Generational Money Patterns | Healing Trauma to Change Your Family's Finances | 98

Instead of saying we can't afford that, we don't have it in the budget, we can't buy that brand name that's too expensive. Change the wording simply to say we're choosing not to invest our money in that right now. We're choosing, we're choosing not to spend on that right now. We're choosing this instead. So they wreck it. They start to learn this language of choice, which is really powerful for anyways in raising toddlers and kids is recognizing that our actions are chosen and it helps empower them.

Hey there, I'm Jules, the budget nerd and welcome to the Debt Rebel Show. This is the place where working families like yours learn how to stop living paycheck to paycheck, crush debt for good, and build a life where money actually works for your family. In about 15 minutes, I'll share practical family budgeting tips, tough love strategies, and actionable steps to move toward debt free living without the fluff, the shame, or the confusion. And I know a thing or two about this. My family and I have eliminated over $107,000 in consumer debt.

And that was after I got my degree in economics. So stay tuned. This is going to be a great episode. So grab that coffee, your planner, whatever you need to make this a great experience. Maybe a snack? If you're like me and let's make your money work for your family, I have a fabulous new friend of mine. She is the founder of Vibrant Voice Coaching Consulting and Counseling. And this is my new friend, Jessica Hammock. She is super passionate about how helping people heal their trauma from money, relationships, faith.

She is a licensed trauma therapist and is currently the Director of Behavioral and Mental health at one of the largest charter schools in Texas serving 100 campuses and 25,000 students. So I want to welcome Jessica to the show today. Thank you for being here. Yeah, I'm so excited. If you see my background, you can see I'm actually out of campus today. And we were, we were busy, so I got stuck in the curriculum closet. So hey, sometimes you go where you need to. Exactly find my makeup. That's right.

So it's not my normal, my normal office, but I am out there in the community and so here we are. I wouldn't miss it. I'm so excited for today's show. Yes, because we had a great conversation about how trauma effects our money decisions, so many aspects of our life. And so how important it is to how challenging it can be, but how important it is to dive into some of that stuff. So just and just unpacking it and recognizing that it is part of our story and we've got some power to change the way that story goes, right?

Yeah, so much. I think people, you know, in learning about trauma, people pick up so much of their belief systems and their actions from their family of origin. And the same is true with their money story. But they don't recognize that that money story could also be a trauma to them and their nervous system. When people hear the word trauma, they often think of like these extreme circumstances, right? So maybe stuff that we might see on the news or things like that, but how does our everyday or some of our financial trauma actually show up in our relationship with money?

So I want to talk about this idea of what trauma is. A lot of people do hear the word trauma. It's a popular buzzword right now. Trauma, when most people think of it, actually think of what we in the therapy world called Big T trauma. Car accidents, violence, wars, maybe significant weather events, severe violations of you as a person and what you went through, maybe abuse or neglect or assault, something like that. Nature And the reality is when we study trauma, trauma is an injury to our nervous system where we don't get to process our emotional experience or the story that we went through.

And so everyone has gone through like we can all go through the same experience and some will experience a trauma and some will not. So there's no one definable thing, but most of those things that I listen are what we call big T trauma. A lot of people experience what we call little T trauma. So it's like chronic situations that we go through over long periods of time or as much smaller scale incident that impacted our specific nervous system and caused us to live in a state where we weren't able to process the emotion and the experience or talk about the story of what we're going through in a way that helps our nervous system feel safe.

So little tea events might be things like moving, losing access to a support system. But that's where money trauma comes in as this chronic experience as part of our story. So I like to say if you talk about going across town to save $0.10 in gas, you might have a money trauma and it could be an absorbed money trauma. You hear your parents or your grandparents. Oh, it's $0.02 cheaper over here. Or I'm going to drive across town and spend 10. I'll save $0.10 a $0.10 a gallon or remember when gas was only this much a gallon, right?

And the reason I say that that's money trauma is because the wealthy and the individuals who don't have trauma about those things don't worry about spending $0.10 or saving $0.10 extra on a gallon of gas. They just drive to where it's most convenient to get the gas or they have their driver get the gas for them. They don't sit and become hyper vigilant about saving a penny here or two pennies there or $0.10 there. And the other way that it tends to show up is when you go to the grocery store and all of a sudden, what used to cost you $195 now costs you $650.

And even though you might have the money in your account, you go to swipe that card and your heart starts to beat a little faster. And you're like, you know, like this feels really uncomfortable or you swipe the card and you hear that like it's declined and immediately your whole system tenses like, wait, what? Like I checked my account. I thought there was money there. What are these people going to think about me? Like? And then you can even start to tell more deeper of a story, like I'm not poor.

I budgeted for this. What's happening? A person that doesn't have trauma will not attach a story to it automatically. They remain calm and neutral until they figure out what's going on. And it could be that the system that they're abusing is just not working. But the pure person who has a trauma with money is going to start to feel all these things in their body rise up and they're going to start to tell this story out of like anxiety and hyper vigilance of like, what are the people behind me think?

What are they going to say about me? This makes me really uncomfortable. Like I know the money is there. They start to out loud justify to the people around him. I know the money's there. I just checked my account. There's nothing wrong with my card. A person who doesn't have trauma won't do that because they're not disrupted by the experience. And so much of that comes because money, while we may not cognitively think of it this way, is attached to care and nurture. And so when our care and nurture cycle is disrupted as a young child or we experience constriction in that environment, maybe our parents say like, we can't afford that.

We can't buy that. We don't have the money for that. We learn a story of I don't have what I need to be taken care of. Even if our parents have love and affection and nurture for us, we subconsciously think there's not enough for me. Wow, I feel like that's like such a mic drop. That whole state. I'm like, OK, I remember those moments when I, when we were like deep in it and going to the grocery store and having to leave the cart full of frozen food and I was like, I checked my account before I got to the register and like I knew what was in there and everything.

And I still to this day have to remind myself like, this is fine. I have it, I have it together. There's plenty in there. And so I think that what you, Oh my gosh, there's so many things that you like, touched on that I'm like, this is, this is exactly the experience that, that our family had too. And that stuff happened before my daughter was born. And so I do want to go into a little bit of what you just said about the, the, the care and nurture part, because that is that for me is what had changed a lot of this stuff.

But how about now, like, even I think for myself, I'm like, OK, I have to remind myself still like, no, just because things cost this amount before and things, things are different now. Life is different now, the economy is different. There's so many things that we can control, but there's so many things that are out of our control. Right. Yeah. And so I think that that talk that I was giving for myself was I'm, I'm so glad that you said that because I still to this day have these moments where I'm like, Oh my gosh, like, Nope, that's not me.

That's that's, that's past that has, you know, we've we've created a better system that's working for us. And so I think that that's what is what I'd love to talk a little bit more too, is why it's so important to recognize those things and then do something about them. Because especially listeners of the show, we're we're actively parenting. Yeah. So just like you talked about the Carrie nurture part, Like I was having a conversation with my daughter last night and she's really disappointed we don't get to go to Dollywood every Sunday.

Well, we live across the country from Dollywood. It's so I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, I know she doesn't have like the same concept of money because she's six years old. Like, but we, we have gone to Dollywood. But now she's like, Oh my gosh. And then I think this is where I get caught up. Wait, is she think that I'm not caring for her and like the nurture part because we can't go to Dollywood and that's what she really wants to do? Yeah. So some of it is I will say this, so some of it is just switching simple wording around instead of saying like if you're in that parenting thing, instead of saying we can't afford that, we don't have it in the budget, we can't buy that brand name that's too expensive.

Change the wording simply to say we're choosing not to invest our money in that right now. We're choosing we're choosing not to spend on that right now. We're choosing this instead. So they wreck it. They start to learn this language of choice, which is really powerful for ANYWAYS in raising toddlers and kids is recognizing that our actions are chosen and it helps empower them even as a side parenting technique and behavior thing. You know, we work with our child. She's almost four and say you can choose this or you can choose this.

What? So for going to bed, sometimes she wants to stay up to play, right? Yeah. He'll be like, you can choose to walk to your room or you can choose for us to carry to your room. Either way, we're going to her room. But that empowerment, she's like, I'm going to walk or run to my own room. You are not carrying me, you know, so there's this empowerment of recognizing what they're choosing. So when you tell somebody I'm choosing not to spend my money on that, you may not have it in the budget to buy that right then and there.

And you as the adult have the ability to have logic and reasoning. But when you say I'm choosing not to spend my money on that right now, they recognize like it's a, it's not a lack communication, it's communication that it's a choice. And so then that's empowered them and say, so then with spending too, we tell our daughter, So from the time she was basically old enough to help, we would have her put the groceries on the car, on the belt, and then I would enter my card and teach her how to put it in the thing.

She doesn't know the PIN number. And I'm like, every time we do that, I say we have to pay for whatever it is that we buy. We are buying these things. We can't leave the store or the restaurant without paying. She had a really hard time grasping those restaurants where you like, you pay 1st and then they bring your food to you because she would prefer to pay at the end. But either way, she recognizes that we have to pay for things. Now she's in the stage where she wants everything and I'm like, we'll put it on a list and then we will make a choice with what we have to spend, what we're going to choose to buy first, like what's most important to you.

So like he talked about the Dolly, what our daughter likes to go out. We usually go out to eat on Sundays after church with some friends. And she's like, are we going to a restaurant today? Can we go to a restaurant today? And like, no, not today. We're choosing to go home because we have food that we need to eat at home and that's more important today. And so kind of just switching that thing, you know, like and for little kids or younger kids is like we're choosing not to go to Dollywood every Sunday, but we can make a plan for the future of when we do want to go.

So let's talk about when we can go again. Let's make our plan so it gives them something to look forward to, some kind of adjustment. And then like with my daughter, if we know we're going on a trip, we'll talk about how many sleeps it is to we're going those kind of practical things that give them a little bit of hope instead of focusing. I'm not saying kids shouldn't have disappointments. They have to learn the resiliency skills, but it's much easier to navigate those emotional things sometimes with younger ones if we give them something in the future to look forward to.

And then how many sleeps is it going to be and get them excited in the planning. OK, my daughter went to Chuck E Cheese with my husband and with a babysitter and they got on some ride at Chuck E Cheese and then they got kicked off because they didn't had to pay extra for it. So she knows now if she wants to go back to Chuck E Cheese, she has to save her coins to get on that ride. So she's walking all over the house. Or like mom, do you have any extra change because I need to save this for when I go to Chuck E Cheese to get on this ride.

The other day some guy randomly gave her 1/4 and like she was cute. She's like mom, I can put this in my bank for Chuck E Cheese. I have never taught her the concept of saving to do something, but she has picked up I, if I want to do that, I have to save the money to do that. And so those simple things can kind of change the trajectory of like, we're not losing out, We're not in lack. So the nervous system isn't being like in that stuck state of trauma, but there's actually planning for the future.

There's hope into it. And I'm teaching them that is possible. We can do these things, but we have to be intentional to choose them. Yes I have always thought of especially spending so many years in youth ministry. I feel like money management is 1, like it's life's biggest game of would you rather like, would you rather do this or would you rather do that? And like you said with the two choices, I think that's so, that's so good and so valuable and tangible ways to teach our kids of all ages, not just not just littles, but even like teenagers, like, OK, here's here's the choices, Here's the options that are available.

And kind of going back to the Dollywood example, like I asked my daughter if we went every single Sunday, would it be as special as it is If we go like every couple of years And she's like, no. So I think that that's such a good illustration of the things that we, the way that we approach these things and the way we talk about things are so or talk about our money is so valuable with our kids because we are their first, we're their first teacher. Well, and also to that experience is what what was the emotions that she enjoyed at Dollywood and talking to her about what are other ways we can experience those emotional things?

Are there other things we can do maybe that are we can go to more often or we can participate in that bring us those same feelings like that? It doesn't just have to be these big experiences, but there can be closer things or smaller things. So we teach them to look at all of these options to experience abundance and celebration and joy. We're not just locked into, I gotta wait three more years to do this big thing again, right? I can do it next weekend, but how can I do it next weekend? The creativity factor for kids.

That's so good and that's a very practical life skill, especially when they're in college and beyond OF how to my dad always says happy is what you make it always has been, always will be. And so it's the same thing with joy, like what we look to for those moments. We get to decide those And I think that that's, it's so it's so good to be able to, and I think there's a lot of money tied to those things because a lot of things just cost money. It's just like currency. Always joke that, you know, we could be trading Pokémon cards, but we decided that we would trade money instead for, for these experiences and these keeping a roof over a head and those types of things.

And so I'd love to touch a little bit more on the care and nurture part of. So one of the things that I'm really specific about when I and when I teach my clients is like taking care of Maslow's hierarchy of needs that bottom line 1st and then adding some of those other things in of is still in that bottom. So we need to, we need to address that, but making sure we have a roof over our head and those kinds of things and how those decisions and prioritizing those things affect our kids not just in this moment today, but in the future and helps them set them, help set up their money story to be different than maybe ours was.

Yeah, so I actually really love, I'm going to give you another resource to think about is William Glasser. Dr. William Glasser actually postulates that basic needs or come from 5 categories. They come from not just the survival needs, which are the food, clothing and shelter, but they actually come from love and belonging, fun, freedom and power. And so all of those things can show up as like that sort of bigger bottom category when you think about it. What drives that we might look at our parents might, our grandparents might have told the story like, you have a roof over your head, you have clothes on your back, like you have food on the table, you have nothing to be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever that story is, right?

Because their parents before them likes actually truly struggled to like, can we hold a house? Can we keep a job? Can we literally put food on our table? And the further away we get from the Depression era and the extreme amounts of poverty, the more the less we deal with that story, the more we have creature comforts. But it doesn't necessarily take away the trauma story. So here's what happens is because access to things has come with more money. And as we typically attach this ability to be loved and cared for and well nurtured through the access to money to purchase the things.

So, and ultimately we can learn this, We learn this story too, by how our mom was typically with money because the mother figure is the caring and nurture figure intrinsically and extinctually. We look to a mom figure in our life to be provide care and nurture. Well, if our mom hid purchases from our dad or other person in the house, like, well, let me go buy this new dress, but hide it in the closet and not tell him about it and just pretend I have it. Well, that's a very like chaotic thing when it comes to like purchases, like I have to hide good things.

I can't have them. Or if our mom said, well, that's too expensive, I can't buy this or we can't do that right now. Or, you know, we're not rich like that, or we're too poor for this or starts telling those things because we are looking to our moms typically for care and nurture. We absorb our ability to give and receive and be sort of in that feminine space, whether we are male or female Now we absorb what we can receive from the feminine person in our life that provides care and nurture and that determines whether we are safe or not safe.

If we're sitting in the car and our mom is worried about saving $0.05 on gas and driving across town, like we have heard this narrative that we got to find something else to be able to get it. Like we've always got to look for the right thing. Or we might have hear this story that is like, you know, she'll, they women will dismiss where they bought and then, oh, this old thing or I got this on sale. It tells us a story that says like we have to seek less than we have to seek discounts. We have to seek bargains.

We can't spend money on things. We definitely can't spend money on ourselves, you know, to take care of ourselves outside of like food, clothing and shelter. That's where a trauma enters in because all the sudden things that it teaches us that little when we're younger to have desires, but we can't actually enjoy our desires. We don't feel so cared and nurtured. So when you think in therapy about they talk about something called secure attachment. It is this idea that kids are secure in their attachment and their love and belonging with their parental figures.

But if there's anxiousness in the household or there's. There's a lot of like emotional volatility. Somebody can develop anxious attachment where they're like, I'm going to change my behaviors so it feels good. So I'm going to gauge my behaviors so that I don't have disruption. And then there's avoidant where like we don't ever talk about emotional things. Nobody does anything emotional. We stuff it down in because any emotional expression is going to cause trouble. So when we have these chaotic stories and how we're attached to just our parents, we can transfer those things into how we perceive money to be.

And that is where the trauma sets in because we learn, we hear these narratives over and over and over again. Our nervous system becomes acclimated to what might be true for us, and it makes it difficult for us to. We've attached emotion to money. When motion, money is just an object. It has no emotional thing. But most people, when you talk to them and you talk to them about money, they have feelings attached to it. They have thoughts, they have belief systems attached to it. Do they have it attached to a book or or a computer or car or clothes?

Not usually, but they have it attached to money. Money is just an object, no different than clothing or books or cars. Or why do people have money and emotions attached to it? Because they learned that narrative when they were little. Yeah, this is a lot, everybody. Takes a breath in through your nose and I'll be out. It'll be OK. Yes, no, I mean, this is This is why. This is why I do what I do though, because I think that I mean, I was taught a lot of these things growing up, some some great stuff and some not so great stuff.

Like I've now giving up, you know, coupons, like we use those on occasion. But like I remember cutting out coupons a ton as a kid. Like this is how you have to stretch a dollar, you know, and things are different now, but just being intentional with the way that my husband and I raise our daughter and the things that we instill in her. We, we are very specific and intentional about that. And so that's what I love to share on this show too, is about when it comes to money because it's like one of those 3 topics you're not supposed to talk about with people.

And I think that that's the one of the reasons why are, especially in the US, we are in a financial situation on a personal level where we're just burdened by a ton of debt and having to go to work and maybe work in jobs that we don't necessarily love because we have these things that we're trying. And it's creating this cycle that we don't want for our kids, but trying to break out of that, right? And we've attached so much, we've attached money so much to identity almost that if you have more money, you're better.

And if you have less money, you're not good. Like it's, it's not a value. Like we have infinite worth and value because we have infinite worth and value. Yes, it has nothing to do with the amount of money we have. But in our culture and society, we have said that if you have this amount of money, you are a seemingly at a better place or a better person or know better or do better than somebody who does not. I was actually listening to this guy who's very wealthy. I don't actually know his name. They were interviewing this billionaire guy and he he has three kids and he said that every quarter they have family meetings about their wealth.

And he said, I share my net worth. I tell everybody where it's at, what's happening with it, what the taxes are that I'm paying, what are the things I'm doing, what accounts it's in, how to access things if something happens to me. And he said then I make all of my kids do the same and make them share their net worth with their siblings. And he said I tell them their net worth should not be the same. One of them is 12 years older than the other, so they should have a difference. One of them has a 12 year advantage.

So he said I'm not going to create this environment where we sit around and we say, oh, you're bad because you don't have as much net worth as this or we're going to be secretive about it. Everything's going to be on the table and there is going to be differences. I expect there to be differences in their net worth because they have different time frames, different understandings, different movements, different and it's OK that it's different. And I was like, like, don't keep that. The secrecy about anything adds to the shame and the guilt and the trauma, that secrecy piece.

And there's so much emotional volatility around families when and a family member passes away and what's accessible, what's not, and all the secrets that, and it's perpetuated throughout history and all the entertainment narratives, the movies, the TV's, this person died, all the world fell apart because nobody knows how much debt they have or this or that. And so we're like living in these experiences, accepting that that those are the stories. That's just the way it is. And that's OK. But that's not actually truth.

And for your listeners who are faith-based and use the Bible as a source of truth, like the Bible talks about wealth and finances and abundance and prosperity and currency and possessions and trade more than any other topic, any other topic. And I don't think that the faith world does enough to actually recognize that. If that's the biggest topic in that book, probably should pay some attention to it. Right, if it's talked about the most then? I ask people, do you? Know what is the oil? Do you know what it's talked about?

They're like love, fear, salvation. There's that. Nope. Money. Money is the biggest thing. Like, you think we would pay attention to the fact that money's talked about the most? You know, like, I don't know, maybe God said we need to learn from something from that, right? Because it's there. So. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So I think like, you know, talking about this. So OK, so I want to think about the person, the mom specifically who's listening right now. And it was like, yes, check, check, check.

I yes, that's part of my story. I don't want it to be a part of my kids story. And I also I'm like, I don't know what to do next. So how about for for that mom that's listening and going, my gosh, this is not what I expected to catch on a Tuesday morning, but here we are. And yes, I need I need to figure this. Out great so here's where we want to start is I think it's really helpful to there's a couple things you should do. The first thing you need to sit down and think about is what do you believe about money and make a list of beliefs that you have and then look at each of those beliefs and ask where did this come from?

Did this come from my mom, my dad? Who did it come from? Did it come from a personal experience because somebody said something, There was a business lady who had her ceiling earning for her business at 250,000. She gets 250,000 and go backwards every time. And she realized one day that is because her and her dad used to drive around and look at houses and explore real estate. And her dad took her in a subdivision and he's like, oh, those people, they make like $250,000 a year. And when you get to be like that, you're she'd absorbed a belief system that she couldn't earn $250,000.

So the first thing is make a list of your beliefs and identify where you got them from. The second thing is it's a really simple like visualization. If it, if it's helpful, you can look at a picture of your mom or look at a picture of your dad. And it's just an experiential thing. And I think it's just an intentional thing that gives the brain some permission to act. But what you want to just do is a simple script and you could say you're not actually doing this to the person. I want to be very clear because some of those family members aren't designed to handle what we're doing as our work.

So look at a picture if you don't have a picture and close your eyes. But let's say they came from your mom, and you can say, mom, thank you for loving me, for caring for me, for nurturing me, for doing the best you could with what you have. I gained these beliefs from you about money and I no longer want to hold on to your beliefs. It's time for me to have my own. So I'm taking these beliefs and I'm handing them back to you. They're yours to keep. And I'm going to formulate my own and I release you.

I bless you. You don't owe me anything, but I'm going to hand everything back to you that's yours and move forward with what's my own. And just that simple exercise of saying something roughly like that and visualizing giving yourself back, giving stuff back to your parents, whoever that was, and just kind of reading through, like I'm cutting the belief system and now I get a chance to tell my own story. And then sit down and write as the third step, what it is that you want to believe to be true about money.

What is the direction that you want your story to go in? Because when we open our mind up to the possibility of what we'd like to believe differently about money, our brain will actually begin to look for evidence of those things. And we might encounter a new mentor, a new tactic, a new experience. Because we've said the buck stops here and I actually want to change my money story for my kids. So that is the first process I would go through. Identify, hand back, rewrite. The second portion of that, a whole 3 steps is taking time to forgive yourself and those people before you, whether it was their intent or not to for you to experience trauma around money.

The truth is, is your nervous system might be holding it. Whether faith is important to you or not, we have learned in the scientific world and in the faith world that forgiveness is the number one thing that can release and block where we're stuck. And so I tell people, forgiveness does not let anybody off the hook for any wrongdoings. It does not give them, release them from consequences. Forgiveness is not restoration. It is literally disconnecting us from the pain of the experience we've gone through.

And sometimes we have to forgive ourselves for our own decisions that we make, even if we made them with limited knowledge or access to resources. But no matter where the this woman, this mom is stuck at right now, she's got to release this decision she's made anywhere in the past. Release yourself from the pain, from the belief system she's operated on. Forgive her parents. And it's just simply, I say, name what they did say. I choose to forgive you for it. And I release you, you know, owe me nothing.

And sometimes that might come up a couple times. You might be standing at the grocery store line swiping the debit card and say, look, Jules, I forgive you for the decisions you made in the past. You're a new person. And I release you. And your nervous system might need to hear that a couple times. And that's OK. It is for you and for yourself to remember their safety going forward in this. And then I think as you begin to walk these things out, because it's not, I won't say it'll be instantaneous for everybody.

There will be the mom that has to repeat these processes a couple times and that's OK. But you want to be aware of what is your body doing when you do anything with money because your body is telling you a story that there's still a belief there that's not that you're not safe about. So do you get heart palpitations? Do you get anxiety? Do you feel like stress in your system? Do your handshake? Do you feel tightness in your chest? Do you feel sick to your stomach? Do you avoid doing things with money or budgeting?

That is a trauma response in your nervous system. So OK, go back to these processes, Repeat those two types of things until you can do those in a relaxed setting and allow yourself to make decisions and give yourself permission to do it differently moving forward. Yeah, that's it right there. Give yourself permission to do it differently. Yeah, right. I think, I think about so many of my clients that are just like, OK, we we are where we are. And I say it's like a gosh Rafiki in Lion King, you know, you hit Simba on the head, he's like, doesn't matter, it's in the past.

Well, we don't want to forget the past, but we want to use it as fuel to change our future. And so I think that that's so valuable, but it is about giving ourselves that permission to just say, OK. Yeah, One of the things that was helpful for my husband and I when we were doing some of this money work is recognizing that our values as a couple were different than the values from our parents and choosing to make money decisions around that. My husband and I value connection with people, so we knew like we were in what I call the debt diet zone for a really long time.

We're like, can't spend any money, do anything fun. So we pay off all our debt and we have excess amount in the bank. And we were literally dying on the vine in our relationships because it was like, we can't go out to eat. We can't do this. We can't, can't, can't, can't, can't. And it was very constructive and very uncomfortable when we were meeting with one of our counselors about it, specifically about finances. She's like, what do you value as a couple? What do you value as individuals? Well, we found connection with people was something that we valued high.

It was a top thing. So we said, OK, then we have to choose to set aside something for connection with people, whether that's once a month, once a week, whatever it is, because that is a higher priority to us than something else. And we, when we started to do that, even if it was just a little bit, it brought such freedom and expansiveness because we chose it and our parents didn't understand it. They're like, why are you going out to eat if you still owe such and such on a credit card? Or because it was the values that were important to us.

Like what was the value that was important to us, that brought us joy, that connected us to each other? It was different than their values. It doesn't make any values bad or wrong. It was just different. And we and she'd remind us, it's OK, this is your value. Remember, you realign to your values, choose your values. And that took a minute to anchor in that it's OK, I'm safe. I'm at the budget point. These are not going to show up at the restaurant and be like, this was not in your line items. You were out of compliance, you know, So giving yourself, yes, permission to do it differently.

And let me tell you, those people with those old belief systems or different belief systems are going to have opinions, you know, but opinions are like behind ends. Everybody has one. Some are bigger, some are smaller, some. You know, that was something for me that was really challenging at first is just releasing other people's opinions of how we spent our money and how we made our money goals was none of my business, especially, you know, like, you know, family or people close to us. And so connection, connection with other people was really important for us as well.

And so we just had we just changed it a little bit instead of going out to eat like we had people over and we did hot luck and whatever. There's so many ways, but figuring out, like you said, what works for you or, you know, what is a value to you and then reevaluating everything from there. Because when you can, when you keep that value there, it's going to allow that whole process to be so much easier because you don't feel like you're on a diet, like you said, the debt diet. Oh my gosh. They tell people if they're not paying your bills, they don't get a vote.

If they're not paying for your life, they don't get a vote. Amen. So why are we giving them a vote? Yes, they can have an opinion all they want, but they don't get to vote to decide the outcome. They're not paying up for any of this stuff. Now they're if they want to contribute, it doesn't count. Your vote doesn't get yeah yeah and does not. Get Oh my gosh, Jessica, this is like, I feel like we just like kind of sort of maybe a little bit scratched the surface and I was like, OK, we need, we have, I know we have to wrap up more time today, but I'm like, we need to do this again.

Yes, but in the meantime, how if someone's like, Oh my gosh, I need to have more of Jessica in my life and I need, I need to be in her space. How? What's the best way that someone can get connected to you? Yeah, so you can find me on my website, the Brent voice dot life. I'm on Instagram and Facebook as Jessica Vibrant hammock. You'll see me. I have a crown in my picture. That's just part of my branding and my purpose and working on identity specifically. So there's the best places to catch me. You can always e-mail [email protected] and if this is this questions for anybody or questions for like Round 2 or whatever we do here, I'd love to hear those.

Feel free to reach out and say yes, like questions about please talk about this or let's cover this because you know, trauma's a whole thing and we can talk a really long time about this and your money story. But I really, I want I want people to walk away with this idea that there is hope. So don't you know, really think about we might have covered some really big things and really, really created some like just take a deep breath. There is always hope and there is grace to walk this out and and tell a new story and get it figured out.

So there's hope and grace available for everybody. Yes, yeah, and systems. And just because you've tried maybe you've tried it before and it hasn't worked like let's let's talk more. So Jessica, I'm going to put that info in the show notes so that people can get connected with you. I am so appreciative of your time and your wisdom and your knowledge and just everything that you shared today because it's so important to budgeting is like one piece of this puzzle and it's like a tool in the tool belt.

But if once we go back and really address some of those things that maybe we don't want to or maybe we see, but we're like, I'm going to do things differently, but we don't necessarily not always know how to do them differently and change, you know, and break these cycles. That's like people like you and I exist, right. To help walk alongside and and take that journey with you. Because that's one thing that I wish I had done is invited someone out like my husband and I, we kind of just might knock with the whole thing.

Yeah, I'm like, OK, yeah. This would have been a little less painful if I had a lot less painful. Let's be right. Sometimes we just have to do it the hard way, not always the most comfortable way, but if you're there, you can still make adjustments at any point on this journey. Yeah, so right, Jessica, before we end the show, I always love to have my guest tell a dad joke. So did you bring a dad joke for us today? I did. Well, I brought a version of a dad joke, I guess you could say. So this man without housing that lived in this area and he knew that there was this really very, very rich man who also lives in the area.

But the rich man was known to be very strict with his money, very tight. He was not generous. And so he's like he said to the rich man, he was like, hey, man, can you like spare some change, like 20 bucks or something? And the rich man said, yes, I, I can. But he said, actually you, I will give you $20 if you come paint the porch for me. Now, of course, the rich man is like things, he's got one over on this man because he doesn't tell him it's like this big wrap around porch for this mansion, you know, so he's got to do all this work for like $20.00.

So the, the guy, the homeless man shows up, he does the painting. An hour later, he knocks on the door and the rich man hands in the $20 and he's like, by the way, it's not a porch, it's a Lamborghini. OK, that is absolutely 100% a joke than my dad would tell and I can't wait to tell him tomorrow night at family dinner. Oh my gosh, that Oh my gosh, that is priceless. Thank you so much, Jessica. I appreciate you being on the show and bringing. I would say that's the best dad joke we've had so far.

It is definitely ranking up there with the daddest of dad jokes. I love it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you for tuning into the Debt Rebel show today. Ready to take your family budgeting to the next level, stop that paycheck to paycheck grind and start living debt free? Head over to my website debtrebelpodcast.com. That's DEBTRE belpodcast.com to grab resources, tools and tips to make it happen. And don't forget, subscribe, leave a review. And if you know another family that will love hearing today's episode, it would be such a gift for both of us, your friend and me.

If you share this episode and remember your debt free life starts with one brave step and I'm cheering you on every step of the way. We'll talk soon. Debt Rebel.

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