Have you ever avoided checking your credit card balance because it was too stressful? According to my guest this week, it’s human nature to push away the hard things in life. Thankfully, there are ways you can reduce your financial stress and gain flexibility with your finances. Emily Guy Birken is a Plutus Award-winning freelance writer and the author of five books, including, Stacked—Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management, written with Joe Saul-Sehy. Emily joined me this week to talk about some of the money mindset issues she’s tackled in her books. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find lighthearted humour in this topic, even while we discuss everything from the Holocaust to a zombie apocalypse.

 

Welcome to the Maple Money Show, the podcast that helps Canadians improve their personal finances to create lasting financial freedom. This episode of the Maple Money Show is brought to you by Willful. Did you know that 57 percent of Canadian adults don’t have a will? Willful has made it more affordable, convenient, and easy for Canadians to create a legal will and power of attorney documents online from the comfort of home. In less than 20 minutes, and for a fraction of the price of visiting a lawyer, you can gain peace of mind knowing you’ve put a plan in place to protect your children, pets and loved ones in the event of an emergency. Get started for free at maplemoney.com/willful and use promo code Maple Money to save 15 percent. Now, let’s chat with Emily…

 

Tom: Hi, Emily. Welcome to the Maple Money Show.

 

Emily: Thank you for having me.

 

Tom: You have a new book that you co-wrote that prompted me to get you on the show because it was interesting. It’s called, Stacked—Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management. It’s an interesting idea because it seems that when we talk about money, sometimes it’s the serious topic that maybe people don’t want to talk about because it’s all really detailed and not fun. What prompted you guys to write this book and take a different stab at the topic so it’s not a dry personal finance book?

 

Emily: This is my fifth book, actually. My previous book before this was called, End Financial Stress Now. That was a passion project for me. It was something that I’d been thinking about for 10 years before I wrote it. It was very much wanting to share with people how they could let go of their money stress and find a different way of looking at things and recognize that they don’t need to carry as much stress about money as they do. I have a friend who buys my books to support me and she said, “I really need to read this one, but I’m scared to.” I asked what she was scared about and she said, “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to read this and it’s going to make me feel even worse that I’m farther behind than I thought I was and everything is just terrible.” She was convinced that even picking up a money book (even one written by a friend) was going to make her feel even worse about the stress she was already caring about money. And so that really stuck with me. So, Joe Saul-Sehy, my co-writer actually came up with the idea for Stacked himself then approached me and asked if I was interested. He pitched it to me as wanting to write a book that’s kind of like the Hardy Boys Detective Manual mixed with the Cub Scout Wolf Guide—but funny about money and for grownups. That was the pitch. I was really excited about it. He likes to joke and just expected me to hang up but I was excited about it because what it gave me was another way of getting into those same money conversations I wanted my friend to have about releasing your stress and finding a different way of looking at it. And coming at it from a humorous place was definitely going to be easier for the folks who are intimidated by money or consider money only slightly less fun than a colonoscopy. They are going to feel a lot more engaged and interested if they’re reading a book that is full of jokes and shares the mistakes that Joe and I have made. We poke fun at ourselves and try to out-compete each other with bad jokes and things like that. That was just really exciting to me as a creative project—to find a way to make sure we get this information to our readers while also entertaining them in a way so they keep reading even when they would normally fall asleep just at the sound of the word “percentage.” That was just an exciting opportunity, and it gave me a chance to use my humour muscles. I try to include a little bit of humour in everything that I write, and it often gets edited out. And understandably. If I’m writing for big names, they’re not looking for a laugh-a-minute. Even gentle humour is not necessarily welcomed. So this way, I could let my comedy chops off the leash and really enjoy myself with this.

 

Tom: Here in Canada, there’s an author, David Chilton, who wrote, The Wealthy Barber. I believe there’s a U.S. version of it as well. I know him a bit so I’ll give him a bit of a hard time. I want to call it a funny book, but it’s certainly a light-reading book. It’s done in a novel style. It’s one of the first books I had read. Again, it’s not that it’s funny, but at least it’s easy to read. It’s something that they can draw you in and make it a little lighter and not get so deep into this topic. When you mentioned your friend stressed out about the idea of even reading your previous book, I get that because I see like these success stories online where this person retired at this age and that person saved this much money. It doesn’t matter how good you’re doing, you’re going to find someone else that’s doing something better. We’ve heard about keeping up with the Joneses but this almost seems like the opposite negative side. It’s not that I need to go buy this thing because they have it. It’s more like I feel behind because you see this. In addition to your friend, have you seen that in other people, where they’re almost not wanting to tackle the topic at all because they’re not willing to read about it or talk about it with other people?

 

Emily: Yeah, I know someone whose wife has been working to try to convince him not to do this, but he’s the sort of person who says, “Don’t go to the doctor because you only ever get bad news. Don’t log into your credit card or bank account because it’s only going to be bad news. It’s just going to ruin your day.” And it is completely understandable why he feels that way. He is not the only one. I have done this—not with money just because money is something I’m wired to work with. But things like weight gain. If I don’t pay any attention to it, it didn’t actually happen. Those sorts of things where I know I feel I’m getting winded going up the stairs to wake my kids up in the morning. But if I pretend it’s not there, then I don’t have to think about it or engage with the changes I’m going to have to make in my life. I think that’s human nature for us to want to avoid and push away the hard things we feel incompetent or overwhelmed about tackling. It’s not until we get to the point where we say, “I have to tackle this.” That’s one way to get to a point where you can make the changes you need to make to feel more in control. I’m hoping that using humour is going to be another way. If you say, “Okay, I have to tackle this,” then pick up the Economist, three days later you’ll be back to the old way you’ve been doing things. But if you have to tackle this and you pick up a book that actually makes you want to keep reading, that you’re engaged with and enjoying, then you’re actually much more likely to take the steps you need to make the changes that are going to be permanent and going to really relieve the stress long-term, much more than not logging into your bank account to relieve stress.

 

Tom: Yeah, that’s a tough one, and I totally agree. Things like gaining weight or going into debt, it’s easy to just not look at and pretend it’s not happening. But then it almost becomes this snowball effect where it’s actually getting worse and worse. I lost a bunch of weight over the last three years, and I’ve had a lot of people congratulate me on it. But ultimately, it also meant I was gaining a bunch of weight in the first place because I just wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t weigh myself for years and now I weigh myself every day. I’m not looking to lose more weight and not looking to gain weight. I’m looking to stay the same. But at least by weighing myself every day, I’m aware. If I were to gain five pounds over a week, a month, whatever it is, it’s something I can see and react to. It’s certainly the same with budgeting and tracking your money. If you’re not watching it, it’s pretty easy to let it get worse and worse instead of keeping an eye on it. And I believe you guys cover this in the book, tracking money. How does that affect all this like when it comes to your mindset and stress level?

 

Emily: For me, I remind people that taking care of your budget, tracking your money is something we often see as one-and-done. That’s the way it’s described. That’s partially because you read an article about budgeting that says, “Okay, here’s how to set it up…” And you can’t have another article that then says, “And here’s how to maintain it,” because you’d have to come back to that. But budgeting, tracking and all of that is a little bit like doing your laundry in that you’re never going to be done. You just need to recognize that this is something you’re going to be handling over and over and over again. And it doesn’t matter how far up you go. While I don’t believe that Warren Buffett washes his own underwear, he does at least have to get it into the hamper and sort it. There are still tasks he has to do. Similarly, I’m sure he does not handle all of the budgeting, the granular details, but he does still have to do the big, big details of his budget—knowing where his money is going. When it comes to things like tracking, it’s important to find something that makes it palatable for you the same way that it’s important to find a way to make laundry work for you. Otherwise, you go through that boom-and-bust laundry cycle that we all went through at some point in our early adulthood. In college I would run to Target and buy new underwear rather than do laundry because I didn’t want to handle it. I kept thinking I could put it off for another week and instead I’d buy a package of Hanes. That’s recognizing that not tracking and not paying attention to your money is a little bit like having that laundry boom-and-bust cycle in that at some point it’s going to be a big enough mess, a big enough fire that you’re going to have to take your entire day to sort it out, in the same way that I would have to spend basically an entire weekend cleaning everything I owned once I got to a certain level of laundry avoidance. Once you accept that, it can make a huge difference. I could say, “Okay, I can do 20 minutes a week, every week? Or I could be like running around with my hair on fire, dealing with major problems every six months.” So, 20 minutes a week seems a lot better. Particularly since we live in the future now and there are so many ways to track your spending that don’t require you to write it down, use a spreadsheet, or enter numbers into things. Your bank will track for you on your phone. You’ve got all of these different apps available that can do that for you. That means it’s even easier to keep track of what’s going on with your money and take that 10 or 20 minutes a week to see what you spent last week, what’s coming up next week, is there enough money in the account? How do I do this? It becomes something that can become part of your routine in the same way your laundry is part of your weekly routine without it having to overwhelm you.

 

Tom: I’m a big fan of automated tracking. I know some people who look at this in their own way, mentally, they need that manual entry. They almost need to feel the pain of putting an expense on the line because, if you’re paying with a credit card or something, you don’t have that feeling of handing over real money. You’re just swiping a plastic card. Some people do like the manual entry, but I’m good with automated. I just want to stay on top of everything. I’ve got various accounts in different institutions and everything, so it’s nice when you can just see everything all at once. I’m not personally a huge fan of the budgeting side, but it depends on where you’re at with your money. When I had a much lower income and was really trying to make things work, I needed a budget, for sure. You need to make sure you can eat and pay the bills when you’re working with the bare minimum. And as you get more income—What I prefer to do is set a spending limit, sort of a big bucket. It doesn’t mean saying, “I’m going to spend this much on clothes and this much on travel,” it’s just not spending more than that set amount, period. How do you see that? I’ve seen you mention financial flexibility before. Is that where this comes in? Is it about not being too rigid with everything?

 

Emily: I think one of the reasons why I tout financial flexibility is because people talk about financial security. They want to reach a level of financial security. And the thing is, and this is probably the grimmest thing I’m going to say, financial security doesn’t actually exist. There is no amount of money you can own, that you can have, that cannot be taken away. I mean, if you’re Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett, and have these millions and billions of dollars, yeah, you’re insulated in a lot of ways from the vagaries of what can happen to an amount of wealth. But the aliens come and invade and money means nothing anymore (laughs), like that could happen. There is no amount of money that can protect you. When I talk about financial flexibility, what that means is recognizing that you don’t want to say, “My money can protect me,” because you want to say, “I can protect me. I can make the decisions that are going to be the best for me and my family and for everyone I love. I can make the decisions of what I’m willing to sacrifice, what I’m not willing to sacrifice.” By doing that, coming at it from a sense of financial flexibility, then you kind of have a more abundance-mindset about your money. If you’re looking for financial security, there’s never going to be a point where you feel completely secure because there’s always thoughts like, “If there is a market downturn I could lose everything.” But if you say, “Okay, I have financial flexibility, which means I have options available to me because I have made such and such decision with my investments, I have this amount of savings to take care of problems if they occur, I can always make a little extra money by doing this or that if there is a bad season.” It’s kind of looking at it that way as in, what are the ways I can move, shift, dodge and roll with the punches as they meet me instead of saying, “I want a big enough pile of money that nothing can ever touch me,” because that just doesn’t exist.

 

Tom: We’re telling people not stress out about money, but once you start talking about the zombie apocalypse, it did get me thinking, almost all my money is in some digital format, With online banks, everything’s digital. So, within financial flexibility, realizing that you’re not going to be financially secure when the zombies come… This isn’t so much a mindset question, but what would you do in that case? Should you have a bunch of gold under your bed or what? I never gave it much thought before, but yeah, everything is digital now. I don’t have a bunch of cash so don’t try find my address and come find me. It’s all digital.

 

Emily: Yeah. Part of my financial philosophy stems from a very strange place that’s been in the news lately. The book, Mouse, by Art Spiegelman, which is about the Holocaust, Art Spiegelman’s father, Vladeck, was a well-to-do Jew in Poland before WWII. Everything he owned was taken away from him. His business was taken away from him. He and his wife were forced into the ghetto and then into a concentration camp. But the thing is, Vladeck was a remarkably intelligent and resourceful person who was also very good with money. When he and his wife were forced into the ghetto, he was not allowed to engage business. Three were all these rules but he found ways around them. He found ways to barter things for better treatment and to get more food for himself and his wife, things like that. The same thing happened when he ended up in Auschwitz. Now, this is a very bizarre place for me to gain some hope because I’m reading this story of something so despicable, it reminds me that nothing is certain. Vladeck and his wife, Anya, believed they were safe and they weren’t because the Nazis came. But Vladeck could rely on himself. He had money skills even when there was no money to be had. That’s something I remind people of and it’s something I find remarkably hopeful. We are using the system of money because we’ve decided that’s what we’re going to use but money doesn’t actually exist. Even when you’re talking about it in terms of cash, it a delusion we all share and it only has value because we collectively have decided it has value. You can’t build a house out of it. You can’t eat it, you can’t wear it’s as clothes… Well, I suppose you could but it seems like a weird thing to do. And you can’t even spend it outside of where it is legal tender. I’ve got some Canadian quarters in a dish that I have to keep in the dish because they’ll be upset at me if I try to put them in a vending machine here in America. So, it’s recognizing that this is all made up. This is not real. We collectively have decided to treat it as real. But just because it’s not real doesn’t mean it’s not serious. It touches every single part of our lives. That means whatever skills you have with money—and everyone has skills with money. Some people say, “I’m not good with money,” but there’s something that you’re good at. You may be good at getting a deal. You might be good at finagling a better price with someone. You may be good at figuring out how to borrow money from people—whatever it is, you’re good at it. You’ll still be good at it when the zombies come and the dollar falls and there is no actual currency anymore and NFTs are worthless. You’ll still be good at whatever it is so you can apply that skill to whatever the situation is that arises. I find that just an incredibly inspiring way to look at the world. To recognize that you’re good at this particular construct we live in right now. But that doesn’t mean you have no skills. If that construct changes, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be completely at sea if there’s a market crash, blah blah blah because you’ll still have these skills and they’ll translate. You’ll just have to figure out how to translate them.

 

Tom: It’s funny. Just a couple of episodes ago we had an episode about NFTs that got a lot of people’s attention. I was trying to explain why NFTs, bitcoin or anything has value and your explanation of what we consider real currency (that doesn’t really exist) is basically what I was trying to say about anything else. It has value because we say it has value. You can’t just make your own cryptocurrency and it’s immediately going to be worth something because other people have to decide that it has value. Your explanation of real currency was basically what I was trying to get across—it’s worth what we say it’s worth. It’s not all that real unless you have it stuck under your mattress and then it’s still only worth what we say it’s worth. But as far as being real, it’s it really is another digital number at this point for most people.

 

Emily: Yeah. And even things like gold. People say that’s recession-proof but that’s only because we’ve decided that this particular rock, this particular mineral, is valuable. Why have we decided that? Because it’s pretty. It’s because we swim in this sense of money being real and value being an absolute, it’s kind of weird to stop and think how this would look from the outside. If aliens came to Earth and said, “What are you doing? What are these numbers?” What happens if someone turns off the global Wi-Fi? I’m just thinking about the movie The Mitchells vs. The machines where they turn off the Wi-Fi and everything is in chaos. What happens if that happens, where all the numbers go away? So, recognizing the inherent absurdity of it, kind of gets back to how I feel about writing about money from a funny point of view. There is some weirdness to this because we are human beings. We look at things in weird ways. They feel normal to us because that’s how we all collectively look at things. But if you just kind of stop and take a step back, you can laugh at how odd it is—the way we have set things up. Looking at it that way can also help you say, “Oh, okay. These things are just rules we’ve decided on. I can figure out how to play by these rules, subvert these rules, or ignore these rules if they don’t work for me. Obviously, I’m not talking about robbing banks or anything.

 

Tom: Yes, but maybe that’s someone’s skill.

 

Emily: I would hope not.

 

Tom: I like what you said, too, about taking your skills—that they can transfer. I’ve seen that in less dire need than a zombie apocalypse. But when people worry about things like their current career not existing, there’s always something that can be transferred. You and I know people that have started blogs as hobbies where they find that 10 percent of that hobby became a real skill for them. Then they can turn that into a business or something. If people are looking at what they like to do, what they’re good at, things can progress if they see that. Almost anytime I see somebody with a hobby, I think, “Oh, you could probably start a blog, podcast or something. It’s the way I’m wired to do it. But I’ve said that to a few friends. If they’re really into golfing or cooking or something I immediately see it’s a skill. It’s their hobby but it’s also a skill and they don’t necessarily look at it that way themselves. They just see a pastime they enjoy doing. But there’s always something you can find from these things if you’re looking at it the right way.

 

Emily: My husband’s an automotive engineer. He’s in his 40s, and he’s probably going to be among the last generation of automotive engineers who are experts in the internal combustion engine because we’re going electric. Things are going to change. Even in the 90s, when he was going to college, it seemed like this is what we do. We do the internal combustion engine. We’re working to make it more efficient. This is how people get around. Cars are what we do. Busses, motorcycles, all of that, things change in the same way. Look at the buggy whip companies, they went out of business. But if you are able to see what your skills are within automotive engineering or within having a factory that fulfills a specific need, you can pivot and find a way to use those skills in whatever comes next because things are always changing. That’s the only guarantee—things will change.  

 

Tom: It’s interesting that you went all the way back to buggy whips because people today can say everything’s changing too fast, fair enough. But there’s always been change, though. If you’re going to go 40 years or so with a career, there’s going to be some form of change even. Even previously, things don’t look now, like they did when I was in college. I wouldn’t have predicted what my job would look like because everything is so much more technology-based. In probably any field there is, everything’s going to be more technology-based. It just seems that people can take those skills and move them elsewhere if they’re just considering it. They just have to see it sometimes. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about in this idea of mindset is choices. And choices that don’t necessarily have a right answer. Without a crystal ball to see the future, should I pay off debt or do I invest? Do I rent a car or buy a car? Do I rent an apartment or buy a house? These are choices that, again, unless you can see the end result and how markets change and everything 10 or 20 years in the future, it seems like it’s more a personal choice. What are your thoughts on how to best handle that? Just in mental clarity kind of way, how can someone at least feel comfortable with their decision?

 

Emily: We all struggle with decision making, and there’s two directions that people can go. People can just be impulsive and just jump in thinking, “Okay, I don’t want to drag this out. I’m just going to go for something.” Or people can be very, very deliberate, and slow about something where they don’t want to make the wrong choice. They want to make sure they’re taking care and doing their due diligence and all of that. And there are problems in both directions. If you are impulsive, you may end up grabbing for something that is not what you want just because you want to get it locked down. If you are slow, you may end up missing out on important opportunities, particularly when it comes to things like investing. Waiting before putting money in the market is objectively, generally, the worst thing you can do. What I think is helpful to remember is, it’s good to know which direction you tend to air on. I air on the side of impulsivity. My husband errs on the side of taking a really long time to figure something out—looking for the ideal. That’s actually one thing where we are a good match because I am saying, “Would you come on and make a decision already?” And he says, “Why don’t we slow down and think about this?” That’s one aspect of it. Know what your foibles are, because then you can say, “ Hey, am I taking too long with this? Because that tends to be my problem. Or should I sleep on this for 48 hours before I do something? The other aspect is to remember that whichever way we struggle with decision making, we’re trying to stave off regret. When my husband is thinking through every single option and taking a year to pick paint colours (I am not exaggerating) he is worried that he is going to pick the wrong thing. He’s going to be second-guessing himself, and it’s not going to be ideal and he’s going to really kick himself. When I am feeling impulsive, I am thinking I’m going to regret not acting. I’m going to regret waiting. By waiting, I’ll have missed out on something. Even just knowing that you are trying to stave off regrets can help you kind of come to terms with your decision making process. Yes, you’re trying to stave off regret, but what’s the worst thing that can happens if you do taking time to make a decision when you’re usually impulsive. Or if you do regret deciding too quickly and getting something that’s not best, what’s the worst that happens? So asking yourself that and kind of walking yourself through how things could play out and how you can handle it if it doesn’t work out the way that you want to, can really be clarifying in making these decisions and not letting them be a source of stress or concern in a way that’s going to keep you up at night.

 

Tom: You gave me two things I want to ask you. First off, you said how you and your husband complement each other well because you’re so different with your mindset on that topic. But I could see it going the other way—two people that are so different could also easily be fighting about money. How do you guys handle that? I think part of that was maybe in your answer already. I assume you guys have good communication about this because it sounds like you’re kind of going back and forth a little, bringing each other towards the center of a more normal decision. Is it all communication or does being opposite like that sometimes lead to money arguments?

 

Emily: Yes, it can lead to money arguments. Communication is a major key to making sure that’s not what happens. It’s also helpful that he and I both come from a place of frugality. We are not compatible in our decision-making. We’re very much opposites in how we make decisions. I feel time pressure in a way he doesn’t and those sorts of things. But we are very much on the same page when it comes to being frugal, not wanting to spend money unnecessarily. We start from that place of concurrence. We both know, respect, and understand that we’re not trying to spend money unnecessarily. When I am feeling like, “Alright, let’s just get this done. Let’s just pay for it to get it done,” he knows I’ve at least done some cost-benefit analysis about it. And then when he is taking a long time to make a decision on something, I know he’s keeping in mind what that might cost, particularly with things like investments if there might be a cost to his speed or lack thereof. And generally, I can count on him—that the cost will be time, not money. That’s something that I can count on him. I feel very lucky in my relationship, that we complement each other so well and being opposites that way but have that core of agreements in terms of frugality. I think that can be really tough for couples if they are coming from very different places. If he were a spender and I were a saver, even with his slow decision making, I think he would drive me nuts—and vice-versa. If I were a spender (as being impulsive) he would be an anxiety ball. That’s what works for us. It’s something I think is really important for couples to get on the same page with so they can at least feel like they have the same values, even if we go about doing things differently.

 

Tom: So you’re impulsive, but you’re not an impulsive shopper. It’s a different thing. The other thing I want to go back with to finish here is, you mentioned the idea that whatever choice you make, there could be a mistake. How do you deal with mistakes? This kind of goes right back to the beginning where you were talking about your friend who is concerned about mistakes she might have made. If you think you made a mistake or know you made a mistake (it depends on the severity of something) how do you deal with that so it doesn’t become this financial stress? If it’s something where you’re not quite sure you made a mistake… Let’s say you make an investment and you’re really not sure if it’s going to work out 10 years from now, I guess that’s what I mean by not knowing if you’ve made a mistake, you just have this feeling. How does this not become this thing that constantly bugs you? And how do you move past that?

 

Emily: One of the things that can be really freeing is to just say, “You know what, I’m human. I’m going to make mistakes,” and I struggle with that. I remember it was something like 15 years ago. I was in my 20s. We went out to lunch with some friends who were in their 40s. And the husband was saying things like, “Yeah, it’s a hard lesson to learn that you don’t outgrow making mistakes.” So, recognizing and accepting it can happen and that you can bounce back from that can be really, really helpful in keeping you from ruminating about potential mistakes. You put money into an investment and think, is this the right investment? Is this going to pan out? Is this going to be terrible? What is this going to do? Provided you have not put every last cent you’ve ever earned into that investment, no matter what happens, you’re going to be okay. If it goes gangbusters, of course, you’re going to be okay. If it takes a major dip, you’ll still be okay because you have the resilience and the skills to be able to handle that. Again, that’s part of the financial flexibility that I want people to focus on. Even if you make a boneheaded mistake, it’s going to be okay. Money can be a life or death situation. I don’t want to take away from that. For people who cannot afford a mistake, it can feel overwhelming. The idea of, “Oh my goodness, I’ve made a mistake and lost $500. I don’t know how I’m going to pay rent,” that sort of thing. That is a different kind of stress. Getting into a better financial place where you’re making more income is the only way to really relieve that. But if you are in a place where you do know where your next meal is coming from, you do feel confident that your money is going to keep flowing in because you’ve got a steady paycheck, and you are terrified of making a mistake, it’s not going to be a dire situation. If I’m worried about something, my sister likes to tell me, “You know what? No babies will die. If you make a mistake, no babies will die. It’s going to be fine.” So, it’s okay . Remind yourself that even a big mistake is going to be something you can handle and it’s not going to ruin your life or anything like that. I had a different friend who was very concerned about dipping into money stuff and asked her if she cooked. She said, yes, she cooked. I said, “Do you cook chicken?” And she said, “Yeah.” And I said, “But did you know if you cook chicken wrong, you could kill somebody?” She said, yes. Cooking is actually a higher risk activity than most of the money stuff they’re doing. Even if you lose everything you ever made in money, you’re not going to kill someone. So, just reminding yourself that there are things you do that are more complex, that are more dangerous, that have more potential harm embedded in them, and you do those… Feel confident about those, and learn. Money can be the same way. It can help you kind of decouple the idea of “life or death” about money and recognize there is a place where there is a lot of wiggle room for me to be perfectly okay.

 

Tom: I like what you said about sometimes it’s a little mistakes, because if you’re staying aware of it, these little mistakes can truly be lessons. You make a little investment that doesn’t go the right way, you’re going to learn from that. You’re going to be better next time. And just like you said earlier, you could check your finances once a week for a few minutes or you can look every six months. I’d much rather make these little financial mistakes than make a big one because you can learn from them and get better at it. Maybe it’s just me, and I’m really stubborn, but I learn more from mistakes than I do from reading a book or something like that. You just have to be hands-on a little bit and figure out how things work. Thanks for running through all of this—just the different ways people can look at their money and handle that stress. Can you let people know a little bit more about the book and where they can find you online?

 

Emily: Sure. So the book is called, Stacked— Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management, and it’s by me, Emily Guy Birken and my friend Joe Saul-Sehy of the, Stacking Benjamins, podcast. You can find it anywhere books are sold. We are big fans of independent booksellers, so if you’ve got local Indie bookstore, you could probably find it there. You can also bookshop.org. That’s an online way to find it. And all the usual suspects will have it as well—Amazon, Barnes Noble. You can also find me on my website emilyguybirken.com. And for listeners in the States, we are going to be on a book tour in March, April, and May of this year. That’s going to be all over the United States. Unfortunately, we have not added any Canadian stops, but if you happen to be in the area, you can find our tour information at emilyguybirken/stacked. We’d love to see you come out and buy a book directly from us. We’re going to have a couple of meet-ups in breweries and restaurants and other cool stuff, and we’d love to see people.

 

Tom: I feel like Joe is holding this against me by not having any dates in Canada. The last time I know he went to Canada, he came to Calgary where I am. He messaged me ahead of time and he said, “Well, let’s meet up,” and I said, “I can’t because I’m heading to the U.S.” I think he’s still holding it against me that the one time he could have seen me in Canada, I took off in the other direction. Well, thanks for being on the show.

 

Emily: I so appreciate it. Thank you.

 

Thank you, Emily, for the fresh take on money management and for dispelling some of the preconceived notions people have about their finances. You can find the show notes for this episode at maplemoney.com/184. If you have a moment, head over to our YouTube channel, and subscribe there. We’ll be getting back to releasing never-before-seen content soon. You can search for Maple Money or go to maplemoney.com/youtube. I look forward to seeing back here next week when Keisha Bailey joins us to discuss the trouble people have getting started with investing, especially in underserved communities. See you next week!