From Not Enough - To Financial Freedom - Linda Grizely : 171

After divorce, a shrinking income, and a dream job that didn’t add up, Linda Grizely hit a wall. All because she couldn’t check one box: “bachelor’s degree.” What came next was bold: eleven classes across four schools, a dual major at 49, and a complete mindset shift about worth, work, and money.

Today, Linda is a Motivational Speaker, Financial Educator, and Realist with a Heart who helps women who feel behind, financially or emotionally, reconnect with their self-worth and start making money decisions that truly reflect who they are and what they want.

We talk about the money scripts we inherit without realizing it how growing up lower middle class, teen motherhood, and “survival budgeting” shaped Linda’s early beliefs. A leadership mastermind cracked open those patterns and inspired her “lid” story: a metaphor for the self-imposed limits that keep so many of us under-earning and under-saving.

Linda shares practical ways to bring calm and clarity to your finances:

• How to build a liquid emergency fund that actually works
• Why 3–6 months of expenses is your safety net, not a cage
• The “Me Money” method that gives guilt-free permission to spend intentionally
• The real reason couples argue about money—and how to stop

We also explore money personalities, spender, saver, avoider, risk taker, security seeker and how to design systems that align with your real behaviour, not some spreadsheet ideal.

But beyond the tactics, this episode is about reclaiming your value. Linda shares the exact moment she stopped accepting less and started asking for more, and how the right credentials can open doors to opportunity and confidence. Her coaching now empowers women to build financial literacy and self-trust without shame, jargon, or judgment.

Let's enjoy her story!

https://www.lindagriz.com/

Chapters

• 1:50 Early Life, Teen Motherhood, First Scripts
• 6:24 Divorce, Business Sale, Financial Strain
• 10:48 Degrees At 49 And A Mindset Pivot
• 14:20 The Flea-In-A-Jar Breakthrough
• 18:40 Books, Mentors, And Coaching
• 21:15 Entering Financial Services
• 26:40 Do You Need A Degree
• 29:40 Undervaluing Work And Asking More
• 31:04 The Me Money Method Explained
• 35:20 Money Personalities And Habits
• 39:30 Emergency Funds And Big Purchases

Transcript

Daniela SM: 0:00

Hi, I'm Daniela. Let's talk about what happens when you change your money story. I'm the flea that's always telling everybody, hey, we can get out of the jar. In this journey, I realized that I had been undervaluing myself and accepting a lot less in pay. I learned a lot about my own money mindset and my own money personality and my own stories I was telling myself. My guest is Linda Griseli, a motivational speaker and financial educator who helps women feel confident and make money decisions that reflect who they are. Let's enjoy her story. Welcome Linda to the show. Thank you for being here. Oh, thanks so much for having me. I am excited that you have a story to share. Why do you want to share your story?

Linda Grizely : 0:43

I have been sharing my story and want to share it because I want to help people that are in situations that I once was get to the next step in life or the next level in life, whatever you want to call it, with knowing that other people have been there and have gotten through it.

Daniela SM: 1:00

Yes, and I appreciate that. I think that's why we need to share stories so people can learn from other people, you know, not going through the situations that you went through. So when does your story start?

Linda Grizely : 1:11

Well, I like to kind of give a background a little bit. So I grew up like lower middle class in the United States. You know, I wasn't hurting for anything. I wasn't super poor, but I knew that I had less than the than the people that I were my friends, right? And then as I got older, then I met people who had less than me, right? So there was all these different layers in there. And the reason I talk about that and bring that as part of the story is because a lot of my story has to do with money, which is what I do now. I teach about money, but a lot of it has to do with money and like the scripts that I was told and the things that I was led to believe about myself. I became a mom as a teenager. So I was a single mom as a teen, figure things out on my own, and was good with money as far as like budgeting and living within my means. You know, I knew what I could and couldn't afford. I think I did a pretty good job raising my daughter and giving her the things that she wanted at the same time. And then later I got married and had more kids, and then I got divorced after being married for half of my life. At that point, I was a single mom again, and I had two kids still at home. My daughter had was older and hadn't moved on. Again, was like restarting and rebuilding. And I think that that's really where my story starts is actually post-divorce because that's when I really started to do in personal growth and like internal works. What happened was I had owned a business when I was married, and I had to sell it when I got divorced because it was a new business that it wasn't making enough profit for me to be able to live off of. So I had to sell it. And it was like a baby to me. It was like the best, the best job I ever had. It was the best thing I had ever done because I was helping and empowering so many women to like just have more confidence and everything. It was a fitness center. I got this other job that I thought was going to be my dream job. And it was like, this is what I want to do. This serves everything that I want I want to be. I loved the job itself, but there were some people there that were making my life very difficult. And also I wasn't, and they still wasn't making enough money to make ends meet. Living as a single parent, I bought a home in the same school district so my kids didn't have to change schools, and it was very limited as to what I could afford on my own. I could have gotten something less, but they would have had to change schools, and I didn't want to do that to them. So I'm realizing that I'm going backwards, right? I'm I'm really like spending more than I'm bringing in. There's not a lot of places that I can cut back at this point. I started thinking about like what am I going to do next? So I started applying at different jobs, but I wasn't I wasn't able to network, which I had always gotten my jobs before through networking. So I was like applying online. And this is back in like what 2015, 2016. So I'm applying online, and I can't check a box that says I have a bachelor's degree because I don't. I only have an associate's degree. So I can't check this box, so I'm not getting any interviews. And I can't go out and talk to people in network because there's already people at my current job making it difficult for me. And if they find out then I'm looking for another job, like I'll they'll just boot me out the door and then I'll be really in trouble. So I'm trying to find a job and not having any luck. And someone that I knew very well in the current job that I had, I had confided in that I was looking. And he said, I have a position that I think you'd be great for. You'd be working for me if that's okay. And I said, Yeah, I'd love to work for you. And he said, Okay, let me put you in touch with the recruiter at the hospital, because it was out of hospital. And so he put me in touch with the recruiter, and I talked to the recruiter, and she was like, You don't have any experience in the healthcare field, and you don't have a degree. She's like, I can't even talk to you. I can't even give you an interview. And so even though the person that would be my boss was saying, Hey, I recommend this person. I would love for her to work with me, I still couldn't get my foot in the door. And I was like, wow, this is a wake-up call for me, trying to find a real job at post-divorce with only an associate's degree. What I did was I took out a home equity loan, I cashed in a small retirement fund, and I just quit my job and I went to school. So I took 11 classes at four different schools in my very first semester. The other thing is, is I actually got married that same month, that January of 2017, when I started school. I got married and I was basically like, I love you. Don't talk to me for three months because I got all these classes I got to take. Like I was on a mission to get my bachelor's degree by the end of the year. And I was finishing up a certificate that I had already started that I wanted to complete. And I ended up with graduating by the end of the year with a dual major. So I majored, I had two majors. That was the beginning of like my like really personal growth drive.

Daniela SM: 6:09

Linda, I have to ask, why four different schools?

Linda Grizely : 6:12

So you can only take a they won't let you take um very many credit hours, like more than a full load at a certain school. So you can only take so many at my main school. So then I was also taking classes at another school where I was finishing up a certificate I had already started. And then I took classes at a community college that I knew would transfer in to the school where I was taking the full load at. And then I also took one course online at a different school that also would transfer in. So I had the four different schools with 11 classes.

Daniela SM: 6:45

Was there enough time in the day for these and to study and the projects and all these?

Linda Grizely : 6:51

Yeah, it was crazy. I'm telling you, it was crazy. But you know, it's uh I was driven. I had motivation. I had it was like, I gotta get this done. I have to get back to work. I just put myself in debt and I have no income coming in to live, like so that I could I could live while I did that. What was the degree, the two majors that you were doing? So I finished up the certificate in nonprofit management, got my degree in marketing and human resources management.

Daniela SM: 7:18

You were always very good at budgeting, no matter what. You were always very conscious and you were very clear. That's pretty good because not everybody had that knowledge that you already were coming since you were younger. Right. The thing I was missing though is that I was never saving. Yes, but you really didn't have enough, or like I have to say, yes, I did have enough and I could have saved earlier, but I thought that I didn't have enough. Is that possible? Even if it was ten dollars a month or a week. Right, exactly. Yes. So that's the uh the mindset that is very difficult for people to get into it.

Linda Grizely : 7:50

It was during the time when I was getting my degree, or right after I had graduated, when I was trying to figure out what I was doing next. I went to a mastermind group that was uh talking about the John Maxwell's book, The Laws of Leadership. And it was a friend that invited me, and I'd never been to anything like that before. I was like, oh sure, I'll go. Like I'm learning I'm networking, I'm talking to people, I'm like just looking to get myself out there and figure out like what's next for me. They started talking about um the different laws of leadership. And one of them is the law of the lid. And the law of the lid is about how everybody has their own leadership capacity and there's a lid on it. You can only lead to the level of your lid, and then you can develop yourself to make your lid higher, right? It's kind of that idea. The person that was teaching it gave this analogy of these fleas in a jar. And you know, the story of the fleas in the jar is if you fleas can jump really high, but if you put them in a jar, they'll jump out of the jar. But if you put a lid on the jar, they'll jump and they'll hit the lid and then they'll just stay in the jar. Then you take the lid off and they still only jump as high as the lid and they never get out of the jar. So it's supposed to be a lesson about your own limiting beliefs and your own story that you're telling yourself about, hey, I can't get out of the jar. But what I heard was something completely different. What I heard was I'm the flea that's always telling everybody, hey, we can get out of the jar. And everybody else is always saying, No, you can't get back in the jar. And it was like mind-blowing for me because all of a sudden I realized that there was so much more to personal growth than just getting a degree and putting certificates on my resume, that I really needed to do internal work to learn more about myself and more about other people and how we all react to each other and in the workplace and why things are the way they are. And so that's when I started diving into the books, like John Maxwell's books, The Think and Grow Rich, The Classics, right? The tipping point, um, good to great, like all these different like books that are all about personal growth or even business growth. And they became my mentors, the mentors that I never had growing up. Like I never had people that were like, hey, this is how you do it. Hey, this is what you should think about. Didn't have that. So they were my mentors, and that's where I just I really just became like a personal growth junkie and just started trying to get ahead. I hired a coach for a little bit. I started my career in financial services. As I started my career in financial services, is when I started to see, because remember, now I'm thinking more about how people interact with things, and I'm seeing the internal blocks that people have with their money through financial planning when I'm talking to clients and they're like, well, my dad always told me this, or my sister did that, or my neighbor said blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you're not your dad, you're not your sister, you're not your neighbor. You're you're none of those people. Your situation is completely new, unique to you. And yeah, that's something you can consider and think about, but here's why it may or may not make sense to you. And even though you could go through all the things and say, yeah, that's not a good idea, they'd still be like, Yeah, I'm still gonna do it anyway, because that's something told them. I'd just be like, wow, it's mind-blowing. So I got into the thinking about like the money mindset and stuff. And then I started learning more about that, and I learned a ton about myself when I started diving into that.

Daniela SM: 11:08

Linda, so you obviously you're self-taught and driven, and you really like to learn and like a sponge, take all this, and you were always like that.

Linda Grizely : 11:17

I don't know if I was always like that or not. Yeah, I always was interested in learning. I didn't read books. I don't even know what book I read before before I went to that John Maxwell mastermind book. I have no idea what the last book I read was before that. As a matter of fact, in the job interview to the job that I had to leave, one of the questions they asked me is what was the last book you read? And I was like, I don't read books. And then here I am, post, and I'm like just like, oh my gosh, like there's this whole other world out there that I didn't know existed. So you never really decided to work on HR. So what I wanted to do in HR was combine the HR and marketing concept, and I wanted to work in like company culture and branding. So I wanted this combination of marketing and HR where it's like, hey, here's our company culture, here's our company brand, you know, this is what we do to the outside for like people coming in, like to attract candidates, but then also on the inside to make sure that we were living up to what we promised. And so that was the type of thing I was looking for, but it just never came to fruition.

Daniela SM: 12:22

And and the second part that you wanted to do is actually the difficult part with companies that they live up to the culture that they promise.

Linda Grizely : 12:30

Exactly. That's what I wanted to do. But it didn't happen. But I'm very happy where I'm at now because I ended up in financial services, which wasn't where I was going. I eventually got my master's degree in financial services too, but it's not like I was planning on going there, but it made sense.

Daniela SM: 12:44

And then your kids at this time, they were older enough that even though they were with you, they they really didn't need your presence because you were so busy with all these.

Linda Grizely : 12:53

Yeah, they were teenagers, so they were they were high school age, so and so how how was your marriage after the studies?

Daniela SM: 12:59

Like now you could have time for that?

Linda Grizely : 13:02

It's funny because my husband's kind of a workaholic too, so it really was fine. He's uh he's a fireman, so he would work, you know, an odd shift, but then he worked as much overtime as he possibly could. He also had second jobs that he did, like other places he would work, so he was gone a lot too. And it worked out.

Daniela SM: 13:20

Interesting. So you you started to read all these books, if I understand clearly, and then you decided, okay, well, I want to go into the financial world, and you got a job in in there. Yeah.

Linda Grizely : 13:31

So how that happened was again, I was stacking my resume because I was looking, I was so at the same time I was looking for the job in HR slash marketing, I was also looking in nonprofits. So I was actually looking down two separate, completely separate lanes. Like I said, I wanted to have a really big impact. So I figured company culture was kind of like a big impact, and then working for a non-for-profit is another way to have a big impact. I was going down both of those paths and interviewing for jobs. Some of these job interviews took like six months. Like they were like, we're gonna have you meet with this team and we're gonna have you meet with these board members, and now we're gonna have you meet with this, and we're gonna have you do a presentation. It was like on and on and on forever. But anyway, so during that time, I signed up for a designation called the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy that was to serve the nonprofit world, right? It's about legacy giving and and planning for people with large amounts of money. I signed up for that, and it's through the American College of Financial Services. That when I put that on my LinkedIn is when I started getting the reach out from the financial services people. So they started calling me, like the usual ones, like, hey, have you ever, you know, have you ever thought about financial services? Like, you know, trying to and I started having conver I was like, I'll have conversations with people, you just never know what's gonna happen. As I had these conversations, I was like, you know what, this does make sense, especially as I was taking the courses, because the courses blend planned giving with financial planning and tax planning, right? So it's like all inclusive. So that kind of like overlapped all of these things. And so I was like, this can make sense because I can really help people through financial planning. And if they decide to be charitable, um, you know, that's even better. You know, I can help them plan that. So I actually had a local uh company that does financial advising and planning had reached out to me, somebody that knew me um through the local chamber of commerce had reached out to me like a year and a half before to ask me when I had gone back to school, like, hey, I know you know you left your job and you're going to school, but we need someone to do some marketing for us. Would you be interested in doing some marketing for us part-time? Because they knew me, they knew what I could do, you know, and I was like, no, I'm I'm getting my degree and I'm just really focused and I don't want to be distracted by a shiny object of like a couple extra bucks coming in because I'm really wanting to just get this degree done, right? And of course I was taking eleven classes at four different schools, so there's no way I could have done a part-time job too. But it was just that first semester that I did that. I mean, it did carry a full load the rest of the time too. But so anyway, so I went back to the guy and I was like, Hey, do you still need a marketing person? And they're like he's like, Yeah, actually we do. And I said, Well, I I'd love to chat. And so I sat down with them and I said, here's the deal. I can do marketing for you, and I also want to become an advisor, so a financial advisor. So can this be a win-win? Can I work for you and do marketing, but can you like you know support me in getting my licenses and becoming a financial advisor? And they said yes. So that was a, you know, a great match, and that was how I got started. Very clever you are.

Daniela SM: 16:39

Do you think that you needed the degree anyway?

Linda Grizely : 16:42

I did need the degree, and then I went and got my master's degree in financial services. So I wouldn't have needed the degree, the bachelor's degree to work for them and to get started. I wouldn't have needed that. But I needed it to get my master's degree, and I needed it to get my certified financial planner designation because that you have that's one of the requirements is that you have a bachelor's degree.

Daniela SM: 17:01

You will still advise anyone that a bachelor's degree is necessary? No, not anyone.

Linda Grizely : 17:08

I mean, it's it's very unique to each person's path. There's lots of paths that you can go that don't require a degree. I would just say it's unique to each person. But I also want to say that when I got my bachelor's degree, I was 49 years old. Just because you choose a path now and you don't think that you need one or don't want one, that doesn't mean you can't go back later and get one. Um my three children, none of them have a bachelor's degree yet. One of them is well on the way to one, and the others are probably not going to, but maybe we'll decide later in life to get one. That's okay because the careers that they've chosen right now don't require one.

Daniela SM: 17:44

It's true. Everybody can have their own path when it needs to happen. Yeah. Do you think that uh from all the things you learned through the financial world, would you say that your knowledge on budgeting was something missing?

Linda Grizely : 17:57

Well, I learned a lot about investing and saving and how compounding interest works so that you can save up for retirement later someday. Learned uh obviously a ton about that. But the biggest thing that I learned, I learned a lot about my own money mindset and my own money personality and my own stories I was telling myself. I realized that at some point in this journey, I realized that I had been undervaluing myself and accepting a lot less in pay than I deserved. And so at some point I realized that and was able to ask for more and move to different places where I could make more money once I realized what I was really worth. Like all this mindset stuff that went along with it. The main thing that I'm teaching now about budgeting, it's called, I call it the me money method. So it's me money, it's putting yourself as a line item on your budget. Because when I did financial planning, the first thing you do when clients come in is you you gather all their documents to figure out how much money they have, and then you talk about cash flow, which is your budget. It's what's coming in and what's going out. That's what cash flow is, right? So we look at their cash flow and we list all the things they're spending money on. So you list, you know, utilities and houses and cars and this and that and what you're saving here and what you're saving there. And then maybe we'll say, like, what do you spend on vacation? What do you spend going out to eat? And so you list all these things, but never is there was there a line item that says, this is the money for me. This is what I spend to get my nails done. This is what I spend to go out to dinner with a girlfriend. This is what I spend to go on a girls' trip or a golf trip with the guys, like if you're a guy, not me. There was never anything that said, like, this is my bucket of money for just me. And that's where me money came in because I actually found it accidentally when I put my husband on a budget. And this is all about mindset around money and your money personality and how giving yourself this own bucket of money helps you to understand what your money personality is, how you interact with money, and gives you intention to your spending, which makes you look at money completely different overall, no matter what your money personality is.

Daniela SM: 20:08

But me money wouldn't be also entertainment, going out, is that's kind of the same, no?

Linda Grizely : 20:13

It is, but so it depends on if you're single or if you're a couple, right? So if you're a couple, then having your own money for yourself allows you to not answer to the other person and not answer to yourself also. Like if you're the saver like me, who would never spend money on my not never, but who had a hard time and felt guilty spending money on myself. It gave me permission to spend that money on myself. And for my husband, who was the spender, he just made better choices. He was just like, Yeah, I don't need that. I'd rather spend that money somewhere else. So he was just like, is my money worthy of this? Just made him have better choices, which then in hindsight, like you could tell, like he just had better idea of like the effect, he was thinking more about the effect of money overall.

Daniela SM: 20:56

Yeah. For me, I learned that I have to have a lot of envelopes, so I open a lot of savings accounts. Yeah. So sometimes the people at the bank say, Why are you having so many savings accounts? And I was like, You leave me, let me be. This is these are like my envelopes. I have an envelope for me and one for Dave, car insurance, taxes, you know, and every week I put money there. That gave me so much peace when the car insurance was due, and I didn't have to worry that where am I gonna get the money? Well, oh, here, I've been saving it for a year, and here it is. Or the car needs maintenance. My husband was stressed. I'm like, no, that's okay, we have the money. You know, I I know it doesn't work for everyone because I have a friend who's very good at money, and he just have everything in one bucket and he knows. For me, it's like I need to have it individually. They really help me.

Linda Grizely : 21:43

Yeah, and and that's part of knowing your m like your money personality and how you interact with money, and that's uh a common strategy, but it can be way too complicated for some people. Some people like the organization and like the idea that it's already the money's already there, it's already set aside, and you can just be like, yep, that's where it's coming from. I know exactly what's happening. And other people want it all just in one place and they can keep it in their head, or maybe they're they don't want to pay attention to it. But so there's different money personalities and there's different things that work for different people. Like you said, if you already have that account set up for you and for Dave, like that's your meme money if it's just for you and you can spend money in there whenever you want, right? So you've already done it. You've already done your meme money.

Daniela SM: 22:26

Yes, yes, I I I do have my meme money.

Linda Grizely : 22:29

Yeah, so that's great. Tell me more about that because what was life like before the me money buckets and what was it like after?

Daniela SM: 22:37

Well, for me, uh I was stressed all the time. You know, we were living in London, England, came to Vancouver, and I came here first. So I opened the bank accounts and everything. So somehow I took charge, knowing absolutely nothing. The only thing that I knew is that we don't spend too much and we never had debts. And having debts will stress me so much. We always pay the credit card on time, but every time I had to pay the bills, I was always stressed. We had the money, but I didn't have a an a good structure. So having this really helped for a big peace of mind. So we we really had enough. Uh, we we never spent more than what what we could. Uh the emotional part of the money connection, though that wasn't really very well. So I needed to learn that. And I think I manage now, I think I have it. Yeah, I think is the hardest thing to get rid of. Yeah, definitely.

Linda Grizely : 23:31

But you also you don't want to necessarily get rid of it because it's part of you, it's part of who you are. You just want to understand it so that you can recognize it when it's happening. Am I emotional spending? Am I what am I doing right now? And and then once you start to recognize it, then you just you don't necessarily change yourself, you just know what you're what you're doing, and then you can make a different decision.

Daniela SM: 23:52

And I wonder how we learned that because I know you you said, you know, I know you we hear from our parents. I don't remember hearing too much, but I remember if my dad gave me $10 and he made me work for it, like I have to polish his shoes or wash the car or something. I wouldn't know spend it. I would not I would go to school with the $10 and I will have the $10 all the time. I don't know if if you you really learned that or how how is it that some people are big spenders? So I I wonder how how we learned that. It's a lot of different things.

Linda Grizely : 24:22

That's the money personalities that I talk about too, is like the spender, the saver, the avoider, the risk taker, and the security seeker. So that's all, and that's there's probably blends of those two, but those are the five that identify. But the idea is that you learn them through your stories growing up. So for instance, you said when you would do jobs and you'd get the 10 bucks, you'd still have the 10 bucks. But see, the way I grew up, I was like, if I needed money, I did jobs and I got money, and then I spent the money. I didn't save the money. But my parents were also living paycheck to paycheck. So I knew that they weren't necessarily saving money and they were just spending whatever money they got. So I was mirroring what my parents were doing because I didn't know any better and I wasn't really taught any better. So I don't know if what money stories you have that made you be a saver, like maybe your parents were savers, maybe something else happened that that made you like have that story.

Daniela SM: 25:18

Well, I don't remember, I mean, I remember having the $10, but I don't remember having more than $10, you know? So maybe in at what at some point I did spend it because it wasn't like I was collecting them. So I don't know what happened to the money.

Linda Grizely : 25:33

And I know that you also uh wrote a book. I have a chapter in a book. Lessons from Thought Leaders is a is a book that I wrote a chapter in. It's a piece of my story. And there's I'm like no how many other authors, a whole bunch of authors in that book that all wrote a chapter about their story. They're stories of resilience and personal growth and just overcoming obstacles and just regular people have succeeded in life, you know, want to share their story to let other people know that that they can do it too. That's wonderful. You know, and I'm still I'm still learning things every single day about myself and about other people, right? Like I just uncovered part of my own money story about a month ago when I was having a conversation with somebody and I was like, oh my gosh, I never really thought about that before. That's exactly why I have this entrepreneurial spirit and why I want to do things the way I want to do them, as far as like make how I want to make money and and you know, my drive and all that. I'm like, it totally makes sense. Once you open up like your mind to learning about mindset and personal growth and like what makes people tick, it's just so interesting.

Daniela SM: 26:38

Can you elaborate more about this entrepreneurial mindset? Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah.

Linda Grizely : 26:43

So it goes back to talking about how I made money as a child. So so most of my friends were given an allowance. They had specific chores they needed to do, and then they got their allowance at the end of the week, right? There was a private chart on the wall that said, Joe does this one day and and Jill does it another day, you know, like it was all mapped out. Not my house. My house was just like, you want money, figure out what you want to do, and then tell me what you think it's worth. And then there was like negotiation, you know, I want to mow the lawn, I think it's worth three dollars, you know, and they'd be like, no, it's only worth $2. I'll be like, okay, $250, you know, and then they give me $250, I would mow the lawn for $250, and then I go to the store and buy whatever it was I wanted to buy. That's just the entrepreneurial mindset. I have no problem like going out and like doing work, creating things and creating what I want to do to get paid, rather than somebody telling me what I'm gonna do, when I'm gonna do it, and then giving me a paycheck. I look back to that and I'm like, wow, that really is. That was totally an entrepreneurial lesson, even though that's not what it was meant to be, that's not at all what it was meant to be. And then I also could see how I only worked to do jobs when I wanted something and I wanted to spend the money. I didn't work to do jobs to s to save.

Daniela SM: 27:56

Yeah, because why? We're young, what do we need to save for, right? Yeah. Then you have this guilt-free spending, and then you you want to buy a laptop or you want to buy a TV or something. And I always get confused because I'm thinking, well, it is you you need those things, maybe, you know? So is that me money or is that savings here and there? It seems confusing.

Linda Grizely : 28:16

As far as investing goes, you always want to have an emergency fund that's liquid cash. And that can hopefully it's in a high yield savings account, right? But you don't even want it tied up in a CD, but not investments either, because if you have an emergency, you don't want to have to pull it out it if it's down, right? I mean you don't want to and if it's l if it's high, then you have tax consequences, right? Because you have the gains that you've made on that investment. So emergency funds should be kept liquid and you should have about three to six months of your expenses in there. That's the general rule in financial planning. Investing after that would be the idea. Or you can do start saving towards the emergency fund and start investing at the same time also, depending on how you're saving.

Daniela SM: 29:00

But the emergency fund, it seems to me like I get a flood, my water tank breaks, or something like that, more than oh, I want a new laptop or I just want to buy a new TV. Truth.

Linda Grizely : 29:12

Yeah. The emergency fund is really more for you have storm damage on your house or you got in a car accident, or you know, you're in the hospital, you got sick, or that's really what the emergency fund is for. But it can be like my dishwasher went out. And if you have three to six months in there and you decide you want to spend it on a new laptop or a new TV, that's fine. Then just replenish, just start replenishing that. But the me money itself is supposed to be specifically for you as a person. So it's supposed to be so that you have those mini sabbaticals so that you can spend the money on yourself and not feel guilty about that. Or if you are a spender, then it helps you just make better choices about the money that you're spending on yourself. It also can level the playing field, like it did for me in my marriage, which is also an unexpected thing, where we each had our amounts of B money that was. The same amount. Like he was the one who would who was going on fishing trips and golf trips and doing all these things. And I was always like, and we're a blended marriage, so we got married later in life. But so that also plays into it. But then I was the one who was like, oh, I can't afford to go on a girls' trip. But really I could. I just had like the the worry of because we should be saving. And like he's spending so much, like I can't do that because I need to be the one that saves. But now that the money is the same, like if I decide I want to go and I have the money saved in my little me money bucket, I can do it. And I don't have to answer to anyone, including myself. And with me, it was myself because my husband was never asking me to answer to him. And I never asked him to answer to me either. But by putting him on the budget, I just wanted him to be more mindful and understand what he was spending because he was like, I'm not spending that much money. I'm like, yeah, you are. Like, here. You're gonna monitor it and you're gonna see. And he does see it now. And it wasn't about controlling or restricting. It was just meant to be like, hey, you just need to understand it. It worked, but it worked way better than I even thought it would, because it worked for him better than I thought it would. And it worked for me, and it worked for us as a couple because it leveled that out.

Daniela SM: 31:10

And then with the me bucket, would you add like if you want to do your nails, if you want to buy clothes? Is that me bucket?

Linda Grizely : 31:18

Yeah, so it's gonna be unique to each person and each couple to decide what it is that they want to include in that. Oh, okay. But I like to think of it as generally speaking, if it's something that benefits only you, then it comes from your me money. So if if we take my fingernails, for example, I get my fingernails done, and that comes from my me money because he doesn't care if my fingernails are done. But if I had a partner who was like, oh no, I love, I love that you have nice fingernails, and I really want you to have nice fingernails, and that's important to me, then maybe that's not your me money. Maybe that's your us money that it comes from, you know, comes from your joint money. You know, it's just it's gonna be so unique. Like we decided that haircuts thank you for bringing that up from our our joint money. They don't have to come out of our me money. But I'm not coloring my hair, I'm not spending a lot on there. But even so, I think that hair itself is like hair maintenance is important. Much more important than nails, right? Let's be real. So I think hair could go either way, depending on the relationship with the other person that you're talking about. Like you could think of things like clothes. Like sometimes you have to buy clothes for work. And maybe that's not coming from your meme money, but any like fun clothes or like, you know, whatever might come from your meme money. It's gonna be so unique because some people might be like, Nope, all of your clothes on all of my clothes are going in my meme money. So my husband and I had a conversation about the cable bill because he watches TV way more than I do. And our cable bill is like huge. And we don't even do any streaming, right? And I'm like, we could just cut the cable bill and do a couple channels streaming and we'd be fine. But he's not fine because he wants this, that, and the other. And I said, Well, maybe that bill should come out of your me money then. And he's like, Oh no, that's not coming out of my me money. So we had a conversation about it because I'm like, I'm not benefiting from it, like he's benefiting from it. But right now, it is what it is, and and we're leaving it where it is. But at some point, if it really came down to it, I could say, No, I don't even want the cable anymore. Like, either we cut it or it goes on your me money. That sounds very like aggressive, and I probably wouldn't say it that way, but you know, like just generally speaking, it could come down to that, right? Yes, yes, yes. Because if it's something that only he's benefiting from it, then then he should pay for it out of his stuff.

Daniela SM: 33:39

And you agree that these conversations should be done in a relationship early before you get married, that you should know how you are as a spender. At least have the conversation how we're gonna save. Absolutely.

Linda Grizely : 33:49

It's not to say that there's no wrong money personality. Just because my husband's a spender doesn't make him a bad person. He's not overspending, he's not living outside of our means, he's just making it harder for us to save for retirement. But he also likes to spend money on other people. So it's not like he's just spending it on himself. But yeah, having those conversations in advance is super important and understanding how people react with money is a lot of younger generations are keeping their money separate, but that is creating a whole nother set of problems because if they're not making the same amounts of money, it can leave one partner feeling like they're living a completely different life than the other partner because they're making less. And so they see their other partner that's making more. And yeah, a lot of times the one that's making more might be like, well, I'll pay the mortgage and you pay the utility the lesser bill or whatever. It just creates this whole like you and me instead of us. So it makes things complicated. So I talk to a lot of people about money stuff, and I have this one younger couple who I just talk to the wife, I don't talk to the husband. So she said that they have their money separate. The grocery money is supposed to come from their joint money. But when she goes grocery shopping and she makes meals, she buys some things that are maybe a brand name or a little extra or whatever. And he says that he he wouldn't buy that and that so she should pay for that because he wouldn't buy it. But yet he's eating the food that she's making. And I'm like, okay, there's a really big disconnect here. Like, this is not this is not a healthy money relationship, right? And this is gonna be you're young and you're newly married, and this is gonna be a big issue. It's just gonna keep getting bigger and bigger if you don't address it now and figure out how to make this work.

Daniela SM: 35:33

I know that you have your book and collaboration, you you have courses. What else do you do with people?

Linda Grizely : 35:39

So I do uh I've I have courses and a community, and those are just launching. I also do um coaching, so one-to-one coaching and group coaching. It's money coaching or finance coaching, but it's also all about personal growth and mindset, all combined in. So it's not just like I just look at your money or I just look at your mindset. It's like we talk about all things so that you can like grow as a whole person financially and in life.

Daniela SM: 36:06

Yes, that's interesting. And do you see that do you have a lot of clients because people are really interested, or is this still like a taboo that people don't want to talk about?

Linda Grizely : 36:14

It is a taboo that people don't want to talk about, but that's kind of the point to it, is that my main focus is on women who feel like they're behind and feel like they should know more because they never learned and they were never taught. You know, they're midlife and they're they're like, I don't know what to do with my money. You know, I don't know if I'm saving enough. I don't know what I should be doing or should it be doing. They just feel and they don't know where to start. And maybe they don't have enough money to go directly to a financial advisor. Or maybe they feel like that they're they don't trust a financial advisor because they're not they think they're just gonna try to sell them something, which does happen. To be that trusted partner in helping them understand finances and learn about them and help them with them is is where I start.

Daniela SM: 36:55

So you are a financial advisor, but you know, necessarily do you want people to give you the money to invest? So I am not currently acting as a financial advisor.

Linda Grizely : 37:03

I'm a financial coach. Uh, I have clourses that will teach you how to do your own financial planning and your own and and just financial foundations and and all things personal finance.

Daniela SM: 37:14

And so and when you deal with women, how how is your success rate? Do you see that uh you really can easily m change people's mind, or it really takes a long time? I mean, I I'm sure not everybody's the same, but the majority if you use a percentage.

Linda Grizely : 37:30

Aaron Powell Depends on the person. Like they have to be open to transformation, right? They have to be open to the idea of that. And some people think they are, but they aren't. And some people think they aren't, but they are. So it's just again, there's that psychology. And it's not about changing them. It's about helping them understand who they are. So one of the things that I say is when when you work with me, you show up as your full authentic self.

Daniela SM: 37:57

Okay.

Linda Grizely : 37:58

You're not trying to be someone that you're not. That's the only way that you learn about who you are.

Daniela SM: 38:02

And and I'm curious that you also say that being good with money and being clear with money. What's the difference?

Linda Grizely : 38:08

I mean, I was always good with money. Like we talked about how I I lived within my means, I didn't have debt. Always was good with money, but I wasn't clear with money in the sense that I didn't understand how I needed to save, which maybe some people would say that's not being good with money, but I wasn't bad with money. And I didn't um also understand my own worth. Like I wasn't clear about how how much I was worth and how how money r interacts with us in our world. Like money is with us every sing every second of every day. It's with us when we're sleeping because we're heating our homes, cooling our homes, powering our phones, whatever we're doing. Money is always there. It never leaves. It's like our breath.

Daniela SM: 38:49

To be clear, you do have to read something, take courses. You have to understand it. You have to think about it. I think old generations, including the new ones, although I I have tried to make my kids know to be clear with money, but it is not taught in school. I think it should be taught at an early age. Emotional intelligence, financial advice, you know, like all these should be basic things that everybody should graduate from elementary or high school, knowing already how it works. And I don't know how it's not happening. I just don't understand.

Linda Grizely : 39:24

It's it's amazing because, like I said, it's with us every second of every day. How how can we not teach it in schools?

Daniela SM: 39:30

And have you done this with your kids? Were you able to to help them be clear with money? Well, we're still working on that.

Linda Grizely : 39:37

Remember, I didn't I didn't have this revelation until much later in life. So they were already adults by the time I figured things out.

Daniela SM: 39:44

Yes. But they're they're doing pretty good. Linda, anything else that we haven't touched? I mean, I'm sure that your life is uh too long to explain in one hour, but is there anything else that that I'm missing?

Linda Grizely : 39:54

We hit all the main points, you know, just the idea that you're never too young or too old, right? I did things when I was young and I then I did things when I was old, and and you know, I'm still I'm still growing and learning every day. Keep going.

Daniela SM: 40:07

Yes, I think that's true. Uh it's never too late. You want to do it, you should do it. It's great. I I'm glad that that you came here to to tell us about that and and to explain that yes, I know that women sometimes are don't want to, you know, they let they get married and then they leave the responsibility of the finance to their husband who says that they know more. You know, something happened, you can get divorced, or you can be a widow, or and then you're lost and you don't know what to do. So I hope that people come to you and we'll put all the notes for your courses and the information on your website so that people can learn and reach out when they need your help. Thank you so much. Appreciate you having me on the show. Yes, thank you. Linda's story reminds us that financial freedom isn't just about numbers. Or maybe that we have enough. If this conversation spoke to you, please leave a comment and share it with someone who might need a gentle reminder that it is never too late to rewrite your money story and find out their finances. Join me next time for another story conversation. Thank you for listening. Hasta pronto.