Financially Smitten Blog

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I recently wrote about the benefits of scheduling a Financial Health Day ["F.H.D."] and I want to follow up with you to show how profitable such a day can be. One of my private financial therapy clients was inspired to take a Financial Health Day and I share her story here with you [with permission and a name change, of course!] along with some of my personal musings on the process.

Amy, a journalist and writer, initially came to me for money coaching because she was living in financial chaos and knew she was not earning her worth. She has made a lot of progress in these areas, but it was her recent F.H.D. that really amped things up and showed her the bottom line profitability of nurturing her relationship with money.

One of the ways that Amy’s underearning manifested has been her difficulty with billing for contracted writing assignments. During her F.H.D., she completed her outstanding invoicing and is now anticipating the $3,200 in income it represents.

She also rarely submitted for reimbursement for meals with ’sources’ for the articles she wrote for an ongoing gig. During the daylong date with her money, she gathered all these invoices and submitted them for reimbursement…to a total of $750! And in doing so, Amy was able to devise a system that will make this reimbursement process much more streamlined going forward.

One of the tasks she planned to accomplish on her F.H.D. was to review her bank statements and reconcile her checking account. In doing so, she came across some questionable charges. A quick and painless call to the bank earned her $75 credited back to her account. And, she didn’t even have to ask! The bank’s customer service rep offered to do this, even though they were not a bank error. Addressing her medical reimbursements was the final thing on Amy’s F.H.D. list. She had a medical concern earlier in the year and had yet to deal with all the paperwork fallout from it. Having the space and time to organize this, Amy wound up submitting for $1675 in medical reimbursements.

All in all, Amy’s Financial Health Day netted her almost $6,000! Not bad for a day’s worth of work, no? And how did she celebrate? A wine connoisseur, she treated herself to a special bottle of wine to enjoy with her boyfriend that night as they celebrated with a delicious home cooked dinner.

As I listened to Amy share her account of her F.H.D., I thought about similar stories I’ve heard from other financial therapy clients. An image that continues to emerge for me as I listen is that of a shepherdess–with a beautiful golden crook–calling back into the fold money that has left the flock….money that is rightfully one’s own, but is lost out in the pasture.

Our responsibility to our financial life is to be a good shepherdess. To ensure that under our watchful eye our ‘financial flock’ is intact, that it is protected from predators, and to continually be ‘counting our sheep,’ making sure all is accounted for. Continuing with this imagery, there are times when I see myself as the ‘money coach border collie,’ assisting my shepherdess clients in rounding up their lost ’sheep!’

YOUR ACTION STEPS TO FINANCIAL SMITTEN-HOOD:

I’d like you to envision yourself a shepherdess of your financial life and give some thought to where there might be some of your “money flock” that is lost in the meadows or at the mercy of wolves. Grab your golden crook and gather it back into the fold. No Little Bo Peep attire required!

Please add to the conversation and inspire others by letting us know how much YOU reaped during your Financial Health Day in the  COMMENTS section below.

Share the Wealth! If this blog post was helpful, please share it via the twitter and/or Facebook links below {or via the social media site of your choice.}

“If you want to rear financial blessings,
you have to sow financially.“
~Joel Osteen

I am always talking with my clients about setting up “money dates,” which are weekly pre-scheduled periods of time to focus on nurturing one’s relationship with money. Ron Lieber, financial journalist for the New York Times, has written about taking a “Financial Health Day,” which is akin to the proverbial ‘mental health day’ so many of us take from time to time. You can read his article online here and it includes a short video ‘documentary’ of his day. [Spoiler alter: He ends his day shopping at Barney's!]

So what is a “Financial Health Day” and how do you make it a productive one? Basically it’s one full day you carve out as uninterrupted time to tend to a variety of the financial ‘to dos’ that are perpetually on your list. Ideally it’s a weekday that yes–you take off from work–to spend with your money. The beauty of it being a weekday is that some of your tasks will most likely involve calling service providers that are typically open only during business hours AND you can talk from the privacy of your own home without your cube-neighbor hearing all about your dental work reimbursements or your concerns about your credit score.

By taking this bold step, you are going to feel SO much more on top of things and in control of your financial life! To start, secure the day in your calendar and set limits so there will be NO interruptions. Make a checklist of the tasks you would like to accomplish. These might include:

=  Organizing your financial paperwork.
=  Researching questionable charges on your credit card bills.
=  Negotiating your cell phone and/or cable company bill. [Check out Ramit "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" Sethi's great tips on this here.]
=  Consolidating crucial financial info. Lieber used Merrill Lynch’s handy (and free) Financial Life Organizer to put all of his in one spot for easy emergency access.
=  Researching and contacting estate planners if you need to create or update your will.
=  Setting up a digital bookkeeping system.
=  Reviewing your credit report and score. You are entitled to three free credit reports each year, one from each reporting bureau, via the Annual Credit Report website.
=  Creating a monthly spending plan.
=  Scheduling time to talk with your insurance agent. Make sure you are properly insured and that you are receiving the best rates available.
=  Going paperless! Most companies now offer a ‘green’ paperless billing option. Research it and enroll.
=  Determining your net worth.
=  Reconciling the paperwork for you insurance reimbusements or FSA.
=  Tending to your emergency fund. If you have not already established one, determine how much you need and set up an automatic monthly deposit into a separate savings account to begin this process. {breathe a sigh of relief!}

As Lieber writes in his article, the best way to get started with your “mini money makeover” is to begin with the easiest tasks first. So, once you’ve compiled your checklist, review it and organize all of your tasks by level of difficulty from easiest to hardest. After you complete each one, cross it off your list. Before you know it, you’ll find that the satisfaction you gain from accomplishing each goal will give you the confidence and momentum you need to tackle the tougher stuff.

Now…one of my mentors would suggest having some delicious chocolate around to “sweeten the deal” throughout the day! Even if you do this I’d like you to think about how you will reward or treat yourself to something special after your Financail Health Day. What can you do to celebrate the time you invested in yourself and your financial wellbeing?

YOUR ACTION STEPS TO FINANCIAL SMITTEN-HOOD:
I encourage you to use the Financially Smitten community to help keep you accountable. Add a comment below stating and committing to the day you have scheduled for YOUR Financial Health Day. Then come back and share your experience and any tips or stumbling blocks you encountered. And, inspire us all with how you treated yourself at the end of the day!

“In business, you don’t get what you deserve,
you get what you negotiate.”
~ Chester L. Karras

I recently wrote an article about a holistic concept of net worth and in the book, Women’s Worth: Finding Your Financial Confidence, author and certified financial planner Eleanor Blayney devotes a complete [excellent] chapter on ‘human capital.” She states: “…our most valuable asset…is our ability to turn our intelligence, education, skills, and experience into income through work.” She goes on to point out that significant wealth is seldom the result of investments in stocks, bonds, and other traditional assets. Rather, our human capital is the path to wealth building.

Blayney shares an illuminating worksheet that calculates the lifetime value of YOUR earnings and shows how things such as asking for a raise, leaving the work force for three years to parent full-time, or getting retraining impacts the value of human capital over time.

She asserts that “the value of your earnings are every bit as important to grow and manage as your investment accounts.” One way to do this to this is to obtain and sustain a competitive standing in the job market. Blayney shares, “Studies have shown, for example, that a college education can increase lifetime earnings by as much as $1 million.”

However vital keeping yourself re-tooled is, it is trumped by an even more important piece of the equation: “asking for more.” Blayney points out that this is something that men are MUCH more comfortable with. The current wage gap means women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in the same job. This may not seem like much, but to put it in perspective, for female college graduates this will result $1.2 million dollars less in earnings over their working life then their male counterparts!

So far, this is my favorite sentence in the book–and may even be one of the most powerful statements I’ve read my whole life:

“I can state with certainty that the investment of time and money spent on improving [negotiation] skills can make women wealthy in a way that simply becoming savvier about investing cannot.”

I hope this is music to some of your ears, because I know how much you ladies dread comprehending your financial portfolios. Now, I’m in no way saying ignore learning about your investments, but it seems to me that there is something super efficient about using negotiation skills to uplevel one’s income. Blayney attests that it is the biggest bang-for-your-buck ROI. AND, negotiating skills can be leveraged in every area of our lives, not simply in our boss’s or client’s office. Think about how beneficial those skills could be in getting your partner to take out the garbage or accompanying you to that chick flick you’re dying to see!

So, ladies, be on the lookout for more information about developing successful negotiation skills because I’m seeing how important this is to rocking your money mojo–and we are going to be on it!

YOUR ACTION STEPS TO FINANCIAL SMITTEN-HOOD:

I’d like you to pull out your Money Journal and write about your response to this article. What images, words, feelings come to mind when you think about “asking for more” and/or negotiating? These are not typically feminine qualities, so I imagine there may be some conflict arising. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this, especially regarding the gender piece. Please share them with me in the comments section below!

I’ve started reading Eleanor Blayneys’ “Women’s Worth: Finding Your Financial Confidence” for August’s Virtual Book Salon and am loving what she has to share. As a Certified Financial Planner who focuses on women’s financial issues and struggles, I’m finding that her book speaks to me. One of the points she makes early on is that is important for us to ‘know our numbers.” She parallels our physical health to our financial health. Most of us know our blood pressure, our cholesterol levels, our weight, etc. Yet, how many of us have stepped on the ‘credit score scale’ or know our net worth, our tax liability, the total of our monthly fixed expenses? Watch Eleanor talk about the importance of knowing our numbers in this short video: