my kids. I want to live life on my own terms. [00:24:06] Speaker B: Right. [00:24:06] Speaker C: And one of the things I talk about, I rarely use the word retirement. I don't like that word. I like phrasing. It by being work optional. And optional means you have a choice, right? Like, it's your choice. You choose when you want to be done working. It's your choice what your retirement is going to look like. And I think that's a big mind shift for people is like, oh, it's like they think of like, I got to get to this finish line. That's my mindset. Can I get to 67? I got to have this finish line. And then what? After that, right? It's like, no, it's like life is about experiences, and the older we get, the more we realize that because we've been on this earth a lot longer than most people. So I love that, that you said that kind of living life on your own terms. I'll say this, I say this to my clients a lot. I want you to live your life on purpose. [00:25:12] Speaker B: Right? [00:25:13] Speaker C: Not by chance. I want you to live your life on purpose and whatever your purpose is. So, yeah, I love that you said that. That was awesome. [00:25:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And there are certain things, right? Like, I'm still going to prioritize the things where I spend money, where it adds value, right. Buying an expensive purse for me, I've done that. I have them. They're nice. They're great. I'll have them for a long time. But you spend the money, you're super excited for a week, and after that you kind of forget. And some of those things I haven't even gotten out of my storage, they're just up in my closet. They're just not day to day. I use my $40 fanny pack, shoulder bag, and a backpack most days that I got from target in reality, right, what we actually use to benefit our life. So when I think about money, I think of, is this making my life easier? Is it giving me more time to do things with my family? Which I kind of mentioned? Is it overall just making the way I move through life more convenient? That's where I spend my money. So I spend my money on my fitness and health goals, so my gym membership and my class memberships. To me, there's a pretty big number that I'm willing to invest in those types of things because I get value from it. I'm willing to invest money in myself. So building a business, investing myself, classes, books, all of those things. Things that I'm investing myself, I'm going to invest money, obviously saving money and putting that aside for different goals. Like I have travel funds, I have work optional funds. I'm going to use Billy's word because I like that a lot. I have my work optional funds and my different accounts that I'm going into, and then play money. Things that we get to say, hey, this month, what's something on our list that we want to do? But I also think you kind of have to have some of those experience you have to spend on the expensive purse or maybe make a bad choice here and there to figure it out because I don't know that I feel like it took me a couple of things happening. It took getting older, it took having a child, which I think really is a big financial check, even if you're really comfortable, because all of a sudden a lot more money is going out, depending on their age. And I think it only gets more expensive from what I hear. But my daughter's only like 22 months next week, so it's mostly like the expense of diapers and supplies and things like that right now. But I've made those mistakes. I've gotten into. I've overspent in situations. And I also think differently. I think about debt. Right. And strategies that I use. Some people don't use credit cards because they're terrified of debt. Well, I use credit cards as a resource and an investment asset because I put everything on credit cards and I get all the points, and I use those points to travel for free, but I pay it off every month. Right. Like all these little decisions that can be scary when, you know, when you have a certain experience around money and debt, but then as you learn to do them intentionally, right, then you become smarter and it actually can benefit you. It takes work, for sure. But I love that you're helping clients kind of check the reality of you can't do what your neighbor is doing. You can't do what your friend's doing because their goals and how they view money and what they think is important are not going to apply to you and your life. And I have conversations with my friends all the time, and we view money so differently, and nothing's right or wrong. [00:28:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that. I wish more people would have, especially like, friends. It'd be hard with family. I get it, some family members. But having more open conversations around money. Right. And I love the fact that. I just love the fact that when you can communicate about money, it does free you because it frees you to not be afraid of it, and it lets you dream. I think that's what people get. So that's why people don't sit down with financial advisors, because they've swept things under the rug for so long that they are so afraid to open up, to lift up the rug, and it's like, you have to. There's a saying that if you keep sweeping under the rug, at the end of the day, all you have is a lumpy rug. And so you have to expose that stuff to be able to be free. At the end of the day, those things, those thoughts, those limiting beliefs around your money, I still have it. You don't ever get away from those things. They don't ever just disappear. You always have that baggage with you, so to speak. I have a huge anxiety when it comes around money. Not anymore. Not huge, but I used to in the sense, like, if we would spend $100, I would freak out. It would be full panic mode for Billy. Right. I'm still driving the same car since 2012. [00:30:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:22] Speaker C: That's just the person I am. Like, hey, it's working. It looks good, it operates. I don't need to do that. Right. But then on the opposite side, there's other people that they spend. Right. That's their personality. But I think if you can understand your personality with money, like your love language with money, understanding how you interact with it, you're just able to catch yourself. Right. See those red flags when they're coming and be able to make a different decision than you would have previous. Right. You always have that in the back of your head. Oh, that's comfortable. But does that ultimately serve your financial purpose? If it doesn't, what are we going to do instead of doing that? [00:31:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. And I definitely think there's lots of people that kind of hold the conversation about money really close to them and don't share. I guess there's lots of people who aren't going to ask, how much do you make? Right. That seems like an aggressive question for me. I don't really care. That doesn't really bother me. But I don't judge people for not wanting to keep that a little bit close. But I find it interesting that there's some people that are like, oh, that's personal. Or I'm like, but is it? And I'm not just asking it on a Whim. Right? We're talking about it. And that leads to a conversation about money, just how you think about it. And people just feel like, it's almost like when they're talking about sex, they kind of feel like. It's like, oh, I can't. Private. And it's just interesting to me. Again, this isn't a judgment. It's just interesting because I definitely encourage people that I work with to talk about money substantially, talk about it early, especially with significant others. Talk about it often, have a plan for making budgets. And so I love that you were talking about it even with sharing it with your friends and having those open conversations so people can collaborate, learn from each other, and just have a better understanding of why your friends or even your family make the decisions they make. And so I think this is kind of a great topic for us to end on because we're going to explore this topic on Billy's podcast and talk a little bit about how to address the issue of money with your significant other and how it impacts both a marriage and how it impacts in the event of divorce, because obviously that's what I do. And the issue of money impacts so many different levels of a relationship, and it has very little to do with how much money you have, although that's what people think the issue is. And so, Billy, anything else you want to share with our listeners before we hop over and finish this conversation on your. [00:33:16] Speaker C: Know, the biggest thing I could say is just, if you're thinking, know, I hope that somebody listened to this today and is just going to have that inter conversation with themselves to be like, hey, what do I really think about money? And just to start asking yourself that question. And that's where it all starts. That's where change starts. So hopefully somebody today or whenever they listen to that, ask themselves that question. [00:33:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. I will put Billy's information in my session notes and also a link to his podcast so that you can pick this conversation up in part two. But Billy, thank you so much for chatting. And, I mean, I'll see you in like five minutes. [00:34:04] Speaker C: I love it. [00:34:05] Speaker B: All right, thank you.