My Money My Way: Taking Back Control of Your Financial Life - Hardcover

Love, Kumiko

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593418840 ISBN 13: 9780593418840

Verlag: Portfolio, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

Barnes and Nobles’ 2022 List of “Best Books that Help!"

Does fear and insecurity keep you from looking at your bank account? Is your financial anxiety holding you captive?

You don’t have to stress about money anymore. YOU can take back control.

As a newly divorced single mom making $24,000 per year and facing down $77,000 in debt, Kumiko Love worried constantly about money. She saw what other moms had—vacations, birthday parties, a house full of furniture—and felt ashamed that she and her son lived in a small apartment and ate dinner on the floor. Worse, when her feelings began to exhaust her, she binge-shopped, reasoning that she’d feel better after a trip to the mall.
 
On the day she needed to pay for a McDonald’s ice cream cone without her credit card, she had an epiphany: Money is not the problem. Self-Doubt is the problem. Shame is the problem. Guilt is the problem. Society’s expectations for her are the problem. She is the solution.
 
Once she reversed the negative thinking patterns pushing her toward decisions that didn’t serve her values or goals, her financial plan wrote itself. Now, she’s not only living debt-free in her dream home, which she paid for in cash, but she has spread her teachings around the world and helped countless women envision better lives for themselves and their families.
 
Now, building on the lessons she’s taught millions as the founder of The Budget Mom, she shares a step by step plan for taking control back over your financial life—regardless of your level of income or your credit card balance. Through stories from navigating divorce to helping clients thrive through recessions, depression, eviction, layoffs and so much more, you will learn foundational practices such as:
 

How to use your emotions to your financial advantage, instead of letting them control you

How to create a budget based on your real life, not a life of self-denial

How to create a motivating debt pay-off plan that makes you excited about your future, instead of fearing it 

 
My Money My Way will give you the tools to align your emotional health with your financial health—to let go of deprivation and embrace desire. Love’s paradigm-shifting system will teach you how to honor your unique personal values, driving emotions, and particular needs so that you can stop worrying about money and start living a financially fulfilled life.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kumiko Love is a single mom who empowers women everywhere to regain control of their financial lives. An Accredited Financial Counselor with over nine years of experience in the finance industry, she founded The Budget Mom, a community of millions of women on a path to financial fulfillment. She’s also the creator of the wildly popular Live Rich Planner and Budget by Paycheck workbook. Love has been featured on Good Morning America, the Today show, CNN, CBS, ABC and in USA Today, US News, World Report, Huffington Post, Money Magazine, Parents Magazine, the Washington Post, and Real Simple. She lives in Spokane Valley, Washington.

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Chapter One

 

The Ice Cream Cone That Changed My Life

 

Some couples fight about money, but my ex-husband and I had an even bigger problem: we didn't talk about it at all.

 

He would give me his paycheck and I would pay the bills, and while that might sound like we were Adults of the Year, what we really were was clueless. Plans? What were those? We were winging it daily, neither one of us caring enough about our finances to even have a conversation.

 

The day I got pregnant, however, we were finally forced to take a harder look at things. How were we going to afford a baby? I told myself we would make it work; we would find ways to be thrifty. I painted the nursery walls myself, a light green color, with paint I found in the clearance section at Home Depot. I watched DIY videos on YouTube and tutorials on Pinterest. I made bookshelves from old rain gutters and made all of the artwork for the baby's bedroom out of construction paper and Crayola markers. I was determined to create special memories with the little money we had. It would be fine; we would just wing it like we always did.

 

But then I actually had the baby.

 

If you've ever looked into the eyes of a newborn, you know it upends everything you thought about what matters. For the first time, "day by day" was not good enough. "Seat of my pants" was not good enough. My son, James, made me long for an all-new sense of stability, a life that was beautiful, intentional, safe, and designed.

 

Enter the moment I decided I needed a budget. A real one. Not the flimsy, just-for-decoration kind, but the kind that would actually help us strategically move forward as a family.

 

This sounded like a reasonable idea-you know, financial goals and all-until I realized my husband and I were on totally different teams. We had finally started talking about money, but every time we did, it would result in a fight. We never had any clear purpose or bigger ambitions. There I was, cycling through various types of budgeting methods, looking for one that would actually make us better with our money-from percentage based to monthly based and beyond-but by the end of each month, we would pay our bills on time but have nothing left over. It was a constant, never-ending struggle.

 

Soon, our debt became unmanageable. We had one or two credit cards totaling $6,000, and I had ballooning student loans, and medical bills from a severe motorcycle accident. But I still managed to make what little progress I could, taking advantage of balance transfers, filing for financial hardship with the hospital, and getting on an income-based repayment plan for my student loans. Eventually-with enough focus and discipline-I was able to pay it all off and was so incredibly proud. I hadn't achieved everything I wanted, but I was getting by. I was making it work.

 

But then the divorce happened.

 

As a kid, I lived through my parents' separation, and it was one of the most defining moments of my youth. I remember the suffering it caused my mom. I watched as fear took over her life. The hurt I felt had ripple effects straight through to adulthood.

 

So when I found myself in the position of initiating my own divorce, all I felt was heart-clenching failure. To complicate matters, the logistics of it all were herculean: it was near impossible to find a place of my own with an annual income of only $30,000 from my job as an assistant in the finance industry. With a little luck, I did finally find an eight-hundred-square-foot apartment. For several months, it was mostly empty. I left my marriage with only a few bags of belongings, so we didn't have any furniture. I managed to buy a TV from Walmart with one of my paychecks, and we watched that TV nightly, eating our dinner on the living room floor. Divorce is complicated and difficult for many obvious reasons, but for me, the loneliness hit hard. When I was married, there was togetherness. Finances together, struggles together, stories together, dinners together. But then it was just me. It felt lonely, scary, and dark.

 

More than the loneliness, however, was the guilt. Even though I knew that this decision was best for our family, I also knew I had stripped away everything my son had known: a backyard, his own bedroom, his toys, the swing set. I was in a constant panic about how he was handling the new changes, and because of that panic, the problem compounded: I kept trying to live a life that wasn't mine. I wanted to pretend like everything was normal. I wanted to pretend like I still had it together, that nothing had changed. I wanted to give my son the life he deserved. And so out of a complex emotional cocktail of shame, guilt, and fear, one morning I woke up, took the day off work, and ordered brand-new furniture on my credit card.

 

A lot of furniture.

 

I was desperate to prove I was a good mom. So desperate, in fact, that I also decided to order some fresh new decor while I was at it (no more construction paper and Crayola for us)-not to mention a new microwave, pots and pans, ALL new kitchen gadgets, and a brand-new bed. Do you know how expensive beds are?

 

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I immediately maxed out my limit. That's when I made the grand decision to start accepting credit card offers I received in the mail. I thought to myself, "I can pay this off over the next year, it's not a big deal." In my mind, it was about building a home my son loved and felt comfortable in, a safe and happy place. But, in reality, I was spending money I didn't have in order to feel like I was living up to my own standards of what I thought a good mom was.

 

The total damage from my "good mom binge" came to over $20,000 worth of crippling, high-interest debt. Coupled with the shiny new Jeep Patriot I brilliantly drove right off the lot right before my divorce, I soon found myself suddenly owing seventy-eight thousand United States dollars. There I was, still living day by day, still making frivolous financial decisions I rationalized as helpful ones.

 

Of course, I never thought I'd have my big moment of truth in a McDonald's drive-through.

 

We were at the park. My son wanted ice cream. We got in the car and drove to the closest McDonald's. I pulled up to the window and ordered one. I will never forget the price: $1.09. As I went to pay, I reached inside my wallet and pulled out my debit card, but then hesitated: I didn't even know if I had $1.09 in my checking account. So I took out my credit card instead. I financed a $1.09 ice cream cone for my son.

 

And suddenly, for the first time, I saw everything with intense, painful clarity.

 

As I looked back at him, happily licking away, I got mad. Sometimes, the truth will anger you, but it'll always be what saves you. In that moment I knew I was going to have to fight harder for a life he could be proud of that didn't involve shame, poverty, and the endless financial stress spiral I was putting us through. I wanted him to be able to experience life without the constant emotional struggle, to be able to actually live-or at least order an ice cream cone without being traumatized. I didn't want to model unhealthy behaviors. I didn't want him to feel the side effects of my less-than-stellar choices.

 

I was also tired of being endlessly preoccupied with money, never knowing how much I had in my checking account, constantly stressing, stressing, stressing, and never being present with him because my mind was always somewhere else.

 

This was one of those moments when you realize you no longer have a choice. Being financially successful went from being a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Portfolio
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593418840
• ISBN 13: 9780593418840
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland