Financial Wellness is the starting point for building Wealth

Hello Beautiful!

What is financial wellness:

How does financial wellness impact our money journey?  Financial wellness is our overall financial health and well-being. It is our thoughts around money, our relationship with money, our money behavior, our ability to make sound financial decisions, and our knowledge about money. Financial wellness is being “comfortable” with our financial position, and where we are in our money journey.

Factors that influence financial wellness:

• Our mindset about money – this is what drives our internal money story. Our money mindset is shaped in the early years of our lives. It’s what we learned about money growing up, our values, the messages we received – directly and indirectly; what we learned in our families, our religious beliefs, what we saw in our communities and the world around us, including, with no surprise, the media. All of these influence our thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs around money. What we believe about money will either drive us, or get in our way; it governs our actions. And it is from this place that our relationship with money is formed.

• Our relationship with money – this is our comfort level with money; it’s how we are navigating our money journey. Are we tiptoeing around it, are we avoiding the relationship all together, are we reckless, or do we have a good command over our money?

• Our money habits & behavior – this is what we do with our money every day. It is the choices and decisions we make. It is how we manage our money; our money practices. This is how our mindset about money presents in our lives. It is how we move.

• Our knowledge about money – how much do you know about money? No judgement. It’s just a question for you.

Why financial wellness is important to our money journey:

When we understand our money story, and can identify our beliefs, thoughts, and values around money, we can move differently and with a different intention; we will behave differently.

The results:
1. We can have a better relationship with our money.
2. We will be able to take better control of our money.
3. We can work towards being in a position to create and build wealth by achieving the 5 Money Goals.

Sharing my journey to financial wellness in hopes that you will be encouraged:

As I shared a little bit in my About Page, my money journey has not been easy. I had to undo a lot of negative behaviors, and beliefs; my money mindset was in shambles. I actually got a lot of mixed messages about money. What I heard, or thought I heard in church completely confused me, and I thought it was a sin to be rich/wealthy; then I learned the truth for myself.

When I was really young, I pretty much lived with my grandparents, and I remember my grandmother always saying, “Lawd, I don’t know how I’m gone’ make it.” This was a regular refrain from her. And to counter that, I had my grandfather who taught me the importance of savings. I remember when I was a kid, he took me to the bank to open up a Christmas club savings account – they don’t have those any more. I was so excited! I really loved putting my little money in that account.

Fast-forward, as a teenager, my mother taught me how to survive, and I continued that survival mentality into adulthood. It served me as a young single mom, but left some scars. I will never forget as long as I live, being on welfare with two kids and getting $682/month. I was just existing – financially. I knew I didn’t want that for me and my children.

I had to work hard to unravel my thinking around money, and how I felt about myself. I had to move beyond my scarcity mentality. My financial wellness was not.

How I changed the trajectory of my financial wellness:

Since I have always had a passion for personal finance and investing, that’s where I started. Because of my passion, it was actually easy to fix the tangible.
• I focused on better money management – I would budget down to the penny.
• I learned everything I could about investing, and personal finance.
• I got a good job making relatively good money, and made smart decisions about what I did with it – that was key.
• If I am honest, though so much better, and decades later, I am still faced at times with money mindset challenges.

I’ll share a very recent story:
Every year I save all bills that have a “K” in the serial number, and I save all change. I use this money towards something I may want, or lately, it’s been the plan to do something nice for myself on my birthday. However, when my birthday comes, I struggle to spend the money. This past birthday I had saved over $850 in change and “K” bills, and I had a hard time doing something nice for me. To be fair, there isn’t much I want; I enjoy experiences more than things. In the end, I put the money in my savings account. That may sound great, but it allows me to see that I still have to work on my money mindset, and that this is a journey.

Whatever your financial wellness picture looks like, and wherever you are in your journey, it’s never too late, and always worth the effort to get to the financial position you are comfortable with.

Embrace your journey!

Warmly,

your sister

Kim