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Small Business Finances with Sarah Becker
Let’s face it, making money is fun, but managing it? Not always so much. Even for those of us self-professed money nerds that love personal finance – business finances are an entirely other beast. And I’ve found that the longer I’m in business and the more my revenue increases, the MORE complicated my business finances become.
So, this week on the podcast, I invited on a guest for, frankly, selfish purposes. Because I wanted to learn from her and get a better grasp on my finances in the business. So I’m really excited to share that Sarah Becker of Becker Talks Money is here this week to help us simplify those finances!
After ten years as a wedding photographer, real estate investor, and small business owner, Sarah Becker kept hearing the same story from her biz besties over and over again. While outwardly successful in their businesses, they were utterly failing in their financial goals (if they even had financial goals).
Sound familiar?
She started asking every businesswoman she knew about their money. Sarah learned that less than 2% of the creative entrepreneurs in her network were happy with the state of their finances. That’s when she started her career as a financial educator.
Sarah believes that money doesn’t have to be scary, that curiosity is more important than correctness, and that everyone can become an expert of their own money. (With a little bit of help — that’s where she comes in.)
When not crunching numbers, you can find Sarah renovating a river cabin with her partner Barry, taking her dachshund Gus for a long morning walk (with a London fog latte), and planning to have Asian food for dinner tonight (again).
This is an episode that I’m personally going to be listening to multiple times, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed recording the interview!
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Nurture those new leads with an amazing Welcome Sequence, grab my templates to make creating one super simple!
- Are you looking to improve your content without spending a ton of time and mental energy doing so? Whether you’re looking for help knowing what to talk about, setting up content systems, or improving your launch strategy, the Chasing Simple Shop has something for you. From A Year of Content Prompts broken up by type of content, to my Launch Strategy Mini-Course – the Chasing Simple Shop is the quick and simple way to take your content to the next level. And you can get 10% off any item by using the code LISTENER at checkout! Just head to amandawarfield.com/shop/
- This week’s action step: Determine your “Enough” Number and DM Sarah and tell her you did!
- Your Money or Your Life by Vicky Robin
- Wave Accounting
- Money Routine Checklist
- This week’s book recommendations: Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel and Atomic Habits by James Clear
After ten years as a wedding photographer, real estate investor, and small business owner, Sarah Becker kept hearing the same story from her biz besties over and over again. While outwardly successful in their businesses, they were utterly failing in their financial goals (if they even had financial goals).
Sound familiar?
She started asking every businesswoman she knew about their money. Sarah learned that less than 2% of the creative entrepreneurs in her network were happy with the state of their finances. That’s when she started her career as a financial educator.
Sarah believes that money doesn’t have to be scary, that curiosity is more important than correctness, and that everyone can become an expert of their own money. (With a little bit of help — that’s where she comes in.)
When not crunching numbers, you can find Sarah renovating a river cabin with her partner Barry, taking her dachshund Gus for a long morning walk (with a London fog latte), and planning to have Asian food for dinner tonight (again).
Social Links:
Website: https://beckertalksmoney.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beckertalksmoney/
Get my money routine checklist: https://beckertalksmoney.com/money-routine
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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
Let’s face it, making money is fun, but managing it not always so much, even for those of us self-professed money nerds that love personal finance business, finances are an entirely other beast, and I’ve found that the longer I’m in business and the more my revenue increases. The more complicated my business finances become.
So this week on the podcast, I invite our A guest for frankly selfish purposes because I wanted to learn from her and get a better grasp on my business finances. So I’m really excited to share that. Sarah Becker of Becker Talks Money is here this week to help us simplify those business finance. After 10 years as a wedding photographer, real estate investor, and small business owner, Sarah kept hearing the same story from her biz besties over and over again.
While outwardly successful in their businesses, they were utterly failing in their financial goals if they even had financial goals. Sound familiar? [00:01:00] She started asking every businesswoman she knew about their money. Sarah learned that less than 2% of the creative entrepreneurs in her network were happy with the state of their finance.
That’s when she started her career as a financial educator. Sarah believes that money doesn’t have to be scary, that curiosity is more important than correctness, and that everyone can become an expert of their own money. with a little bit of help, which is where she comes in when not crunchy numbers.
You can find Sarah renovating a river cabin with her partner Barry, taking her dash on. Gus for a long morning walk with a London fog latte in hand, and planning to have Asian food for dinner tonight. Again, this is an episode that I’m personally going to be listening to multiple times, and I hope that you enjoy it.
As much as I enjoyed recording the interview, you’re listening to episode 150 of The Chasing Simple. And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.
How do I run a successful business from my home? How can I [00:02:00] possibly wear all of the hats? Am I the only one that struggles with staying organized? What am I supposed to do about work-life balance? How can I create a solid schedule and routine? How do I even stay productive? And the biggest question of all, how do I manage it all?
And can I really create a business that I love without being chained in my laptop? Welcome to the Chasing Simple Podcast. We’re hard conversations and actionable education meet. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, time management coach, online educator, and crazy Cat mama. My mission is to help overwhelm biz owners get more done and less time so that they have more time and energy for what matters most.
If you feel overwhelmed or occasionally lost in the rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship, I want you to know that you aren’t. Those things you’re feeling, you aren’t the first or the last to feel that way. The hard things you’re going through, someone else has already been there too. Each week I’ll bring you transparent [00:03:00] conversations, actionable steps, and a judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whenever your drink of choices and meet Mimi here each week for love. Practical tips and advice on simplifying your biz. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?
Are you looking to improve your content without spending a ton of time and mental energy doing so? Whether you’re looking for help, knowing what to talk about, setting up content. Or improving your launch strategy. The Chasing Simple Shop has something for you from a year of content prompts broken up by type of content to my launch strategy mini course, which will teach you my entire strategy for launching your upcoming online course.
The Chasing Simple Shop is the quick and simple way to take your content to the next level, and you can get 10%. Any item just for being a listener of the Chasing Civil Podcast [00:04:00] by using the Code Listener at checkout, just head to amanda warfield.com/shop and again, that code for 10% off is listener.
Sarah, thank you so much for being here today. I’m super excited for everyone listening. We literally just chatted for an hour before we were finally like, we should probably hit record. So I’m really sorry you missed out on that conversation, but I’m super pumped for the conversation that we are going to have.
Can you just introduce yourself, tell everyone who you are and what you do, and who you. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. So my name is Sarah Becker. My business is Becker Talks Money and I’m a financial educator for entrepreneurs just like you. So I’ve been in the entrepreneurial space over a decade now.
I started to sell Wedding Photographer and then I got into real estate and then I got into another business and now I helped other businesses figure out their finances, which is honestly for me, very fun. Cause I’m a. Well, and you say now, but it sounds like you’ve been doing it all along now, you’ve I’ve actually, yes.
Get paid to do it. . [00:05:00] I’ve been doing it on the side for a while. Yeah. Over margaritas and stuff like that. Now I can actually, now I’m like, I’ll invoice you . Well, I’m really excited that we get to learn from your expertise. And my first question, and for me, this is my biggest financial issue with, Hmm, let’s talk about it.
Business finances. What is the difference between personal finances and business finances? What are the logistical differences? What are the mindset differences? What do we need to know to differentiate between the two? That is such a great question. So first, let’s talk about the how the government sees it.
So if you’re an L L C, which I imagine the majority of people listening are the government does not see a. Between your personal and business finances. Technically your business is a pass through entity to you. So even if you’re an LLC and you have an e i n, an employer identification number that you use instead of your social security number, at the end of the day, you’re the one who has the tax liability.
You’re the one filing this. Schedule C with your taxes, you’re the one [00:06:00] paying the government. Right? And when we get the separation is when you electrify as an S corp, which I typically recommend. If you’re making over about $70,000 in profit a year, not gross in profit, then it’s time to really think about becoming an S corp.
That’s when you start running payroll for yourself and the government. Sees that as two separate things. However, what the government thinks is honestly not as important as what we think at the end of the day and what our mindset is. And you know, when I started as a wedding photographer, my friends and I kind of had this thing where we would call it’s it’s real money or it’s photography money.
Because we would spend $5,000 on a camera, but when was I spending $5,000 in my real life? Literally never. Right? So it’s really hard to. Them is the same. They’re definitely not the same. But I like to think about it as your business. Finances are to fuel your business. It’s to do what’s best for the business.
Your personal finances are about what’s doing what’s best for you and [00:07:00] your future self. So I really like to keep them as separate as possible, you know, so does the government. I always recommend before you make $1. , get that business bank account, get that business credit card, keep it all separate because business money is not real money.
Yeah. I love that. I love that view. It’s not real money. Um, yeah, because yeah, it’s definitely a whole different ballgame when, and we were talking about this before, where I feel like I have a pretty good handle on our personal finances. Yeah. But then it comes into the business world and it feels.
Different and I have a budget. Mm-hmm. and I, I am like on top of my bookkeeping. That’s not one of those things that falls behind. I’m on top of it and I, I know what’s coming in, I know what’s going out, but I also feel like there’s just something I’m missing there. And unfortunately, because I don’t know what’s missing, I don’t even know how to improve that.
I think one big. Difference between personal money and business [00:08:00] money is that business money fluctuates, right? Like most people in their personal life, if you have a partner that makes a steady paycheck, or if you’re paying yourself a steady paycheck from the business or used to a certain amount, and even if the amount you’re bringing in isn’t stable every month, the amount you’re spending typically is, you know how much your mortgage or rent is, how much your utilities are gonna be, you know what your car payment is, how much you spend on groceries with the business you never really know.
How it’s, again, very fluctuating. And so I really like to reverse engineer a budget. And so instead of saying, okay, how much money did I make this month and where should it go? I start with how much money do you need to spend this month, both in your personal life and in your business? , being able to average that over a year gives you a really good number like Vicky Robin in a book I really, really love called Your Money Or Your Life, she calls it like an enough number and it’s how much money, how much money is enough for you.
And I’ll just tell you my enough number is $70,000. If I can bring in [00:09:00] personally, that’s after tax $70,000. I’m golden, and I save about 50% of that because I max out a Roth I r a and a solo 401k every year. So that’s almost $30,000 just in retirement investment that I’m putting away every year. So even with that included.
that’s my enough number and I know that some months my business is not gonna hit a 12th of that, and some months it’s going to hit five times that. So, okay, here’s my biggest question because I think so often we talk about, I keep saying my biggest questions. I’ve got a lot of big questions today, friend.
I love it. Biggest questions only. No tiny questions here. All the biggest questions. . So often when we hear people talk about fluctuating. Numbers with business people are specifically talking about that take home pay. Mm-hmm. . But what I’m curious to hear more about is the business operating expenses budget itself.
How do you budget for your business and their [00:10:00] operating expenses when you’ve got such fluctuations each month? Yes. I love that question. So you’re asking about the expenses, not the. Yes. So not what we’re paying ourselves, not how to deal with that kind of fluctuation, but how do you deal with the fluctuations with what we’re spending in our that play money, so to speak.
Yeah. Yeah. How do you, how do you deal with that being so different month after month after month? Yes. Okay. So I really recommend finding a percentage formula that works for you so that you can forecast what your expenses are going to be. I love a 30, 30, 30 10, which basically is 30% to ownership. Okay.
30% to expenses. 30% for taxes and savings, and then that 10% is just a little wiggle room. It’s just a little extra. And this is really helpful because I think a lot of budgets focus on profit. This is a gross budget, right? So if your business made $10,000 this month, great, I want you to pay [00:11:00] yourself $3,000.
I want you to set aside, you know, that kind of thing now. , if you are a single member, L L C, like most of us probably are, you can definitely pay yourself more than 30%. Right? And a lot of people are going to need to, to make their business work for them. But if you’re paying yourself more than that 30%, it should be coming from your expenses, not from your taxes or your savings.
It’s okay if your salary is an. Gotcha. But I think what a lot of times people will say, I don’t know if I can afford this for my business or not. I’ll use photography again as an example, because it’s a good one, and that our equipment’s really expensive. Like, can I afford this $5,000 camera? Well, it’s like, well, what?
Typically, again, in photography, you have contracts booked out for several months. So it’s like, well, let’s calculate, you know, if you wanna spend $5,000 and that’s about three months of expenses, are you gonna make. Is that 30% of your income and if it is, then yes, you can definitely afford it. Yeah. That’s definitely the, the trip up factor [00:12:00] of is this investment a good investment right now?
Yeah. Or not because of cash flow. Can you explain cash flow in a business, what it is and what the world that’s supposed to look like? Yeah, absolutely. So cash flow is literally what are you bringing into your business? Like cash flow and income to me are very, very similar. Um, I think that something that’s really important to think about is your business is supposed to fuel your life.
So if your cash flow can’t fuel your life, then you e there, you need to reassess your business, whether that’s. Push it forward and do more to make it work or take a step back and think about another way to make income. I’m obviously not saying like if you just started your business last month and you’re not making enough money to build your life, but give yourself the i r s gives you three years to be profitable and depending on your life, stage it, you know it, that’s a personal decision, how long you wanna give your business.
[00:13:00] But the whole point of having a. Is for it to fuel your life. So you wanna make sure that you’re cash flowing enough for your life. And another part of that is if your business isn’t making enough money to cover your personal expenses, what are some personal expenses you can cut? Because personal expenses and business gets very symbiotic.
So again, if you’re not making enough in your business, That doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to change your business, but it means you need to change your personal life temporarily. So when you’re looking at an investment and you’re evaluating whether or not now is the time and we, we aren’t evaluating whether or not you’re gonna get ROI from it.
We know that. Yes, we figured that part out. This is strictly the finances. , how do you, so you look at what’s coming in, what’s going out over the next however long, how do you decide, yes, this is the time to invest in this, or no, it’s not. Okay. So another thing I really like about having like a percentage formula in your mind, and honestly I recommend even having like separate bank accounts for this formula, is that if you’re setting.
[00:14:00] 30% of your gross, of every dollar that comes in for your savings and taxes, you’re not actually gonna spend that because your taxes are based on your net, on your profit, not your gross. So I see that after a year of people using this formula, they’ve got a nice little nest egg, they’ve got a little business savings, a little cushion, and what I recommend is at the end of each quarter, Look and see how much do you have in that cushion?
Some people feel like, okay, my business is great. I don’t need to invest in any education this year. I don’t need to invest in any equipment or, you know, any expansion. What do I do with this money? I’m like, that’s a bonus for you. Then go ahead and just bonus yourself out. Give yourself a little extra. . But if you have this money and you are wanting to, you know, buy, buy the $2,000 course or go on the $5,000 retreat or whatever and keep leveling up, that’s what that money is for.
So you don’t necessarily need to forecast. [00:15:00] You can start saving and have that, and I always say like, you should be saving for future. You, you don’t have to save for a future. An event or an item like save knowing that you’re gonna wanna do something in the future, cuz you always will. And once people start on this formula, Again, they get that little nest egg pretty quickly.
And so then when you’re, you know, faced with a financial decision, you know, immediately if you have that money or not, because I’ll say, if you don’t allocate that money, it’s gonna disappear. Okay. So what you’re saying, I feel like a huge label just went off in my mind. Okay, . Okay. Everything is so much clearer now.
So what you’re saying is operating expenses, that 30% is more so to be used for kind of the day-to-day. Expenses that you have in your business? Yes. Not those things like outsourcing a huge project or. You just blew my mind. Now you can always combine, right? So let’s say you have like a little folder, [00:16:00] either like in your mind or like truly two different business bank accounts.
And let’s say you like, oh, you know, my expenses have been lower. I’ve got a few grand in the expenses account. You know, I’ve got a few grand in the savings account. You can totally combine them and do something with both of those things. It’s just having a couple little pockets of money for future you and your future business.
I just, I’m speechless. You just blew my mind. I, that right there was the piece I was missing. Um, it makes sense. One coaching in this interview. Of course. Um, that’s what this interview’s all about really. I mean, it’s, the VIPs are able to listen in. That makes so much sense because I have been. I have, I don’t do 30, 30, 30, but I have, you know, a percentage that works free percentages.
And I have a bank account for each. I have five different bank accounts. Like I’ve got all of that. That you profit Firsted? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. And it’s great. I love it. It’s, I’m a black and white thinker, so if it says I have this much in the bank account, that’s how much is there. But I have been pulling all of my investments, the [00:17:00] conferences I wanna go to.
Yes. The one-to-one coach I wanna hire. I’ve been pulling all of that out of operating expenses. Yeah. But it is an investment. It’s what your savings are for. And I have never, and I always end up in this place of the cash isn’t flowing like I think it should be flowing, and I’m so confused. Mm-hmm. , and it’s because I haven’t been pulling it out of the wrong bank account.
And no one has ever made that clear. Yeah. So thank you. You’re very welcome. Wow. So now that we’ve got that covered Yeah. I, you mentioned briefly what you’re doing for retirement, and I know this is something else we talked about before we hit record, but. What is entrepreneurs should we be thinking about in terms of retirement?
What should we be doing? What? That seems like a really gray area as well. I know it’s super confusing. So my very first recommendation for anyone who’s like, hey, I wanna start saving for retirement. My business can support. This is don’t wait for you to be able to max out an account before you start investing.
That was a mistake [00:18:00] that I made. I’m a perfectionist, so I was like, if I can’t put $6,000 a year into a Roth, I R A, I’m not even gonna bother. But the issue is that with compound interest, you could kind of assume that anything you invest in the stock market is gonna double every seven years. So the earlier you start, the better because it helps your money literally earn money.
So if you could only put $50 a month into a retirement account, start it today. Start with a Roth i r a. It’s not tax deductible, but I love it because of that reason you all the growth, you know, you can just keep putting money in there. Once you have maxed that out, I love an independent 401k. People are going to give you two options basically after a Roth ira, a SEP ira, or a solo 401k.
I prefer a solo 401k because the limits are bigger, so it’s more room to grow. And Amanda, as you mentioned in our non-recorded part, [00:19:00] if you want to bring on employee. A 401k makes a lot more sense. So going ahead and starting with that. Now, the great thing about a 401K is you can contribute from both sides of your business, and by that I mean you can contribute as an employee of your business.
and as your own employer. So the great thing about that is that you can, the limits are just so much higher than an ira, so every year it changes a little bit, but this year, in 20 22, 20 23, you can do $19,500 as your employee. And then at the end of the year, once you’ve calculated how much profit your business has made, you can also contribute up to 25% of your profit as long as the total doesn’t exceed 58,000.
That’s a huge amount of money. I mean, I think an entrepreneur is doing great if they’re making $58,000, period. So let me be clear that we’re not, you know, that’s amazing. But it shows that you have room to grow. Yeah. Whereas with the Roth I R A, it’s $6,000 room maxed out, and once you [00:20:00] make $144,000, you can’t even contribute to your Roth anymore.
That’s why I always recommend starting with it, because if you make it big tomorrow and you’re bringing in that, you know, multiple six figures, the Roth is dead to us. The Roth, the limit is that for. A joint? Like a couple? No, $6,000 per person. Oh, sorry. I meant the, once you hit that threshold, the 1 44, is that what was Oh, the one, no, the 1 44 is one person, and I believe this year it’s 205,000 joint.
Gotcha. Okay. . Yeah. And again, that’s profit. So that’s another confusing thing. It’s not, I think people struggle with as a business, is that the money you’re bringing in and then the money, your tax return shows you brought in is so different because we’re able to deduct so much as small business owners, which is great, but also hard when you wanna start thinking about buying a house, stuff like that.
So there’s always a lot of considerations and that’s why it’s also important to remember that a Roth I r A is not deductible. It doesn’t [00:21:00] come off the top, but a 401k. the employee side can. So if you meet a hundred thousand dollars, you can put 20 in your I four Ohk. And technically you’ve now made $80,000.
And I want to just throw this out there for everyone listening because I know we have a lot of solopreneurs that are listening. Yes. When I was researching retirement accounts, For the business specifically. I came across these two. I mean, they’re the, there’s the two. And I have made zero progress in actually acting on opening any, because I was getting so tripped up over the fact that the SEP ira, it won’t work once you have employees, correct?
Mm-hmm. . But the solo 401k, you have to use that one for employees. And when I was doing this, Gosh, almost a year ago at this point. That’s kind of embarrassing that I haven’t taken action on that, but I got so tripped up because at that point, . I was like, I’m never gonna be anything besides a solo [00:22:00] coordinator where I have no interest in having employees.
Yeah. But I also, there’s a small little voice in the back of my head that said, you don’t know what the future is gonna hold. Yeah. But I really believed that I was never going to have actual employees, and I still don’t. But I did just last month hire a virtual assistant, which is a contractor, which is different.
but it is a step towards actually one day potentially bringing on employees. And I still don’t know if I’ll ever do that, but you just don’t know what the future’s gonna hold with your business. So I just wanna throw that out there. If you’re thinking, I’m always gonna be a solopreneur, if you’re very much on that train like I was, I would still consider listening to what Sarah has to say about the solo 401k, just because you.
you don’t know what the future’s gonna bring. You don’t know what kind of growth you’re gonna see in your business, what projects you’re gonna take on, and how much time that’s going to put on your plate, and things like that. Yes. And another thing to think about, you know, you may think. and, and you may never have employees, you may never hire an employee, but what if you wanna [00:23:00] retire your spouse one day?
A lot of people come to me and they say, Hey, in five years I want my spouse to quit their corporate job. I want them home with me. I want them to be part of the business. Well, are they gonna be an employee of your business? Maybe. So, thinking about. You may not want an employee, but yeah. I mean, you’d pay your spouse.
So yeah, thinking about that in the future too is important. But I’ll also say again, this is like where perfectionism comes to play, where you’re like, I have to make the, there is one right decision. There’s not. If you decide to do one and then transfer to another, that is not a problem. So the most important thing is that you are saving for retirement.
The less important thing is how you’re saving for it. So I know it can be overwhelming, but give yourself the grace. to not make the most perfect possible decision. Cause there really isn’t one you, we don’t have crystal balls, right? So just starting to save is the most important thing you can do. Love that.
So important, man. Again, I fall into those perfectionist tendencies clearly. Oh my, I mean, really hard textbook, which is why I [00:24:00] can say that because I literally know from experience . So what would you say to the people that are listening and they’re like, this is all. , but I feel like I’m lost in the day-to-day money stuff.
what advice do you have for them? So the very first thing I would do is figure out how much money you need to make, not how much money you’re making, right? It’s easy to do like a little calculation, see how much money you brought in here to date, but how much money do you actually need? Like what is your enough number and is your business sustaining that?
I would say that’s the number one thing. Another important thing is that if you’re not tracking your income and expenses in any way, it’s time to start doing that. I know it’s. Boring, but information is power. Knowledge is power. Like I always feel so empowered at the end of the month when I’m tallying all of my expenses because it gives me more information about myself and my life so I can make better decisions moving forward.
We do that for our clients, right, in all sorts of ways. We [00:25:00] collect data about them, we learn about them. Did better help them. You wanna do that for yourself too? So if you are not using anything, I really love Wave Accounting. It’s a hundred percent free. It. Has so many amazing tools and resources in there, it easily matches up with your bank account.
You can sync them. You know, once you start categorizing stuff, it’s, you know, it’s a smart app, so it’s gonna remember what that was for next month. Like, oh, this is my Amazon charge, or what have you. And you could also run all sorts of reports through there. You can run your profit and loss, you can really see what’s happening.
And again, it’s a hundred percent free. So if you try it and you don’t like it, you have not spent any money. We will link to that in the show notes. Friends? Yes. And I also have like a little 10 minute, uh, tutorial that I’ll send to you, Amanda. You can link that in the show notes. So if you’re like, I am just too confused about this.
No problem. I’ve got your back. I literally will teach you how to get it all set up. Perfect. And you also have a money routine [00:26:00] checklist that everyone demo. Absolutely. Tell us about that. . Yes. So one of the biggest questions I get is like, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing. So I set up a little money routine checklist.
It’s literally from my life. It is what I do every week, every month, every quarter, and every year. So people download it. Literally put the dates like in their calendar as a little reminder. And it is just a really great peace of mind to know like, okay, I’m checking everything I need to check. I’m doing everything I need to do.
Like there’s nothing in the back of my mind financially. I’m all set. So yeah, that’s completely free download. And again, we can link that in the show notes. Perfect. We definitely will, and Sarah said this a few times now, but your action step for this week, friends, is to determine what that enough number is for you.
And I want you to send Sarah a message on Instagram and let her know that you did that and we’re gonna hold you accountable. You don’t have to share the number if that’s way too personal and too uncomfortable, but just say, Hey, I did it. I actually took this action step. And she’s [00:27:00] Becker talks money on Instagram, correct?
That’s right. Yeah. And I think that that. Perfect. And I think that’s a really good point. Like it doesn’t matter what the number is, as long as it reflects your life. I think that, you know, as entrepreneurs, we can get really caught up in like the six figure year, the six figure launcher, the da da da da, da, and you know, a lot of people.
Live in a, where you live depends on how much money you need to make. I mean, I work with people to figure out their enough numbers all the time. I’ve seen enough numbers that are literally $20,000, like I need to make $20,000 this year, and if I do, I’m golden. And I’ve seen enough numbers that are like 150,000.
Like I have to make this, I have to like keep my three kids in private school. You know, like it, there’s so many variables. So again, the number does not matter as long as it’s honest for. Oh, that’s so important. And season of life matters as well. Oh my gosh. There was a time where my number was significantly lower, like $14,000.
Yeah, because yeah, Absolut, we didn’t Absolutely, our cost of living was low. We didn’t have as much need for my business. [00:28:00] Whereas now it’s a little bit higher because we’ve taken on some other investments and expenses and things like that. Yep, absolutely. So it changes depending on where you’re at in life too.
So it doesn’t, I reevaluate mine every. You know, at the end of the year I’m like, okay, what, what I really need to make next year and what are some dreams I have and that I can add to this number? And you know, that’s one of the big ways we were able to buy two houses in two different places and split our year 50 50 because we really planned for it and we really thought about it.
Exactly how much money is this gonna take? I love that. So we end every episode with a book recommendation, and you already mentioned one, but I would love to know, is there one book that you would recommend that everyone go reads? It can be about finances or it could just be a fun fiction book that you really enjoyed.
Oh, oh my gosh. Whew. Okay. The pressure is On. Okay, so yes, the book I mentioned, your Money Or Your Life by Vicky Robin. It’s really short. It’s kind of intense. I mean, again, like take what serves you, leave the rest. But if I. Recommend if I could force, actually, I’m gonna go stronger than [00:29:00] recommend. If I could force everyone to read one book, it would be this one.
I love it so much. Another really interesting book about money is called Psychology of Money, and it’s less actionable. It’s really just stories of how people have handled money, typically rich people. But it’s really, really interesting and I’ve learned a lot from that. So it’s a really fascinating book.
And also I love the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s a book I read every year. I make myself read it again and something I. About it is he talks so much about getting 1% better every day, and how at the end of the year you’ll be 37 times better, which is like crazy to me. So I really love thinking about where you are with money right now.
Don’t feel like you have to take everything we talked about and implement it this week. Like what’s one thing you can do to get 1% better at your money tomorrow? Focus on that one thing, like don’t worry about doing everything all at once and go download that checklist and that will help you get that 1% better.
That’s, that’s definitely more than 1% I think. I think James Claire would agree that’s at [00:30:00] least 10% better. . I’m here for it. Everyone, please make sure you go download that and get your money routines and check. We know we love a good simplicity focused routine around here. Yeah. Sarah, thank you so much for being here today and No, thank you for having me.
Yeah, this has been a blast. I think we may have to do a multi-part series at some point about, look, let me come back. Business finances. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll keep talking as long as you’ll have me.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world to me if you’d leave a rating and review. This is a great way to help spread the word about this podcast. Help other wonderful women like yourself find it. You can find this episode show notes as well as tons of other great resources over@amandawarfield.com.
And if you aren’t following me on Instagram yet, I’d love to connect with you over there. I’m at Mrs. Amanda Warfield. Shoot me a DM and tell me what you love most about this episode. Thanks for being here, friend. I’ll see you next time.[00:31:00]
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