The Money Blog

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3 Common Financial Mistakes Women Make (+ How to Fix them) || with Lisa Schader

podcast Sep 24, 2023

 

I recently watched a reel on the "motherhood penalty" that sent me down an internet wormhole. Finances already make me a little bit anxious, but coupled with my research I knew it was time to bring an expert on the podcast. Lisa Schader, founder of Money Fit Moms, dives into essential financial insights for women, and shares her personal journey from frugal upbringing to becoming an advocate for financial independence.

 

We explore common mistakes women make in managing their finances and provide actionable steps to build wealth. Tune in for an eye-opening conversation that will empower you to take control of your financial future. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, this episode offers valuable insights to help you thrive financially. Plus, don't miss out on Lisa's free money challenge—a hands-on approach to kickstart your journey towards financial wellness.

 

Host a Tricks and Treats gathering!

 

 

About a few other things...

 

Do you struggle to create habits that stick? It's not your fault. The truth is simple: you've been trying to form habits using methods designed for perfect robots--not real women living real lives. It's time to change that. If I could help you gain confidence in creating habits AND guide you to uncover the ONE supportive habit to deeply care for yourself, could you commit 21 days to learning this method? The Sticky Habit Method is a 21-day course that revolutionizes the habit-formation process. It's real habits for real women.

 

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This episode is brought to you by OneSkin. Get 15% off with the code PROGRESS.

 


 

 

 

SHOW NOTES
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Try me FREE Class and check out my NEW Habit Course
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Songs Credit: Pleasant Pictures Music Club

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Monica: Lisa Shader. Welcome back to About Progress.

 

Lisa: thank you so much for having me.

 

I'm thrilled.

 

Monica: I wanna start by finding out from you a little bit of your own history if budgeting and money and finances, was that something that you, as a little kid, were really interested in and good at?

 

Lisa: So I definitely think it was in my d n a, my, my heritage, my family growing up of just being frugal. And I think that was mostly out of necessity. And so I was, I think, naturally. Frugal. I always loved math and numbers. I think when I became that person who couldn't stop talking about personal finance and specifically investing wasn't until college. So I actually I got my degrees in accounting. My master's had an emphasis in tax, but that is not necessarily related to personal finance, but I had colleagues. In the tax accounting world who struggled with personal financial choices. And that's when I realized this was not common sense. But I had one huge advantage and that was that my husband and I had taken a personal finance class that was just an elective. It wasn't even part of our coursework, and we were able to take it together. And it was taught by a professor who had worked in investing. And once you learn about the power of compound. Compound interest is one of the greatest miracles in the world, and people who know it and understand it also cannot stop talking about it. And so I did like a competition where were supposed to teach about something and it could have been about anything.

 

And I chose to talk about the power of compound interest and investing, because The miracle happens in decades. It's not like a get rich quick thing, but I could not stop talking about it. That's why I started that first blog was because most of the mom blogs around money were about couponing and frugality,

 

which are great, Are not miraculous.

 

You know I mean? It's

 

not this crazy thing. And I have to say when I talk about money, 'cause a lot of people have this hang up around a negative connotation about if you talk about building wealth or net worth, it is not about money. Money is a tool. Your greatest resource is actually your time.

 

So when I talk about building wealth, I'm talking about the power to have your time back, spend more time with your loved ones to make the world a better place. And so I just always like to provide that context. 'cause a lot of people are just like, oh no some people get it, but some people are raised to have this kind of puritanical view of money and wealth and just realize it's just a tool and it's the best tool to buy back our most important thing, which is our time.

 

Monica: I'm so glad you said that right off the bat. And also how you talked about another kind of I guess feeling we can have about money. Is that ugh. Feeling like that means I need to coupon and budget and while that all can be part of it, it's about like pinching pennies. For you. It's about so much more.

 

It's about the long-term vision of what financial freedom can do, especially for women. And so before we really dig in, I wanted to know that too. Why does it matter to you that women in particular get good at finances and not just the penny pinching, but beyond that?

 

Lisa: Yes,

 

absolutely. So women specifically, Moms who I know. Not all of your audiences are moms, but I know a lot of 'em the most financially vulnerable population in the world because our income earning potential is affected by having children. 'cause we're often, whether or not we're the primary caregivers, you still are balancing how, whether you're outsourcing, childcare, it's always a difficulty. At the same time we're the ones most effective by the outcome of finances. So I just posted about this the other day, that 80% of women will be single when they die, which sounds really

 

dark. The truth is that women outlive their spouses. So whether or not they get married or divorce statistically you're gonna outlive and more, the average is 12 years so it's not for a short time. It's for a long time.

 

and even though women are more likely to be involved in the daily money management, such as budgeting and purchasing decisions, they are less likely to feel confident about these long-term big picture finances, which honestly have such a bigger impact on your financial wellbeing. And yet we're the ones who are going to be living with the consequences of that for a long time. And so my excitement is because it's just these little things and it almost feels like secrets because it's just not common knowledge that can make or break your long-term financial wellbeing. And I'm just so interested in getting that information into the hands of people who are. Once you learn the basics, it will change your life significantly and impact your health and wellbeing and stress.

 

I is absolutely life changing. You can see how fired up I get because it's just this thing that can be so life changing when you learn the basics.

 

Monica: It's almost like you should call yourself a financial educator and counselor because the two go hand in hand. Just the effect it can have on women. The toll of . Of, of stress that finance can have on the day-to-day lives, but also in the trajectory of their lives. What I wanted to talk about were some of these basic slash common sense things that you believe everyone, especially women, should know and be doing about.

 

Finances. So we're actually gonna start with the mistakes though. What are the three big mistakes that most women are making when it comes to finances?

 

Lisa: Yeah.

 

And even the word mistakes. I have a very shame-free view of finances I love to reframe that we've all done the best we can with what we have. And so I like to see these as opportunities for improvement. So missed opportunities. One of the best analogies

 

I like for retirement is the Oregon Trail. 'cause I don't know about you. I played that game

 

in school and Right.

 

You have to, you had to leave at a certain time. Otherwise winter hit and kind retirement. Get on, get going and get going at a certain pace to be able to hit these milestones and timing and get there in retirement. And so for me, these mistakes or missed opportunities are like, you don't even know there's actually this supercharge button on your wagon or your accident or whatever you're using on the organ trail, your car

 

to

 

Monica: I love

 

Lisa: make it so much easier. And so this is not to induce shame of oh no, you're doing it wrong. It's Hey, guess what? This thing can get so much better. So mistake number one is budgeting, but not tracking net worth. And that's not to disparage budgeting. It's great, but your net worth is a game changer. Mistake number two is thinking investing has to be complicated. And some people just even shut down their brain as soon as they hear the word investing. 'cause if you don't have a lot of familiarity, it's. Just feels like this thing that you don't do and never will do, but I'm telling you, it's actually can be incredibly simple. And mistake three is not knowing your long-term financial plan. A lot of people know their budget on a monthly basis, or they know their budget on a yearly basis, but they're not necessarily having that long-term lifelong financial plan. So I would say those are the three most common, easily remedied mistakes or missed opportunities.

 

Monica: can we go back to mistake number one? Because I'm one of those people. When someone says net or gross and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. I have to ask. My husband's an accountant, so every time I'm like, what's net and what's gross? What am I meaning every time? So when you say their net worth, what do you mean?

 

Lisa: Yes,

 

you're right, so net has to do with you're totaling something up and you're subtracting something. So your net worth is the total value of your assets, what you own. So your house, if you own it, that'd be the value of it if you sold it. All of your cash accounts, all of your investment and retirement accounts, anything you own minus your debt or what you owe. So if you have a mortgage, if you have any, I only put credit cards if they are not paid off. Every month. Basically any unpaid debt. So if you have car loan, student loan, any kind of, home equity loan, any kind of debt, subtracted that.

 

So what you own, your assets minus what you owe your debt equals your net worth. To be clear, I love budgeting. I do budget. Love it. It's a great way to make sure you live within your means, which is a key part of wealth, but only looking at your cash accounts.

 

I was trying to think of analogy. Imagine going to Disneyland and never leaving Main Street. Can you have a good time? Yes. But you are missing on the bigger picture if you are doing finance. And you're building this long-term. Net worth is, cash should be only a small part of your finances. So if you're only looking at your cash, you are not gonna be doing the things that actually build worth, which is avoiding or paying off high interest debt.

 

And especially investing, A lot of times people are not motivated to invest. Because it, the cash leaves their account. And if you're not tracking all of your, those are their accounts, it falls off the face of the earth

 

And It doesn't feel like that exciting. if you're only gonna do one, track your net worth.

 

But I've worked with people who they were paying off debt and, honestly, budgeting was just not something they did. And all we did was spend five minutes just updating their account balances. If people don't know how to do this, I have a free challenge, and this is the first challenge you do.

 

You can do it in a spreadsheet. There's tools that you can integrate all this instantly, so it really doesn't take a lot of time. But we went through and updated all their account balances and their cash balances stayed relatively the same when they were paying off debt, but because they were tracking their net worth was going up by thousands every month and they became. Debt free in a matter of months, because once you figure out what you're doing, it's amazing. How much faster you can move and then you're, and then they would see these moments where, the 4 0 1 K balance would go up and they'd say, oh, that doesn't count. We didn't actually contribute any to it.

 

I'm like, exactly like you're you're putting money places where it is growing on its own and no longer putting in places where it's holding you back. So

 

I've seen people say tracking your net worth changed the trajectory of their finances in such a huge way. it just basically zooms you out to see the whole picture of building the net worth.

 

Monica: Okay. That's fascinating to me. So it's almost a mindset shift, right? Like It's changing your relationship with money and also your future. So that way you are spending it in ways that are more aligned with the bigger picture than just seeing things in the smaller picture. Is that right?

 

Lisa: Cash is really only meant to be for relatively short term needs, and yes. You absolutely should have an emergency fund. And that's why that's part of my money food challenge. It basically takes you through step by step. But , there's two more categories.

 

People who are right to spend less than they earn. And we work with that and maybe there's nothing left over for investing. But another very common group I work with are the cash hoarders who love, and they start to make more and it's great and they can't stop hoarding cash and investing terrifies them. But actually the ironic part is, They want to keep the cash 'cause it helps 'em feel financially stable. But because of inflation and the missed opportunity of not investing is actually way more dangerous because that cash is losing value every year to inflation and investing helps you outpace that.

 

So it just helping to realize yes, cash is great up to a certain point, and then it starts to hold you back. So then once you see the bigger picture, okay it's not gone. There's huge fluctuations in the short term, but over the long term. Investing is the key to get you where you want to be, whether it's retiring on time or retiring early. It's, it has to enter the equation and you have to get beyond that cash hoarding mindset.

 

Monica: And also beating inflation because your money has grown to match where money has inflated too, which is fascinating. Okay, so let's review mistake number one, budgeting, but not tracking your net worth and how do we fix it?

 

Lisa: Spend five minutes a month tracking your net worth.

 

Monica: Five minutes. Is that how long it takes?

 

to me when you said that, I is that 20 minutes a month or

 

Lisa: Yes.

 

No.

 

and actually the first time you do it, it will take longer because the other reason why I have people do it is it's an information gathering exercise because

 

A of people don't.

 

Even know all the accounts they have, right?

 

They have an old 4 0 1 k, they forgot about it.

 

And this is an exercise that reminds 'em like, oh, do I have that? Should I roll that over to an I R A? They don't have the logins. They have no idea what the balance is. And so the first time we do it, it does take longer 'cause it's rounding up the accounts and the logins. And I send out a tool that just links everything so you can.

 

Track really easily, but yes. Yeah, it's literally five minutes.

 

Once you round up the.

 

Monica: Awesome. Let's go on to mistake number two, thinking. Investing has to be complicated. Raising my hand, that is very intimidating to me. So what can they do if they're in that place of I can see where you're coming from. I know you're right, but oh my gosh, I'm just like this. If they're me, I'm speaking about myself.

 

I'm just an English teacher. I'm not good with numbers. I won't know how to judge the stock market.

 

Lisa: Yes. Yeah. So I will tell you, investing is one of those magical areas where the lazy method is actually better.

 

And Tell you what I mean. Imagine if the reality was the best way to clean your house is to do nothing, right? How great would that be? Or or in order to run a marathon, all you had to do was calculate when you wanna run the marathon by and then figure out how many miles you wanted to do each. Each week to get there and then do nothing. You didn't actually have to run, like that's, finance is one of these magical places where because of technology, you literally can set it up, automate it, and forget it. I always say set it and forget it. 'cause it was the tagline from one of my favorite infomercials, but was a kid. It's amazing. So this is

 

Monica: love that it's infomercial, but

 

that was you and me on Friday nights, Lisa. So

 

Lisa: Yes. Oh gosh. So this is what I mean. So a lot of people, when they think of investing, they think of picking hot stocks and timing the stock market, which is

 

What's.

 

called active investing. And statistically, the studies show that active investing underperforms. Passive investing, which is buying things like index funds. And if you don't know what that is, I will tell you and holding them for decades. And think of the best analogy, and this is from someone called Jack Bogle who created the index fund. Basically said

 

rather than trying to pick out needles in a haystack,

 

buy,

 

the whole haystack.

 

so

 

what an index fund is is, right? When you think of investing, you're thinking Apple,

 

Amazon Target.

 

right? You're thinking of companies. So what came about, it used to be that you had to buy individual stocks.

 

'cause it was actually a physical. Paper. Paper and you were giving them actual money and you kept a paper in a safe deposit box. That's not the reality anymore, right? So back in the like 1920s, they came up with mutual funds, but then the hot thing was to have the hot mutual fund manager who was

 

Outperforming all the other mutual funds.

 

So

 

Jack

 

Bogle was an undergrad at Prince.

 

Monica: and he had a theory that

 

Lisa: Paying these managers was actually holding back the returns, and so he created an index fund. All an index means is, it's just. All of the group of something. So like a index of a US equity means it has all the equities or an s and p 500 index. It's the top 500 stocks, right? If you do a US right s p 500, it has all of them. So that's what it means by the haystack. So rather than paying someone to go and pick out the needles, it's way cheaper to just. Take the whole haystack. And so he did a study and he was right, meaning sometimes people would outperform when they were man, actively managing it.

 

But over time, because the fees reduced the return, it actually

 

underperformed over time. the vast majority of the time you were better off. Not paying someone to pick out the things and just buying all the things. Sure. Low fee and people

 

were paying like 1% or

 

more

 

up to 5%

 

of

 

their,

 

money just for the ability to buy these special, actively traded funds. And the fee on an index fund is usually 0.05%, not 5% 0.0.

 

Like not even 0.1%, like a

 

fraction

 

Monica: that's

 

Lisa: 0.1%. And so maybe that's something you didn't know, and that's like probably the most technical thing I'll talk about, but I just want people to know like investing is not picking hot stocks and it's not trying to time the market. What I say all the time is it's not about timing the market, it's about time. Because the miracle of compound interest happens in decades, and that's why I don't want people to sit on this because now even though life's crazy with kids or life, now is the time to start that clock because the miracle of compound interest happens around. Decade, 2, 3, 4. And if you're thinking I have less decades than that to retirement, you actually need growth in retirement, like during retirement too.

 

So it's never too late to start benefit fighting by this. But I just want people to get over just that little bit of intimidation factor thinking there can invest unless they can pick stocks or time the market you don't wanna do either. You can if that drills you. But actually active investors, like I said, typically underperform.

 

Monica: Okay, just buy the haystack. So mistake number two. Let's recap this. Thinking. Investing has to be complicated and your fix was.

 

Lisa: Learn about low fee index funds and ETFs. It's not about timing

 

the market, it's about time in the market.

 

Set it and forget it.

 

Monica: Mistake number three. You said this was not knowing your long-term financial plan. Tell us more.

 

Lisa: Yes.

 

The a long-term financial plan can include all of things tangly. This would include your asset protection, things like making sure you have long-term life insurance on your breadwinner. So that's why I built my free challenge 'cause it covers all those little things. But the Most important thing to know about your long-term financial plan is how are you going to buy the most expensive thing you'll ever buy?

 

And people's mind instantly goes to. House is the most expensive thing you're ever gonna buy.

 

That's not true.

 

The most expensive thing you will ever buy, anyone will ever buy is your financial independence. Also known as retirement, and that's a big thing. It's called the fire Community. Financial independence retire early.

 

Whether or not you wanna retire early, doesn't matter whether you just wanna retire on time. You still need to understand this concept

 

that retirement has almost nothing to do with age and just everything to do with. reaching this point, I call it financial Independence Mountain, where once you re the top is when you have enough investments to live off of your investment income alone.

 

So you're not dependent on the income from your job to pay for your expenses. Retirement is optional. If you love your job it still feels really great to know I'm doing this 'cause I want to.

 

Not because I have to. And the pace you wanna do that is totally up to you,

 

Right,

 

But understanding this concept of the sooner you start moving up that mountain and absolutely take your time, enjoy the vistas.

 

This is not about spending as little as possible. I just took Two trips to Europe this year and felt zero financial guilt about it because what we did is we built our long-term financial plan. So if you're only gonna figure out one thing, it's calculating and automating your monthly retirement contributions.

 

Because like I said, there's a lot of parts, but that is the most expensive, most important part. And like I said, this is why financial goals are the easiest thing you can do is because you can basically

 

make it like any other bill where it automatically comes out your account. Each month.

 

And what that does is it helps you feel so good about spending because they've already taken care of it. The analogy I use that's used for a lot of things is right, the rocks, the pebbles, and the sand. And if you try to fit them in the jar, the sand first, the sand being like the fun spending oh, we spend, we buy the things. We buy the. The kids' activities and the howing decorations and the home decor,

 

and then the pebbles are the bills, and then the rocks are our big, long-term financial goals.

 

And if we try to do it in the wrong order, it's oh, I'll do, I'll save more for retirement if there's any money left or, and there never is. But if you figure out this big, most important goal, put that in first. Then, you make sure that you have enough to cover your bills and then you just know what's left over and you can spend it, I call it joyful spending,

 

right?

 

When you can reframe, Knowing that it's still on track for your long-term financial goals, it feels so much better because, all those big things are taken care of. And absolutely you should spend on those things even though investments compound. So do memories. So

 

That's a big thing. is Realizing

 

Yes, like want you to do this,

 

Not so you're stressed about money. So the exact opposite. So you know, those things are taken care of and you can take the trips and

 

The things that make your life easier, the things that help you build memories with your kids because, The sooner you do those things, the more time you have to enjoy those memories. And because time is our most precious resource, it hits differently when you know, money you're spending is not going to deter your long-term financial journey.

 

Monica: That sounds like a big stress relief right there. And when you say automate your monthly retirement contributions you're talking about like Roth IRAs, right? And then within those Roth IRAs, we go back to number two. That's when you invest in low fee index funds and ETFs. And have I got this right in my head?

 

Lisa: Yes. Yeah. So once again, this is education, not advice, but that is a perfect example of something you would do when you automate it. So a lot of people they do the most amount of their investing in their employer. Funds because like the 4 0 1 k, because it's automatically withdrawn from their paycheck. And then I try to get people to see that is not limited to 4 0 1 K. You can do the same with a Roth IRA as I A stands for individual retirement account. It's something that's outside of. So you can contribute to it if you have earned income or if you are the primary caregiver. There's an exception, there's an annual limit.

 

And that's when we started getting to these things. And that's why I create content every day. 'cause I give, I make a fun video to help people realize this stuff. But yeah, so that's a perfect example. But yes, so you figure out how much you can contribute, whether you're working with your tax professional or just researching on your own. You automate that, so it comes out as like a bill, like anything else would. it'll

 

Automatically contribute and then I have it auto buy, let's say an index that I want and just automatically it. Buy the investments that I want, it'll just buy more of that investment,

 

if and if this intimidates you, there's so many options. There's robo-advisors that I'll also low fee that will help you buy the investments if that is the part that wigs you out. But there's so many options.

 

Monica: Okay, this is fantastic. I want to just emphasize that we have had the fire hose experience here, but still in such a way that is digestible. So if they're loving this, they're gonna love way more checking out your Instagram feed where we just take you, just take one little piece and you teach it in a way that makes, it makes so much sense like you've so over delivered today.

 

Thank you. I know you also have a challenge and I wanna take this challenge. So can you tell us what it is?

 

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. I apologize. I get so fired up for the people

 

Monica: I'm a fire hoser when comes to development, so I get

 

Lisa: no, I know. So yeah, if I said anything that you didn't get this, so I say I am like. You don't need to remember anything. You don't need to take notes. So this is why I created my Free Money Challenge, it's an email challenge you can sign up for, it's free, and it takes you through one challenge at a time.

 

So you're doing all this on day one. So challenge number one is that, that top tip I recommended of calculate your net worth and every challenge has. Videos and just step-by-step explanations,

 

like I listing out the types of assets and liabilities. So it's literally just One small challenge.

 

A lot of people, if they're working with a partner, do it together. If they've had a hard time historically discussing money, it's a hot topic. This can be a great way to facilitate those discussions, but I promise every challenge is assuming you're starting from zero, you don't know anything about finance or investing.

 

It's just slowly. Walking you through each challenge. If you have questions, you can reply to the email and it will email me, this is definitely a passion project for me. So the point is just to help people work through these basic financial tasks.

 

Monica: Tell us though where they need to go to sign up for the challenge. We'll put it the show notes, but in case they're one of those people that like to hear it and then go search for it themselves.

 

Lisa: Yes,

 

You can go to my website,

 

money fit moms.com or any of the social media is Money Fit Moms on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter Threads. Yeah,

 

any social media? I'm there. Yeah. As Money Fit Moms. And then if you go to my links, it's the Free Money Challenge.

 

Monica: So I have two more things. First, I want one simple way they can get started on what we learned today. What would that be?

 

Lisa: Yes.

 

So,

 

if you're only gonna do one thing, even if you're not gonna join the challenge, it would be calculate your net worth because it's gonna do two things. It's gonna be that information, awareness, gaining exercise to figure out. Where are your things? And you will get so much out of that of it if you're, let's say you're the primary caregiver and your spouse is working to say, Hey what are we contributing to your four oh k?

 

What's balance? How do we log into it? Figuring out how to gain access to all of that, and it will help you zoom out and see the bigger picture

 

So it's not always bad news. You can just figure out where you are and it's a great challenge,

 

Monica: I really am doing this. Just so you know. Okay? Now I did not . Prepare you for this. So this is like just came to me. I would love to do just a rapid fire session of you answering questions. What is your favorite tool for budgeting?

 

Lisa: I love YNAB.

 

You

 

Monica: it one more time.

 

A budget YNAB

 

stands for, it's an acronym for you need a budget. It's not free. If you already have a budgeting tool or system that works that you love, that's awesome. If it's not broke, don't fix it because y N is not easy. But I will say I've done them all ynab is significantly better because it's beyond budgeting.

 

It's more about cash management, which is really what budgeting is. But if you've done it before and given of it on it, give it one more shot. If it just doesn't work for you, great. It's I think $99 a year. But it's because number one, they're not selling your data. They're not trying to sell you anything like pretty

 

much all the other like free

 

budgeting tools are.

 

Yeah, but also they provide support. Meaning if you can't get something to work, which I have a master's in accounting, but when I was getting it set up,

 

I

 

had to co contact customer support and they can work you through it. Or you say with your permission, they can go in and fix anything that you're not sure about, so

 

it's actually you're paying for

 

a service,

 

But I, anyone I know.

 

who has gone to y a and taken, a. Situated. Can't go back to any other budgeting

 

software in my experience. But like I said, if you're happy with what you're using, great. Stick with it and feel great about it.

 

Okay. Favorite tool for investing

 

Lisa: The investment firm I like is Vanguard. So Vanguard was founded by Jack Bogle, the one who invented the index. Fund. There are several though that have low fee index funds. Fidelity is one of 'em. Schwab is another one I like. Vanguard. Fidelity is more, I think, user friendly, especially for new investors. Vanguard is improving every day. Vanguard has the highest rated robo investor. That's the lowest cost once you hit a certain Asset value. So that's why I like Vanguard is because you can take this little management quiz on their site to say, Hey, what level of management do you think you need? And it has from what I've compared, the lowest fee options for management. So

 

Just make sure you know what you're paying in fees and you feel great about how much you're paying in fees.

 

Monica: Okay. What is your favorite way to spend money personally?

 

Lisa: Travel.

 

Travel is a hundred percent my favorite way to spend money. I don't care about home decor. If you can see this on video,

 

everything Is probably like Facebook Marketplace or on Super Sale, but I think I'll have 13 trips this year. I did Paris, I did England and the Cotswolds. I'm gonna New Orleans. I just, I went to Disneyland with my oldest son. We take turns taking our kids on one-on-one trips,

 

So experience over things for me all day every day.

 

Monica: Brilliant. And last one, what's your favorite thing you're saving your money for?

 

Lisa: We just finished our kitchen remodel, so that was the big savings goal.

 

I am, like I said, list into home decor, but my husband has become our primary chef and he really wanted to do that. So my ask was we had to be on track for. Early retirement and we had to save 'cause I didn't want to finance a remodel.

 

So we just finished that. And beyond that, it's just once again trips. I think the next home renovation, I think we're gonna do like a hot tub or something in our backyard. But told my husband

 

he's not allowed to even say the word backyard until it's been at least a year of no renovations. 'cause kitchen is a big one.

 

So that's our excitement.

 

Monica: Love that. Thanks for being willing to do that. Unexpected Series of questions, but I am fascinated by your answers and everything you've taught us today, not only has been so helpful, but also hopeful, which I personally needed. This is an area in my life that I'm very intimidated by. So thank you, Lisa, and I hope people will join your Challenge.

 

We'll make sure to link to that as well as your Instagram and anywhere else they want to go. I appreciate you and your friendship and your time.

 

Lisa: Thank you

 

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