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Ever wish you had a mentor to help you become who you were meant to be? Crystal Ware is redefining what it means to become your best self, in business, life, and love and sharing everything she she knows to get YOU there faster.
Are you stuck? Feel like you are meant for more but not sure how to breakthrough? Every week, we will explore all of your questions on building a path to true happiness, achieving success and creating our dream life. Brick by brick, we will work through the issues and mindsets that keep us stuck, dive into finding our passion and how to take ACTION. Clarity (vision) + Confidence (Owning your worth) + Courage (to live life on your own terms and become your own CEO) propels you to your destiny. And the good news it: its all within you!
Each week, host, Crystal Ware, will bring you all of the practical wisdom to grow every aspect of your career and life including mindset, vision, goal planning, social media management, financial acumen and so much more. You'll also meet top business leaders, entrepreneurs, mompreneurers and innovative thinkers who invested in themselves and found their way success and happiness by leading on their own terms.
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00:07 - Amanda Hanquist
And so, when it comes to those kinds of little tricks and things and finding out where our money is going, that's when we can really start to snowball and really start to save and make an impact and a dent in our wealth.
00:20 - Crystal Ware
Welcome to the Get Clear with Crystal Wear podcast, the place where we get clear on our goals, own our worth and learn to be the CEOs of our own lives. I'm your host, Crystal Wear, lawyer and former Fortune 500 corporate leader who found the confidence to say goodbye to a lucrative career and start my own business. Now I'm opening up the playbook and sharing everything I've learned to get you there faster. It may not be easy, but it will always be worth it because you are made for more. So put on your big girl pants, jump on board and let's reach for the stars. Are you ready to get clear? Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, whatever time it is that you are listening to this, we have another amazing woman entrepreneur on the show today.
Amanda Hanquist is the Fit Financial. You must follow her on Instagram. Absolute fun, enlightening information. She is a 15 year financial professional, wife and mother of three, with a love for health and fitness. So you know she's a girl after my own heart. She co-founded the company Fit Wealth Advisors with her husband, Sean, which focuses on helping high earners who aren't rich yet create the wealth that they deserve. Music to my ears, these are like all the words and terms that I love. Amanda also has a specialty in behavioral finance. After overcoming her own struggles with money, she realized how many other high earners are out there have never been taught what to actually do when they start making real money, and so we are going to dive right in with that. Introducing Amanda, thank you for being on the show and tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got to be where you are the Fit Financial.
02:07 - Amanda Hanquist
Yeah, hi, crystal, thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to be on today. Yeah, you know the Fit Financial. It came to me out of my own vulnerability, I guess you know I've gone for a long time of sharing. You need to separate your finances and here's how you file this form for taxes. And here, at the end of the day, I said stop. Nobody resonates with that. And once I started sharing about my struggles and my overcoming and how I got there, I started to realize how many other people have either been in that position or are there now and just truly need somebody to say hey, me too. Here's what I did to fix it and that's what I created and started doing with the Fit Financial.
02:59 - Crystal Ware
Who are you actually working with? Like, what is your ideal client? If you wrote down on paper what do they look like, feel like, think. What are they doing?
03:06 - Amanda Hanquist
Yeah, so I don't necessarily fall into my ICA has a certain hair color and wears a certain thing and that goes to a certain job. Like because of what we do, it's a broader audience than that. So, if I had to put it specifically, we work with high earners, so they have to make a reasonable amount of money. We're not talking to people that are not able to put food on their table. They don't know where their next paycheck is coming from. That's just not what we do. My heart goes out to them, but that's not who we work with. We work with people that make real money but they don't know where it's all going. They don't have wealth to show for it. They have a significant tax bill and they don't know why and they don't know what to do about it. Those are the individuals that we work with. We can pull a lot of levers. We can move a lot of different parts. We can really help you make impact with your money. Those are the people that we work with.
04:07 - Crystal Ware
Yeah and I know what's really interesting is in looking at your background and all the things that you've done. You've been an entrepreneur for much of your career, which I just think it's fascinating because I didn't really understand or know anybody that was an entrepreneur. I grew up thinking going and getting a Fortune 500 job and being in this stable company for a long term was like the gold standard. So how did you end up really in the place of being an entrepreneur?
04:37 - Amanda Hanquist
So it is quite funny because my dad was a place officer my entire life. My mom was a teacher my entire life. So I didn't come from an entrepreneurial family, but I had a W-2 career job in the field that my heart dreamed of forever and ever, which is design. I had my first review as a W-2 employee and they sat me down and said, just to back up, at the time I had a two-year-old and he needed to have tonsil surgery. He was sick a lot, he needed to have this tonsil surgery. Anybody that has kids knows about tonsils. Your kids sick all the time, right, and they eventually need to have this surgery.
Well, I needed to take time off, and I had just been reprimanded for taking too much time off for my sick child.
Well, I wasn't making enough money to warrant my husband taking the time off, right, as I told you, I was making $13 an hour at a job I had to have a degree specifically for, and so I was faced with a decision to basically lose my job or not go to my son's surgery.
And so my mother-in-law went in my place and, bless her heart, she was able to do that, but in that moment I was so upset being a first-time mom. I think it's different once you've had three kids and you've gone through a million of these things and you're like whatever, nobody else. But when you're a first-time mom, it hits different and I remember sitting there and not going to my son's surgery, my mother-in-law going instead, thinking what am I doing? This won't happen again. I am not going to let this happen again. I am going to choose whether I get to go or not, not somebody else dictate that for me. That's ultimately what gave me that final push into becoming an entrepreneur. I think that gets you also, when you have a family to support your backup against the wall mentality.
06:35 - Crystal Ware
Yeah, and I think it's really important for women to hear that, because things have changed so much since COVID. I think it's really interesting in what is driving women and maybe what we have repressed over the years of like we need to climb the corporate ladder, we need to make XYZ and money and all these things that we want to achieve. We might have been repressing feelings of like, also wanting to be at home and also wanting to take care of our family and some of those nature versus nurture genetic things. Like I like to cook for my family, I like to make home cooked meals for my family. How do you balance all those things? I think it's just an underserved area and a place that we don't talk about a lot of like how you can become an entrepreneur.
I remember one of my friends from college who grew up in a similar family situation as you did and had this amazing job. At the time I thought it was crazy. She was working seven hours a day for a family office, a wealthy people with oil and gas assets making 50 grand a year, working literally seven hours. She quit to start her own business and I could not believe it. I thought it was the craziest thing that anybody would ever do, because $50,000 when you don't have any debt and you're a single person and no kids feels kind of rich and in like seeing where she went with that.
It's been phenomenal. Like you, she built a business, she sold the business, she started another business and throughout this time, her and her husband had all of the control in what they were doing with their career and what they were doing with their family. It's just been really beautiful to watch and I just would never have known that. I love highlighting these kind of stories for other people to understand what is really out there and available to you. So one of the other questions I had that's really interesting, because you are so focused on health as well as wealth how do you see, how do you define how health and wealth really go together?
08:42 - Amanda Hanquist
Man. They are so paralleled it's literally insane. Not only are they paralleled just from an obvious standpoint, but there have been studies to show the correlation between health and wealth. Now, obviously, we can think of the overweight, older man that has made his millions right and then he may die of a heart attack because he let his health go. So there's that piece of it too. However, you can't tell me that when you feel fit, you have more energy, you have a better like give to everybody else, right. You just feel good, and that shows up in your confidence, that shows up in how you treat people. You might not save the eating, the frog moments for last right, and so I think that they're so parallel and interrelated. When you feel really good, you're going to make moves in those compounds over time, to success, in my opinion.
09:41 - Crystal Ware
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think, at the end of the day, when we think about it is like what good is having money if we are not healthy, if we're not feeling good, if potentially you could have a heart attack and die at 60 and you didn't have time to even enjoy all the money that you were making? So I really almost think they're synonymous and so the fit financial I mean to me is just like the gold standard. I just love that. Are you finding that, with that lifestyle, your kids are seeing and replicating that already?
10:16 - Amanda Hanquist
Oh, 100 percent. We're kind of known for being quote unquote, that family, you know. But we're really very I would say it, and I always say consistently good over, occasionally great, because we aren't anybody that just eats grilled chicken and salad at every single meal, right, but you're not going to see us eating fast food every day either. So we're just really that family where my kids are athletes, they know how to make beef and rice and they don't have a grilled chicken, right, they know how to do those things. My daughter knows that she can go into the pantry and get her little package of muffins, but she's not going to go eat five packages of muffins, right, like, she knows what moderation is because she's been taught that from day one.
And I think that that's the missing piece is, we try to get our kids to finish their play, we try to get our kids to moderate when they're older, when we've never taught them from day one how to moderate in the first place. And then it turns into these adults that are overweight and overeat and can't control themselves around food, and so, yeah, I mean I definitely made that a point early on to encourage our kids to make good choices, and it was never out of force. It was always out of showing because I'm also doing it, and it's just one of those things where if you do something very simple over a long period of time, it just turns into something really good, yeah, and I think that's another way a place.
11:43 - Crystal Ware
I see you know close, close correlated analogies on the moderation piece and how simple it is really for health in the long term. I mean, it's simple things like cooking at home. If you use real butter, it may have be high in fat, but I believe if you are cooking at home for the majority of your meals and you're moving your body 30 to 45 minutes a day, you're going to have the foundation for most of it. And it's the same thing for wealth If you are investing in saving a certain amount and living below your means. That is really the foundational issues. These are not things that are overly complicated. We somehow psychologically and you probably can speak to this more make these things more complicated than they have to be, or more daunting. In reality, when we boil it down, it's not. I'm not saying it's easy, but the solutions are fairly simple.
12:43 - Amanda Hanquist
Yeah, absolutely With simple, it's not always easy and I definitely find that, you know, if we save it until Monday or next month or wait till the first of the year, make things a resolution, like we build these things up in our head to be this big, elaborate scheme, and then we have to, you know, get this gumption or motivation to then spark the interest of even doing it. And it could just be I'm going to save $20 a week, right? Or I'm going to, if you're an entrepreneur, hire my kid once a week to do this thing, and then I'm going to put that money into a Roth IRA, right, Like I mean, it's just these little things. But, as you said, simple doesn't always mean easy. But I think we find and I kind of started implementing this because we all have our things that we're better at than others.
I hate cleaning my house, but I've noticed, if I just clean a little bit every single day, so I'm about oh, I would say, 18 months ago started doing 30 minutes of house cleaning every single day, and now it's like I just always have a clean house. I don't need to spend an entire day every week cleaning it.
13:46 - Crystal Ware
Yeah, Well, you hit on something that I'm really interested in you sharing with the audience that the Roth IRA. As an entrepreneur, and putting your children to work. I've been reading a lot about that and my kids are just getting to an age where I think that could legally make sense. I know we don't have the kind of business where we could be like, oh, you're a baby model, right, so thank you about legitimate ways that we can employ them for this. Can you explain to people who may have never heard of this concept what it is? And then I would love to know if you're doing that with your kids and or any of your clients are doing that.
14:23 - Amanda Hanquist
Yeah, absolutely so, when I had my nutrition coaching side hustle. As I told you, I feel like when you're an entrepreneur, you just always have a lot of things going on. Well, one of the things that I did very frequently was I would have my son come with me to the grocery store and hold the camera for me. He was my videographer, or he would help me set up for my little cooking videos, right. Or I had my other son display workouts because I did a student athlete nutrition. Everything is always an opportunity when you're an entrepreneur, I feel like. So, him being a student athlete, I had a student athlete course that I had created at one point, and so those were always fun little things that I can involve my kids in doing.
And so now, for example, we are a financial firm and our podcasts have to have disclosures at the end, and so how fun would it be to hire my daughter to speak the disclosure? It might take me an entire Saturday to record that, right, but how fun is that to have that cute little voice at the end talking about our disclosure. Who wouldn't want to listen to a boring disclosure in a cute little kids voice? So those are all fun little things that you can think of If you have a little bit more of a simple thing.
When I had my financial firm, my kids would shred papers for me or file papers or simple tasks, clean my office, things like that. But the point is we typically say if they're between ages seven and 17,. If you don't have, you know, like a music business where your kid can cry in the music video like Jay-Z did with his daughter, but if you have a pretty standard business between the age of 7 and 17, you can hire kids to do some pretty cool things like that and then they can, as long as they have earned income, they can contribute that into a Roth IRA.
16:10 - Crystal Ware
Yeah, and so what I have read is that once you're doing that let's just call it a 10, and you are doing a Roth IRA every year. The theory is that then you could build up to where it's something like it's 60 or whatever. They have a million dollars and it's all generated from your business paying them as an employee, investing it in a Roth IRA. That then compounds over the time for them to basically give them a nice starting point for retirement financial freedom, and this is all legitimate above the board, and it reduces your taxable income for your business. So it's like a win-win all the way around, and so I love that.
16:59 - Amanda Hanquist
Yep, it absolutely is. Now, this is why it's called tax planning, because it's not always in everybody's best interest, right, it has to depends on your taxable situation and your earn income. And do you need to do that? Would it be better off? Put somewhere else, right? But it makes for a really good TikTok video a lot of times.
17:17 - Crystal Ware
Yes, and I will say, and I will disclose talk to somebody about it. Talk to a professional. Make sure that you understand the ins and outs of how that works. As a lawyer, as somebody that made an A in my tax law class, I am obsessed with taxes, I'm obsessed with tax planning, but I still read research and then revert to a professional because I do not do that as my day job, but I think it is really interesting. So, for people are listening who have a business or thinking about starting a business, this is an interesting thing that you can use to. You know, and there's all kinds of things that your kids can do. I mean, my kids do small things for my husband. I hadn't thought about that as being the videographer. That's really interesting for making videos for my engagements, but I love it and I wanted to talk about that because you brought it up. Another thing that I know you have dealt with and maybe you can share a little bit more about the money struggles that you went through.
18:15 - Amanda Hanquist
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This was one of those reels that went viral, so yeah. So it was one of those situations where I'd kind of always struggled with spending. I had a family trauma at an early age and it took me into adulthood to realize what I was actually trying to mask to make myself feel better, and my outlet for that was shopping and spending. You know, some people use substance abuse like alcohol or drugs. Some people gossip and saving things to make themselves feel better, or whatever it is Everybody is. You know, some people binge eat. Mine happened to be shopping, and you know what I really knew. It was a big problem.
I was making the most money I had ever made in my adult life. I was making real money for the first time and I had the most debt that I had ever had. And I remember one day sitting there in my office by myself and, by the way, being a business owner at the time, it made it really easy to open up my own credit cards, my own accounts, and I was again making a lot of money. But it made it very easy to also hide things. And I remember sitting there one night late at work. I used to work late a lot. Adding up all of this credit card debt, other debt that I had accumulated. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I cannot tell my husband this. He, I mean, he's going to divorce me. Who wouldn't, who wouldn't, who wouldn't, who would want to deal with this? And I remember going to him laying it all out there. I took care of it all myself because you know, I'm one of those women that just I'm going to stand on my own two feet, but just sharing that, laying the cards out as they were, knowing that that divorce was a possibility. Money is one of the biggest causes of divorce today, as I'm sure you're aware. He didn't, he didn't divorce me, luckily, but I got to take care of, slowly, got it paid off, slowly tackled everything.
But then, after all of that, I kind of felt myself slipping again and I decided you know what I've got to figure this out. And that's what compelled me to do my entire year of no shopping. And I went an entire year of not buying clothes, not buying shoes, not buying bags, accessories, nothing. At the time I actually didn't even get my hair done, which I don't a lot anyway you can see the six inches of roots here but but I didn't get my nails done you know I'm not a big spender on makeup anyways but my biggest issue was just every time I opened up Instagram, there was the cute influencer with all the stuff, and so I just made it a point that you know what? It wasn't a Monday, it wasn't a resolution, it wasn't, you know, a January 1st thing. It was just a random Tuesday that I was just about sick, that I'd done another binge shopping and I just paid off all that debt and I said no more of this because he probably will divorce me if I do this again. Right, and so I did an entire year Because I never wanted to feel the way I felt that day that I added up everything.
And when that whole year ended and I realized everything that I had accomplished, I knew what my triggers were with spending. I knew how to cope with those triggers. I knew how to emotionally overcome my trauma at those moments, because I forced myself to go a very long time to just really feel everything I needed to feel. And that's where you know, I think if I would have talked about it at that time, I wouldn't have been ready to really open up and share. I think sometimes it takes a little bit. I was back in 2018, 2017-ish, but that's really where I learned all that, from all that emotional stuff. And, of course, what's cool is the CFP, the Certified Financial Planning designation, now has behavioral finance, which I'm really excited about. But, yeah, that's ultimately what led down this journey of no shopping and emotional spending and filling voids that we have.
22:35 - Crystal Ware
I just want to pause and say thank you to all the amazing people tuning in and making this show a success and to share some exciting scoop. I am opening up, for the first time ever, one-on-one coaching. We have two options available the Executive Edge Two Week Program and the Career Catalyst Six Week Program, which will use my proprietary Earn it framework. If you're ready to propel your professional journey, crush your salary goals or need someone to coach you through a big career decision, let's conquer it together. Limited spots for unlimited empowerment. Links to sign up will be in the show notes and in the link tree on my Instagram and LinkedIn site. See you there.
Well and I think that's a common thing, especially exacerbated by COVID People have been more on the island, more work remote, more removed from people in day to day. So if you already have some of those issues going on or feelings and trauma that you're dealing with, and then you're sitting alone and you're on your computer all day, I can see how that can be a really challenging thing. And what I love and I think people should really focus on, as the takeaway is really twofold. That one you can start now. You do not have to wait. You do not know. There's no perfect time to get your stuff together. Whether that's health, whether that's money, whether that's healing or relationship, whatever it is like, you can decide that right now is the time, and you are going to move forward, to start making changes. You don't have to have a perfect plan, you don't have to have the time. You have to make the time and decide and move forward. And then two, being really intentional about what you're feeling, about what you're dealing with, how you're going to move forward, and focusing in on what your triggers are, where you're seeing the problem. Like the first thing we need to do is be self aware of what it is the problem, how we're being triggered, and then we can find ways to cope and create solutions.
And so I love that you've focused that issue that you've had around those two points, because that is really I see people getting stalled and held up a lot by perfectionism, by what's the right date, what's the right time, how am I going to handle this? So I just love that you're so open and sharing, that it takes bravery to talk about something so close to you and personal story. So I really, really appreciate that that kind of leads right into one of the other things that I wanted to discuss that I was talking about recently on a solo episode is about the amount of consumer debt that the average American has. I mean, it's just really, really crazy. So, without knowing the numbers of your situation, but knowing that when you have a large amount of debt and you're servicing the debt, then how do you have enough money to keep growing like your normal stuff, your savings, your needs, your groceries, and still paying off all the debt? Do you see, with some of your clients and high earners, do you see that commonly?
25:50 - Amanda Hanquist
Yeah, and I think luckily when you're a high earner is when you get your crap together. You can get in front of it pretty quickly. I was pretty lucky. I was making a lot of money. It was really sad for how much of it was going out the window, so I was able to really tackle it rather quickly.
So I do feel for individuals who have gotten themselves into a tough situation where maybe they don't have the means and that might either come down to laying it all out they're figuring out where your money is going and really tightening it up Like everything is a no until you're tightened up, debts paid off. I like to start with the smallest debt first and work up from there. That just mentally, psychologically, seems to be the best way to do it. But when you sometimes it just also may maybe mean you need to make more money, like I mean. I know that's easier said than done, but I know a lot of times sometimes that's just what it is. Maybe it's a side hustle, maybe it's asking for a raise and having the courage to do that, or maybe it's finding an entirely different career path altogether. But yeah, we definitely see that.
But a lot of times, especially the high earners is when you can figure out where all your spending is going and you can really designate I call it guardrails putting a name to your dollar having a connection with your money.
It spends a little differently, it hits a little bit differently. We really care about it. And so when we can put guardrails in place, we can have a name for where that money is supposed to be going, we're less likely to emotionally spend it on stuff right, or at least have like a 48 hour rule or a 24 hour rule where we let the emotion kind of settle down before we pull the trigger right, cause a lot of times we definitely don't need it after that 24 hours to settle down. And so when it comes to those kinds of little tricks and things and finding out where our money is going, that's when we can really start to snowball and really start to save and make an impact and a dent in our wealth. And then, once we're on that path, well, it doesn't matter if we want to buy the shoes or the bag. We've got to get past that first.
28:05 - Crystal Ware
Yeah, and I think that's really powerful. I mean, two things that resonated there is when you talk about just the feeling that you get from when you get on the right path. I know there was an Edmellet podcast I was listening to recently where he said at one point I don't remember the exact dollar amount, so let's say he was making $50 a day or something not a lot of money and he was figuring out how to save $10 a week and he said just building that habit and knowing that I could commit to doing that and doing that was so powerful for me to move forward and continue that as I kept making more money. So when people are like I don't have any money to save, I agree with you, which is another point that sometimes it has to come down to. We need to make more money. You can only cut so much, but how much you make can be endless, and so that's really important. But if you can't save money at X income, how do you know that you're going to be able to save it when you double your income? I mean, it's just not guaranteed.
So creating those habits I think is really important and I think that's really helpful to know, and I loved how you said putting a name to it, because if you think about it, if I was like this pile of money over here is my kid's college fund Mine goes actually automatically to my kid's college fund, so I don't see it, it just comes out. But if I had to think about it in that way that I was about to spend my kid's college money, yeah, that would hit differently. That would be a little different than just saying this is my income, my salary. So I think that's a really, really good tip for people that might be struggling. So what do you think really women are missing when it comes to money and talking about money? Because I don't think a lot of women like to talk about money, like you and I do.
29:58 - Amanda Hanquist
I hear all the time oh, my husband takes care of it, or my wife is not allowed to shop on Amazon or not allowed to go to Target by herself, and we've created that reputation for ourselves, sister, and we shouldn't right. Girl math is not a thing and I cringe every time I see the girl math thing. But it's get educated. We want to be treated the same, but we're not willing to do the work to be the same. There's something majorly wrong with that. Now I will say that, like we just Weren't taught about money a lot of women weren't but the same goes to men. I mean, it's not 1948, right? Like we don't have to go into the bank with our husband to put our name on the checking account. All right, I mean, it's hallelujah, we're in a different era. So, yes, you've got to give that up. Right, there are so many free resources out there nowadays and I mean I put free stuff out all the time and it's supposed to be in the form of fun content that's easily digestible.
But the point is, is it all comes down to action? Right, we can, I can give you the easiest one, two, three step process, but if you don't have action behind it, nothing's gonna change, and we can't wait till we're motivated. Motivation, in my opinion, isn't, as it is like, an ever-changing thing, and if we wait till we're motivated, nothing ever happens, and so it really comes down to Choosing. Right now that we're going to make the change, we're going to figure out what that step one looks like, because I think when we don't know what to do, we do nothing. And so what does that step one look like for you? We're gonna make that change, and then we're just gonna do it. Maybe you have to put February 1st whenever that day of the week is, I don't even know on your calendar and say that that's, that's what we're gonna do, right? And so I think it just comes down to choosing to get educated do you think this just hit me, amanda?
31:57 - Crystal Ware
because, contrary to popular belief these days, I do think there is genetic components to a lot of our influence and factors. You know, I don't think that we can ignore that. Although some people would like to say that men and women are the same, I believe that I can do the same thing as a man. I do not believe I'm the same as a man. There's a difference. So now this just hit me. Do you think there is a genetic component to? Yes, women need to educate themselves, but do you think there is something genetically predisposed where Women just want to be taken care of and that is why they don't educate themselves? Because they are just expecting Someone in their life is going to eventually do it for them?
32:39 - Amanda Hanquist
Yeah, and I think that that's totally. I'm such a to each their own. If you want to be taken care of and oblivious and you just want to take care of your family and your husband take care of everything, I think they will. They call that a traditional family, although I think that term needs to change because I think traditional is a different sense nowadays, but but I I do think that's okay If that's what you want. But I also don't think we can be completely ignorant, because things do change and we do have to make sure we're okay for ourselves and our family. Husbands pass away, wives pass away, husbands want divorce later on, right, and so you, number one, you've got to take care of yourself. It's important, regardless of your situation or dreams and hopes and desires, that you are at least Educated enough to take care of yourself if needed.
But I do think that there is still Some gender bias out there. You know, obviously I'm not educated enough to know the, the scientific Difference or whatnot, but I do know that there are some differences, especially depending on where you live. We live in the Midwest area and I think we are still a little bit behind the times in the Midwest, but but I think that you know there's still a pay gap. That's known I you know there are laws out there too as far as like credit equality, lending equality. You know there are laws out there that prevent Discrimination and things like that, and so I think we're getting better, but I think that there's still work that needs to be done. It wasn't too long ago when I had my initially started my financial services agency. It was a predominantly male industry, and not only that, but there's only, I think, 24% of the certified financial planners out there are female, so there's definitely still a gap, but the only way to close in on that gap is to start doing what we're doing today.
34:41 - Crystal Ware
Yeah, absolutely. And just saying we can talk about it, you can talk about it, don't be embarrassed, don't be shy about it. I mean I will say in all honesty, I don't normally want to come out and say to the dollar what I make, but talking around that, talking in, you know, frames of reference and my friends also doing the same, because how can I help somebody else and how can they help me if we don't talk about Some amount of where we are on the income spectrum? And then, when it comes to investing, which I feel I don't know why, it's very personal, right, it's like this is my money and this is what I'm doing with it. But I feel like, because I'm investing in a third party, it's not necessarily my Salary income.
I feel very comfortable talking about investing and what I do. And I I mean my husband is a very Macho, I mean not like a machismo guy, but he's a very manly man, but he is busy doing his business and he lets me do all the investing. I mean that's so we're a little inverse. You know, I'm take that on and I love it and I have always wanted to be involved and I've always wanted to know what's going on. And, besides having the high level, you know where are we on our savings plan or whatever. He just, you know, doesn't have time to focus on extra, like an extra step in the process, and you know it works. And I that I want to lead by example and show other women that like, hey, if you have an interest in this, if you have the resources and the means and want to learn, even if you only have $50 a week, a month, to invest, like you can start taking the initiative to do those things. And it doesn't have to be your husband. You don't have to rely on him. There is so much technology and things that are Favourites that we can do, and even with alternative investing.
I mean I am from a very working-class family. My mom did not even go to college and I had to learn this all on my own. I, you know nobody was teaching me this. I had to take it upon myself to learn this and I want other people to know you cannot use your circumstances as an excuse. You just got to go out there and do it and anybody can. Can you know? Grow in what you know income class they're in. Anybody can invest. There may think be things that we're not, is Not available to us, and let you have a hundred million dollars, okay, that's, that's reality, but there's a lot that is available to us now and I just really love talking about it. So, if you had to say, what are the three foundations For people, or two or whatever number you have, what are the kind of Foundations of wealth building that you like to live by and lead by?
37:29 - Amanda Hanquist
Yeah, so I'm gonna put on my entrepreneurial hat for a minute because well and I don't know the the scope of the audience, if if you have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen, but I suppose this could even be for those that work for corporate or work for somebody else, but when you are, first of all, an entrepreneur, it's number one so important to separate your finances. I think that's one thing that we forget is we we take money from a client. It goes into our bank account to get spent on our personal expenses, right. We don't know where that money goes, we don't know how to separate it, and then, all of a sudden, we have this tax bill that comes to and we're like, oh my gosh, what the heck do we do? And so I think that's the number one is we got to separate our finances right. And then we have our Business checking account that we pay ourselves from and that's where all of our personal expenses are going to be coming out of. That's called net income. Of that net income is going to be our 20% For our future. And so if we're not able to save that 20% for our future, then we've got some work to do. I'm not saying that everything else is a no. But I'm saying we need to work our way up to that.
And so, number one know what we need to be making at home. If we can't Figure that out, we just kind of freely spend, and then we don't know where our money is. We don't know. Have you know, really any goals to go off of? And so, number one, what do we need to be making? And if I'm not making that a, do I need to make more money? Or if? Is my lifestyle inflation just getting out of control, right? And so let's figure out those things. And so, once we have that figured out and we can come up with a goal, that's our goal, is it a? Like? I like to have two different goals a short-term goal and a long-term goal. So our short, short-term goal this year is that we're taking our kids to Disney. We started saving for that last year, right? So that's our short-term goal. How much do I need to save? How much is this trip gonna cost me? Let's start putting a little bit away every month for that, right, that maybe you want to get a Birken, I don't know, but maybe you know.
Whatever the case is, whatever that looks like for you, long-term goal is gonna be are we gonna move across the country and buy a house? Are we going to what is what do I want my retirement to look like? I think that's the biggest thing is whether you like it or not, you are gonna retire someday and we've got to start saving for that right At least not retirement. Maybe it's financial freedom and that's where our 20% of our net income is gonna be going. That we're gonna be working up towards Before we can get to that is gonna be our emergency reserves. So three to six months of your bills. It's really important that I'm a big and tell you have three to six months of emergency reserves. Our free fund spending is a hard. No, I know that sounds a little bit I Tough, but it's so important.
Things happen every day. I have kids. I know you've said that you have kiddos. It's like things are always happening with our kids. My kid just broke his arm last year. That ended up costing us $10,000 out of pocket. Things are always going to happen. Maybe you can't work for a little bit. Whatever the case is, maybe you need a water heater replaced in your home. Three to six months of bills. So I'm kind of working backwards. But those are my three staples Is you're 20% for long term, you're short term goals and then knowing where all of your money is going and coming. Do you need to just make more money or do we need to change our lifestyle? Inflation?
41:04 - Crystal Ware
That's awesome. And, I would add, that made me think about one thing when you said, you know if you couldn't work for a while, and so one of the things that I have really been focused on shifting my brain towards which is just not in the world that I have come from is how can you create equity or other? I mean, nothing is truly passive. Okay, I don't want to say that, like you had to earn money to invest, so you had to get the money somewhere, but once you are invested with other companies, it is somewhat passive. And how do you develop? You know, so you're either, you know, in the stock market it could be dividends or, if you're a silent partner in a business, that you get some percent of the cash flow where you are not yourself having to work in. That is what my long term goal is at this point is.
I don't have like set numbers around that, but that is what my goal is, because I want to have an avenue to make some amount of money, not huge, I'm not thinking millions but some amount of livable income in case I didn't want to work or couldn't work or, you know, was incapacitated or whatever the case may be.
And so for those of you who haven't thought about that, I think that where we are in the world, those opportunities are available to us, even if we're not making millions of dollars. You just have to educate yourself and look out there. And it takes work Like it's not really passive, because I've had to work to find opportunities to where we could get into stuff that would give us an opportunity to do that. It takes networking, so it's not ever free, but I just want to highlight that to people because you know, I think that is something that was reserved for the ultra wealthy for many, many years and it's just only recently become something that we could think about and I think that's really interesting. And the last part I wanted to talk about because I know we have a hard stop today is the threshold of money.
43:14 - Amanda Hanquist
So this is so interesting. So there was a study done by Princeton University several years ago that talked about, I think at the time the average median or middle class income was around $70,000. Today it's around 90. Some would even argue it's about 120. But there was a study done that shared that there was obviously a threshold where, if your means of necessity are met, that the threshold of happiness does not increase. So essentially what they're saying that once your basic needs are met, once you can pay your mortgage, so you have your house over your head, a roof over your head, you're able to put food on the table, you're able to have okay clothing. From there, everything additional did not create any extra happiness.
And so I think that's a really important study that we can take away. And might I also add that some of our wealthiest clients have never made more than six big years in their lifetime, year over year. And so I think that's really important to understand that if you're not able to save off of $120,000, you're just going to get the BMW and then the Lexus and then the next whatever is above that. But my point is is you're just going to move into a bigger house, you're just going to get a nicer phone, you're just going to elevate your clothing. And so if you don't learn to save from $100,000 and learn to be happy on $100,000, you're not going to be happy on a million either.
45:00 - Crystal Ware
I love that. I love that. I love that. I am literally cheering and jumping up and down because I think that that is what people are missing. They always focus on the material goods of what is going to make you happy, and it's not that. I think that a lot of people are looking for freedom or ability to control their time, whatever that looks like to you, and you have to define it. Otherwise, our culture and our commercials and everything else around us is going to continue to push you to our more stuff, which is not going to get you happiness, and so I think that's a really important message.
To end on that there is a difference in being happy and having more. They do not correlate, they do not go hand-in-hand. And if you find yourself going down that rabbit hole, you need to ask yourself why, and see what your real intentions are, what your real goals are and what you're really craving out of life, and when you get really clear with yourself and that's why the podcast is titled Get Clear Get clear on what is going to make you happy, what your goals are, what you want out of life, and once you have a clear understanding of those things and who you are as a person. The sky is the limit and it won't rest on money alone. So I have loved having this conversation with you today, amanda.
Amanda's website and Instagram will be in the show notes. Connect with her, check it out. Like I said to start off, she has great content, doing amazing things and is just a really good voice of reason and moderation in health and in wealth for women. So check it out. Thank you so much for your time today, amanda, and keep getting clear everybody on what your goals are with it, with money, with health, with career, with all of those things, because they are tied together. You cannot have one without the other.
Until next time, we'll see you later. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you want to create a career you love, get the salary you deserve and build the confidence to live life on your own terms, sign up for my free newsletter, where you'll get actionable tips to raise your worth, build your wealth, create freedom and create a life you absolutely love. Head over to crystalwaremediacom to sign up or click the link in the show notes and join thousands of others making their dreams a reality. Whether you are just embarking on the journey or well on your way, the worthable newsletter has something for you. See you next week.