SPEAKER_01 0:00

I had had a financial roller coaster before. It's not like I started my business and it was just progress is linear. All of that happened before my business model broke and along with it, my self-esteem. So what I used to say, and and I still sort of say it, but it's it's I make money from lemons. Um so I guess you could say I was sort of in training to be resilient. Um, but eventually things got so difficult that there was no resilience to be had. Like it was just crying on the bathroom floor. And that really started with the diagnosis of my son's medical condition.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Hi, Huntresses. This is Talk Rich to Me. Where we get more comfortable talking about money and dealing with money. Brought to you by Huntress Wealth. 71% of women are investing, but only one in six feels confident about where she's headed. Huntress is the all-in-one financial app built to help you make a plan, get actionable steps, and build your wealth. Join the wait list at HuntressWealth.com and get good with money.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

I'm joined today by Claire Wasserman, who is the owner of Ladies Get Paid. She does career and pay coaching. Um, but she has also has gone through her own financial experience that she recently shared um publicly, where she went from having over a million dollars in assets with her partner to a negative net worth. So we're gonna talk today about what that's really like and you know, just hear Claire's story and and how she's handling all of this. Thank you for being here, Claire. Oh my goodness, thank you for having me. Before we get into kind of the roller coaster that you've been on, can you just give us the little glimpse of the past?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah. So I'll talk about the top of the roller coaster. I started my business, Ladies Get Paid, in 2016. Um, it was for women who wanted to come together to talk about their relationship with money and work. It was purely events-based. We would host events all over the country every month, and we ended up within a thousand-person conference. And our primary source of revenue came from brand sponsorships, and that's how we built up a seven-figure business. Pandemic happens, obviously, everything changes. Our entire business model was broken. No more in-person events, no more brand dollars. And I had to learn what is online marketing, right? I'm 39, I but I act a little bit like a boomer. And I really struggled. I'm gonna be honest. I had a very hard time wrapping my head around what is TikTok and if I should go on it. I started to reinvent myself, got that degree in financial psychology, became very interested in inner worth as much as outer worth, because what ladies get paid really was based on was helping women get raises as a way of closing the wage gap. But I was evolving, we were evolving, and the world was evolving. And as I was struggling to figure out my new business model, we decided we're gonna get pregnant anyway. But because I'm a lesbian, we gotta pay for that, right? Sperm does not come free and ended up spending about $25,000 to get pregnant. Um, but it put us into a bit of a precarious financial situation. Fingers crossed, nothing worse can happen. Well, a lot of worse things happened after that.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

So you did get pregnant, it was twins. What happened from there?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah. So the joke with the having twins is it is a two-for-one discount when you are doing fertility treatments. So even though we knew having two kids at once was gonna be expensive and an expense that we were not totally prepared for, uh, the prospect of having to get pregnant again uh via science, for lack of a better word, uh, it did save some costs. So we were happy about twins. The twins are born, declared healthy. Um, I actually had this unbelievable intuition when they pulled my son from me. It was a C-section. They pull him from me, and I turn to my wife and I say to her, he is not safe. I like have chills when I think about it now. But they said, no, no, no, he's safe. Everything's fine. But I said, No. Twenty-four hours later, a nurse during a routine checkup hears a murmur in his heart and calls the pediatrician who says to us, Don't worry, this is pretty standard. I have not seen surgery in more than 20 years of practice. I get a call an hour later, and it is, yes, this is this is a surgery situation, and we need to intubate him. And they took him away. And seven days later, he was having open heart surgery. It was a 10-hour surgery, and he was on life support because of it. What could go wrong did go wrong. And it was, I would say, in a year and a half of hospitalizations in and out. He was in the hospital for the first three months of his life, but then we brought him back because of extreme fentanyl withdrawal. His intestines were dying, he had gastro issues. I mean, it's just a cascade of conditions that come from the original diagnosis of congenital heart disease. He had another open heart surgery, he had multiple procedures. And of course, during this whole time, we have another newborn. Okay. We have another newborn because they're twins. And so my wife and I effectively divided up. My wife Ashley, she was the hospital mommy, and I was the at-home mommy. And we do have some family in the area. We've got cousins, but you know, they're they have lives, so they really couldn't help. And our parents live across the country. So we were really on our own. And this is where the debt accrued. We really could not work. We could not work. I mean, fortunately, we work for ourselves. So we at least had the option of flexibility. But I had not at that point created any kind of passive income. I mean, if I don't show up to lead, for example, a job search boot camp, it's not gonna run. Like there's no video for you to watch. It's gotta be live. If I don't show up one-on-one to clients I coach, there's no business. And I had to make a decision. Do I go back to work? How much can I go back to work? And I did, I did run a job search boot camp two weeks after I gave birth with my son in the hospital on life support. I was in front of my webcam teaching. Very grateful for that experience, A, for the money. But B, it did give me a way to hold on to a shred of my identity outside of absolute devastation. But there was no time really to work. There just wasn't. And while we, of course, spent, you know, our full deductible, we do have insurance through our company. Again, we pay for it, right? We are our own business owners. Um, I think we ended up paying out of pocket at most $8,000, maybe $15,000. Um, but insurance picked up the rest. However, they didn't want to pick it up. We got a bill for $1.5 million. We called the social worker at the hospital and we said, of course we can't pay this. And she said, We I understand. I'm gonna jump in and help. So she did her best, but and this is where my it's all my wife, not me, hours and hours on the phone with the insurance company saying, Yes, my son needs this life saving procedure. No, this is not elective, and you must pay for it. And that is a full-time job. We start eating into our savings. My wife sells off all of our investments. We're not bringing in income. And this is where the debt accrues. So I do want to be very clear to everybody who has heard a bit of my story online. Um, when they take, you know, at first glance, oh my gosh, medical debt. I I can't believe you had to pay for all of his medical. No, no, no, no. It was more about our inability to work because of caregiving and that we have a small business and that business had not yet recovered from the pandemic. We had also taken out a loan on that business. We owed that loan. Uh, so there's multiple systems at play here. Um, but I do want to be clear, you know, insurance did pay. However, I got sick. And this is where I did have to start paying out of pocket for things.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Versus pandemics kicking in and marping this out. When were your children born? Our kids were born in 2024.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

And I really started struggling with the business in 2021. So I had had a financial roller coaster before. I want to be clear. It's not like I started my business and it was just progress is linear. But eventually things got so difficult that there was no resilience to be had. Like it was just crying on the bathroom floor. And that really started with the diagnosis of my son's medical condition.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

What point did it feel like the financial layer was heavier? Because I mean, caring for your son in the hospital. Yeah. Whatever, we'll figure out the money, right? Like that's not the important part. Was it always there or did it really creep in as the problem?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Great question. When I think back to when my business model broke, what I was most devastated about that was not at all the money. It was that I had no definition anymore of what made me worthy. Um, and it's not so much that the money itself defined my worth. I knew that if I produced an event and people showed up and they loved it. And a brand paid for it, right? Okay, I am worthy. It was more the the inability to do the work and being confused now about how to rebuild. And the fact that I was confused shocked me too. I've always sort of known what to do in my life. It's always been obvious what my next step is. Um, I think because I've been so connected to my intuition. And then now, when it all fell apart all at once and right off the heels of the highest I'd ever been, which was this book deal, that precipitous drop shocked my system. I mean, literally, it was a system, it was a nervous system problem. And I could not get out of bed. So I had a deep depression, ended up becoming medicated for it. Um, so all the financial stuff, that was like, that was the aftermath. The real problem was who am I if I don't know what's next? Now, getting pregnant, I want to mention I was nauseous and throwing up every single day for nine months. So while I was trying to rebuild my business, I would say I had a chronic illness and was fingers crossed, really hoping I was gonna be able to figure it out post-birth. Right. I'm laughing because it's like the pressure, the enormous pressure I put on myself, part of it financial, was very worried about our money for sure. Also with the impending, you know, twins. My God, how are we gonna afford this? But again, I would say it was an existential anxiety that was way greater than the financial one because I'd always had figured out the money all throughout my career. I I was very scrappy, very entrepreneurial, um, always lived below my means. We had a great deal in the apartment. Um, if I desperately needed to, you know, ask my family for help, they could, they could do it. Right. So I felt like the safety net would appear if we needed it. But again, just my inability to work was what was most disturbing to me. And then with my son in the hospital, me caring for the newborn, I yeah, did not the numbers. I mean, when we got that $1.5 million bill, that was probably when I really got scared because it was seeing the math just uh visually that on a piece of paper. $1.5 million, and I said, We're buried. Our life is ruined. And of course, my wife immediately says, Claire, this is not what we're actually paying. I think this was even sent to us by a mistake, right? But it did wake me up to the reality of what was not in our bank account, and also that this was going to take years of recovery. Whereas all my other, you know, missteps and all the other problems I'd had before, it felt like, okay, we can figure this out in a couple of months. Like the the comeback time was was fast before, or I had the energy to at least, you know, tackle it in a way that felt fast. This was the first time that I felt defeated.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

And I ended up having a manic episode. I completely disassociated and ended up being diagnosed with bipolar two, which was a diagnosis I had received probably a decade earlier, but really denied it. I thought it was not a good psychiatrist. He was a man, he didn't understand me. These are all the things I said, and had gone on and off medication, and I was off of it at that time. And after my manic episode and realizing how in denial I had been about everything that was happening, including my money, I yeah, I like really got medicated and I got really honest with myself.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Short of the medical diagnosis, how do you not dissociate with $1.5 million a bill that is just doesn't feel like reality. That feels like a big trigger for anyone, but especially if you already have, you know, this in your life.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah. And I think also when you have no idea how you're going to tackle this. If I had a steady job without a newborn, like, okay, one foot in front of the other, like I'll Google how to do that. No, there's no Googling here. Because also, I don't have the energy. I'm just trying to keep my newborn alive and praying that the nurses are keeping my son alive in the hospital. Like, I can't even wrap my head around this. And even if I could, just where do you begin? So yeah, there was, I had no choice but to have a mental breakdown from it. But here's the thing, my wife couldn't. And so something we've had to do a lot of unpacking now is how we both experience trauma differently. And in ways that it could have brought us closer together, it drove us apart. And I think this is very common for couples who experience hardship. I think for a lot of couples, you have the quote, same situation, but completely different experiences of it.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

And both need processing. It's not like one experience to process, it's your experience and her experience, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Like a thousand percent. And also time, time, like we also needed time to have this all unfold. Like this was happening in real time. Things were changing every day with my son's condition, right? Also, my daughter's, you know, not going to be a newborn anymore. And like, what about daycare? Right. So it was like every week evolving into something new. And then you have to respond to that. I I it was like I was in a boot camp from hell.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

I mean, it should kind of alleviate some of the stress or fear from listening to this. Is your son okay now? How's he doing?

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yes. So my son was the recipient of a groundbreaking technology. Um, it is a stent that is made for babies, and it was approved by the FDA 36 hours before he was scheduled to receive the old stent. And the old stunt would have meant open heart surgeries every couple of years. This new stent, they can do what's called a balloon catheterization, which is an outpatient, you know, he'll he'll go home the day that they do this procedure, which yes, they will have to do it every few years. Um, this is groundbreaking, game-changing, life-saving. Um, and it it's it was his doctor that made it. So talk about right place and right time. We went from feeling like the unluckiest parents that could ever be. Like we were the unlucky ones to now we realize we are absolutely the lucky ones. But he is, you know, on track to be developmentally normal, live a full life. And um, I want to say he doesn't know what happened to him, but he does. But what he knows is the most beautiful part, which is that he had all of these nurses and doctors caring for him. So I'm I'm just so inspired by him. And I'm gearing up to have my own surgery, and I'm very, very, very scared. But I keep reminding myself, Claire, he did a 10-hour open heart surgery. If he can do it, seven days old. Yes, exactly. Like I can at 39, I can do this.

SPEAKER_03 16:26

Yeah, you can do this.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

What was your out of pocket? Oh, that's right. I should know, I should know that number. I don't know our pocket. Um, I think my wife ended up cashing out like $300,000 worth of investments. Like I have to I have to ask her to get those exact numbers, but thank you for reminding me. Um, but yeah, I mean, we have no investments, no savings. Um, and we do have some money in our bank account because we are earning again. Um, but that's obviously going towards cost of living and paying down our debt.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

So like we have no safety net, basically. That's that's what it it really destroyed.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

We talked to a lot of people that are very diligently building their little nest egg. And it's very common to hear the fear of using it. And so I do want to highlight I'm so glad that y'all had some safety, like it got you through, and I'm sure it was painful to use, and maybe it wasn't enough, but I'm glad you had it during like all of these different like I say stages. It's like you've lived 50 years and five.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Um totally. Well said. My God, that's the name of my memoir. Thanks. 50 years and five. Um were you seeing a therapist before the baby? I had seen a therapist uh specializing in internal family systems, which uh changed my life. Um, I saw her when I fell into my deep depression at the beginning of the pandemic, but she didn't take insurance and that was pretty expensive. So I just did, you know, maybe like 10 sessions and then I couldn't see her anymore. But I felt like I got a lot out of it. Was not seeing a therapist throughout my pregnancy and did not have anyone to call when we got the diagnosis. Um, it is, by the way, so frigging hard to find, first of all, a good therapist, but second of all, a good therapist who takes your insurance. I've seen so many that just have not worked for me. And yeah, I'm currently paying out of pocket quite a bit of money for somebody who I do find to be helpful in a way that it's worth the price. The health journey has been hard on me. There was some mental health, but what's really contributing to my mental health these days is I I have a chronic back condition that came from all of this stress. I have two herniated discs and I'm getting a titanium plate put into my back because my back literally crumbled from all of this stress. I ground down so many teeth that I had to pay $20,000 out of pocket. I have dental insurance. If you really want to talk about insurance and get me on my soapbox, it is the dental insurance because that did not cover anything and I pay for it. So $20,000 to dental and I get rejected all the time. That crown is unnecessary. I'm sorry, I'm not getting a crown for grill. It's not a grill. Okay. So there are so many claim rejections from insurance that I honestly don't even fight anymore because I just don't have the energy. And it's like, add it to the tab this point. If you're already this much in debt, like, and that's the thing that's rough is knowing that these insurance companies are getting away with charging you and you could fight it, but then you look at your debt and you go, is it even worth it? Like, what's an extra $1,500 on top of this money? So anyone who's been in debt knows what I'm talking about here. And I hope this is not so depressing that you've all turned off the podcast at this point.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Thinking of the degree in financial psychology part is like debt is a tool. Debt does not have like good debt, bad debt, but there's the heavy interest rate, and it does weigh on you. Like there is a cost to debt beyond the actual cost of debt.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

So I'll I'm gonna be very honest about my debt here. Um we did not tell our parents how much debt we were getting into. Um, they were obviously suffering themselves from seeing their grandchild be on life support and their children, you know, having to navigate it. They were very distressed. We didn't want to add to their distress. I imagine there's a lot of people listening and watching who totally get this. You don't want to be a burden to your parents emotionally or financially. I finally did share a bit of my number with my mom, and she was really upset. What made you decide to tell your mom? I don't remember why and when we decided to tell her. Maybe she just asked me point blank finally. For me, my biggest issue actually has always been receiving help, um, or even just receiving money. I know I'm ladies get paid and I'm, you know, helping women negotiate their salaries, but in many ways, I've had difficulty accepting money from the ladies get paid community. If it's a brand, big corporation, please, I will take money from you all day. But if it is an individual who comes to me who is suffering in some way, they need a job, they want a promotion, they want to raise, they want to start their business. I know how scary financially it can be to be in that position. And so while what I'm offering them brings in even more revenue, like they will get a return on their investment, and I believe in that. I have guilt about charging them more. I have since gotten over that. I want to be clear. I have gotten over that. And you know why I got over it? My own situation. I hit so rock bottom. I said, you know what? I have to really look at all of the ways that I have been socialized and just strip them apart bit by bit and find completely new ways. Of seeing them, seeing myself, and making a different decision that truly serves me. And what serves me doesn't have to be at the expense of another person. For example, if you pay me for coaching, it is an investment in yourself that you can feel full of pride of. And like you're going to show up and do the work and get more results because of it. Versus if you don't pay much, you don't do the homework, you don't get the results. Like it can be good to pay. Plus, I always do payment plans, very generous with those. Because guess what? I've been the recipient of payment plans. You could always negotiate for payment plans. So that allows me to now feel more comfortable receiving. But this experience has really made me reckon with a lot of baggage I had in so many areas of my life. And so for that, I'm I am grateful.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

And it's gonna say it's reckon with all of it. That like a lot of people don't have to face these things. Things like owning a business and deciding how much to charge. These are almost all like badges to earn, right? Like maybe they're badges you don't want. Um the the world's worst prizes is figuring out how to negotiate a $1.5 million medical bill. But if these are skills that you've learned, are you thinking about taking these as a part of your coaching business?

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Thousand percent. I mean, I also am finishing up a degree in nervous system regulation because of all of my health issues. I realized I was not processing somatically a lot of the stuff I was experiencing. Like I was just trying to meet it intellectually. And I do think a lot of the things that we go through in life, like people pleasing, perfectionism, inability to set boundaries, all that. There's actually a physical component of it that we need to work through. So I've become very curious, first and foremost, how did I get here? How do I get through it? And this is probably me trying to make meaning of suffering because it's the only way that I can keep going. But I've got to believe that the universe gave this to me so that I can help others. I think my hugest takeaway from all of this, because I've had a lot of takeaways and I'm sharing them on my Instagram. Claire gets paid, so go check that out. But I think all the things I've learned ladders back to connection, connecting to ourselves underneath the layers of socialization and connecting to others, right? Even just the vulnerability of sharing my truth online. I've had thousands of people now share their truth and we really see each other, not our posturing and our performing, but like what is actually in our hearts and our souls. Like it is very deep now. And that's amazing. That's amazing. And of course, I've got to bring this into my coaching. I mean, right after our podcast, I'm gonna be redoing my website for speaking engagements, right? I have a whole new keynote now. And it's interesting to build this while I'm still in it, right? There's no silver lining or tidy bow. Oh, I went through this, but now I'm a multimillionaire again. I have faith that I will get there. I absolutely do. My joke is that I'm a pretty cockroach. Okay, you cannot kill me, but I don't want this to be a sort of rags to riches situation. Like, cause ultimately, is it really about the money? No, it's about what the money affords you. It's about what the money makes you feel. And I'm gonna be honest, when I was, quote, really successful, I was so mean to myself. I would freak out about any spelling error or grammar mistake I might put in my email. And then I would catastrophize, Claire, you shouldn't even do this work. You call yourself a writer. I mean, so mean to myself. Can you be mean to yourself while you're going through the apocalypse? It's like I mean, some people are, but then it's not bad enough for them. No, it's uh it's it's you it literally you might go into victim, like, oh my god, why is this happening to me? I mean, thousand percent I've been there. I but kind of what that does is make you feel bad for yourself. Self-compassion, maybe. Yeah, and that can lead to self-compassion. And by the way, I want to be clear, I did self-flagellate through much of this. Like, it's my fault for not having a stronger business model. It's my fault for not having more savings. You know, of course, like that's how this whole thing started was self-flagellation, but it got worse and worse and worse. So therefore, I had to get kinder and kinder just to stay alive. So I feel like I went through some kind of Rubicon and I don't know exactly what's on the other side, but I'm peeking at it a little bit and I can't wait for what's next.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

One of the things you shared when you did start talking about this openly on Instagram is something along the lines of you're going to talk about it, but you've been keeping it quite the guilt of like being on food stamps and helping other people, like coaching people on their money. How did you come to the decision to talk about it?

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Yeah, I think shame came from every time I was coaching or on stage, and I felt like I had to pretzel myself into a really put-together version. I do know what I'm talking about. I'm a great coach, like all of that. But then when I get off these calls or walk off the stage, I'm a mess. I am just an emotional wreck. My bank account's a wreck. My marriage, I mean, we're working through it and we're gonna be fine. But to feel like I'm falling apart in so many areas, and then I can't be that way publicly, that cognitive dissonance, I mean, it really, it was really weighing on me. And the thing I had to figure out was does being a mess make me less credible? Like this put together version, is that now a lie? And the answer is no. They both are true. And in fact, for all of us, many things are true about ourselves and about life. And they don't need to contradict each other at all, actually. And what changed was I really had to start posting on Instagram for, I'll just say for work, for business. I I really, you know, I'd let it go dormant. And I had to get the Instagram engine going again. And I could not bring myself to do the videos that I thought I was supposed to do, which is these top tip videos, five things every interview candidate should know, kind of stuff, right? And I was in a therapy session and I was just going on and on about it makes me nauseous. Like I can't, I'm gonna vomit if I do these videos. And she was kind of like, then don't do something else. And I thought, gosh, what would that something else be? And so this part is very funny. I said, okay, I am going to share what I've gone through, which by the way, I had written an article on Substack about this before. I already had some public attention, but it felt very different to do this on Instagram and to make it a video, like my face, you know, my face out there. So this felt different. So this is the funny part. I did create a video, and this video was me holding up my laptop with a beautiful PowerPoint presentation that I made. And it was like all the things I've learned from going broke. And I just can't bring myself to publish the whole tone was off because that was the whole reason I was frustrated about making these top tip videos anyway, and kind of the shame that I'd been feeling was this disconnect between my private life and my public persona. And I thought I've got to figure out a way to meld these two together where they don't contradict each other and I still feel whole. While also protecting something. And I said, I'm gonna just film this again and I'm gonna do it while sitting on the freaking floor by my bed, and I'm gonna speak from the heart. If I cry, I cry, but I don't want this to be a sad video. That was important to me. This is not like, oh, poor Claire, oh my gosh, you know, no. So I pretty quick in the video about yes, this horrible thing happened in my life, but that's not what today's about. What today is about, here are the things that I learned. But I expressed it in a way that felt much more authentic to what my actual lived experience is right now. And it, you know, it went viral. And AOC commented and she writes, Claire, what a brave and powerful testimony, and then shares her story about her father getting cancer and them going on food stamps. Like, I'm gonna cry. This is, you know, it's so many of our stories in not exactly the same way, but we've all felt uncertainty. Or for many of us, and this could be those, those of you watching or listening, you are financially fine, but you were living in abject fear that you won't be. And I say to you, your fear is your reality. So you might as well go into debt. Like either be happy that you have the money and can live the life you want, um, or go be in debt and live that reality. But but to live in both at the same time, if you don't have to, my God, please don't like be in the moment and celebrate what you have and also accept you may not have it tomorrow. And that's gonna be fine too. And by the way, you're gonna be fine also means you're not gonna be fine. Again, I think we oftentimes try to go, I'm either this or I'm that. I'm successful or I'm a failure, I'm rich or I'm poor, I am, you know, full of fear or I'm fearless. No, I am all of those things all at once. Let us stop forcing ourselves to choose one way of being and do our best to figure out how can I integrate all parts of myself and then find my people who want to hear the nuances of that lived experience.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Yeah. It's it's like we are complex. Like we, it is all of the above. And the I am fine might not always be true, but I'm going to be fine, can be, right? Like that's a choice, right? To to look forward to being fine.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Um, actually, I'm gonna totally push back on that. That's not at all. It's it's I'm fine and I'm not fine at the same time. There's no I'm going to be, because this this moment is all that we have. Again, having had my son on life support, like we literally have no other time except for right now. And I'm not okay. I mean, I'm in chronic pain. Like, I'm genuinely not fine, but I'm also very happy to be alive, sharing my story. The sun is shining. I just had some coffee cake, that was delicious. Like all of that is true in this one moment. And it is the ability to hold that at the same time without either lamenting the past or looking forward to the future. Like those things don't exist. It is just you and me in this moment.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Yeah. And that's that was another thing that you shared is that you still are spending money, even in this situation of not feeling like your financial picture is great. Life is happening right now, and certainly knowing what you want in the future or thinking about what's happened in the past, but you got to take care of right now first.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

I think this is really important for everybody here. Continue to spend your money, okay? And don't feel guilty about it. My wife and I, every now and then we go to a concert. Think about the healing that happens at that concert for us in our relationship. Every now and then I get a pedicure, which ironically, when I made money, I would never have done that. Now I've decided the money I spend at that pedicure is healing. I feel taken care of in that moment and I desperately need to feel taken care of. So it's been really interesting to see how my relationship to spending has changed because I was a lot more scared of it before in many ways. But I want to be very clear here. We cut down on our expenses massively. We did take a fine-tooth comb and go through every single line item in our life and then decided I am going to continue to spend on an expensive therapist and doing some more self-care things because that is a priority in my life and I am at peace with it. And in fact, I take pride in being able to spend my money because to me, it represents living my life in the way that I want to live.

unknown 33:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

We talk a lot about, like we say, we're beyond the budget, and that being detailed in the budget and being vigilant about your budget is a tool. Like it's it's absolutely a tool to put to use when you need to use it. But broadly, we talk with people about knowing what our needs, knowing what are wants, and knowing what's going towards something else that's important to you, whether it's now or in the future. But I think it's the thing to recognize is that even the stuff we put in the once bucket, some of that is values-based, right? All of it. I mean, all of it is like it's easy to call something a want and and live in that world where you call it a want. But when you're actually pressed to get down to your needs, like you will see what is a need. A pedicure can be a need.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

I mean, our line items have changed. Everything keeps shifting. And what's most important is that you keep asking yourself, is this aligned with who I am and what I need in this season of my life?

SPEAKER_02 34:58

If you ran into your 2018, 2019-year-old self, what wisdom would you give her?

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Get on TikTok. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. Best example I can give for that is Tori Dunlap, the financial feminist, the financial feminist, taught a workshop for ladies get paid when we first started, and she had started her business. Over two million followers on TikTok, now well, very well off, and I'm on food stamps. Like, I just refuse to look at emerging technology and learn it. Cause I said, I know how to do this other thing and I do it well. I'm gonna stick with it. And times were changing, and I did not change with them because I was afraid of the learning curve. So that's that's big. Like, so whether it's AI or whatever else, like if things are changing, like you've got, you've got to get on board. You you just I mean, or do it in an ethical way, but like you've got to find a way that you can align yourself with this change instead of burying your head in the sand, like I did. So I really did lose a lot from from that. What I would say is that you are going to be tested in so many ways that are incredibly painful, but there are so many ways that you're living right now that is also incredibly painful. And at least when you go through hell, you start to get intentional about what kind of pain you're willing to inflict upon yourself and what kind of pain you're gonna just process. Like it can move through you. Like that's why I do the nervous system work, right? Like you can receive horrible news and you can process it and physically uh release it. Like, very, very important. So just know nothing's gonna get stuck within you. Like you can learn the tools to alchemize it in some way, but I think we gotta take a really hard look at all the ways we make life more difficult for ourselves when we actually have the choice not to.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Now that you've come forward and you've had so many people respond to your story, has your emotions around any of it shifted?

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Yeah, I felt worse actually. I'm gonna be very honest about this. My wife got a lot of text messages. Is Claire well? And not like, is she okay because of what she went through? Is she having a mental breakdown and doing this on the internet? Our couples therapist said to us or said to me, I wish you'd shared this with close friends before you went to the internet. She said, Don't try to chase a viral moment. I got so many texts from people going, You're so brave. That took a lot of courage, you're so brave. I felt like shit. Because I felt like they were all saying, What's wrong with you? I wouldn't have made that choice. And it is, I mean, this goes against human nature. We are wired to want to belong. I want to feel like people are like me too. And so on one hand, I do have the people on the internet saying, Me too, I have either experienced financial insecurity or I'm afraid of it, particularly those who are new to financial insecurity, having had success and privilege on one side, being confronted with the other side, like that intersection I'm very interested in. But the people who are closest to me in my life, they were skeptical.

SPEAKER_03 38:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

My wife was also not happy. And we really had to work through it. Really had to work through it. So again, this public experience versus my private life, the dissonance continues. But I have to say, I think it might be like that for all people, right? Like you put on makeup and you go outside, right? The very act of even putting on makeup is this kind of barrier. No shade to the makeup, I put it on for today, right? But it's it's it's a it's a painful and hurtful experience, but it's also get objectively quite interesting to see how this is playing out in my life. And I just had to believe there's something greater here that's happening. Um, and again, I've I've my intuition has always stirred me right, and I'm getting that spidey sense from now that I built something successful, but what happens if I could build something even bigger? Or what happens if I don't build anything at all? And I just like helped a few people on the internet, that's not so bad either.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

Um, there was almost a choice to stay small and stay hiding and stay worried, or see what was on the other side, right? And now you've seen what's on the other side, and there's good and there's bad, but I do um I think it helps your credibility, like lived experiences. This is like women seek out women providers. There's the the feeling of relating. Your immediate circle reaction doesn't surprise me at all either, because we don't talk about this stuff. People don't talk about money and money publicly. Um, or Franklin mental health, telling publicly, like is a choice. But there's also a point where you just gotta shout. It's there.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Franklin rock bottom. I mean, this is kind of how I looked at it. My so my coaching business is very interesting and I it is evolving. Um, I will have some months where I close like a bunch of money, like and I'm like, oh my God, it's amazing. By the way, this is terrible for somebody with bipolar type two, because I'm like riding the high. And then there's a couple of months where why is nobody booking a sales call with me? Where is it coming? Is it all over? Of course, I'm having PTSD from you know the pandemic. And then all of a sudden I get sales calls again. So it's it's this wild roller coaster happening over here. And honestly, I shared my story in the dip. I was not seeing any sales calls coming in, and I genuinely thought my career is over. I'm too medicated to be manic. So I'm guessing this is just my personality. But I was like, I'm I'm cooked. I have nobody coming in. What do I have to lose? I've lost everything anyway, with the exception of my family's life. Like we are still alive, and that's it. And I'm gonna share this because it is weighing heavy. And I know by sharing it, the burden will be alleviated somewhat and it's gonna help other people. This is how I started Ladies Get Paid. I had had a sexist experience that I wrote about, but did not have the guts to post it publicly and instead emailed it to some friends. Because I thought to myself, if I speak about how women are objectified and what that does to our self-esteem and to our careers, ooh, I can't. If I shout that from the rooftops, like I will not work again. But I emailed it to friends and I had so many people write me back and say, wow, me too. That was why I then said, I am going to host an event to get you all in a room because I need us to be sharing war stories from here. And that was the catalyst to ladies get paid. That's what I think might be happening again here. But instead of talking about the wage gap, I'm talking about identity and money, which again, I've I've studied these things. So, like the training has been there. Now we have the life experience. But it does beg the question, and this I think will be relevant to everybody here is how we've lived so far and where we want to go. There is the messy middle of it all. There is a transition. How do I even articulate this to myself or to others? Then there's the money transition, right? Well, can I monetize this? Is it gross to monetize it, right? There, there's a lot of moving parts here. You put one foot in front of the other, so you be the one to like make the change. We keep going, but I also have to let it unfold. And that's what's kind of sort of brilliant and awful about this whole thing is you're like moving ahead in a car and you're like, I'm I believe in where I'm going, but actually I'm not sure. Like the road is appearing as I'm driving. And maybe there's a mountain vista over there, but maybe it's just a pile of crap. Like, you know, or depending on how I look at it, it could be a mountain or a pile of crap. I'm really happy that you're sharing this.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

I thought this is a medical debt story, which is important, impacts like 60% of bankruptcies or something or do with medical debt, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Like it's by the way, and by the way, my we just looked at my what I've spent money on in this last year, and 60% of it is medical costs. The majority of my money is going towards medical expenses. So I don't know if we consider that medical debt or not. Um, I haven't fully wrapped my head around it because it's just so awful. Well, that hasn't been sent to collections. Exactly. One other thing I wanted to say about moving forward. I think there's a time and place for moving forward because pre-all of the apocalypse, I was obsessed with action. What are we doing? It's never fast enough. What I'm realizing now is that there is a time to move, and then there is a time to pause, there is a time to feel, there is a time to reflect, and then there's a time to move again. And it it just goes in a cycle, and to not confuse them or try to skip over any of those phases of that cycle, um, that's a huge lesson I've had to learn in both my emotional, financial, and physical healing process. Sometimes you just gotta sit with it, and that's a really good thing, even if it hurts.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

So, what is one piece of advice that you would share with all the huntresses out there?

SPEAKER_01 44:02

Um, one piece of advice is that fear is probably running your life in so many ways, consciously and subconsciously. And I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, um, but just look at all the ways you're not putting yourself out there or not taking care of yourself, um, or not opening up your bank statement, or obsessing over your bank statement, all the ways that you're defining your identity and your worth, like so much of it may be fear-based. I'd much rather you feel like, did I live my life eyes wide open, heart wide open, and and be incredibly intentional with how you show up in every single moment, recognizing that the pain will always be there, but you can be bigger than it too.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

All right. And last question, Claire.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

What does rich mean to you? I think rich means to me a richness of relationship first with yourself. But just do I I was gonna say deeply know myself, but I mean we're always uncovering new things about ourselves. But am I in the process of deeply knowing and loving myself? And everything stems from there.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Beautiful. And thank you so much for sharing your story. If you enjoyed this episode of Talk Rich to Me, you'll love the Huntress Wealth app, where you can get more comfortable with money, make a financial plan, and make your money move. Sign up now at Huntresswealth.com.