#17 - The Two P's in Financial Freedom: Principals & Practices

Join Chelsea in diving into the four essential principles and practices for protecting both financial and mental peace. She emphasizes the importance of knowing your next moves, solidifying your foundation, and setting consistent boundaries. 

Chelsea encourages you to incorporate these practices into your daily life to evolve your money story and create a path toward lasting success. 

Episode highlights:

1. The importance creating and protecting your financial peace.
2. Knowing your next financial moves and solidifying your financial foundation.
3. The power of consistent dreaming and envisioning for financial success.
4. Setting boundaries with money and maintaining financial discipline.
5. Embracing consistency, intentionality, and the belief in financial success.

Whether you’re looking to build your financial foundation or embrace consistency and intentionality in your money management, this episode offers 4 principles to transform your financial journey. 

Episode links:

Law of Attraction Journal 

Always and Never About Money Episode Links:
Video Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyMasteryWithChelsea
Socials: https://linktr.ee/the_money_whisper
Money Mastery Website: www.moneymastery.work
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlwaysandNeverMoney/

Transcript

Hey there, financial explorers. Whether you're a seasoned money guru or just dipping your toes into the world of finance, I'm glad you're here. I'm Chelsea Williams, your money whisperer and founder of two companies that focus on helping business owners and individuals take control of their finances. Always a never about money is where we gather to dive deep into the fascinating intersection of money and human behavior. We're here to learn about our money story, uncover the driving forces behind financial habits, understand the impact of history on our wallets today, and give you all the knowledge and tools to change your money story.
So join us for insightful conversations, personal anecdotes, expert insights and thought provoking ideas that will challenge your perspective and help you use money as the simple tool that it is to enhance your life. So whether you're a business owner or an individual working a job, get ready for a journey that will transform the way you think about money.
Hey, hello and good morning, afternoon or evening, wherever you are.
It is mid-morning for me. We've had a few storms roll through that were a little scary, which says a lot 'cause I love storms and my power's actually out and my neighbor's doing some construction. But here we are and thank you for tuning into this episode of Always and Never About Money. My name is Chelsea. I call myself The Money Whisperer because I understand so deeply money and how it weaves into every single other area of our life. I hope you found our last discussions insightful. We talked about me and Sam, I introduced you to Sam, and we talked about how my daughter created equity for herself in an asset at the age of 16, which is remarkable and I'm so proud of her.
And you know, my goal as a parent is to instill a couple different things into my kids when it comes to money and when it comes to life. And so as we dive into this episode, I want you to remember and be aware that your money story is a reflection of where you are personally and you have the power to change it if you're unhappy. So if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, ask your questions. We love answering questions and share with other people who might benefit listening.
Today we're gonna dive into the principles and practices that can help you protect your financial piece and create a solid foundation for your future. And these are the two things that I'm intentionally bringing awareness to for my kids from a very young age because these are the things that really move us forward. The things, the principles that we live by and the practices that we exercise in our daily lives are the things that create the results that we see. And it's not a quick fix, it's, it's what we do in and out every day consistently. I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of people and their money in a business setting, in personal finance settings and these principles and practices.
I believe after almost 20 years of doing this, what I love are what you need to achieve your version of financial success and financial peace. And no matter where you're at, by the way. So if you are dead broke and you keep getting hit with unexpected bills and you feel like you're drowning, or if you're kind of sailing along and you really feel financially free, you can do most everything that you wanna do. And everything you need is more than covered and you have enough cushion, you're comfortable. These principles and practices are what can move somebody up and out of feeling like they're drowning and keep and further elevate those who are doing pretty well for themselves.
But they are consistent in every individual, in every money story that I have ever had the honor of looking at and interpreting. And so let's start with the four principles. The first is protect your financial piece at any cost.
Your financial piece is your mental piece. I can literally interchange that word with mental peace. Money is a tool, but it is incredibly mental and it can be such a sensitive trigger. And so you have to protect your peace. You have to make sure that your needs are met and shamelessly your wants, the wants that you can accommodate within your financial boundaries. But protecting your financial peace is protecting your mental peace.
And sometimes that is really hard. And so let's flip that word really quick. Financial peace. Let's call this mental peace. Protecting your mental peace might look something like retreating into solitude. You know, I have had an incredibly busy year. I am grateful for all of the traveling and the small trips that I have been able to take and enjoy and they have been so much fun, but it is also exhausting for me. And so when I come back home at this point, I really just wanna be home.
And the thought of going out and even you, you know, I love karaoke, but even the thought of going out to karaoke just sounds like such energetic work that I don't have to give right now. And so to protect my peace right now, I have to.
I wanna stay at home, I wanna be at home and I love my friends and my family, but I really just wanna be at home right now. That's me protecting my peace. I exerted so much energy traveling and being present in those moments so that I can enjoy them. I need to recharge my battery. And what that might look like in a financial setting is, you know, I talk to a lot of people who have family members or friends that ask them for money. Maybe they're the breadwinner in their circle, in their family. And so people have gotten really used to asking them for money. And these people really want to help, but they help to the extent that they threaten their own peace, their own financial peace, which is a direct, has a direct impact on their mental peace.
And so protecting your financial peace can mean doing the very hard things, the hard things that make us uncomfortable. The hard things that make other people feel like we don't care or maybe we're being selfish.
But there are so many reasons and examples I could give you why protecting your foundation is first, foremost and unnegotiable. Because if you really want to help the people around you, you can't, if you're sacrificing your own foundation, you will become as helpless as the people around you. So principle number one, protect your financial piece at any cost. Principle number two is always know your next moves. There are always the the, the landscape of money is always changing, it always has and it always will. Opportunities pop up and then they're gone. And that is impacted by so many different things. Our economy covid created a ton of opportunity as much as it also squandered.
And so part of becoming financially successful is know what your next moves are, plan ahead, plan for the present. If, if you don't have enough padding in your bank account to go three to six months without income so that you can protect your piece and focus on executing those next moves, you're setting yourself up to crack the foundation. And that's what we need to really work on building. So always have an openness to new opportunity, new potential. Next moves. If you lose your stream of income, what will you do? Are you prepared for that? Where will you go next? How are you gonna get there?
If you choose to move or if you want to move, how does that affect your finances? How much do you need to save? How much is that gonna increase? There are always changes in your financial trajectory that can happen. And there are always opportunities that are gonna present themselves when you are open to them. I love working with business owners because if you are a true entrepreneur in spirit, I believe that you have a gift for recognizing opportunity and you have confidence to take risks.
And so taking calculated risks becomes the goal for these individuals. But the fear of every business owner, entrepreneur, and individual, if we're being honest, is failing.
And sometimes we can stay tethered to that fear so strongly that it keeps us from growing.
And so the perspective that successful people tend to take is that they go down that rabbit hole, they explore their fears, they figure out, okay, if I'm a, if I'm afraid to fail, let me brainstorm all of the different ways that this could happen. So for example, in business, maybe we have a really good marketing strategy that's working really, really well. We have to hire more people to accommodate the new workload. And all of a sudden that one marketing strategy gets a kink and stops working.
What are you going to do? What are the next moves? And as a business owner, you know, we have a lot of options to cut costs, decrease team size to accommodate workload. We can ebb and flow with the revenue. Now we have to be willing to do that. And that is incredibly difficult, especially when you're dealing with your team and cutting people because these people are human and we have hearts right? But it is necessary otherwise the ship will sink. So as a business owner, there are about 50 different things that I could do and would do if something devastating was to happen before I ever get to a place of even considering closing the business doors.
And let's explore that fear a little bit more. For me that looks like what if something completely devastating happened? And I can't even in my mind think of what it could be that would shake my business' foundation because we've built it so solid. But let's go down that rabbit hole anyway.
Even if, let's just say we get sued and this lawsuit puts us under, I will do it all again. I will bounce back. And so always having your next three moves helps you to exercise the competence in knowing that there are always other moves. There are tons of moves you can make before your fears come anywhere near reality and moving confidently through that.
And part of having that confidence means that you honor principle number three, which is protect the foundation, solidify the foundation. You can only fall as low as the foundation that you have created for yourself. And as you grow and scale, as you go outward and evolve and move, you're always solidifying the foundation so that your foundation is building up and up and up. And the higher you build your foundation when you fall, your foundation is higher to fall on.
But you can do that, you can do that with your finances. And what that looks like for a person or a business is knowing where you are at creating boundaries or a budget, creating a plan and investing in that plan that's setting aside for saving and investing in business. That looks like hiring people, paying for marketing strategies and personal that looks like investing in stocks or retirement vests, investing in financial freedom. So always spending time solidifying the foundation. Every time we grow, we have another level of foundation to solidify. And you can do that, right? And so here's an example of of a foundation.
Insurance is a great example of a foundation. If the most catastrophic thing happens, we are protected. And yes, we have a deductible. But you know, for example, we just had a huge storm come through our area and I have people that I know that have destruction of property, cars, houses, garages. This property is completely destroyed and we're talking thousands and thousands of dollars to manage the situation. And that's not even including the stress of making all of that happen. Reaching out to insurance companies, contractors, whatever it takes, that's a lot. And so insurance for example, is peace of mind and not just insurance on our homes and our cars, life insurance.
Think about how many financial tragedies happen when somebody passes away because there wasn't something in place to alleviate some of the financial stress of you know, these situations. So there are many, many ways to solidify foundations in business. It is systems. So if we're investing our money in technology, standard operating procedures, training, these systems are our asset in business. That is the foundation. The foundation is what people buy when they buy businesses. How well did you create and solidify a foundation? How well did you build the framework and implement systems and standard operating procedures to maintain this business, this thing that we have built?
And you don't get to a place of success with without going down those rabbit holes and knowing that at the deepest, deepest level of all of your fears, you can bounce back, like acknowledging that all of the steps that we take, and this is principle number four, always bounce back. Look, it sucks when we fall over. It sucks, but haven't we all more than once? Isn't it a guaranteed thing in life to have setbacks? But you can always bounce back. When I go to the deepest, deepest root of my fear, and when I talk to clients who own businesses, when we explore the deepest, deepest root of their fear, once we talk about all of the things that they can do before that fear ever becomes a reality, number one, they're generally not worried about it.
And at that point, once they see and acknowledge all of the things that they have overcome, all of the things that they have done, all of the odds that they have beaten, they now see and why they should have the confidence in themself to be able to say, you know what? Even if my entire business goes under for some way off the wall, reason I will do it all again. I have the ability to do it all again. Yes, it sucks. Yes it sucks and no, nobody wants that. But look, life happens and we have to create that foundation so that when we do fall, because it's not if, it's when we have created a foundation for ourselves so that we only fall so far and then we bounce back.
And so to be able to truly embrace these four principles, we really have to also embrace practicing four key things in money and in life. Here's what I mean when I say we have to practice. Practice is where we are consistent. We do things consistently and it's gonna feel uncomfortable and weird and we might even be resistant in the beginning. But that is why we practice and we practice. And practice makes progress not perfection. By the way, practice is a lifestyle. These four practices should be incorporated into your lifestyle no matter what your version of success is. And I say that they should be incorporated into your lifestyle for you, not because it's something that has worked for me and that I have observed in other people.
I truly tell you that you should do this 100% for the benefit of you. This is not for me. This is not me imposing what has worked for me and other people on you because it's the only way. This is me telling you what I have seen and observed. And I truly believe that if everybody can take these principles and practices and incorporate what it is that you want in success, 'cause everybody's version of success is different.
So identifying yours and using a starting place of these principles and these practices will get you incremental progress no matter who you are or where you at in life. So the first thing I want you to practice is dreaming and envisioning. We lose our sense of creativity and imagination at such a young age.
But if you study the great innovators, they have been able to continue practicing the art of dreaming and imagining into adulthood. And it is literally how they created that. Things that we see today. The remarkable, amazing things. The first light bulb was a vision before it was tangible. The first iPhone, Steve Jobs saw it in his mind's eye before we ever held them in our hands. We have to start practicing dreaming. And what we're doing when we practice this idea is that we are tuning in slowly and over time because these are practices, we don't just do it once and it's over with. We practice them every single day.
You are tuning into your vision. And so what helps me in my life and what I have also seen, this is another consistent practice that successful people that I have seen in terms of finance and lifestyle and overall happiness and sense of abundance. These are the things that we are doing when it comes to our financial vision. What we're really working out first is our lifestyle vision. Before we ever attach a price tag to that vision, we are figuring out what does it look like? Who are the people, where are we going, what are we doing? What is it that you want? And then we start to attach a price tag to it. But the idea of spending time thinking on what it is that you want is what we need to practice here.
Because I talk to so many people and it, it makes me sad because so many people don't even spend time imagining what it is that they want with their finance, which means asking the question of what do you want with your life? What do you want the people around you and what do you wanna do with these people? And so that's a very deep question that in my experience, not a lot of us are asking ourselves and we're we're definitely not practicing it the way that we should be. So one of the ways that I love practicing, staying in tune with my vision, which changes by the way your like let's drop all the pressure, your vision is allowed to change.
It's okay if you don't know what that vision is. But what I want you to get into the habit of doing is practicing it, practicing figuring out what it is that your vision is. And I love using like a journal planner format for this. I have the planner through the law of attraction. I just really love it. I've used quite a few of them and this is the one that I tend to stick with. But they have really good visuals. And you know, if you've ever done any type of journaling or self-reflection or planners that have journal exercises incorporated into them, you've seen that kind of quadrant, like your quadrants of life, right?
And it's something like family, finances, health, and faith.
And I find this a really great place to start because your money is gonna follow all four of those quadrants by the way. And so practice figuring out exactly what it is, what you want in the quadrants of your life, and then we can start the journey of attaching a price tag to it. But these are what successful people do. They practice tuning into their dream, their vision. Another way that a lot of successful people practice tuning into themselves and vision is through the practice of meditation. And if you've listened to probably any of my podcast episodes, I talk about meditation a lot. And it is now for the first time, supported with scientific data that this thing that we thought was woowoo really, really works.
And come to find out, incredibly successful people have been doing it forever.
And so I highly recommend practicing the art of meditation. Vision boards are also a really fun way to practice your vision and tune into your vision. It also creates something visually stimulating for us to look at every day, which is what a practice is. It's something we do every day, right? And so if you've never heard of a vision board, look it up on Pinterest, Google it, it's so much fun. You can do it once a year, once a quarter, once a month, as often as you want.
But it allows us to give our brains something visual to really reinforce this lifestyle, this new way of thinking and this new outlook that we wanna have so that we can change ourselves and change our money stories. The third practice that is never ending is setting boundaries.
And so very technically when we talk about your money, that is simply tracking your money. Your money determines its own boundaries. The money you have coming in, the money you have to spend and the money you aim to keep and invest. So simple. But this is the always and never about money podcast. And so let's go into the not about money part. Setting boundaries with your money is as difficult and intricate and challenging as setting boundaries with people in relationships and in settings. Social settings, boundaries are based on the person and a lot of us haven't done the work to identify our boundaries in the first place and then also practice the art of modifying our boundaries.
And these are some of the things that keep us stuck. We're unwilling to evaluate our boundaries. And as you grow, as you be, as you get to new levels, new places, new settings, new environments, your boundaries may be unestablished, they may need to be changed. And I realize that we can have an entire episode on setting boundaries, but I want that to really sink in the fact that successful people financially and overall happiness in life, they have unwavering boundaries and those boundaries are always being evaluated and are open to change, but they are always there and they are. Unnegotiable money makes it really, really simple to identify these boundaries because it is a finite tool.
It is one for one. If you have a hundred dollars, you have a hundred dollars to spend. It's as easy as that. Now we have to learn in our finances to allocate these boundaries. The boundaries are not meant to be met. They're meant to be a piece of mind. And what I mean by that is we can't spend what we get. We have to get out of that practice of spending the money that we receive. We have to get into the practice of setting a boundary of only spending so much. And the rest we keep. We keep to build savings we keep for an emergency fund. We keep to save for something big that we want to do. We keep to invest. And the fourth practice is consistency and intentionality.
We have to embrace change and evolution and that shows in our finance. If we hate a job, if have to be willing to evolve and be uncomfortable, to go find another profession, to be willing to go find something that fuels more of our passion. We have to be brave and we have to go do these things with intentionality of not wanting to settle, of not wanting to be miserable, of not wanting to live paycheck to paycheck, of not wanting to not be able to pay rent because you have such a big kind heart that you can't help but to help the people around you. Any success story that you find that lasted any good amount of time required consistency and intentionality and embracing the idea of change and evolving.
And without this fourth practice, nothing that we've talked about is gonna be possible if we're not consistent, if we don't have intention, IE, if we don't spend time tuning into our vision so that we know where our intention should be, where our direction should be. If we're not consistently practicing the things and if we're not always open to change and evolution, we are gonna be stuck. It's the only other alternative. And so what I want you to hear today is that you are bigger than your money problems. You can create a foundation so that when you fall, you can only fall so far. You can know what to do before you ever get there.
You can know what your next moves are to grow your money. You can always bounce back from any financial setback, and you must protect your financial piece at any cost. And you can start by implementing these four principles and four practices into your everyday life. And please tell me all about it. But you have to know what's possible. There is someone out there who is successful by your standards and their story is similar to yours. I promise and spoiler alert, even when no one has done it yet, there's always a first. I'm a lover of track and field and if you haven't heard the story about the first man to ever break a four minute mile, I would love for you to go listen to that story.
And the most amazing part of that story is everybody said it wasn't possible Once he did the impossible, so many people started to believe they saw that it was possible and they did it too. Maybe you are just the first. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Always and Never About Money. Remember, your financial piece is worth protecting at any cost. Stay resilient, plan ahead, always bounce back and know that you have so many options before your worst fear is ever a reality. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with others. Until next time, keep evolving and groving your financial story.
If you liked this episode, be sure to show us some love by subscribing and turning on those notifications. You can find me on Instagram under the Money Whisper, and also where we encourage you to contribute to join the conversation, ask questions and share your thoughts so we can create more episodes tailored exactly to what you wanna know about Money. I'm your host and your personal Money whisperer. Until next time, remember, it is always and never about the money