One of my favourite quotes from the book: “You are a Badass at Making Money” by Jen Sincero is this:
“Not a day goes by where we don’t use money, or use something that was paid for with money, or have an experience that is somehow connected with money. Not. One. Single. Day. and yet, we rarely, if ever, stop to investigate how we feel about money, how we speak about it, or even what the hell money actually is.” [64]
It really nails down the importance of WHY we need to be reading things like this and why I chose to read it myself. If you’re interested in hearing what I learned from this book, or you’re interested in starting your own journey of mastering the mindset of wealth keep on watching because I’m about to give you all the details!
The book is called: You are a Badass at Making Money and it’s Jen Sincero’s 2nd book. I knew I was going to enjoy this book when I got to the 2nd page. She equates sex to money, and says:
“When it comes to having sex and making money, you’re supposed to know what you’re doing and be all great at it, but nobody teaches you anything about it and you’re never supposed to talk about it because it’s inappropriate, dirty, and not so classy”. [2]
HOW FREAKING TRUE IS THIS?!
This is exactly how I feel about money, and why I decided to become a financial coach. Money is seen as taboo, it affects every aspect of our lives yet no one teaches us what to do with it, how to act around it, how to understand it. We’re just supposed to ‘know’. And even then, even if we figure out the ‘technical’ details of it, how are we supposed to understand the EMOTIONAL details?
IF people talk about money at all, it’s all those technical skills. How to make money, how to save money, how to invest money maybe, but all in those ‘technical’ ways, (ask your boss for a raise, put this specific amount into this specific account for this long etc.) Even I have a lot of posts on these topics. They’re important to learn! But it’s also important to understand the other half of it. The half NO ONE talks about.
The EMOTIONAL and MINDSET effects that money has on us.
That’s where this book comes in, it’s all about mindset and emotion, and doesn’t shy away from giving you the hard truths. In fact, another of my favourite quotes from the book is when she is addressing the topic of what she calls ‘Busting Yourself” she says:
“We choose to stay in our stories because we get what I call a false benefit from them - We get to keep our identities as a broke person, we get to blame our brokeness on things outside ourselves (I don’t have time, I have seven kids, the economy sucks, I can’t find a pen to write down my to-do list with), we don’t have to push ourselves outside our comfort zones and risk failing, looking like an idiot, losing money, changing and becoming different from our family and friends - the list goes on and on”. [90]
...and of course, she goes on to give us the tough love. She tells us why it’s important to call ourselves out and understand all of the false excuses we have in our brains. But she doesn’t leave us hanging, I really enjoyed the formatting she chose to use for this. She sets out all of the chapters in a similar way:
The first part of it, is a story, usually a personal one, but sometimes it’s one she heard from someone else, like what Jim Carey said on Oprah. She relates these stories to the money mindset trick, or belief, or ‘skill’ that she wants you to learn. It ranges from how to understand where your mindset is currently, to how to change it, to how to push it to the limit and overcome the challenges it’s presenting. She does a really good job of wrapping everything together.
My favourite part of the book however, is that she actually provides ‘activities’ at the end of each chapter. (Yes, worksheets! Like elementary school except cooler because we’re adults now.)
She puts these activities under the title “To Get Rich” and I found it really relatable to actually have something tangible to complete. For example, at the end of Chapter 5, where she talks about connecting your desire for money to passion, she wants us to understand our ‘Why’: Why do we desire this money? What will we spend it on? How will it feel to make this money? Etc.
In this ‘To Get Rich’ section she tells us to write a fantasy ‘Day in the Life’, to get specific on what we want, and how it will FEEL when it happens. We’re encouraged to make a mantra around that specific fantasy and break down the exact amount we need to make it happen.
I really found these ‘to get rich’ sections really helpful because sometimes I find it pretty difficult to “believe the ‘woo-woo’”. I have no doubt mindset is important, but I’ve just been so mentally trained in the opposite direction that unless there’s something tangible I can grab on to, sometimes it’s just too hard for me to really understand the nice and fluffy ‘if you just start thinking and believing, your life will change’ stuff. Don’t get me wrong, this book has plenty of that idealistic woo-woo, but these ‘Get Rich’ action points really make a difference in terms of the actual application of skills learned in this book.
I won’t lie to you. I haven’t done all the activities in this book. If I’m honest, I don’t think I will. BUT, I have saved a lot of my favourites that I WILL be completing. I’m definitely not done with this book yet!
Another thing I wanted to mention about this book is the times I was ‘hit with a ton of bricks’, by which I mean, I read a line and thought WOW.
There were a few times this happened, the quotes I mentioned at the beginning of this video are good examples, but there was one that REALLY hit me hard in the gut.
She says:
“When it comes to money, who and what you surround yourself with has a huge effect on how you perceive it and feel about it. Your environment helps define what you consider to be expensive or cheap, a wise or stupid purchase, and how much you’ll allow yourself to make. In fact, here’s a sobering exercise: take the average income of the five people you hang around with most, and you’ll most likely find yours.” [185]
SAWHA?! That IS my life. Seriously.
You know when you read or see something that you’ve been thinking for a while but never knew how to actually put it into words? That’s what I felt when I read this quote. If you’ve been watching my channel for a while, you might know that this is something I struggle with. I always thought it ‘would be cool’ to make a lot of money, but didn’t really think it was something I could do.
Why?
Because everyone around me was making less. But my partner Alex, has dreams of making big money. When I met him, I was thinking ‘great for him, I hope he does that’. But I never was thinking ‘wow that’s an inspiration I wish I could do that’. I never even thought about myself until he asked me. He seemed baffled that I WASN’T thinking bigger. My answer, was legitimately word-for-word: Oh, well, my parents don’t make that much and we were fine so it will be ok. He was like UH GIRL WHAT?! You’re not your parents?! You live in Toronto now, AND it’s 20-- I think it was 2015, so he’s like it’s 2015! Cost of living is WAAAAAY higher than what your parents were making.
At first I really fought against that. I really was thinking no, I have a Bachelors of Social Work, Social Workers make like $60,000 a year in a GOOD job that’s fine, and besides I’m not skilled enough to make great money. No one will hire me because I don’t have ‘the right’ kind of education. Of course I’m smart and a good worker but I can’t show that on a resume. I had ALLLL kinds of ‘reasons’ why I shouldn’t be making more money. But, the hard truth, was that I was using my environment as an excuse. I was looking around at my friends and my parents and saying ‘if they’re good on that salary that works for me’. I was using that as an excuse to stay in that comfort zone. If I don’t admit that I want more for myself I can’t fail at it. I can’t be rejected for a raise from an employer. I can’t be ‘proven correct’ if I send out a million resumes to high paying employers that don’t call me back.
That’s why this quote got me. I’ve actually come a long way from 2015, I’ve been with Alex for 4 years now, and I DO now have dreams of making ‘big money’. But I was never able to understand WHY I was feeling the way I did. This book, validated for me that it was a feeling OTHER PEOPLE had. Not only that, but it explained WHY people feel this way and HOW to get over it.
It was a huge boost for me, and I was really struck by that realization and appreciated the book for including it.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, I think this book does a really great job of explaining the mindset of wealth. Understanding why we sometimes feel like we’re completely failing at making money and how to overcome those challenges.
I’ll be honest with you. It’s a mindset book, it’s a little ‘woo woo’.
But, it’s backed-up with some great tangible activities that can set you on the right path, to have you actually applying the things you learned.
It’s already changed the way I think AND feel about money. I’d say it’s worth the read!