🚲 Improving your relationship with money is like riding a bicycle


Hi friend,

Improving your relationship with money is like riding a bicycle. There are two sides that you must pedal to propel yourself forward.

One side of the pedal is taking practical action, like implementing a spending plan, setting up automatic savings/investing, and tending to your finances regularly. The other side is managing your emotions around money, so they don’t manage you. For example, not using money to solve non-money problems, like playing status games or knowing when your feelings about money are holding you back from earning more.

You have to work on both sides to feel like you’re making progress. The practical side feels easy because there are concrete steps you can take. The emotional side is more nebulous; progress is hard to measure, and sometimes, it can feel utterly pointless, like fumbling in the dark.

One emotion around money that I’ve been fumbling to understand is why I feel guilty, and sometimes gross, for wanting to grow my bookkeeping business and earn more. On this week’s episode of the Weird Finance podcast, my coach, Kristan Sargeant, helps me unpack these feelings.

What feelings around money are you fumbling around with lately? Don’t be shy; hit reply.



1. 😔 How to Unravel Money Guilt with Kristan Sargeant (Weird Finance) In this episode of Weird Finance, we dive deep into the intertwined realms of financial health and personal growth with our esteemed guest, Kristan Sargeant (@kristansargeant).

2. 🥤 Why is Diet Coke so expensive in 2023? (Vox) The economy, explained by Diet Coke, kind of.

3. 🔊 Is Loud Budgeting the New Quiet Luxury? (High Snobiety)

4. 🤓 A bookkeeping thing - Maximizing Tax Deductions: A Guide for Creative Business Owners (Hell Yeah, Bookkeeping)

5. 🛏️ ‘Fast Furniture’ Is Cheap. And Americans Are Throwing It in the Trash. (New York Times) The mass-produced furniture that sold furiously during the pandemic could soon be clogging landfills.

6. 🍓 Why is fruit so expensive in Japan? (Time Out) “Fruits such as Japanese melon and grapes are not so much a snack in Japan but a luxury item cultivated for gifting”

7. 💰 A Few Laws of Getting Rich (Collab Fund) “When the benefits of money are so obvious but the downsides are so subtle, the downsides you didn’t anticipate can be more jarring than the benefits you expected.”

8. 🤑 What If Money Expired? (NOEMA) A long-forgotten German economist argued that society and the economy would be better off if money was a perishable good. Was he an anarchist crank or the prophet of a better world? “Money may be a language, a way to translate value in terms we all understand, but money is not the sum of what we have to say. The more money one has, the less meaning work has to that person. At the same time, life’s most meaningful work, like raising children or cooking a meal for others, often goes unpaid. And yet this is the substance of life, the stuff that determines who we are and how we will be remembered.”


@thehellyeahgroup


If you have a question you’d like me to answer on the Weird Finance podcast, you can leave me a voicemail at 1-833-ASK-PACO. You can also email me your question by replying to this email or emailing us at weirdfinancepod@gmail.com.

The Nerdletter is put together by my Editorial Assistant, Cole Yaverbaum, of Ladies Talking About Money.

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The Nerdletter by Paco de Leon

Want money advice that you can actually understand? So much money advice ignores who we are, our background, our values, and our emotions. I’ll show you how to be in better control of your money every week, even if you’re just starting out.

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