Inspire Your Family’s Finances with guests John & Karen Yates

In this episode of the Brainy Moms parenting podcast, Dr. Amy Moore and visiting co-host Sandra Zamalis interview John and Karen Yates. John and Karen are financial alignment coaches, founders of Inspire My Money, and authors of Own Your Financial Future: Seven Strategies to Get You Started Today.  

Does the word “budget” create negative emotions when you hear it? For many people, that’s the reason budgets fail. John and Karen have created a new way of looking at your finances that uses the psychology of goal-directed behavior and gives you full control of how you spend your money. It’s an inspiring way of thinking about your shared dreams, working towards meeting them, and enjoying life now as a family. Not waiting for the “right” time.  Join us for an episode that addresses a topic that many couples want to avoid but don’t have to.  It’s all about aligning your goals and working towards achieving your dreams together. 

 

Read the transcript and show notes for this episode:

Episode 124
Inspire Your Family’s Finances
with guests John and Karen Yates

Dr. Amy Moore:

Hi, and welcome to this episode of Brainy Moms. I’m Dr. Amy Moore and I am here with a very familiar voice, a visiting co-host Sandy Zamalis from LearningRx.

Sandy Zamalis:

Hi, everybody.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Sandy is filling in for Teri this week. So Sandy and I would like to introduce you to our guests today, John and Karen Yates. They are financial alignment coaches, founders of Inspire My Money and authors of Own Your Financial Future: Seven Strategies to Get You Started Today. And they are here to talk to us about getting control of our finances in a very different way than you’ve ever heard before.

Sandy Zamalis:

Welcome, John and Karen. Thank you for being with us today.

John Yates:

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. So excited to be here with you guys.

Karen Yates:

Yes. Thank you.

Sandy Zamalis:

I was so excited when I found out the topic of today’s podcast. In fact, after watching your personal story video on your website, I decided to prepare for today’s discussion by forcing my husband to take money personality quizzes online with me to see what our own relationship with money was, which was comical, but eye opening. I know our podcast listeners would love to hear your money story, so could you please share how you discovered your money story and began your journey to becoming financial alignment coaches?

John Yates:

Sure. I would love to. That’s why we’re here, wanted to share our experience and hopefully it will inspire you to do something as well with yourself. Our journey started back in 2018 and just not that long ago, and what happened was we had just come back from vacation and just like everybody else, we’re like, oh my gosh, got to go to work now. And so we were realizing the struggle of time with family, time on vacation that we all enjoy, and then coming back home and realizing, oh, here we are back in our real routine and let’s go back to work. And so we were at a point in our relationship, 20 years down the road, where we were just really struggling. We were at a really hard part of our life-

Karen Yates:

Of our marriage.

John Yates:

… of our marriage and our relationship, and so after that vacation, we were like, oh my gosh, this is what we need more of to get back on track and more time or more vacations, and how does that happen when you’re working? It doesn’t. And so with our relationship struggling, it was just kind of a turning point to say, we have to do something, and what is that? And so-

Karen Yates:

We had this crazy idea. Let’s ditch our normal life. Let’s get away from this nine to five, or really, let’s be real. It wasn’t nine to five. It was seven to five daily grind, and we see each other for a couple hours a day. We see our kids for even less, and you’ve got the whole process of coming home and making dinner and cleaning up, and then there’s a bedtime routine and we didn’t have any time. And so we said, well, let’s ditch that. And we decided that, you know what? We want to do something completely different and we’re going to travel. We had wanted to travel and I always thought that we were going to have to do that in retirement. And when you sit down and think about it, it’s like, well, if you plan for retirement, one, you have to hope that you have enough funds saved up. Two, you have to hope that you’re in good enough health, and now three, you have to hope that there isn’t a global pandemic going on which prevents you from traveling.

Karen Yates:

So we said, you know what? We’re in good enough health. We don’t have the funds at the moment, and there wasn’t a pandemic. Two out of the three and reality was… Our bank account was at about zero at that moment. We’d gone through four job losses between the two of us. We’ve had multiple out-of-state moves each time. And what really put us at zero is we’d had a real estate flip that was supposed to do really phenomenal for us, and it ended up being a flop. And so we were back at zero and we said, man, how do we do this? How do we go and travel when we have no money? And we didn’t have jobs that we could work remotely. So we had to figure this out.

John Yates:

It’s so crazy to think when we tell our story to look back on it. We always hear people that are just struggling at zero or like… we both have college degrees. She was a chemist. I have a teaching degree and as a chemist and a teacher and we can’t make it, it’s just so frustrating. We bought in our homes every time we moved, we had investment real estate, and we were at zero at 20 years later, and we were trying to figure out why was this happening? How could we change this? And with our relationship at a low point, we were like, oh my gosh, this is just a disaster in the making. And so how do you get out of that?

John Yates:

Well, you just kind of find each other if you really want that to happen and you decide what to do, and so with that, we said, okay, we’re going to go do this. And so we just did what we needed to do. How do we create an online income? Well, that was the first thing. So I went on a mentorship, got qualified to go on this mentorship, did that for a couple of months and figured out how to make money online, and that opened the door for the rest of it, so that’s how we managed to take off.

Karen Yates:

It was in seven months of deciding, of really committing to this. We had this idea and we let it sit and stir, and we talked. It was not a decision that we made lightly in any way, shape or form. I mean, we talked about all kinds of things, but we talked and talked and talked and talked.

John Yates:

Which helped our relationship.

Karen Yates:

A ton.

John Yates:

Just that goal setting, kind of reformulated our relationship.

Karen Yates:

And we went through that process and so we finally, a couple of months later said, okay, yes, this is what we’re going to do. And within seven months we had saved up one year’s worth of expenses and we got on that plane with one way tickets and we haven’t been back.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Wow. Okay, so you went through this mentorship program, learned how to make money online. What did that look like?

John Yates:

The mentorship was kind of a last minute thing. This online guy that I’ve been following for just a couple of weeks, had a teaching program and you had to fill out a questionnaire and do some things to see if you would qualify to be one of the 10, and I was coming across this in the last week of his program and said, oh, well, this isn’t going to really happen. But nonetheless went ahead and did it and got into the mentorship. I was the last one into the mentorship. And after the fact, he tells me it’s in Thailand and I was like, well, that’s not going to happen. We have no money. I can’t fly to Thailand, do all of this.

John Yates:

And again, when that goal is present, you just look for ways, and so whatever happens to you in the negative sense, like okay, well, you can’t go to Thailand, so that’s out, that’s over. Go back to your normal life. But when that goal is present, when things are moving forward, you just find a way, and so-

Karen Yates:

You find the opportunity.

John Yates:

Yeah. The next step was see how much airfare is. Lo and behold, a trip ticket was $300 from the US to Thailand and back. And I was like, oh my gosh, how can you pass that up? So I went. I mean, you can’t pass that up. I’m thinking thousands of dollars to go there and back, and it literally cost us, I think, $600 for everything to get there and back on a plane. So for me to go from Kansas to San Francisco, Las Vegas, LA, and then out and back, $600 total. And so those-

Karen Yates:

Literally eliminated that barrier where it was like, oh no, we can’t do this.

John Yates:

Right.

Karen Yates:

And there were still a lot of scrambling because at the time he didn’t have a valid passport. So it’s like, okay, got to process that really quick. And there were still barriers, but that cost barrier then, once we really looked at it and said, okay, this is an opportunity that we don’t want to pass up, and you start to find ways. And it really gets down to the communication and the alignment that we both said, yes, this is something that we really want to do. How do we make this happen?

Sandy Zamalis:

You keep mentioning communication and that in-depth year where you really talked through your financial problems. Can you share more about that with us? One of my favorite things on your website was you guys sharing your relationship to money and how you discovered how you were each looking at money differently, and I know our listeners would love to hear that. Can you share more?

Karen Yates:

Sure. That’s really something that we’ve believed so strongly that it’s a major part of our program is that communication really solves so much and really getting into the money story. It really is. We each have a different money story and it really comes from our childhood, our upbringing, and you and your sibling can have completely different money stories. It’s really what-

John Yates:

Spouse. I’m your spouse.

Karen Yates:

Yes, but it can be your sibling that grew up in the exact same environment. Oh, you’re not my brother. That’s gross. Even a sibling that grew up in the exact same house can have a completely different money story because it’s what impacts you as a child. And so thinking about your money story, you really think about what are some of your first memories about money, and for the two of us, it’s completely different. I grew up in a very frugal, very protective, almost afraid of money environment, and that affected how I reacted to money. And John had a completely different relationship.

John Yates:

My story was that my dad started off going to college with a child, full-time, and working full-time midnights. And so I grew up with that mentality of get through school and work hard and the rest will happen. And so he climbed the ladder very quickly. He was the president of an international plastics company at 32 years old or something, and money was never a worry. We were upper middle class and had a boat lifestyle and went skiing every winter, and had all the… Had really it all, looking back. As a child, you don’t realize it, but looking back, it was pretty amazing. Had the sports car and had friends who had swimming pools in their basement. Looking back, that’s not normal.

John Yates:

So I grew up with that and so money was never an issue, and so I always grew up with what seemed normal today as adults going out to dinner whenever you want, and just going on vacation and doing the things obviously at a different level, as a child for me, but in our own sense, just using the money that we had to live the luxury lifestyle as much as possible. And so that’s kind of my story. And so as an adult, where that takes me, is money is not a worry. Just go to work, work hard and be smart about how to grow your money exponentially. And so we attempted that. I was a financial advisor for a while and traded on the Wall Street New York stock exchange with a small company in New York. And so I had all the knowledge for this and it was just not happening.

John Yates:

And so the communication for us is really what brought our two stories together and finding out what we really want for our life. And we were going about it the same… We were going towards the same goal.

Karen Yates:

We had the same destination.

John Yates:

Yeah. But just a different path to get there. So with my beliefs and my thinking about how to get there was scaring her to death, and so she was always holding back and stop, stop, stop. And when I want to get a boat like, oh no, that doesn’t fit my story of save, save, save, but it fits my story of this luxury lifestyle. But the goal for her was to have memories and have close bonding family, and that was my goal with my boating lifestyle was to have memories and have a close family lifestyle. Well, the different paths creates a conflict. And so once you come up with those two stories and realize the conflict, once you can get that out of the way, and you realize that the end goal is actually the same, the more communication, the more you start to see that happening.

Karen Yates:

Right. It just changes everything when you don’t have that conflict, when you realize that that destination that we both wanted is the same, now we can communicate as to let’s get on the same path so that we’re not fighting each other, we’re not having conflict, we are actually working together towards this same goal, on the same road, then it just changes everything.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Yeah. So you talk about that… You don’t approach this from a numbers bottom line perspective, that you look at it more holistically, that there are 10 areas of our lives that need to come into alignment for this to work. So can you talk more about that? It’s interesting philosophy.

Karen Yates:

I mean, we know that money plays a role in literally every aspect of your life, even from parenting. Do you choose to send your child to a private school or did they go to the public school? Do they have extracurricular activities that cost money? All of that plays into just the simple thing of parenting. Now, social interactions, oh, do I want to go out drinking with my friends or do I want to go do this or that with my friends? Well, it’s going to cost money. And so looking at just the bottom line, it really negates so much of your life, and as money is interwoven within every aspect of our lives, we realized that we have to look at all of those.

Karen Yates:

And what our program does is we actually have each person go through and look at all 10 of these aspects of their life and say, what is it that I want from my career, from my parenting life, for my social interactions, for my emotional life? What emotions do I want to have on a regular basis and how do I create those situations that yield those emotions? And so we have each one go through individually and have them do that together, then look at those together and say, okay, yes, we want a lot of the same things. And so having really a holistic approach to everything that you would want to spend money on, and including your career where the money’s coming from. Are you in a job that you’re happy with, or is this something that you really want to change? And having those discussions really changes the interaction between the two spouses.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Interesting. So you also talk about the secret sauce that you were missing when you were trying to figure all this out. Talk about that secret sauce.

John Yates:

Right. So the secret sauce is the alignment piece, and what we mean by that is the process that we went through from our struggle in the beginning and our marriage was really not at a good spot. We were really having a hard time. And you can think of all the horror stories and they crossed our minds. And so we were there. And so the secret sauce is once we started communicating correctly, and that we went through that process of the following year, the following eight, nine months, and all of the communication that happened, was just becoming aligned with each other. The communication of wanting to fulfill each other’s goals and to do it now, to do it currently, not… Our society is set up to set everything up for retirement and our whole lives are set up for that one goal down the road, and yet we miss what’s happening now.

John Yates:

And so a lot of what we took in is figure out what we can do and what we want to do and make as much as possible happen right now, no matter what. And I know a lot of people have a hard time, including us. It’s a very scary place to go to have that full on commitment, because we’re trained to think, oh, when I’m 60, when I’m 65, then we’ll do that. And so it’s very scary to commit to something that big right now. And that’s why so many people don’t do our lifestyle, but they do make massive changes within their own lives in their own ways. And so that’s kind of the beauty of what we’ve seen happen, is through these 10 different categories of your lifestyle, that you can actually pinpoint with each other and make strides towards… The money kind of falls into place and that’s kind of what we’ve seen, is the money just happens because your minds are aligned to think together now.

Karen Yates:

Right and to work towards the same goals. And so we found alignment with the goals with each other and then with your money as well. So you’re choosing to make those goals important and you’re making decisions based on each other, based on your relationship, and then your finances just naturally kind of go along in the same path. And it’s really incredible when you get to witness it happen, because what can kind of seem like a struggle between two people, between a husband and wife where there’s conflict, and they suddenly opened these lines of communication and they’re freely communicating and they’re sharing their goals and getting to the emotions, which is where we really drive these conversations. You have to get to the emotional aspect of what you want and of how you’re feeling and sharing that. It just gets both partners on the exact same page and realizing that we can do this together.

John Yates:

Yeah. Just an example, in our five week program, the first two weeks we don’t even look at numbers. It’s all about how to communicate differently than you are now.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Did this translate to your kids as well? Did you include them in the conversation because I’m sure they were front and center watching the shift happen? Did you sit down and talk to them about changes that you were making and new patterns you were creating?

Karen Yates:

Definitely. And they were different ages at the time. There’s five and a half years between them, so our daughter was six and our son was 12 at the time. And so we kind of shared with our son a little sooner what our plans were because we’re going to leave the states and for him it was a little bit of a bummer at first, because we had just moved like a little over a year before, that he was like, “Wait, we’re moving again?” But he kind of quickly got over it. But with a six year old, we’re like, oh my gosh, like six months, nine months, it’s like forever and a day to a six year old, so we didn’t want to share it with her because we’re like, oh my gosh, she was just going to want to like, oh, it’ll just be so long. But yeah, we definitely shared with them.

John Yates:

We put some seeds in there, some secret little questions to pull out some information and kind of prep her, see if it would actually be okay.

Karen Yates:

Yeah. And the funny thing was is when we told her. She was like, “Oh wait, mom, dad, you’re not going to work? Okay. When are we leaving? Let’s go now. I’m ready.” And she was all on board, but we definitely included them in financial conversations, telling them, “Hey, this is what we’re doing. We’re saving money for this.” And one of the easier ways that we did it was we would still go out to eat and the kids both liked to get lemonade when we would go out to eat, as a treat. We didn’t have it at home often. “So okay, we’re going out to eat. Maybe we’ll get a lemonade.”

Karen Yates:

But we kind of brought them into the whole aspect of this planning by saying, “You know what, if you don’t get a lemonade. If you just get water with your meal, then we’ll go ahead and we’ll transfer that money into this account.” And so we’d pull out our phone, use this little app and we’d say, “Okay, we’re going to transfer the $5 that the two lemonades would’ve cost us. We’re going to transfer it into the savings account.” And they were like, “Oh yes, I’m contributing now, right? I am helping towards this goal.” And it really made them part of the process which helped in the long run. We weren’t fighting with them like, “Oh, I want a lemonade.” No, it was like, “Yeah, I’m not going to have a lemonade. Can we put that money in that account?” And so just bringing them into the process, having them be on board with it, really did help.

Dr. Amy Moore:

I love that idea. I mean, that has applicability in a lot of scenarios too. So let me just clarify for our listeners, you are not selling a program that says, hey, you want to travel the world instead of work, do this. You’re saying we have the secret sauce for you to align your goals, whatever they are, with each other.

Karen Yates:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

John Yates:

Yeah.

Karen Yates:

We know that there are some people who want to travel the world and that’s great. We welcome them with open arms. We will share so much with you. But if that’s not you, there’s still absolutely… this program is designed for whatever your goals are. We know that most people don’t want to do that, that there’s things that are holding them where they are. And that’s absolutely fine. There is no judgment on that. You don’t want to travel the world. Great. What is it that you really want? Do you want that nicer home? Do you want that really nice vacation? Do you want to have a boat and do that on the weekends? Whatever that goal is, it really doesn’t matter. It’s really getting that alignment, that togetherness, to where you can have that goal and have it now, not have it when you’re 65 and a half and the government says that you should be retiring.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Right. Right. Your life doesn’t start at retirement. Your life is now. And so there’s [crosstalk 00:23:14] the journey.

Karen Yates:

Exactly. And that’s one of the things that we really firmly believe in that you have to enjoy the process. And so there’s plenty of financial people out there who will say do whatever you have to do to save as much money as you can now, and eat rice and beans and live in the cheapest place that you possibly can, and walk to work when you can. And we’re not that way. We know that you have to enjoy the process or otherwise it’s why are you doing it? Not going to get to the end goal because you’re just going to give up if you hate the process. And so we are all about enjoying life now. Yes, there are moderations, but you don’t have to give up everything that you love in order to really achieve those goals. It’s really that alignment between you and your spouse that makes all the difference.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Do you find that asking couples to be very open and honest about their individual goals so that then they can collaborate on shared goals, do you find that there’s some resistance there? Do you find that that vulnerability is a roadblock to being able to communicate those goals? I just know that talking about money can be very scary, right? And you open up the weaknesses when you talk about money and sometimes people would rather just walk through life blind and hope it all works out. So how do you help them break through those barriers?

Karen Yates:

We understand that very, very well. From a very personal standpoint, I did not ever want to talk about money. John was a financial advisor. I was like, “Here, you deal with the money. You [inaudible 00:25:01] with it.” I didn’t want anything to do with it. He would try to have conversations with me, and I was exactly like you described, I would cower away. I would put up the stop sign and say, no, I do not want to do this. I don’t want to have these conversations. And so we realized after this transformation happened, that the 20 years that I had been doing that we hadn’t made the progress that we could have because we didn’t have that communication. And so understanding that, we kind of know those buttons to kind of push, to say, you know what, it’s okay to have these discussions, and we don’t start with discussions about money because we know that those are fraught with a lot of emotions. And so we start with conversations that are about something-

John Yates:

That’s where the 10 categories come in. You can start with something simple and then start with something that’s comfortable. And you kind of work into a deeper conversation with each other, and that kind of helps get you to the next discussion, and then you continue on, and those are all wins. The first 5, 6, 7, 8 are all easy and comfortable and wins, and you’re learning how to talk in depth with each other. Okay, now you get to the more difficult one about money, which is set up as talking about your goals. It’s not talking about money. It’s talking about your life goals, and you’ve just gone through seven or eight of those goals, and now you feel really good about reaching those goals together. And so now what is this next goal that happens to work with our job and our finances, how are we going to put that in position to do the best for us?

John Yates:

And so it becomes an easier conversation when you set it up with six or seven or eight other conversations along the way that are relatively easy. And so the hard part is just kind of breaking through to the… Getting out of the routine really, getting into what is it truly deep down, if money was no object and you could live where you wanted, what would you do? What would it look like? What would it feel like? We didn’t meet these people, but we read a lot about other people’s stories, and this lady had always wanted to live on the ocean, and she was two states away from the ocean and she never thought she could be there because their job was here. And she quit her job, moved to the ocean and found a job with a better pay. And she’s like, “Oh my gosh, I could have done this 20 years ago.”

John Yates:

And so if you’d never have that idea, if you never break out of that routine, then you’re going to be stuck where you’re at. And so these conversations help you get unstuck. And that’s the beauty of getting to the end piece of that money, which is a difficult subject, even if it’s the ninth or 10th conversation that you’re going to have, it still has a lot of emotion tied to it.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Do you find that it really kind of boils down to safety, like people feeling safe?

John Yates:

Absolutely.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Money. I think that’s really probably the sticking point about money because money is just paper, right? But it’s that safety-

John Yates:

But it’s paper.

Dr. Amy Moore:

… It’s that safety net so that you feel secure. So it sounds like those 10 categories that you go through, you’re really working through those safety barriers and figuring out goals along the way.

John Yates:

Yeah. If you didn’t have those safety nets, if you didn’t have your routine, what would it look like? And everybody has a different story than where they’re at. Everybody has their retirement story in mind when they talk about today, and so how do you pull some of that retirement story into today? Not that you can do it all, but maybe you can? We have, essentially. We’ve lived on the ocean for the last 18 months. It was amazing. You could walk to the ocean, a hundred yards from the ocean, like it’s incredible. And I never imagined that three years ago. Never could even imagine it.

Karen Yates:

We were living in Kansas, so slap bang in the middle of the United States. You got a long way to drive in either direction to get to the ocean.

John Yates:

It was always my dream to live at the ocean, but until you break out of that routine and see something else.

Karen Yates:

Yeah. And breaking out of that routine, really doesn’t all boil down to ditching it all and going and doing something completely different, but really breaking out of the routine of your thinking even. I mean, everyone does this, right? You get stuck in your routine, and it all goes into the brain physiology. Our brain develops habits so we use it less.

John Yates:

They know.

Karen Yates:

Right? And so we all get stuck in these routines and it’s not saying anyone’s wrong for doing it, but our whole program is to break you out of that routine of thinking, just to explore other options, other possibilities. And what is it that you really, really want deep down, because it may be that you want something very, very different than what you currently have.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Absolutely. So we need to take a quick break and let Sandy read a word from our sponsor, LearningRx. And when we come back, I want to start talking about some specific strategies that we can start with today.

Sandy Zamalis: (reading sponsor ad from LearningRx)

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Dr. Amy Moore:

And we are back talking to John and Karen Yates from Inspire my Money. And so you guys have an ebook called Own your Financial Future: Seven Strategies to get you Started Today, and you are actually offering that to our listeners for free, right? And so can we talk about some of those strategies that our listeners could get started on?

John Yates:

Yeah, absolutely.

Karen Yates:

Definitely. One of the things that we really are firm believers in is not budgeting actually. And I know that kind of sounds a little strange when you hear the word financial and coach, you think, oh, that must equal budgeting. One of the things-

Sandy Zamalis:

Now you’re speaking my language.

Dr. Amy Moore:

I’m all excited now. No budget? Tell me more!

Karen Yates:

Exactly. The problem is that budgets, I really equate them with diets. So what happens when you go on a diet? You say, okay, I can’t eat this food. I can’t eat this food and I can’t eat this food, and you’re going to be restrictive on what you eat, right? And then you see that donut sitting there on the counter, and you’re like, oh, I want that donut. And you just start thinking about that donut. And your brain is focused on this donut that you can’t have because your diet doesn’t allow it, right? And hours later, even if you didn’t eat the donut, you’re thinking about that donut. And it turns out that when you go off the diet, what happens? Most of the time you gain back all the weight you lost and sometimes even more than you had before, and so it’s just this restrictive process. And the problem is it’s not triggering anything different in your thinking in how you think about food.

Karen Yates:

And so we find that budgets are the exact same way. Okay, we’re going to restrict what you spend. We’re going to tell you that you can only spend this much on your housing and this much on your food budget and this much for gas or whatever, right? And okay, it might work while you’re on it. For many people, it does for some time. But then they have all these negative feelings while they’re involved in this budget, right? Oh, I can’t go out to dinner because I don’t have money in my budget. And what happens? You start thinking, oh man, I really want to go out to dinner. And now all of a sudden that dinner out just becomes like this, oh, pie in the sky kind of thing that you can’t have, and you’re thinking about it, thinking about it, and it’s just all these negative feelings and emotions revolving around not going out to dinner.

John Yates:

Negative feelings about your money. It’s really what happens.

Karen Yates:

Right? And so we shift it so that we are focused not on budgeting, but actually on expense tracking. And so we look backwards and we look at the expenses of what you had for the last month. What did you spend? And then having those discussions that we’re so very adamant about having, and saying how do I feel about how much that we spent on food, going out to eat, right? And so then we use that to forecast, what do we want to do this coming month? And so this is a monthly conversation and it’s between both spouses, right? This is not something that you do. Oh, this is how I feel about it. No, this is how we feel about it.

Karen Yates:

And now all of a sudden you spent a little more than you wanted to the previous month and you say, okay, well maybe we should cut down a little bit this month on going out to eat. So now it comes out that, oh, I want to go to eat. Oh, you know what? We said we were going to cut down this month, so what can we do? Well, we can go to a less expensive restaurant or we can choose not to go out to eat and we will make something at home.

John Yates:

So both of those decisions are now positive decisions.

Karen Yates:

Absolutely. And so we changed that, so now all of a sudden this not going out to eat is now a win because we made that decision based on our previous month, looking at our expenses, what we did, and now, instead of this being negative like, oh, I can’t go out to eat. Now, it is, I am choosing not to go out to eat because it’s more important for me to put that money towards my goal of XYZ. And so changing that mindset about money and about your spending and getting away from this restrictive feeling of this budget, which doesn’t allow me to do things and makes me feel negative and uptight, and changing it instead to looking at my expenses and then making decisions together about being intentional with that money. Now we change those decisions from being negative to being positive. And now it’s a win for both of us when we decide, you know what, we’re just going to get some pizza or we’re going to make something at home.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Yeah. And that’s classic goal-directed behavior and the thinking that goes along with that. And so if you can adopt that mindset that, is my decision going to move me towards my goal that I’ve set, not that somebody set for me, but that we’ve set together, or is my decision going to take me further away from our goal, then you have this sense of control, right? That the budget isn’t controlling you. That you have all the control in the world, because they’re your goals. I really love that.

John Yates:

Thank you so much.

Karen Yates:

Yeah, it’s really fundamental that we get away from that negative feeling, because I mean, there’s so many emotions tied up with money already that we don’t need to be playing more on top of them by saying, okay, this is this budget that you have to follow. And I mean, we see it all the time. People go off the budget and their spending just goes right back to where it was or sometimes even worse. And it breaks my heart really to see this because the problem with the budget is it does nothing to change the mindset, and so you go back to your old habits.

John Yates:

You’re trying to be in a forced situation. You’re trying to hang on for dear life until you get to retirement. And then whether it’s months down the road or, or even a couple of years down the road, it’s just too hard to maintain, and you’re always calculating, how long can I keep this up and how much longer till retirement? And it’s just not worth it. It’s not worth it at some point. And so they stop. And so they get back right to where they were and it just doesn’t help.

Karen Yates:

Or worse.

John Yates:

Yeah, it just doesn’t help. So they may have had some money built up in the meantime, but all of the holding back and frustration gets released at some point.

Sandy Zamalis:

So your coaching program, Inspire My Money, how does that work? Is it individual? Is it with groups? Do you work one-to-one and what are your clients really learn as they’re working with you?

John Yates:

So we do one-on-one right now. We’re trying to build it up to get to group, but it’s a whole different setup. So right now it’s one-on-one, couples, couple to couple, and they’d go through a course program, and then we have one-on-one discussions every other week, and that’s how we continue through the program with them.

Karen Yates:

Right. So they really learn… The focus is really on this alignment that we’ve talked about. Alignment with each other, alignment with the goals, and those goals are aligned with each other, and the finances aligned with all of that. So we get this wonderful triad of alignment, where we start to see a lot of massive positive results from that. And so coming out of it, a couple have the ability to communicate about money, about their goals. They have a clear path on where they are going, where they want to go together. It’s not something that we set at all. It’s something that they have set together and we are just facilitators really to help that along, to help them define that if they need help with that and to help them find the little ways to save money in ways that maybe they don’t even realize are possible, and to really facilitate how they can get to those goals even sooner than they might have before. And definitely by getting that communication together, they’re already five steps ahead.

Dr. Amy Moore:

It sounds like a real mentoring relationship you’re building.

John Yates:

It is. Yeah, it is. And so to share some of the… I know you asked about some specific strategies and you just kind of secretly put it in there the ways that you don’t even know are there. [crosstalk 00:39:52]

Karen Yates:

There’s a lot of hidden things that people spend money on that they don’t necessarily realize. And one of the biggest that we find is actually food. And it’s not just going out to eat. Going out to eat is obviously a lot more costly than making food yourself. But we found, I mean, one of the things that we found that we were vastly surprised at is just making a meal plan for the week. In doing this, we were able to save, ourselves, like 250, $300 a month just by making a meal plan. How does that happen? How does that work? But it’s really making sure that one, you have ingredients on hand. Two, you’re not sitting there at five o’clock when you’re hungry saying, oh, what are we going to have for dinner? And then three, saying, oh man, I got to go to the store because I don’t have XYZ ingredient. No, you eliminate all of that.

Karen Yates:

And it just lowers that barrier to actually making food at home. But you also end up wasting a lot less because you’re planning that, okay, you know what, if I’m buying this bag of spinach that I know I’m not going to use all of it in this recipe, you know what, three days later, I’m going to plan to use the spinach on something else so that it’s not being wasteful. And just by doing the simple thing of menu planning, you can save a lot of money every single month, which just multiplies over the course of the year.

Dr. Amy Moore:

And do you find that that’s more successful if couples meal plan together or does the one who cooks make all the decisions and everybody else just has to accept what the menu says?

John Yates:

Oh no, this is definitely a holistic thing. We bring the entire family together. What you like for dinner? What you like for dinner? And so the plan really goes into detail when you get into it of every two weeks, you have a two-week menu plan. It’s very detailed in the course where you go to the grocery store for this certain things on this week, and then on the following week you go for these items. And so we don’t use coupons. We don’t do any kind of that stuff. That’s all bonus if you want to get into all that. But the object of the game is to eliminate going to the store and so when you do go, you know exactly what you’re going to get on this week and it’s going to hold you over for the next two weeks. And so it’s a very strategic, detailed plans. Tons of hours of research have gone into it, and tons of money has gone into our bank account because of it.

John Yates:

And so at the end of our journey, before we left, one of the things that we were trying to get to, because we’re very healthy eaters, like to be, try to be, was that I always wanted to get into the organic foods and start buying organic-

Karen Yates:

Produce.

John Yates:

Yeah, produce and everything else, as much as we could. So by eliminating our food bill, our decision was okay, well, let’s transition into organic. Before we didn’t want to afford it. Couldn’t afford it, whatever you want to say. But now with all of that savings, we were like, okay, let’s transition. So our food bill kind of crept back up, but we were eating what we wanted to eat and that felt good for both of us.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Sure. Well, and that has health savings across the lifespan as well, and that’s an investment in longevity. Yeah.

Sandy Zamalis:

I love that that holistic idea really is like a team building exercise too. Like, especially if you’re sitting down at the table with your kids and everyone’s deciding what would you really love to eat this week? What would you like to see on the menu this week? And everyone’s [crosstalk 00:43:27] together. That’s great. It’s not always possible sometimes, but it’s nice. I like the team building aspect of it.

Karen Yates:

Yeah. We definitely include the kids because generally the details fall to me. I’m more of the planner, more of the detail orientated one, but like, I get tired of deciding every week, so it’s like, “Okay, what do we want on the menu this week?” And I just open it up and it’s like, okay, bring it on. And you know, oh wait, we had that twice last week. No, we’re not having that this week. But we definitely include them and make them part of it because I don’t want to be making all those decisions, and John doesn’t either. So we open it up.

John Yates:

Yeah, it’s interesting because those are just tips for kind of our situation, but when you get into it, if that’s not fitting for your family to save that money there, it’s the goals that you’ve set up for each other, for the family, that kind of takes hold, and if eating out four or five times a week is your goal and makes you feel really good, and you both agree and align with that, then that’s perfect. That’s what you want. It’s not how to save money on food. It’s how to align yourself with the goal. Because I know as an example, my parents used to go out five, six times a week and that’s what they wanted to do. And that’s okay. It’s not that you can’t, that you’re ruining your financial life because of this. No, you’re enjoying your life together now and you’ve set your money, you’ve directed your money towards that goal, and so everything else kind of works out.

Dr. Amy Moore:

So then you just have to find another area that isn’t so important that maybe you can adjust your spending in that isn’t so important to you.

Karen Yates:

Exactly.

John Yates:

Yeah. And what happens is it kind of grows because the little things are kind of your day-to-day or month to month, but the bigger things is where you really kind of change your life, whether it’s the house or the cars or vacations. Those are thousands upon thousands of dollars. If you can save 50,000, 100,000 on a house on your next house, okay, well, that’ll take care of some things for that end retirement goal as well. I mean, you could save 50 or $60,000 on your car situation over the next 10, 20 years also, just by rearranging and looking and aligning what that looks like in the future. So as much as we talk today about what it looks like right now today, those strategies are huge when you get into the bigger numbers and the bigger items of life, that can be life changing. And nobody really tends to plan on those 60, $100,000 chunks that can change your life. They think, oh, my 401(k) will take care of me when I’m 65. And you can double or triple that amount by the time you get there.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Do you provide guidance for couples who have found themselves in debt?

Karen Yates:

Definitely. I mean, that’s very common. The numbers are staggering as to the amount of debt that Americans have, and so it’s definitely in there.

John Yates:

Everybody’s in debt, be it student loans or credit cards or you know-

Karen Yates:

The vast majority of people have debt, and so yes, we definitely address that. We definitely help people figure out a plan to address that and to keep them from falling into that cycle. And that really goes into that whole mindset again, of changing that mindset so that once they’re done with the program, they’re not done with what they have learnt. They’re not off the budget. They are simply carrying forward with what they have learned and they’ve changed their mindset, and so it’s definitely a part our program at how to handle that, how to tackle it together and really get through that and change that mindset so you’re not in that situation again a year, two years, five years down the road, because we’ve done the work to change the mindset so that it doesn’t happen again.

Dr. Amy Moore:

So is there one last thing you’d like to leave our listeners with?

John Yates:

I think we’ve kind of said it all throughout, but I think it is the most important part, is really sitting down and having a heart to heart, because it doesn’t matter what level your relationship is at, whether you guys feel that you’re really on top of everything and really good relationship, things were going well, or that you were where we were at and we really either needed a heart to heart or things were going to look even worse. So to have that heart to heart about what you want your life to look like now, not 20, 30, 40 years from now for some people, but right now, how does that look? And if money was no object and you could land wherever you wanted to land, what would it look like? And you start to weigh, okay, how do we do it? Can we do it? Should we do it?

John Yates:

There’s just all kinds of different decisions that never really get talked about, and so to bring those conversations out on a regular basis is really powerful and it just creates a new habit to get into those kinds of conversations. So every Sunday we have it on our calendar, pops up on our phone, goals today. And so we sit down and have a sometimes a two minute conversation, sometimes a three hour conversation. But to have that habit of checking in with communication is probably the most important piece.

Karen Yates:

I just like to add to that. One quick thing is don’t let your lack of finances right now prevent you from doing something that you really want to do. If you have a dream go after that dream. Your situation right now is not where you are stuck, and so go after it. Do something that you love, that you want to do so that as you age, as you get older, that you don’t have the regret that, hey, I didn’t do this.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Great advice. So we are out of time and need to wrap up, but I just want to thank our guests today, John and Karen Yates. Thank you so much for spending this hour with us, for giving our listeners such great tips. And if you’d like to connect with John and Karen or learn more about their coaching program, you can visit inspiremymoney.com/secret, and we’ll put their social media handles and those links to download the free e-book Own Your Financial Future: Seven Strategies to get You Started Today. We’ll put all that in our show notes.

So thank you so much for listening today. If you liked our show, we would love it if you would leave us a five star review and rating on Apple podcasts. If you’d rather watch us, we are on YouTube, and please follow us on social media @TheBrainyMoms. So until next time look, we’re busy moms and you’re busy moms. So we’re out.

Connect with John & Karen Yates 

Find out more about their financial alignment program at: inspiremymoney.com/secret

Download their free ebook: Own Your Financial Future: Seven Strategies to get You Started Today

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