Amanda Jacob – Money Mindset Coaching – Creating Solid Foundations For Amazing Futures

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Transcript

Welcome to the You World Order Showcase program.

Today we're talking with Amanda Jacob.

Amanda founded life changes by you.

She coaches professional women in their 20s through 40s with families who want to learn how to spend money guilt free while working towards their financial goals like.

Paying off debt, these women are tired of living paycheck to paycheck and are ready to assess their spending and mindsets, and they can manage their finances so that they can spend time with their families and more experiences and have more experiences and adventures.

She helps them resolve their confusion around money overspending, dependence on debt and poor money management once and for all.

She helps her clients create a solid financial foundation so they're comfortable leaving.

That paycheck and instead are able to spend quality time with their families.

Please help me welcome Amanda to the show.

So welcome, Amanda. It's really great to have you here. Just telling you before the show that your name will be always memorable to me as my daughter's favorite name is Amanda and her boyfriend's name is Jacob.

So no chance of me forgetting that.

So tell us a little bit about.

Yourself. What are you doing?

So I am a money mindset coach, as you said.

My name is Amanda Jacob and I help people mostly working moms.

I like to help them with their personal finances and reach, financial freedom and the way that I do that is through money mindset.

And so I like to plan, I like to organize.

I like to set.

Budgets and dream a lot.

We set goals and we set plans to make those happen.

But in all of that process.

Mind drama comes up when you say the word money, and there are so many stories and so many thoughts and so many different feelings that we have.

And most of those are holding us back from our true potential.

And so I help you weed through that and align your thoughts and your stories and your goals and your values so that you can really make your financial future one that you can be really proud of.

Wow, that sounds pretty intense.

It's actually quite a fun journey along the way because you get so much clarity and then you get you really get to enjoy the process because once.

You can get.

Past all of the drama, you really just get to set goals and start making things happen and making them happen faster than you ever thought possible.

So who do you?

Who do you?

Who's your ideal client?

Do you? Yeah.

Like to work with.

I love working with women to start people or women, women who have professional jobs or they're working moms, so somebody who's got.

A career that they're.

Proud of that?

They love that they want to have two.

That income streams coming into their house, so they've got a decent income. I usually like to work with people who have about $100,000 or more coming in because then.

All we've got to do is figure out what's most important to you, and then we can find wiggle.

Room in your budget.

And working with moms is really fun because a lot of times my background in nursing.

So a lot of times as a mom and as a nurse, I was giving so much of myself away.

But in this.

We find a way to give back to yourself also and in a way, giving back to your family, because when you are fulfilled, when you are.

Recharged and your cup is full.

You were able to give even more of yourself and I had to learn that the hard way in the last few years.

So it's it's definitely a personal journey, but one that I want to share with so many other people.

We'll share it here first.

Thank you for giving me that opportunity.

So how did you get started?

What motivated you to start down this path?

I mean, you were a nurse and this is kind of on the other side.

This is, I will say it.

So it started about five years ago.

So I've been a nurse for.

Six years and I was making.

My husband was finishing up his degree in engineering.

And he got out of school.

He got a job where he was interning.

So it was.

Easy, super, easy for him and.

We just kind of transitioned really easily into adulting as I call it, and we had our big kid jobs and.

We were just doing the.

Same thing and that was really just not paying attention.

You know, living paycheck to paycheck, even after we were making like 100 and.

$50,000.

We were spending thousands of dollars on stuff we don't even know where it was.

And Kevin likes to remind me it was.

Me, but I'm not proud of it.

I didn't even go to.

Target and and so I never even got to enjoy that.

But it was, you know, we were coping with other things busy and you know.

Having our family and wanting to do more and all of these things and we were just numb to wanting to deal with finances, especially me.

I was burying my head in the sand.

I didn't want to pay attention to any of it.

I was just.

I was just like, we're good.

Like, I'm better off than my parents.

And it wasn't until I looked at my life compared to a not a coworker, but somebody I went to school with nursing school with, and she was just slaying like she was single and she had goals, and she was posting about him and.

I was just like.

OK.

I know I can do it better and I I might be competitive, but it really knocked some sense into me because I asked her and it humbled me to ask her because I watched her for months and months, like just play and I was like, OK, what are you doing?

And she dropped a book off at my house and I.

Read it and I was like, OK.

Cannot see any of that, so I had to make changes.

I was like, OK, we're going to, we're going to figure it out.

And of course I had just bought a brand new car, and so I was like, this was the most logical like car I could have bought and I justified it, you know, to the end, still have the car.

But we did end up paying it off.

In seven months, my husband actually sacrificed one of his dream car.

Ours and to gave that up for a, you know, a more functional car for himself. He bought an $80.00 Honda.

And fixed it.

Up and he he always reminds me, you know, I was so humbled by doing those things.

And I have to give him so much of the credit.

Because I would have paid off his Jeep, I would have let him keep it.

I never would have asked him to sell it, but that was his big sacrifice.

I would have.

I've asked my husband has a Corvette.

Best Damn used car we ever bought.

This thing is like 15 years old.

We bought it used. It's probably like 35 years now. I I'm really bad with cars, but in the beginning it was just like is this is the most useless Jeeps and corvettes.

Totally useless cars.

Yeah, yeah, but that shifted his mindset and, you know, it wasn't something that I had to deal with.

Cause I was like you keep it, you sell it, whatever.

It doesn't affect me.

But for him it was a huge deal and it was really the time where he was brought on and he was like, no, we're doing this like this makes sense.

And we're going to get our stuff in order.

And we did we, you know, we paid off all of our consumer debt.

We we built an emergency fund that we've never had to touch because we of the way we save.

And we have just set ourselves up for so much success. We've graduated, I say from, you know, Finance 101.

And we've done other things.

We have a rental, we have, you know, my husband, bless his heart, he works 4 minutes from home and he's, you know, decreased his commute by like 4 hours a day to that, to 4 minutes.

And it's just.

He's given up so much, we've compromised.

We've had so many talks.

And in that journey of all of that, I, the nurse and me wanted to share everything and not on social media.

Like, I'm not like, oh, I've logged it all, but like I just wanted everybody to know what was possible for them.

And so I started financial coaching and I went through the financial coaches Academy.

And I learned how to sort of build a business.

You know, the nurse in me was not an entrepreneur, but I definitely.

Yeah, it does.

It discourages and.

I had to.

Yeah, I had to.

I had to follow my passion.

And so I did.

But I did it on the side.

I I I worked with just, you know, friends, family, anybody who was willing to.

Listen to my, you know crazy nonsense about personal finance.

And from there I just I detached more from nursing because this aligned with who I wanted to be.

I grew so much more as a person in fixing my money, like the number aspect of it.

I ended up being able to see that my mindset actually.

Have to shift in order for all of.

Those things to.

Stick and we're.

We're five years into our financial journey and we went from, you know, a negative net worth to we're well over.

You know, I think we're getting close to a million.

I haven't crunched the numbers in a while, but.

All it is is a mindset shift.

You know, I learned what was enough.

I learned how to be happy with what I have.

What to spend my money on to?

Really fill my heart.

And and I did it all intentionally, all mindfully.

And that was one of, like, two of the most important things that I've learned in all of this.

Anybody can crunch numbers.

You can find a calculator anywhere you can, you know, logically think about.

But to set intention and to do things mindfully and create those habits for yourself, it that's the key.

That is the one thing that if you don't have those, the numbers will change.

Your habits will change and.

And you have a baseline of habits that you've already established, so it's really easy to fall back into those patterns.

Both in mindset and in spending because it, you know, everything starts in your head.

I love to remind my husband when he's having, you know, mind drama.

Don't worry, it's all.

In your head.

It might be.

A little honorary, but it's fun.

Husband. She's got a lover.

I feel like you have to have humor, so there's a lot of serious things that we have conversations about.

But it allows for so much more freedom, freedom of time, freedom of your emotions.

Like I am able to not stress about money as soon as I learned about what was possible.

And I took inventory of where our money was going.

I was done being stressed.

There was no such thing as stress with my money anymore, because I knew that all I had to do was not do something or do another thing and it would be figured out.

It it's really simple.

A lot of these things are.

Really simple, but it's having the.

And really, what you do is you.

Just start in the learning curve for people.

Stuff that has taken you five years to figure out.

People can learn from.

You in six months.

Yes, thank you for saying that.

I would have forgotten it.

It is so true.

I spent two years, you know, with my head in books, learning about this stuff because I just, I had to learn more.

I needed more knowledge.

I wanted to just continue, you know, to expand my awareness of what I what was.

Possible for myself and my husband and my family, but in turn I get to share all of that knowledge and still that those principles, those thoughts, those habits.

And the best part of it is like I don't tell you what to do.

I don't tell you what's best for you.

You we have a conversation.

We figure out what's best for you.

What's going to stick?

What makes you happy?

What you need in your budget?

What you don't need in your budget.

What we need to.

You know what we need to, you know, create for you for the future you want.

And it is just.

It's so much fun and, you know, even when you come and you're having a crud day and you're like, we had an emergency.

Well, guess what?

That is just another learning opportunity, OK.

And if we don't have the money for it, guess what?

We learned that we need to start.

Saving for something just in case it happens.

And I love I one of the things that I do with my clients that I love being able to teach them right off the bat is safe.

You might be in.

Debt you might not know how to, you know, do something.

But guess what?

We're going to find room in your income and we're going to save it so that you never have to worry about an emergency.

You're always going to be prepared and you're always going to be from that moment on, you're going to be building those habits.

To have forever.

And it doesn't have to be miserable, right?

For some reason, when you when you live within your means.

You take joy in some of the simplest things like.

You know, learning.

To cook a lot of people don't know how to cook and it costs them a lot of money because they don't know how to cook.

Because you can save a lot of money in the grocery store if you.

Can just buy the base ingredients.

Marvelous food. Ohh.

But it's an opportunity to learn something.

New and you can learn how to cook online because.

You know YouTube.

And Pinterest can't go to Pinterest if you're on a diet.

Let me tell you.

Oh yeah. No, I.

That is so true.

I think one of the things that.

That shifted in US and early on was we we took the joy that we got from getting things or.

A family of three 2 1/2 really and but.

We took that.

And we we put that we found something else to find joy in.

And so for us.

We did find joy in eating, and so we allocated a little bit for restaurants.

We also, you know, we started cooking at home, which, you know, two kids in college with a kid, a baby.

We didn't find the time before, but afterwards we did and.

But the other shift that we made was we found joy and watching our savings accounts grow and for my husband, it became a competition for himself like 1.

We're not gonna use the money and two each month we're going to watch, like, how much more can we get it?

I think we can.

Put this much in and so it became like.

It became a game for him.

Which is a slippery slope in itself.

We had to shift that once we had enough.

Money in our savings to.

OK, well now we can spend that money more freely.

And so now we bolster our travel account, which is amazing.

But you get to create those things.

A lot of people they can't imagine like saving for travel.

But I have thousands of dollars.

At my ready.

Yesterday I just booked a trip to Southern California because I wanted to.

I can do that because I got control of my money five years ago because I was willing to listen because I was willing to change what I had done for 27 years.

And you got help.

You went and.

You hired somebody to show you how to do this, to teach other people.

I did and that was.

The best thing I could have done, which was very uncomfortable for me once spending money.

And two help for help.

Well, when you're.

In the position where your spending is out of control, the idea of spending money to get your money in control seems counterintuitive, but it always pays for itself.

Ohh gosh, they sometimes I have people laugh at me.

When I tell them my prices.

And it's because they think that it's so cheap.

Because I help people learn how to save thousands of dollars, so the amount you spend on me is laughable by time we're done.

Like you can save that in a month.

And then you'll have the tools to continue to build your war chest, and you'll be able to.

When you have.

When you have your finances under control, it just seems like you have so many more options in life.

And, you know, people say, you know, money can't buy happiness.

But for me, money is bought.

Experiences that I otherwise wouldn't have that bring me joy in.

My life money doesn't buy happiness.

But not having money and not having control of your money does bring misery it.

People can make you know.

Any amount of money, there's millionaires out there who are miserable because they're living right up against their income, yeah.

And you know for them when the rug gets pulled out from under them and you know, sometimes that happens in life, things happen to you that you're not expecting and you just get knocked back down to 0.

If you have the tools.

You can climb back up again.

It's yeah, like.

You know, they say, you know, once you've made $1,000,000, the 2nd.

Million is really easy.

The same with saving.

I've heard once you make $1,000,000 you could still lose $1,000,000.

Really easy you can, but you can make another $1,000,000 because you already know how to do it.

Yeah, the path is already set.

It's same the same with savings.

You know once you know how to save and how to live within your means.

Even if you get your whole savings gets wiped out because of something happening, a catastrophe.

You can still do it again because you know you know a you've done it.

Yeah, setting a solid foundation is so, so key.

It's not you again.

So we talked about who your ideal client was.

What do you struggle with?

In your business.

My business, yeah.

I think you know what's funny is we have these conversations.

You know, this isn't the first podcast.

I've been on.

But and I really, really enjoy these conversations like talking with people, talking about what I do.

But when it comes to talking to a screen or talking to social media and putting myself out there that way, like.

I always come up blank and it's like.

I've got great.

Things to say, I can tell you, you know, a million different ways.

How I can help.

You and the results you can get.

I would say feeling like I can speak to.

The abyss of social media is definitely has been my biggest struggle in building a business because I know I can help people.

I've seen it.

I've watched the changes that I've made in my clients already.

I've even seen it in my family.

Who, you know, I won't charge for my services because that's a slippery slope.

But like my parents, like I didn't learn a gosh darn thing from them growing up when it came to money, except for what I thought I didn't want to do.

But I honestly did the exact same thing.

But my parents thank me.

For teaching them what I know about.

Finance what I know about money mindset because now they have savings.

Now they have an emergency fund that they don't touch and it's those types of changes that.

Just they fill me, they fill, fill me up, they fuel my passion.

And so that's why I keep putting out stuff into the.

Social media bit.

But it is definitely, I think my biggest struggle if clients just showed up at my doorstep, I would be making.

Transformations left and right.

But for some reason, everybody wants to find people on social media or.

And so that.

One's always been my biggest challenge.

Kind of hard when you're you start out, you want to be a coach and you just want to help people, and then all of a sudden you realize.

And then I'm an entrepreneur.

I know what the nurse in me was like.

We have to build a business.

They didn't teach me that.

Often gets left unsaid. So what's the one take away you want people to to get from this conversation?

I think to know that it is possible for you to reach financial freedom, and I know for so many that seems.

Impossible, but you really get to define it for yourself, and when you stop and you think about what even just what retirement might.

And then you figure out what you need to.

To to get there.

It is so much more tangible than you think.

And you just have to.

Do that work to create those habits?

To shift your mind.

To create the.

Future you want.

But it's not just the future.

It's living the life you want now, too.

I think that's so important because in your budget, you need to have fun now because you never know what the future is going to hold.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of times, people, when they think about, oh, I'm gonna have to take.

Control of my money.

And I'm gonna have to budget everything and it's not going to be fun.

And you know, if you're really in debt, it might not be fun for a minute, but.

The other side of it.

For most people and the the people that you're talking to, who have the income.

Just getting a handle on where your money's going. You can find money that you you're not even gonna.

You're not even going to notice that you're not having that thing, that you're not paying for a lot of times, people are just paying for things that they're not even using.

You can find hundreds of dollars in your budget just.

Looking at, you know, the apps that somebody is put on their phone that you're being billed for every month, but you're unaware of it because you're just not paying that close of attention.

When we go through the inventory of your spending with my clients, it's usually a.

Ohh we could.

Do better than.

That like and then when you propose like.

Oh well, you're not spending money on yourself.

Well, we need to fix.

That how are.

You going to want to keep doing this if you don't enjoy what you're doing right now.

So a lot of the times one of the big ones that I.

Always am a proponent.

Of and the people who come to me are similar to me and so travel is one of the biggest expenses that people have.

That is more frivolous in the sense.

I absolutely put it in your savings buckets.

We're going to start saving for travel because I want you to travel.

We traveled when we were getting out of debt.

I would never remove that for anybody else.

And you might have to figure out what that looks like while you're paying off debt if.

You do have a lot of debt.

But guess what?

When you pay off that credit card, you pay off that student loan, or you pay off that car.

Guess what we're celebrating?

And if you've saved some money for travel, well then take yourself to the beach.

Take yourself some mountains.

Take yourself to the river.

Whatever that looks like for you.

We're in summer time, so I'm thinking of those types of things, but.

Whatever that looks like for you, you need to celebrate those wins, because that's going to keep you on the journey that's going to keep you excited, to keep doing whatever it is you're doing, especially when you're paying down big loads of debt.

And it just makes you feel so good when you, when you can see that you're you're making progress because to me it's like cleaning the house.

You know when.

When you clean.

The house and that looks really good and.

Everything put back where it belongs and it only stays that way for like 15 minutes.

Feels so good.

And I think that's one of the easy things to forget when you're going through that because you can just roll over your celebration into the next, you know, whatever you've got.

To pay off.

But and when I when I tell my clients like how are you gonna celebrate when I ask them like how are you going?

To celebrate and they're.

Like what do you?

Mean and I'm like.

That's a huge achievement.

That's so big.

Like, have you done that before?

Have you done it with this mindset?

Have you done it for the last time?

We're making huge strides, huge changes and we're.

But have you done it this way?

Paid it off.

Have you done?

It this way.

Yeah, it's a big deal.

It is a really big deal.

So how can people get a hold of you?

So we I always blank on how people can get a hold of me.

So I've got a website.

So my business name is life changes by you and so the URL is just life changes by you dot.

Com So you can always find me on.

But I'm also on Facebook, under my personal name.

So Amanda, Jacob, I have a life changes by you account on there too, so you can search under there and I'll, I'll find you if you like it.

I'm also on Instagram and tick talk with just my business name, so life changes byyou.com.

Perfect.

And we'll put all those.

Dot com just like that just by you.

I know I always want to do that too.

Myhandleitshouldhave.com at the end.

Yeah, I'm not super tech savvy and if you work with me, you will learn that.

But yeah, we'll figure it out.

It always works out.

It does the way it's supposed to, so we'll definitely put the links in the description below so people can get ahold of you and this has been great.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Yes, thank you, Jill.

It was really a pleasure.