Money isn't just about numbers. It's about emotions, too. Tiffany 'The Budgetnista' Aliche's new book unpacks the relationships we all have with finances so you can make the most of your cash.

Transcript

ANDEE TAGLE, HOST:

This is NPR's LIFE KIT. I'm Andee Tagle, one of the producers of the show, and today, we're going to talk about money. More specifically, we're going to talk feelings about money - hopes and fears, guilt and shame and the significant role they play in your financial life. Feeling uncomfortable yet? Good. Then we're in the same boat.

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TAGLE: I've never been great with money, a trait I often blamed on being too busy or perpetually poor math skills or a weakness for convenience and good sample sales. But of course, my dilemma is more complex than just a bad relationship with algebra.

TIFFANY ALICHE: Money is more mindset than coins, than dollars and coins.

TAGLE: That's Tiffany Aliche.

ALICHE: Much better known as the Budgetnista, I like to say I'm America's favorite financial educator - if not, at least your favorite financial educator.

TAGLE: In addition to being one of LIFE KIT's favorite financial educators, Aliche is the author of the new book "Get Good With Money." It's a super practical guide to getting your financial house in order to achieve what she calls financial wholeness in 10 steps.

ALICHE: Budgeting, savings, debt, credit, learning to earn, investing, insurance, net worth, getting your financial team in place and estate planning. The first five are super, super, super foundational, and then the next five builds upon those first five.

TAGLE: Her book dives deep into each one of these topics, but Aliche says this process begins with understanding your own financial identity and the many feelings and environmental forces that shape it. For Aliche, conversations about money have been front and center her whole life.

ALICHE: Like, kids had Sweet 16s, but at 16, we walked to the bank down the street to open up our first joint bank account with my parents. And so I just grew up not having kind of, like, hang-ups about money because it was normal conversation. I was like, you guys don't have money talk Thursday nights?

TAGLE: Not all of us might have been so lucky, but we can all, says Aliche, get good with money. We just have to get good with our feelings first. In this episode of LIFE KIT, tips for accessing your emotions around money and learning to strengthen your financial voice.

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TAGLE: You talk about how you used to live in this state of financial fear, and you say that financial wholeness is the cure to that financial fear or to financial trauma. And I love that idea - financial wholeness. How do you define it? How do you define that term? Let's start there.

ALICHE: So I define financial wholeness when all aspects of your financial life - and there's 10 that we lean into truly - so when all of these 10 aspects of your financial life are working congruently for what I like to call your greatest good, your biggest benefit and your richest life.

TAGLE: Greatest good, biggest benefit, richest life. That's really smart.

ALICHE: Yes. I would say financial freedom is for the few, but financial wholeness is for everyone. It doesn't matter how much you make. It doesn't matter what you do for a living. It doesn't matter how old you are. Financial wholeness can be achieved by everyone, and so it's just a holistic view of, like, what to do with my money and how to maximize and make the most of it.

TAGLE: So financial wholeness is really about making sure you have a strong foundation for wherever you're at.

ALICHE: Wherever you're at.

TAGLE: Wherever you're at. It's not about being a millionaire. It's about just making sure, wherever you're at, you have an appropriate foundation. You have the appropriate, you know, pillars in place.

ALICHE: Exactly, because from there, then you can build. What's so great about financial wholeness is that it is, like, the prerequisite to the rest of your financial life. If you get that solid foundation - like, I grew up with a solid foundation, so as a result, even though, like, I lost my first condo to foreclosure and I lost my job and I had this scam happen, I'm here and stronger than ever before because of that financial foundation. And now I pass that gift on to y'all through "Get Good With Money."

TAGLE: I want to talk a little bit about the emotions behind money. I loved what you had to say about money-messaging and being aware of the influences in our life that might affect our habits and our financial voice. I know in my own life, for example, I immediately thought about how my dad was always super, super frugal. You know, he asked for discounts wherever we went. That's a really valuable skill, but as a kid, I just remember feeling so embarrassed. Like, I just remember turning beet red. And so now as an adult, I just have zero haggling ability - just none at all - and, you know, probably, I'm worse off for it, you know? So how do we break those habits?

ALICHE: So one of the things I illustrate in the book is that 1, bravo to you, Andee, for acknowledging that you see that habit. So that's first. You can't break something that you don't acknowledge and see. So teaching folks to see, 1, what is the habit that I'm seeing in myself, you know? Then 2, exploring where it came from. And so, like, bravo to you again, recognizing, like, oh, this is from dad, you know? And then 3, practicing in a safe environment. So what I would tell you, Andee, is that, like, OK, don't worry about, like, the financial haggling for now. You know, likely, if you are not haggling financially, you might be someone that's uncomfortable with, like, sharing with the waiter, actually, can I get extra cheese on my macaroni and cheese, right?

TAGLE: A thousand percent.

ALICHE: Right? So that's me, too, right?

TAGLE: (Laughter).

ALICHE: And so I would say, OK, it's a baby step.

TAGLE: I can never send a sandwich back.

ALICHE: Yeah. So it's like, sending something back - and not even sending something back - maybe just asking for something additional, like, oh, can I also get dot, dot, dot because what you're wanting to do is you want to practice advocating for yourself, you know, because it's hard to jump into the financial advocation, you know, for yourself if you're not able to advocate in small, little ways - so starting with a safe, simple practice and then leading your way up from there.

TAGLE: And breaking these habits, you talk about, is in service of doing something you mention in the book, which is finding your financial voice. What is your financial voice, and how does someone go about finding their own?

ALICHE: So your financial voice is - everyone has this internal voice as they're doing something. So if you're wanting to find your financial voice, I just want you today to - every time you make a financial choice, I want you to, like, do kind of like a heart check, you know, and ask yourself, what am I thinking? What am I feeling? I want you to practice pausing. Like, let's get Uber Eats. Pause for a moment and ask yourself, how am I thinking? How am I feeling about this? You know, am I thinking or feeling nothing, you know, which is fine? Or am I feeling a little anxious or a little guilty 'cause this is another Amazon purchase? Whatever that is, I want you to stop, pause, check and kind of mentally record for yourself. And then I want you to kind of get a pulse of, do you largely think about your financial choices positively or negatively?

So this might actually - like, if you really find that you're having a hard time mentally with money, this, you might - a little notebook might really help because literally you might, you know - like, you might have a happy face on one side of the notebook and a sad face and literally just a checkmark. Like, oh, that was a positive thought - check. That was a negative thought - check. Because we're trying to get a gauge of, like, how are you with your finances, and what is your money message to yourself, and what is your voice? Is it a positive voice? Is it a neutral voice? Or is it a negative voice? And it's already there. You just want to tune in to listen to it, but you also want to actively work toward changing and transforming it to something more positive.

TAGLE: That's great advice. Now, we've asked about this before, but I want to talk a little bit about mindful spending. Can you break down the different priorities people should be thinking about for us?

ALICHE: Absolutely. It's do I need it? Do I love it? Do I like it? Do I want it? And so needs are - we already know - food, shelter, clothing, water. You must have to maintain your health and safety. Second are your loves. Loves give you joy - will continue to give you joy six months to a year from now. Likes give you temporary joy, so in under six months, you won't remember, right? So it's like, OK, you know, this thing is cool. So likes give you, like, that temporary joy. And wants, there's really no joy at all. So what I want people to do is to lean into, like, the first half of the equation - your needs and your loves. So your needs take care of your health and safety, and loves give you lasting joy - and less money toward likes and wants. Not no money, but the more money you spend on likes and wants, the less money you have for needs and loves.

TAGLE: Great. I want to change gears a little bit. We had a listener question come in, and as soon as it came in, I thought of you. And you kind of address this in your book. I'm just going to read it for you. How do you budget your spending for the month when you're starting at zero dollars available? On the first of every month, I balance my checkbook by putting in my pay and entering all of my usual monthly bills, but by the time I subtract my monthly bills, I literally have zero dollars left for the month. I even have to transfer money from my savings into my checking account just to cover the bills, which leaves me with negative money. I don't ever buy coffee or eat out. How do you manage your income when you simply don't cover your expenses? And I know this is something that a lot of people are dealing with, you know, with the pandemic, with, you know, having all of these surprise emergency, you know, spendings. What do we do? What do people do in this situation?

ALICHE: If most of your money, like this listener, is going to your financial obligations - like, maybe all of your money or actually more money than you actually have - then that means you have a don't make enough issue. I think if nothing else, this pandemic and quarantine has taught us that we all have to learn how to earn in multiple ways because some people's whole industry knocked out - the restaurant industry, movie industry.

So learning to earn, but in the meantime - and this is what I had to learn. It was a hard thing, and it might be hard for you, listener, to hear - is that I had to drop down to what I call my health and safety budget. That is, what things on my list must I pay for to maintain my health and to maintain my safety? Everybody else had to wait. So I'm giving you permission to say, you know what, I need to prioritize myself before I prioritize my bills because if I'm not here, if I'm not healthy, if I'm not safe, who's going to pay them anyway? Nobody.

TAGLE: I'm moving on a little bit to savings. You say we should save like a squirrel.

ALICHE: Yes (laughter).

TAGLE: And I really like that. How do we get squirrelly? Just, you know, big picture - how can we all get a little more squirrelly?

ALICHE: This is what squirrels do. Work the hardest - they save the most. And when wintertime comes, squirrels - like, they hole up in their little tree, and they eat off of the - when they work the hardest, and they save the most. And so that's what we can be. Like, human beings are the opposite. When we get our raises, when we get our bonuses, it's like, drinks on me, drinks on me, you know? We tend to spend the most and be like, well, things are good. I don't need to work hard, you know? And then when financial winter comes, we're like - that's when we try to put the more work in, you know, but there's no work to be found. So that's how you get squirrely then. If you're experiencing financial abundance, lean into it. Like, you know, work a little bit harder if you're capable, but definitely save a little more because some of that - your financial acorns - are actually meant for your financial winter as well.

TAGLE: I love that. You tell this great story in the book, and it's about saying no to brunch with your girlfriends for a very specific reason. Can you share that story with us?

ALICHE: Yes. So friends of mine would go to brunch every Sunday. It was maybe like, say, 30 to 50 bucks every time. And one day, I realized I wanted to go on vacation, but I didn't have any money. And then when I was realizing it, she called and was like, hey, girl, you want to go to brunch? And I thought to myself, that's where my money is going. Like, did I - what did we even eat last week? And I realized brunch is not a love for me because I don't even remember what we had last week. She loved brunch. That was her love. I was spending my money on her loves.

Now, it's not her fault because she was doing what she's supposed to do - spend her money on her love - but she was convincing me to do it as well. So I stopped going to brunch, and I almost made it, like, how you do, like, a drinking game. Every time somebody says Andee, you take a drink. But I said every time someone says brunch, I put that money in my savings account. That was my drinking game. And so every time they invite me to brunch, I would transfer 30 to 50 bucks to a savings account, and then when I had enough, I used it to go to my first solo trip.

And so now I learned that I'm not saying no to brunch. I'm saying yes to Morocco. I'm not saying no to brunch. I'm saying yes to India. And these are real countries I've been to. I'm saying yes to Monaco. I'm saying yes to Italy. And so I always encourage people to do the same. I want you to use your money to live an actual richer, more joyful life. I want you to make sure you're not using your money towards someone else's idea of loves. To me, that's not the best use of your money.

TAGLE: What especially spoke to me was that you said you learned how to say no in a different way. It wasn't just no, sorry, I'm busy. You didn't make excuses, you know? You changed your language. Can you give us some template language for how we might be able to change our language? You know, when those uncomfortable situations come, how can we say no to brunch too?

ALICHE: So whatever it is that you're saving toward - 'cause I don't believe saving's just for saving's sake. You can save toward emergencies or save toward goals because saving towards saving's sake means that you probably are not enjoying as much life as you ought to, right? So if your emergency savings is fully funded - you got your six months, your year, your three months, whatever you think is necessary - great. You can say, you know, I would love to - you know, it sounds really awesome to go to dot, dot, dot or to go to the mall or whatever, but honestly, I'm saving toward sharing that amazing, dope thing because your friends and your family - they love you. And so that's really the language - identifying the thing that you're saving toward, your goal or emergency savings or otherwise, and then reiterating that language to the person that's asking you to spend, because I promise you, that positive language feels good to you and to them. You're not actually saying no to them 'cause what they hear is, oh, wow, Tiffany - Andee is saying yes to herself. She is saying yes to this awesome goal, not no to me.

TAGLE: So Tiffany, you came from a household where you were talking about money all the time, but what about people where that wasn't the case? You know, how can we get comfortable talking about money? What can we say? What can we do? How can we start having those conversations?

ALICHE: You're right. I think the average person did not have these conversations at home. So how do you naturally do that? So you have to find a safe environment to do so. It might just be a group of your girlfriends where you've said, like, you know, this is my - you know, I would love you to be my accountability partner, and I'm just going to talk about money with you. So finding a safe environment to do so, and if you don't know anybody in your own physical real life, that there are digital folks that you could lean into and virtual people that you can lean into. I speak freely in front of my friends about money on purpose because I'm always trying to create a safe environment. I'm not going to judge. For me, I don't know what's right or wrong for you. The educator in me is just merely here to present you with as much knowledge as possible so you could choose the right choice for yourself. So make sure that when you're looking for these safe spaces, that that's the energy you get.

TAGLE: So I'm hearing seek out a safe space. It doesn't necessarily have to be your family or your household. And also, you know, destigmatize it. Like, don't be scared to talk about it, normalize it. It's OK to talk about dollar amounts. It's OK to talk about salaries. Familiarize yourself first as you need. Dip your toe in first.

ALICHE: Yeah, dip that little pinky toe in.

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TAGLE: Tiffany Aliche, the Budgetnista, thank you so much for joining us. This has been wonderful.

ALICHE: This has been awesome, Andee. It's always a good time with you. Thank you for having me back.

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TAGLE: OK, let's recap what we've learned. Money is so much more than dollars and cents. Our relationship with money is emotional, and those feelings are tied to lots of things - your upbringing, your environment, plus, you know, all the money-messaging in the world and the media. Learn to hone your financial voice by first being aware of the money influences in your own life, then take time to examine your financial decision-making. Do you feel mostly good or mostly guilty about your choices? Track your feelings if you're not totally sure where you're at. If you want to change a habit, start small and practice in a safe environment. Maybe enlist a friend to be your accountability partner. Next, be more mindful of your spending by differentiating between your purchases.

ALICHE: Do I need it? Do I love it? Do I like it? Do I want it?

TAGLE: Remember, a no to a like can and should be reframed as a yes to a love. Your friends and family will understand, and they might just be inspired to do the same. Finally, you can work towards financial wholeness by just talking about it more. Seek out safe spaces with your people or online, and ask the questions you want to ask. Air out your grievances. The more money conversations are out there, the less they're stigmatized, the more empowered we all are. It's just good sense.

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TAGLE: Thanks again to Tiffany Aliche for joining us. Her new book is titled "Get Good With Money."

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TAGLE: Special thanks to listener Carly Miller (ph) from South Dakota for her budgeting question. For more NPR LIFE KIT, check out our other episodes. If you want more Tiffany, we have an episode with her about how to curb unnecessary spending and another on how to boost your credit. We also have tons of other episodes on parenting, personal finance, health and lots more. You can find those at npr.org/lifekit. And if you love LIFE KIT and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/lifekitnewsletter. Also, we want to hear your tips. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at lifekit@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Clare Marie Schneider. Meghan Keane is our managing producer. Clare Lombardo and Beck Harlan are our digital editors. Beth Donovan is our senior editor. I'm Andee Tagle. Thanks for listening.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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