Your Financial Wellness Plan
In this article, we’re talking about the ins- and out of a Financial Wellness Plan. If you need help figuring out how your life fits into your money habits, this is for you. This is apart of the Foundations of Financial Wellness series.
If you are interested in listening to the Holistic Guide on the Money and Flow Podcast Here are all the podcast that sparked this series:
Let’s dive in
Why NYE Resolution Don’t Work
Fun fact: New Years Resolution used to FREAK ME OUT. Any time someone would ask me about what I would do differently with my year, I would get annoyed roll my eyes and say I haven’t thought much about it.
It’s because secretly I was trying to craft the perfect New Year’s Resolution goal. You see back then I was a secret perfectionist borderline masochist.
Lose ten pounds
Run a half-marathon.
All the typical resolutions. I would try a new goal and I would immediately get side-tracked…
Only to find my goal disappear because I didn’t have enough time… Or “the universe” was telling me that I needed to put my efforts into another goal. I would eventually feel guilty that I didn’t follow through a goal. Cue the explicit content. 🤬🤬🤬
I’m not alone; in the most recent years, people have recognized that New Year’s Resolutions don’t work because, past the second month, people forget the real motivation behind their goals.
…Also, it takes 66 days to form a long-lasting habit. This is why people are ditching resolutions and setting up vision boards for the year these days.
Setting the Year with intention
In the past five years or so, the self-help community has created an alternative to NYE Resolutions with intention parties. Coaches, yogis, and tribe builders set up events where people would create vision boards and set up intentions.
As an avid kool-aid drinker. I began to attend these parties. Cutting out magazines like a teenager and posting them on my wall.
I would set the year with intention, saying that this year is going to be the year of self-love. Write a check to myself of 100,000 dollars. Only to find myself overworking and overeating cookies out of stress. How’s that for self-love!
I also got so annoyed with my vision board and setting the year with intention, because my intentions weren’t coming true. When I asked other people how could you measure intentions. Many of my friends said.
You can’t measure intention, it is a gut feeling,
Perplexed and slightly annoyed, I threw out my vision board because intention without measurable results doesn’t work out that well.
This past year, I’ve tried to figure out what is the most successful way to weave both ideas resolutions: NYE resolutions and intentions and be content. By creating a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly rituals.
The idea is simple, but the execution requires weekly continuous self-reflection- called financial wellness dates ( we’ll dive into that later).
From this experience, I’ve learned to embrace NYE Resolutions and Intentional Year Planning. I had to tie my thoughts, habits, and goals surrounding my mental health and money story…
And I had to get over my chip
My Mental Health Journey
Prior to 2019, I had embarked on a huge mental health shift. You see 2016, it was my Renaissance Year. I quit my job, traveled the world, started a business, and fell in love.
All of these experiences I wouldn’t change for the world, but when one starts all new things in one year, the beginning of the year is rosy, but as the year heated up so did my perfectionist archetype began to creep out.
I started to “perfect” my everything… And I stopped looking at my money. I had money saved to quit my job because I was frugal. Like some entrepreneurs, I was putting a lot of hours into my business and not truly paying attention to sales.
I invested a lot of money into coaches, social media managers, and conferences. All of these were great, but I spent more time getting my mindset, but not getting the numbers clear.
During this time I was investing in myself I reconnected with an old friend from middle school, we’ll call her Michelle. Michelle as a successful business owner in California.
It was nice to reconnect with her because unlike me Michelle was a rebel. Even when we were kids, I can remember Michelle telling our 6th grade Social Studies teacher just what she thought about the Mesopotamia period.
So it was no surprise that Michelle would ditch college altogether. Start a business, work with Richard Branson, Zappos, and other brands. She also would donate large proceeds to help girls attend school in developing countries.
For a year, we would chat and laugh about working too much. Not making that much money. Yes, Michelle was a badass entrepreneur, but she didn’t vibe with making money.
In September, she texted me and said she was headed to Philadelphia in December and she wanted to meet up with me. I was so excited.
November passed. I texted and asked her when she was headed out here. She said that she broke up with her boyfriend. And she’ll get back to me. I texted her at the end of December to check-in…
No response.
I saw a December 31, 2016, Instagram post that showed her drinking and doing yoga. On her Instagram post, Michelle said that 2017, was going to be the best year ever.
Three days later. A friend of Michelle found her dead in her garage. I didn’t know that she was battling with mental illness or her family's ancestral trauma.
This experience hit me pretty hard because Michelle was the second death in 2016/2017 that I had to take in. My former student was killed by her boyfriend in November and I didn’t process it.
It was in January 2017 that I began the grieving process.
To make matters worse, I lost my contract that was paying my bills. My body began to shut down. I stopped talking to people.
I talk more about this on the Worth Winning Podcast
An eviction notice was on the door of my apartment
Flash forward to April 2017
I can remember it was like yesterday. I just came back from pitching a business idea to a potential client, only to find a bolted door. I was evicted from my apartment.
I walked slowly into my car sobbing in tears. I called my family to tell them what happened. As I was about to open my heart and tell them how I failed them. As I slammed my car door…
Some girls hit my car while my car was in the park. I thought to myself I guess this is what it means to be hit rock bottom.
Thousands of miles away from my family. Embarrassed that I was someone who appeared to hit the black privilege lottery. I had a good college, I made more money than my parents did when they were in their twenties. I appeared to look good on paper. But I never asked for help.
I was taught that no one will help you, but you trust God. This makes sense that this was the advice that I was given. My family is from Lousiana. Many of my relatives were born before the Civil Rights Movement.
As a small business owner, I began the process of overworking. I would take any job that I could take. I was working around 80 hours a week and making no money. I started taking these money mindset entrepreneur classes which cost more than I was used to spending. They were telling me to spend over my limit. There were lots of conversations about what you value, and if you value yourself you will charge more.
Yes, I believe in the money method, but I also wasn’t producing great work.
Manifest money. All of the mindset stuff was great, but there was no real practical advice on how to manage money. Nor did it explain how money could be used to help build your own community. But I took the advice and followed it to a tee only to find myself unable to budget my lifestyle.
When you are a solo business owner if you don’t figure how to outsource your skills, you are doing it all. You’re going to lose time and money. You’re also eventually going to create your own mini founder’s syndrome.
Through a lot of conversations, I realized that the advice that I was listening to entrepreneurs that came from overspenders themselves. In later years, I read the Millionaire Next Door. From reading this book, I recognized that many of the entrepreneurs that I was interacting with either came from families with money. Or was trying to Keep Up with the Kardashians or the Carters.
This is not to bash folks with immediate monetary money, but I lost my true authentic self. I lost my WHY. I had to come to terms that although, I thought I had my confidence was false around my habits, my execution and follow up were poor.
I also had to forgive myself for mastering the art of self-deprecation. I also had to start the habit of looking at how all my ideas are based around my money story. I honestly thought I had to “struggle” to endure mental toughness to run a business. That was a load of crap.
Prior to starting a business, I was a frugal one. I had managed to save most of my twenties, budgeting my money. Helping myself pay for a small portion of college every year. But as a business owner, I thought I had to change myself. I had saved up a lot of money for myself and I was making 29,000- 49,000 depending on the year. One year I was making 29,000 in my first year of teaching and I managed to save 5,000 of it.
Only to see my money drift away faster than it took to build it.
That night, I slept on my friend’s couch. All covered in dog hair. I didn’t know what to do or who to talk to, so I turned to Google to help me find the answers.
I typed in Eviction and success. I found an article from a guy who didn’t look like me talk about how he went from being fired, evicted and became a millionaire by 27. While the insight seemed great. I was turning 30 in three months and thought of being a millionaire didn’t seem like it was an option. Unless I sold my organs and became a surrogate mom to a famous actress.
I then typed up Black women and eviction. I found several articles around eviction and there were two memorable articles.
Article about how Black women were evicted at alarmingly higher rates than other racial groups due to various factors.
I found a local entrepreneur by the name of Ashley Fox who talked about rising up from being evicted to reclaiming her space as a business owner.
For a wrinkle in time, I was slightly relieved. I heard someone’s experience with money that looked and sounded like me. As I sat there angry and unsure of different possibilities
I started to ask the question of how can I change my narrative around money and rebuild my future.
I closed the business. I immediately got a job working as a waitress and I started going to therapy. I looked at my eviction and started from the bottom.
I admitted that I was a workaholic and that overworking affected my money and mental health. I had to see how my career affected all aspects of my life.
On the wellness front. I forgave myself. I started practicing yoga and started my mental health checks every week. I did a lot of digging for my
Southern ancestry and I began to put things into perspective.
I started to see that check-in was vital to my day, week, and year. I eventually created a financial wellness plan to check in with me.
I slowly started forgiving myself and I even paid off my all my undergraduate loans. I started and finished my MBA, so I can always teach a community college course to fall back on. I eventually became a financial wellness specialist and I’m on the path to becoming a Certified Financial Planner and started teaching Corporate Wellness classes.
What is a Financial Wellness Plan?
Financial Wellness involves the process of learning how to successfully manage financial expenses. Money plays a critical role in our lives and not having enough of it impacts health as well as academic performance.
A financial wellness plan is a personalized guide to understand how your mind, body, and spirit affect your money. It thinks about how every aspect of your life is affected by money.
We forget how our habits, beliefs, ancestry, gender, and societal circumstances create our habits consciously and unconsciously. From interviewing 40 Women of Color. It was clear that many of our ideas are still generated by our ancestry.
But for some reason, most of us separate every category in our lives: Health, wealth, relationships, career, etc. And most of us exclude how money plays a role in our mental health and wellness.
Think about if you have a late bill. What do you think about when you're at yoga? How that late bill is ruining your life. Your downward dogs are sloppy and you find yourself not paying attention to the teacher.
We typically separate logic and creativity. Finances and wellness… We see them as all separate. But are they really??
Trust me. I was that person too! I was the queen of compartmentalizing habits, jobs, etc. I’m a Type-A, blerd, ENTJ, Enneagram 3…Only to find myself repeating the same self-deprecating thoughts at work and home. I felt as if I wasn’t enough.
I had to work on my emotional pillar. After working with two marvelous women, I realized that I had to create some new habits… AND forgive myself. I also had to partake with therapy and heal my ancestral wounds. I had to see how most of my habits were formed before I was an adult.
Was the experience fun? No, but I am the most content than I have been in my entire life. I am a recovering Type-A. I take days off now! I still hustle, but I try to stick to a 24/6 by Tiffany Shlain.
What I uncovered was astounding. I was able to uncover why I struggled with my finances when I became an entrepreneur. I used to be a “saver”, but I fell into the trap of the starving artist, which was my ancestral habit.
You see I have a lot of family members who are creatives. They would set up businesses or fashion lines, only to give up when the going gets tough. I like my family would buy a ticket and hopped on “manifestation train,” and depleted all my savings. I even found myself evicted from my apartment four years ago.
Eight Pillars of Financial Wellness
There are eight wellness pillars: physical, nutritional, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, financial, and environmental. Wellness is the most important aspect of our lives. When we are not well, everything else spirals out of control.
Due to the brevity of this article here’s the breakdown of each pillar in a few words
Physical: Sleep, How you look, feel
Nutritional: What you eat, how you treat your body
Emotional: feelings in all aspects of your life
Social: Who you associate with
Spiritual: Religion, spirituality, work environment ( company culture)
Intellectual: How you use your brain
Financial: How your money follows in your everyday life
Environmental: Where you live, work, and play
Most of us don’t see how our past, present, and future encompass our entire wellness story. It was essential to that looking at my money daily, weekly, monthly would change my habits around money. comforting than restricting, which is why WELLNESS is emphasized.
We have to ask the question: When I look at every aspect of my life how does each wellness pillar story fit into my life and money?
We have to set weekly uninterrupted time to figure out how every aspect of our lives is connected to our Money Stories. These uninterrupted time are called financial wellness dates.
Financial Wellness Dates are setting up, weekly uninterrupted time to figure out how every aspect of our lives is connected to your Money Stories. These uninterrupted time can be called Financial Wellness, Money, or wellness dates….
It can be whatever you want it to be. It can be as short as five minutes to five hours.
Do you want to change your health, only to realize that changing diets are expensive? Do you want to move or travel to reset? These are some of the questions that you can ask yourself.
The biggest disconnect between the wellness and finance community is that we neglect to see how money plays a huge role in our everyday habits.
For most of us who didn’t learn about money in school. Our vision of money is keeping a budget and stick to it and In a financial wellness plan throws out that idea out with the 2010s.
So when we are trying to incorporate our wellness goals, we neglect to see how money plays a role in them.
I explain in detail the eight pillars in my book: Our Money Stories.
When I designed this unique technique, I wanted to make sure anyone can use this method. I also wanted to make sure it was accessible to everyone because I started at rock bottom.
The Benefits of a Financial Wellness Plan
Mental Health is paramount in this digital age but often ignored. We often find ourselves getting caught up in the trap of keeping up with the Kardashians or the Carters. Our FoMo kicks in overtime, and we lose sight of who we are and our goals.
Your Financial Wellness plan can help you do a mental check-in with your wellness and money. It also allows space for you to forgive yourself from all the money woes in the past. It is also a way to tie in how your mental health is determined with your money.
Many of these stories that we tell ourselves are told to us when we were young, and many of us never questioned the idea. We just kept them as the status quo. It was clear after chatting with over 200 people in 2019 that self-care and self-discovery was a significant missing piece in budgeting or looking at one’s cash flow.
And that no one truly knows what it means to be financially well. Because we’ve never included money and wellness together.
But if you look at Northwestern Mutual Surveys, and people ask the question of what is the number one cause of work stress is money… And a burnout
Tools and Books that can launch your Plan
To create your own financial wellness plan. All you need is a clean notebook or journal. That’s it.
Personally, I use the bullet journal method, and I recognized that that is not for everyone, but it’s not mandatory. For the most part, I ditched the computer and started working with a pen a paper. When we write down our goals, thoughts, and dreams they are more likely to come true when things are written down.
Paper or Online Calendar: Analog can only help you so much. Technology helps as well. I used Google Calendar to schedule my dates.
Books
For all my book friends. I read a couple of books that helped with a Financial crafting Wellness Plan. I am a fan of figuring out what books can help you figure out how to get out of a rut.
Here is a list of books that I read while writing a financial wellness plan.
Atomic Habits by James Clear- video synopsis version here it is
Lesson learned: one small habit can change your entire year
The Art of Seduction by John Greene
Lesson Learned: I learned how I had mostly masculine tendencies. I know incorporate the feminine every day! If Machiavelli had a brother with emotional intelligence, this would John Greene be it.
The Memo by Minda Harts
Lesson Learned: Being a woman of color it can be overwhelming to self-reflect. What’s more important: Culture or my job?. Harts shakes us and tells us that self-reflection is key to securing the bag
Oh, and I also wrote a book on it too!
Here is the step by step process of Financial Wellness Date.
Schedule weekly Financial Wellness Dates in your calendar
Type in Your Calendar Going on a Financial Wellness Date
Attend the Date
Schedule weekly Financial Wellness Dates in your calendar
Have you ever sat down at your schedule in your Google calendar and wrote out the words, budget time or running! Only to realize that the time that you wanted to use for that time cut in with your brunch time. You FINALLY get to see your friend, Julietta. You haven’t seen her in five months — Julietta, who just spent time on a project in DC for orphans.
You may have looked at that calendar invite, but you brush it away because relationships are more important than money. Set up time on your calendar for a Financial Wellness Date on your schedule. Every WEEK.
Step 1: Type in Your Calendar Going on a Financial Wellness Date
Setting intentions means planning for them.
Type in your calendar weekly going on a financial wellness date. You can use other names. Money date. OM time Now! Taking Care of Cash Flow. Seeing my accountant( which is you) — investing in myself. Use whatever word that makes you feel great about your life. Start getting into the habit of looking at your financial wellness as a ritual.
Step 2: Attend the Date and reflect on your financial wellness pillars each week
It’s recommended to work on one pillar at a time. When I first started this process I asked myself a series of questions here’s an example:
Environmental Pillar
What was the first experience that I had with my environmental pillar?
My that I remember is hanging going hiking with my dad. When I was a kid, but dad and I would spend time together and hike all over California.
How does each wellness pillar story fit into my life and money?
Hiking was a way for me to be more in-tuned with my spirituality. I also loved how it never cost that much money.
How does it relate to my ancestry?
This is the first step to understand how one can holistically plan out their life.
Now my wanted to share my strategy for one of current my strategies
Intelligent Pillar: Book Goals
I thought about setting my intention of reading books and I will read at least 60 books this year last year I read around 15.
I also want to let y’all know that I don’t buy books. Everything I get is from the Free Library of Philadelphia. I think I own 20 books. I used worked at a library for three years in college so I do have a leg up.
I also read an article about a librarian who read 300 books in 2019 and my wheels began to turn. I’d like to share with y’all the changes that I made:
Added the Philadelphia Library as a favorite on my browser
read the top 2019 book list for the New York Times
Added Oprah, Reese, and Noname’s book club Social Media Feeds
Signed up to Well-Read Black Girl and Electric Lit email newsletters
Followed #bookstagram on Instagram
I changed the navigating menu of my phone to show audiobook apps instead of text messages and missed calls. I placed all my phone apps in categories and all my communication apps are placed in one category
I wrote a really long list of books that I was interested in.
Instead of listening to music at the gym I listen to audiobooks.
In the car, I listen to audiobooks
In my habits checklist. I include read and read at night on my checklist
Add library apps on my phone that allows me to check out free audiobooks
Place books on hold at the library
Add time limits on all my social media apps
Delete most of my social media apps daily unless I have to use it. I use the computer.
Lastly, If I don’t like the book I stop reading it. I’ve already done that with 2 books already. I consider my Rights as a Reader
Here are more resources to help you activate your wellness brain
Podcast
If you are interested in listening to the Holistic Guide on the Money and Flow Podcast Here are all the podcast that sparked this series:
If you’d like to get the print-out 6-week Financial Wellness Plan, you can access it HERE