056. Declutter Your Finances, with Bernadette Joy

Before you yawn and tune out because this episode is about finances, hold on!
Back in January, I attended a podcasting conference and met today’s guest, Bernadette Joy — a financial coach whose vibrant energy immediately drew me in. What blew me away was her fresh, no-nonsense approach to money: she teaches financial freedom the same way I teach home organization — through decluttering.

Bernadette is the author of Crush Your Money Goals, recently named one of Oprah's Top 10 Books for Personal Growth in 2025! She's also graced stages like South by Southwest, Nasdaq, FinCon, and TEDxHouston.

In this episode of Organizing for Beautiful Living, Bernadette shares:

• Her personal story of tackling massive student loan debt ($72,000!) and paying it off in just two years.
• How being the daughter of immigrants shaped her views on success — and why her dreams looked very different from her family's.
• Why managing your money (like organizing your home) is about clarity, focus, and momentum — not perfection.
• Her "CRUSH" Method for decluttering your finances sustainably and simply.
• The mindset shifts that allowed her and her husband to "hack the system" and live rent-free — without giving up their freedom.

You'll walk away energized, hopeful, and armed with a practical plan to start organizing your money without getting overwhelmed.

Bernadette also has a free checklist to help you take the first steps toward financial freedom — grab it below.

🔗 Important Links from Today’s Episode:

🎧 Copy and send this link to share the podcast with a friend so they can listen too!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/organizing-for-beautiful-living-home-organizing-tips/id1740218605

📋 Download Bernadette’s Free Checklist:
A step-by-step plan to overcome the overwhelm and start your money journey:
https://www.crushyourmoneygoals.com/freeguide
📚 Bernadette’s Website:
https://www.crushyourmoneygoals.com/
🎙️ Listen to Bernadette’s Podcast "Crush Your Money Goals":
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crush-your-money-goals/id1422564669

Follow Bernadette on Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadebtjoy/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bernadebtjoy/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bernadebtjoy

Connect with me:

You can find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireflybridgeorganizing
Here's my website: https://fireflybridge.com

Call or text me: 305-563-2292

Email me: zeenat@fireflybridge.com

Transcript

Hey, welcome to Organizing for Beautiful Living, the podcast for working moms and entrepreneur moms that provides sustainable organizing tips for your home, work and life.

I’m Zee Siman, Professional Organizer and Productivity Consultant, and I’m here to share simple ideas that don’t take a lot of time so you can love your home, excel at work, and have the time to enjoy both without stress or overwhelm. 

Ready to get beautifully organized? Let’s make it happen!
Before you yawn and doze off because this episode is about finances, let me just tell you something. Back in January, I was at a Podcasting conference and I met Bernadette Joy, who is a financial coach. Her energy drew me in, but what really blew me away was that she approaches getting a handle on your finances like you’re decluttering!
So I had to have her on the show. 
She’s written a book called Crush Your Money Goals, which is on Oprah’s Top 10 books for personal growth in 2025, and in the past year, Bernadette has spoken on some of the biggest stages, including South by Southwest, Nasdaq, FinCon, and TEDxHouston.. 
In my interview with her, you’ll hear not only her story, how she started with massive student loan debt, but paid it all off in just 2 years, but also how her family’s dynamics was a bit of a struggle for a long time for her. I know that a lot of you can relate - maybe not to the exact situation, but to the fact that sometimes, it might feel like we and our families aren’t on the same field, so that while your family wants you to be successful in whatever you’re doing, the way they think you should go about it, and the way you want to go about it, to reach that goal, are really different.
And this applies to your finances, sure, but also to your home, your lifestyle, how you prefer to do things.
So, enjoy my conversation with Bernadette!

Bernadette, you said that you are, that being the daughter of immigrants has made you face a very specific challenge, specifically the fear of leaving your family behind or others behind in your community in search of better things of success.
Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Oh, all right, we're starting deep. I love it. All right. I know, I love it.
I will say I took a lot of time to reflect this past weekend.
So this is perfect timing.

I went on this three day retreat.
And a lot of what we talked about was the hardship of realizing that you don't quite fit into your kind of blood family.
And not for any bad reasons.
I wrote in my journal this past weekend that I realized that really the difference between my family and I was that I just had different dreams.
 And so whenever they were trying to give me advice, particularly my parents or my uncles or having conversations with my brother, it was, well, you should do this because X, Y, and Z because the assumption was because we're from the same tribe that we have the same goals and the same dreams.
And it took me the better part of the last decade to realize that I have different dreams from them.

Specifically, I did not dream on having a big home.
I did not have a dream of having a big corporate job or a big corporate title.
I did not dream about having kids.

And so all of the advice or all of the things that they were trying to share with me out of love was because they assumed that I had the same dream as them to do all of those things.
And for a long time, that made me feel like I was bad.

It made me feel like I wasn't a good daughter or a good sister.
It made me feel like I was always doing something wrong because my blueprint for what my life was going to look like.

Just didn't match theirs.

And I'm grateful that you asked that question because it made me, this weekend in particular, made me realize their dreams aren't bad.
My dreams aren't bad.
They're just different.

And all fairness, they want the best for you.They've always wanted you to be, to have a obstacle-free life, to be able to retire, to have all the measures of success that they thought of when they were growing up themselves.
But why is there then, do you think?
Why is there not the understanding between that generation and your generation of, well, things can, we can have success, but in a different way?
And I'm only asking this because, as a daughter of immigrants myself, the ideal was become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer.
Very specific trades and professions that are guaranteed, quote unquote, success.
But why is there such a difficulty in understanding that success can have such a different look than those traditional ones?

I mean, same thing for me, it was Dr. Lawyer or accountant, not an engineer, and my mom and my brother and my father are all accountants.

And so, I don't think that it's so much a lack of understanding versus a lack of exposure.

I think they literally just did not see other paths.

As a Filipino, the other, you know, medical field is a big one because there's a lot of Filipinos who become doctors or nurses.

That's just nurses are actually the biggest export of the Philippines in terms of resources.

Yeah, I always challenge everyone, if you go to your hospital, how many Filipinos there are as probably a good chunk of them.

And so, you know, if you only know what you've seen and you've never seen someone personally be successful in a space that feels very risky, then the natural reaction is fear, right?

The natural reaction is, especially, you know, when I told my family I wasn't even doing something that's even remotely like sounded like a real job.

You know, I left a very stable, you know, career that people understood, my parents understood what an investment bank was.
My parents understood what an insurance company was, which is where I used to work for. But when I said I'm gonna actually create something from scratch, something that doesn't currently exist.

My first business was a dress rental business and they were like, so you're gonna run a store and I'm like, yeah, kind of, but not really.

And when I couldn't clearly explain it to them because I was still formulating it, I always tell people, you know, as entrepreneurs, we are, you know, sailing the ship and building it at the same time.

I was with them, mm-hmm.

And, you know, their question genuinely was like, why would you do that?

Like, I don't understand why you would do something so hard when in their mind, oh, it's just easier to follow this map that we found to be successful for us.

So I don't know now in hindsight because when I, at the time, I took it as, well, you don't get me and you don't love me because you're not even trying to understand me.

I genuinely look back now and realize they just, they didn't know any differently.

And so I can't blame them for something that they just never had exposure to.

And then, you know, when I went into financial coaching and launching Crusher Money Goals, it wasn't until I was on television and I was like being written in articles that my father, who's like, since passed away, like that he was like, okay, like, I don't, I still don't understand what you're doing, but other people have validated it.

Like, good morning, America says that you're somebody.

So that must be okay.

Whereas I'm like, I've been telling you this all along.

Like, I'm gonna be fine.

And I'm really grateful for this conversation because I think so many of us, particularly female entrepreneurs of color, like we rely so heavily on other people's opinions or judgments of what we're doing to kind of check in to see whether or not we're doing the right thing.

But if our nuclear families have not been exposed to the types of things that we're doing, then yeah, their natural reaction is gonna be, I don't understand why you're doing that or you shouldn't do that or whatever it is.

And then for us to figure out, well, where is that coming from versus feeling like, oh, we're doing something wrong for doing something different?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not feeling a guilt that sticks around.

Well, so, okay, so soon after you finish your education, you realized that you would have masked student loan debt that you hadn't really understood the scale of until you sat down on that.

You saw what that number was.

So what did you do about that?

And what was the amount?

It was $72,000, which was, and mind you, I was already an adult, right?

So I was already a working professional and so I had been paying bills along the way.

So I was just like, I can't owe that much because I've been paying like thousands of dollars every semester for this thing.

And so when I saw it was still $72,000, I'm like, I must have paid at least 50K by now.

How is this $120,000 program?

And mind you, this was a program that was like online before things were really online.

 This was before the pandemic.

So I was like, I just paid $120,000 for a bunch of people.

I just don't understand what I did.

And my first reaction was I cried.

I cried my eyes out.

I was just so, I was felt so defeated.

And I honestly just felt really stupid.

I was like, I mean, I'm sure it was in the fine print somewhere, but clearly I didn't read it.

And in particular, what really got me was that not even just the amount, but that it was a crewing interest daily.

That was the equivalent of like a Starbucks, like matcha latte, because I don't drink coffee, right?

So I was just like, so every day I'm just like, in my brain, I was just like, oh, I'm buying a matcha latte from Starbucks and just like throwing it on the ground.

Yeah.

And for some reason, I had thought that the interest wouldn't start occurring until after I graduated or that I wouldn't be responsible for it or whatever.

And I just really did not understand what I signed up for.

And what I find a lot of people talk to me about is that they too do not understand what they signed up for.

And so there's all this regret, particularly around student loans, but I had to have this like come to Jesus moment when I started bawling my eyes out of just like, well, I can't undo it now.

Yeah.

I can't go back and say, oh, I didn't understand what you sold to me.

And so like, could you just take it back?

And I don't really want this.

Like that's just not, not an option.

And so the question then became so what now?

So what are you gonna do now?

Whether you like it or not from debt, you spent $120,000 on a degree.

And you are going to have to pay it back at some point.

When I first figured that out, the immediate reaction, which was not my normal reaction was flight.

When you get scared, usually I consider myself a fighter.

But in that moment, I was just like, how can I get out of this?

What can I do get out of this?

And then when I realized that I couldn't, then I started taking some action.

Oh, and that at that moment, the feeling was it kind of like, you can't ever outrun this.

It's like these financial things, and we're talking about student loans here, but there's no outrunning it.

You can't, unless you have this huge windfall and you can pay it off all at once and get rid of it completely, you had a well-paying job at the time.

That's it, I did it.

I did it.

Oh, no, no, I was making 30K a year at the time.

Oh my God.

So in other words, barely making it month to month.

And then you have this thing overhead.

Yeah, yeah.

So I will say actually, so I didn't think I could outrun the problem, but I did think that I could outrun how long I would have to deal with it for.

And that was really the shift.

I was like, okay, okay.

Was, you know, I talked about it with my husband.

So after I balled my eyes out and I went over to my husband, and he was sitting in his office, and I was sitting in my office.

We had two separate rooms because I was taking all these classes all the time.

I was like, bro, because I called my husband, bro.

I was like, bro, I really screwed this up.

Like I had no idea I took on this much student loans.

I had no idea that this was the fine print.

I had, now I read everything afterwards.

I was like, oh my God, I should have read this beforehand.

I would not have signed up for this in this fashion.

I would have figured out another way.

And ultimately, I probably in hindsight, I would have extended out how long I was in the program for to like, to pay more over time versus like getting this one big.

Now you start owing 70, $2,000 starting the day after you graduate.

So my husband said to me at the time, and I'll never forget, he's like, what's, he was just like, if you ever meet AJ, he's the most chill person, which can be really frustrating in times like this where.

You wanted him to panic with you?

Yeah, he was like so unfazed.

He was so unfazed.

He was just like, I mean, everyone we know has student loans, both his brothers, his older and younger brother, my sister.

Like everybody we knew had student loans.

So he's like, everyone else is student loans.

I'm like, they're all figuring out, it should be fine.

And we're pretty smart.

So I'm sure we'll find a way.

And I was like, but everyone like as an example, and this is not a judgment, but I said, yeah, but your brother has been graduated for like 15 years and still has student loans.

Like I don't want that.

Like I don't want to live for the next decade or two decades of my life still making this freaking payment, especially for a choice that now in hindsight, I regret.

And I don't regret the MBA program.
 I regret how I financed it.

Yes.

Yeah.

So I, you know, I said, well, I'm not doing that.

I don't care what everyone else is doing.

I'm going to do something different.

And I made that day, I made the decision.

It was January of 2016.

I made the decision, I'm going to pay these student loans in two years.

I don't know how, I don't know where, but I cannot even fathom holding onto these for more than two years because I think I'll go crazy.

Well, so was that the impetus of you saying, okay, that's it.

I need to, I need to do something so different like start my own business, or were you still thinking about, okay, what's the next incremental job that I did?

So at the time I was still working as a corporate recruiter, which was very, it was a commission based job.

So that's why I had a 30K salary.

And at the time is when I decided to launch this distress rental business, and it was an actual project out of my MBA program.

And I said to myself, well, I can't take on the risk of really fully scaling this business and also have this amount of student loans.
Like that just does not feel good to me.

So that's actually where the two years came from was, I will stick this out for two years.

I'll build this business a little slower so that I can focus on paying down the student loans.

And then once the student loans are gone, then I was like, oh, then I'm going balls to the wall with the business, but the first two years of the business, which launched in April, 2016, right after I graduated.

Like I looked at that business as more like side hustle income as in like I was still doing the day job, I was running this business.

And anything I made in the business went straight to my student loans.

Wow.

And that's discipline, that takes discipline because you could have taken a vacation.

You know what?

A lot of people say, wow, you must be really disciplined.

And like if you again, if you ever meet me real life, I am not a disciplined person.

Like I just ate a cream puff like right before we got into this for breakfast.

You want a cream puff?

So I'm not, I don't think I'm disciplined, but I think I just, I once I have a very clear idea of what it is that I want to do, I get very tunnel visioned.

Got it.

Like that's the only thing.

And that's actually what I teach a lot in pressure money goals is that, you know, if you, if instead of trying to do everything all at once, just pick one thing that really matters.

And in that case, I was just like, I just need to pay off these $72,000 of student loans for the next couple of years, anything else that competes with that priority financially, I'm going to have to make a choice.

And nine out of 10 times the student loans won.

Every now and then like a pair of shoes would slip in or, you know, like a little trip would slip in.

So, but generally speaking, eight or nine times out of 10, I was choosing to take any extra money I had and put it towards the debt.

And that's why I was able to pay it off like, we ended up paying it off by November of the same year.

So it was really aggressive.

Yeah.

Wow.

Congratulations.

That's huge.

You've mentioned before that the fire movement just financial independence retire early.

That doesn't really capture what you want people to have as their goal or at least what you have as your goal.

And instead you propose the fine movement, F-I-N-E.

Tell me what fine is.

So I can't take credit for fine.

It was another woman and now I'm blanking on her name, but we'll put it in the show notes.

Who came up with FINE, but it's financial independence next endeavor.

And why I like that acronym is as I have talked about the fire of movement with many, many, like now thousands of people for a lot of Americans, specifically like retirement just does not resonate as a word, as a construct, as a vision.

Like people just can't see it for themselves.

Because right now a lot of people are just like, don't even feel like they can afford basic housing or afford to go to college or, you know, even buy their next car or anything like that.

So like just even saying the word retirement people like, that's like, I don't even think that's what happened for me.

Right.

But when I started reframing as, you know, financial independence next endeavor, what it really did was say, I have the freedom to choose whatever it is I'm going to do in life.

And it could be another job.

It could be starting a business, but it could also be for me right now, it's like really getting a good grip on my yoga practice or right now I'm learning how to swim.

That like that for me is a very big endeavor.

Like for me learning how to swim has been harder than starting a business.

Because it had such deep rooted fears around water and drowning and all of these things.

So, you know, whatever that next endeavor is, is to say, I want you to have enough money that you feel like doing that next endeavor doesn't feel so risky.

Got it.

And that's not just in energy.

It's not just in money, but in energy and time.

So the fact that I use this as an example right now, my swim lessons are on Thursdays at 11.15 a.m. which is when most people are working.

Right, right.

And you're protecting that.

Yeah.

And the swim lessons, I thought it was going to be such a financial hurdle because again, I like, I was like, wow, swimming seems like a really important skill.

Must be really expensive.

My swimming lessons are $70 for like eight weeks total.

Wow.

Yeah.

So like the fine-  finance is not the issue.

It's the time and energy to get there.

And right now there's supposed to be five other people in my class.

And I'm the only person who's been showing up.

Showing up.

Yeah.

Every week.

So that just goes to show you it's not always a money issue.

It's whether or not we have the time or energy to focus on this next endeavor.

And that's really what we, what I talk about when we talk about financial independence, it's to free up your energy and your time, like free up your calendar to be able to focus on whatever you want to do.

 And the word there is focus.

So you could have eight different endeavors that you really want to do, but if you have eight things, you're less likely to focus on all eight.

So you're trying to keep it.

Okay.

So you and your husband, you and AJ, you sold your home.
You no longer have a mortgage.

Yay.

And you're renting.
 So why does that make sense for you?
Why did that make sense for you?
Why did you choose to do that?

I love this topic so much because people are so like, what?

You know, I get a lot of the traditional, right?

The traditional look of stability and it all includes buying a house.

That's your goal.

So why wasn't it for you?

Well, you know, what's funny is that a lot of, there's a lot of proponents in the personal finance space who actually say that renting, especially right now, is less expensive than owning a home, especially if you live in one of the like the 50 major like metropolitan areas in the US.

I live in Charlotte, North Carolina.

 And for where I live, like right now in the location for me to buy a home here would be over a million dollars.

And my rent is $2,500 a month for a two-bedroom.

And we have a pool, we have a gym, we have like events every month, like it's great.

And I can walk across the street and hit a food court with like 12, 15 different restaurants, right?

So for me, location really mattered more.

Buying a home likely meant that I would be living out in the suburbs or farther away from things that I wanted to be in.

Financially, what's been interesting is my husband and I, we now make enough passive income from our investments that it pays for our rent.

So what people, this is what I think is so fun about this conversation.

Because every time I say I rent, I feel like I wrote about this on Threads last week.

People are like, you're stupid, like your financial coach and your tongue, people that renting is better and whatever.

And like, you know, the only way to build love is be a homeowner or whatever.

And you must not know because you don't own a home.

I'm like, actually I've owned three homes before.

So I'm one of the unique cases where I actually went back to renting.

It was not like I've been renting all along and I'm trying to sit out for a home.

I actually sold three paid off homes, three different paid off homes and went back to renting.

So that kind of negates that conversation like, oh, you just don't understand what it's like to be a homeowner.

It's like, no, actually I've been a homeowner for like over a decade for the last time before this.

So lifestyle-wise, it makes a lot more sense for my husband and I.

We love to travel.

We hated coming home and like our grass being this high and like, you know, leaves in the gutter that we would have to clean up when we got home.

Right.

Financially, now because we took the proceeds of what was stuck in our equity in the home, and we invested it.

Now we get about, I calculated for January, we get about like $3,600 a month from just like passive from interest and dividends each month and that, and our mortgage is 20, I mean our mortgage hour rent is $2,500 a month.

So we have enough money to pay for our rent and I use the extra money to put towards retirement or traveling or pretty much anything else.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so we hacked the system in that way and most people like, it's so funny because those same people are like, you're stupid.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Once I say it, I'm like, well, I actually don't really pay rent.

I'm living kind of rent free right now.

Then they don't know what to say next.

And go from the equity of these homes that you owned at a certain point. And now you're, yeah, living left free from that.

So you, you, you, you, you did, you hacked the system in the sense that you took the benefits of homeownership and now you're living off of that.

We're now the responsibilities of owning a home and the maintenance and da, da, da.

Next to it.

And I'm not saying that we won't ever own a home again, but we're in the season of life where we're not home very much anyway.

But also the last two years, my husband and I have had a pot of money sitting where we will, we could buy a home if a good opportunity came up.

And it's been like three years now.

And we like just the pricing of homes in locations where we would consider living.

We've looked at Florida, we looked at Nevada, we've looked at New York, we've looked at here in North Carolina, we look in South Carolina, and the pricing of housing right now, it actually, financially does not make sense for us to do it.

And we have, and we have, and we wouldn't even, we wouldn't even need a mortgage.

Like we have enough money to pay for a home in cash.

And we figured out it was still cheaper for us to rent.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Thanks, then.

So, OK, so you've written a book.
Let's talk about this. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Which, by the way, the book Oprah has named her book on her top 10 books, Personal Growth in 2025.
Wow, there it is.

It's Crush Your Money Goals.

1344.32 1350.56 SPEAKER_01  So it's called Crush Your Money Goals, 25 Smart Money Habits to Save, Invest, and Fast Track Your Money Freedom.

Why, who did you write this book for?

 Who do you need to read this book?

Selfishly, I wrote it for myself first because I wish this was, I wish this was a book that existed back in 2016 when I was staring at those 72,000 dollars for student loans and had no idea what to do next.

Yes.

And all I found online were a bunch of people who did not look like me or did not understand what my situation was.

And some of it didn't resonate with me, but some of it did.

And now I say that the person that really needs to read this book is someone who makes decent money, but still feels like they're running the rat race and and wants a simpler way.

So I say 25 Smart Money Habits.

And those are operative words.

Smart, meaning this is going to require a little, a level of thinking, like critical thinking.

It's not going to just be like, Oh, automate everything.

Like there's, I mean, there's enough books that say all those things.

And when I did the research for this, there's, I mean, there's so much information already out there.

So I first I almost thought, like, why even write this book?

There's so much stuff there that already exists.
But what I realized was that a lot of the books related to personal finance specifically did not focus on ones that did require a little bit more critical thinking, not like a ton, not like, Oh my gosh, I have to philosophically become a person in finance in order to understand my own financial.

But you do need to be critical thinking, like you need to ask questions. And you need to know how to apply these to you because not all 25 would apply to every single person.

Right.

And then money, of course, this is very specifically about financial habits.

But the word habits really was where it was like a really big pivotal transformation for my own way of teaching was that I tell people that this is not the book that you that tells you what you need to know.

This is the book that tells you what you need to do.

And so it's very focused on behavior and action versus, you know, mon, like monchure your way to well or, you know, being more motivational.

It was really like, no, do this.

And there is an order and crush your money goals.

It spells out the order in which you need to do these things.

And what I found was that most people are skipping.

They're either skipping steps or they're doing it out of order.

Well, and what really struck me about the book is that it's not just like, it's not a laundry list of, OK, tips.

Like here's a tip here and here's a tip there about how to make your financial situation better.

You're telling people to declutter their finances.

And as an organizer, I really like that.

I mean, that really struck me as very important.

And the crush approach gives you, like you said, the step by step.

We have doing that in order.

So you're finding then that the people who are coming to you for help, because you also coach people and you have a program.

But you find that they are overwhelmed by the financial tools, the types of accounts, financial information that's out there, who's coming to you for this and how are you guiding them through it?

I would say.

I haven't used this analogy.

So let's see how this plays out as I speak it right now is I think parallel to your world.

It's the people who have that chair in their bedroom that like gets all the dirty laundry.

You know, it's like, you know, that one chair that we're like, oh, let me just play here this year.

And then you're later.

Yeah.

And then one day you look at the chair and like, oh, my gosh, it's just I can't even see the chair anymore.

It's just a mound of crap on top of it.

That's basically the person who's reading this book is saying, hey, I didn't do anything like anything catastrophic necessarily to like ruin my finances.

There are people who just like, you know, spend a ton of money and didn't realize where it all went and like spend it on stuff that wasn't necessarily aligned to them.

It's actually a lot of the people are the people who are like, this little thing happened and this little thing happened.

So I just put it in this chair.

I just put it in this corner and didn't deal with it.

And now they've gotten to the point where like, oh, my gosh, the chair is covered.

It's everything is dirty.

Yeah.

Every and everything is disorganized.

And now I have to shovel my way out of it and find that chair again.

So I can zen in it.

That is essentially who has been in particular in 2025 who have been really feeling like this resonates with them is that a lot of people earlier in my career, they were like, oh, I don't think I need to work with you because I don't have any debt.

I don't have a big amount of student loans or I don't have, you know, a ton of credit card.

And I'm actually a pretty mindful spender, but it's the people who are like, oh, now I'm trying to pay for my kids college.

Let me put that on the chair.
Now I'm trying to also pay for my own retirement.

Let me put that on the chair.

And they they've they've delayed taking any action on all those things that they know that they need to do.

And now it's gotten the list has gone in too big.

So a bit of overwhelm.

Tell us very briefly what crush what the crush approaches what each other of that kind of stands for.

Yeah.

So it's five steps.

It spells out the word crush.

 And so each of the habits are broken down into one of those sections.

So there's five habits in each section.

I really love sharing that.

 And I feel like I I want to gold star from you in the sense of like the big the big feedback I got recently was that the book is very organized.

Yes.

So it's five five steps and then five habits underneath it.

See stands for curate your accounts, which means I clean up your clutter and make sure that you're starting from it as clean of a slate that you can.

Are is reversed into independence, which we just talk about fine.

What is the actual number you need in order to be financially independent?

There is a calculation to it.

And then what do you do about it?

You is understand your net worth, which is now that you've cleaned everything up.

And now you know the where you're going.

Where are you now?

And do you understand all the tools that you have available to you in order to reach that independence?

Number S is spend intentionally.

And that gets into the heart of everyone's like favorite word budget budgeting.

Where it's it's less about tracking and it's more about setting intention and setting up systems, which I think there's a lot of parallels in between what you do and what I do is just like you have to build a system around how you spend money versus just letting things like fall by the wayside.

And then H is what we started this conversation with, which is heal your money wounds and what's the narratives that have been creating these different fears around money and your beliefs around whether or not you can actually reach financial independence.

And let's we may not we may not.

Heal them completely, but we can work on that healing process.

Yeah.

I love it and I totally agree.

Very organized, very easy to understand.

Very well done.

Thank you.

OK, so just very quickly, then let me have an example because a lot of the people who are listening, they have kids, they have some amount of debt, whether it's, you know, credit card debt or, you know, they're sitting on a mortgage and that kind of thing.

But let's say I need to say for retirement, but I also want to be able to send my kids to college.

And I need to reduce my debt.

Where do I focus?

Where, what can you tell me to do in order to figure out where to focus?

Well, I always tell people to start off with debt first because once it's done, it's done.

Yeah.

And that's what I learned from my own experience.

I could have lived in the next 20 years with student loan debt, but I decided to pay it off in a year and I never have to think about it again.

Whereas saving up for your kids college and saving up for your own retirement are going to be much longer tailed processes.

And in both cases, probably much higher amounts.

OK, like right now, sending kids to college easily six figures are for sending into a private school.

Even if you're sending into a public school, it's still like several tens of thousands of dollars.

Retirement in the US is probably going to be in the millions for most people.

Yeah.

So my hope, you know, for the vast majority of Americans is most Americans aren't sitting on a million dollars of debt.

They're sitting the average right now is like around 100 K.

Right.

So.

So if you think about that, once you're done, you're done and then you never have to think about it again.

There again, is that parallelism between what you do and I do.

And one of my favorite little tips, like a preview into the book, which I think you'll appreciate, it's called the declutter the date challenge where, you know, day one of the month, you take one item and you get rid of it day two, you keep doing that.

Yeah.

And but what I ask people to do is to pair that with paying down their debt, like paying themselves when they do that.

So what if I, for example, I probably need to get rid of this, like coaster, right?

So I'm going to like put it in my donation pile.

 And then I literally take a dollar that represents how many items I got rid of that day.

 And I put it and I literally make a payment to the debt that day.

You make the payment that day.

Oh, yes.

OK, OK, right.

So so a lot of people are like, oh, I'll use this money and pay towards that.

And then they don't.

Right.

Or it sits in the account.

At the end of the month.

And but yeah, some people will like put it into a different savings account.

But then they're like, ew, now it's like $435.

That looks pretty.

So I'll just either leave it there or I'll buy something with it.

So you have to make the payment that day.

So when I had my $72,000 of student loans, like I wish I still had access to my account.

I really wish I had screenshots.

You would see all these like random amounts of money.

Like why she paying $17 towards her debt on November 20th, right?

Like, oh, it's because I literally got rid of 17 items that day.

And then made a payment of $17 towards my debt.

And that is so rewarding for people who love to do lists or who feel like they want to get some instant gratification of just like, oh, there's like, I can actually see my balance going down, right now.

And because people will start to think, well, $5, that's nothing.

Like, why would I make that payment?

That's nothing towards a debt, but $5.

This is five, five bucks, five bucks is five bucks.

Well, reduce the amount by $5.

That's right.

That's right.

But also like, you know, pairing it with this physical activity of decluttering my, my home has allowed me to downsize from like a four bedroom house to like a two bedroom condo and I have so much less to deal with.

But like I, like when I was doing this, every time I would declutter a thing, I would keep saying to myself out loud, this used to be money.

This used to be money.

Now it's going in the donation pile.

So I basically am like tossing this money out.

So I might as well take the money that I spent on this thing and put it towards my dad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's one of the big things is that once you, once you, once you've got something in your house, that money is gone.

That's money is gone.

There's no need to hang onto it.

So use that money instead to do something productive for you for you.

Now that.

So do you and AJ consider yourselves retired?

I, I'm on the verge of it.

I think - I turn 40 in a couple of weeks and I thank you.

And part of the reason I went on this retreat this past weekend was to reflect upon whether or not I do want to retire.

What does retirement even mean for me?

I'm still in a working definition of retirement is because everyone is everyone that I say, oh, I'm going to retire at 40.

They're like, what?

 What do you mean?

Like what are you going to do?

That's always the first question.

What are you going to do?

Are you going to start a garden and you're in Tai Chi classes all day?

And there's people who, you know, it's been very interesting because a lot of older folks, people who are like 55 plus there, I get, I get this like who are still working, by the way, they always pass some sort of judgment to be like, oh, well, I could never because I just love what I'm doing so much and did it.

And I'm like, good for you.

Great.

Yeah, fine.

Yeah.

Also, I think you're lying to yourself a little bit because I bet you if you had enough money, would you still be doing this job?

I don't know.

Right.

Right.

So for me, I realized that this is, I'm glad, again, this conversation is so amazing for me because I haven't had a chance to really fully process yet, but the immediate thoughts that come to mind in terms of, do I consider myself retired as an, I'm never going to take a client again that I don't feel a 100% amazing about.

Right.

I'm never going to take a speeding gig that I don't feel good about anywhere.

I've already said no to a lot of speaking gigs this year, which is very uncharacteristic of me.

Um, because I realized that what I am like, I'm going to travel all the way there and not that, and then stop because I don't want to help people, but it's these, in particular, there are certain areas in business where I'm just like, I don't know that that's the right space for me to be in.

So I'm not going to do that anymore unless I feel really called to.
So as a kind of a prime example is I said no to one of these like women's empowerment kind of like summits because it felt very surface level.

It was like the same thing.

I'm like, we've had these conferences for like decades and it feels like we're moving backwards.

So I don't know that I want to be in that space, but I said yet.

And that, but I said yes to being a speaker for Native Americans for like a conference for them.

And I was like, that's a space that I'm very intrigued and interested.

And I think there's a lot of work to do in equality and equity in that.

In that group.

Yeah.

And then this weekend I learned that really retirement for me is I'm not going to do anything anymore that interrupts my piece.

Ah, oh, that's amazing.

I love that.

That's where I'm at right now.

I don't know what that means yet, but if it feels like it's causing all this tension in my body, I'm not doing it anymore.

Makes sense.

Makes sense.

Wow.

So tell me just very briefly, how do you organize your week right now then?

What does your work situation look like versus your home situation?

You tell me you take swimming is protected on Thursday mornings.

What else is protected?

And then when do you work?

OK, I am very proud of my system around.

I'm staring at it right now.

So I use a Google calendar, which is, you know, nothing fancy, but every Monday morning, so right before I got on this call, I go through what is going on in my week.

And if there's anything that doesn't feel aligned or doesn't feel like it has to be a meeting, then I will change it into an email or cancel it.

Yeah.

And then at the beginning of every week, I look at my calendar and I call and I color code what the different things are on my calendar.

I've generally worked Monday through Wednesdays.
I'm off generally Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Oh, yeah.

So I try to stick to about 20 hours a week.

OK.

And anything that's blue is client facing.

Anything yellow is business related, but not client facing.

So like this was yellow today.

Um, anything that is green is related to like physical exercise and health.

And then anything purple is social.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I do this where I color code everything.

And if I notice that there's not enough purple or there's not enough green, then I spend my Monday morning planning out the rest of my week to make sure that I get purple and green in there because that's usually what goes by the wayside.

Of course, of course.

Oh my gosh.

OK, I love, I love that you do that.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

And what's really helpful for me, I wish I should, you know what, I might even send you a screenshot of this.

I'm just like where I also noticed that if I see different colors and they're like not grouped together, then I'll rearrange my meetings so that the same type of energy is not flipping back and forth between a lot of different things.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Is there anything else that you want to, that you want to make sure that we hear from you?

I'm not blowing smoke at you.

This is generally one of my favorite interviews that I've, and I've done like probably 50, 60 interviews at this point right now because of the book.

And so I just want to say that you did an excellent job being prepared for this and an excellent job in asking very like insightful, thoughtful questions that I have not really answered before, which is really fun.

And so what I would ask everyone to do, who's listening is, I really hope that this is the year that you decide that you want to pursue real freedom.

And of course, a lot of that is tied to whether or not we can afford that.

So I really hope that people are encouraged to check out the book.

It's also available on audio.

So if you like the sound of my voice here, then audio book might work well for you.

And I ask people that specifically, even if you don't end up reading the book, is to take inventory of what your current money habits are right now.

And rather than adding more, because this is the mistake that I see everyone do, they're like, oh, the way to freedom is to add more, wake up at five AM and add more things to my routine and do all of that.

And actually take a look at everything you're doing and just subtract something today, take something away.

And I think that would actually get you a lot farther along than you expect.

Wow. Well, thank you so much, so much for taking the time.

I really enjoy your energy.

And I did listen to the book with your voice because of the energy.

I really enjoyed that.

So I like how my people are reading to me.

But even then it was really easy to focus on the section.

So thank you so much for putting it that way.

So just before you go, what do you think your next endeavor is going to look like now?

You're turning 40.

Anything that you can tell us, yeah, a lot of us private, but oh, no.

There's three goals I have right now that are my next endeavors, mini endeavors. One is this week, as I mentioned, I'm going to swim into the deep end of the pool for the first time.

I'm like, oh my God, I'm really scared.

I'm really scared about it, which I think is a good thing.

But it was really funny because my swim instructor who has an apprentice, so it's like two of the swim instructors.

And right now it's just been me because no one else has been showing up to class.

They're like, OK, next week you're going to the deep, deep end.

I'm like, nope.

And I literally said to them, like, nope, don't want to.

 I'm good.

So I'm working on that.

Number two is I am taking improv classes right now.

So I'm hoping to perform my first improv show at some point in the next couple of months.

What? Oh my God.

Yeah.

Wow.

Which has been amazing.

I highly recommend anyone to take improv because it's if you're an overthinker, it will care it real quick.

And then the third thing is to focus on my kind of yoga journey right now, which is specifically in the meditation.

I realize that I am not good at sitting still.

So I'm going to work on meditating in the next couple of months, which sounds like very like corny and whatever, but it's actually an area that I really struggle with.

Wonderful.

Wow.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for sharing that.

 Thank you.

I appreciate you being here too.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Of course.

She is just no-nonsense, isn’t she? Bernadette has a free checklist to overcome the overwhelm to get started on your financial decluttering - sound familiar? I have a link to it in the show notes, as well as all her social media links and her contact information.


Thanks for listening, you guys. Please share this episode with a friend this week, would you? I’ve put a link right in the show notes that you can copy and text over to them, ok? Making it easy for you.

OK, have a great week!, and I’ll see you on the next episode.