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If you're a spiritually-minded person in the beautiful, messy process of creating your life and asking the hard questions then you just found your people. Middle Ground is hosted by life coach and mom Brynne Erickson, and is a space for the real, honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversations about faith, identity, relationships, health, personal growth and much more. With roots in Latter-day Saint (Mormon) faith and culture, this show explores the full, multidimensional experience of being human and becoming more with genuine curiosity about the many other ways of living and believing. Because the more honestly we see each other, the better we love ourselves and the people around us.
Brynne Erickson (00:29)
The more I'm taking ownership of my finances and my health and my time, I'm realizing the way we use all these things are incredibly similar. Our emotions drive the decisions that we make in all of these areas and they ebb and flow, meaning we'll put more time or money.
into certain areas of our life and less in others and that will change depending on what is more important at the time. And they all affect each other like in order to improve my health or buy food I need time to plan that out and go get it and money to fund that. And they are also intertwined and interconnected but as I have gotten really clear
on what I want every aspect in these areas of my life to look like, the easier it's been to say, yes, I want to spend more time here, or no, actually, I don't want to spend as much money in this area because I want to spend more money in this area. And we have really been thinking about finances this year. kind of ⁓ are going to be a little more.
stingy on how we spend our money. We're not gonna go on any vacations, maybe we'll go camping, do some local things, but we're gonna stay at home. We're gonna really buckle down on school loans and the goal was to get my husband his dream truck that he's wanted for like a decade now and we've been saving for it with each paycheck, whatever we have left over. We've split it up between all of the debts and the savings and the dreams.
and we've been adding money into this account, well, a part of my budget. I'm a really good budgeter. I have been for the last four years and we've been able to watch those funds grow for this dream truck. And this was the year that we wanted to make it happen. And the goal is to get it in cash. And if we couldn't get it this year, then we'll just keep working towards it. Funny enough, my husband has been driving the truck that I drove.
in high school.
And I graduated in 06 and it was brand new then. So he's been driving this truck. Um, he had a little Toyota Tacoma when we first got married and it was a two seater. And then as we had kids, we needed to upgrade. we, my parents graciously shared little red with us and we've, he's been driving that. So he's wanted something that'll fit our whole family, something bigger and
It's been in the works and I do believe in manifesting to me. Manifesting is just taking ownership of your life and creating it to be what you want it to be. Looking for evidence that it's happening. ⁓ Acknowledging when people or solutions are in your path and ⁓ not being deterred by things that seem to go wrong, but getting curious about them and how they could actually be helping you.
in accomplishing your goal. So it's co-creating with the universe, your higher power, your community, your resources. It's just making things happen. we kind of had a unexpected thing happen last week where a dog ran across the road as my husband was on his way to work and it caused a little pile up and little red.
was the last car in the pile up and was declared totaled last week. And it was ⁓ really sad actually. mean, yes, now we're kind of in a position where we have to get a replacement car, but we really were ready to either drive her into the ground or just keep working on saving until we had enough cash to buy this dream truck. And now we're in this position.
where we need to get a car in some way. So we started looking at all the ways we can make this happen. We are in a good spot with what we've saved for this truck, which is really exciting and why we thought we maybe could do it this year anyway, but we were still a couple grand short. And funny enough, the money that the insurance is giving us for the truck is
quite significant. We didn't expect that. And when my husband sold his Tacoma, he saved the cash that he got for that. And when we saved, just sold my old Equinox when we upgraded to a minivan for our family. We saved all of the cash that we acquired for this dream truck as well. So I went and put that into the bank today. We've kind of been holding onto it as emergency, tangible cash, you know, dollar bills and
But now we're going to actually put it in towards the truck between so between that cash and what we're getting from the insurance it significantly increased the amount that we had for this truck which is crazy But not at the same time. It's funny how when you
have things that you want and that are important to you and you want to have happen and you start getting to work on it and making it happen even in small increments it happens and it happens in ways we don't expect but I I know that the universe I have a testimony of the universe or God or your guardian angels working for your good and this was just another testament to me
In fact, the family texts when my husband, er, when my brother dropped the picture of Little Red, cause he helped get my husband a car, and on his way to work, my other brother was like, she, she could figured out a less dramatic way to get your dreams back. And he was totally kidding. And yes, it would have been nice to have had a less dramatic way or, ⁓ even traumatic way, sad way.
of getting this new truck, thankfully everyone was okay. ⁓ Everyone that was involved in the wreck was okay. My husband's just fine, which for a car crash or a car wreck, that's what everyone hopes for. And everyone was very gracious. My husband even called me and one of the people in the pilot, I could hear him conversing with her and Dallin was just.
very sweet and like you know these things happen I'm okay are you okay all right we'll get this taken care of and no one was yelling at each other and freaking out and police came and the tow truck came and everything was done in like an hour it was really incredible and now we are seriously truck shopping which is bizarre but I'm really excited we're really excited really grateful the little truck that we had didn't
fit all five of us and it will be fun to have a truck, two cars that we can all fit in versus just one, the minivan and I'm feeling really grateful but also ⁓ I guess just wanting to testify that when you truly take ownership of your life and you know where you want to put your time and your health and your money, essentially all of this is forms of energy.
that it compounds, it happens. Things truly can happen. But if you don't know where you're headed, you don't know what you truly want to do with your time and your money and your health, then you have nothing that you're working towards. So it's important to have an idea of what matters to you and get to work making it happen.
if this is the one life that we know for sure that we have to live.
and let's live it. And make your dreams come true. Just start small. Just start small. Put one dollar aside for a dream and take a look at where you're spending your money. Get real with it. When I was getting into budgeting, I decided that I really wanted to make my dreams happen and my family's dreams. That I needed to make sure I knew where our money was going at all times.
and that has been really helpful. I use an app, it's called YNAB, it's an acronym, it stands for You Need a Budget. It's Y-N-A-B, and that has been incredibly empowering and super helpful. And I've really liked using them, I've used them for about four years now. And you give every dollar a job, even the dollars in your savings, you break it up into what you would want it to go into.
⁓ Rather than just having one big savings fund like you have the dedicated emergency savings for like if you're Someone lost their job and you had it to pull if you had to pull from that To live your life and then there's like the savings that is emergency right like if I need New tires or something for health or going on vacation like I I got
rid of that savings and broke it down into all of those categories. Like all the things that we would actually want that savings money to do for us. And it's been fun to watch those categories grow like our vacation budget and our emergency auto and emergency health savings. And yeah, it's it's just so empowering when we get clear, get more clarity on
how we wanna be utilizing our resources and what we're working for, know, every day, doing the grind, going to work. What is it for? Is it just to pay the bills and just to get by through this life? Definitely put those things in that light you up, that take care of yourself, that help you to grow.
and become the person that you want to be for yourself and for others. I truly believe that the better we take care of ourselves, the better we can show up for the people that we love and for the people that we interact with. And we're willing to be more loving and patient and kind because we have taken care of ourself in some small way. It doesn't have to be extravagant. It doesn't mean you have to go have a splurge day at the spa, although
I highly encourage that too if that's something that you want to put on there, just something as simple as joining some sort of sports league or going out for lunch with your friends and paying for a babysitter if you need to. ⁓ Buying a new pair of shoes and do tons of research on which one pair is totally worth it, you know? ⁓ Some other things that I've been focusing on is instant gratification.
with money and shopping, right? Where Amazon and pretty much everywhere can deliver whatever you want immediately and getting that high from pushing by and getting the confirmation and knowing when it's coming to your house, like it's thrilling, isn't it? don't, maybe it's just me, but I love getting packages and opening them up and getting new stuff. And I've been this year so far as part of my refinement process with our finances.
I have been delaying that instant gratification. put things in my Amazon ⁓ cart, but I've told myself that I can only buy on Amazon one time a month. So almost like going to the grocery store and buying all the things that were on your to-get list rather than doing it multiple small trips. But what's been interesting is things have sat in that cart. I've
things that felt so urgent and like I truly needed in the moment, I've been able to delay those and actually put them in safer later. Like actually, sure our doormat is ripping and falling apart and not in great shape, but it's actually still functional. And I'm gonna hold off on that. Maybe it'll go on sale. Cause it was on sale when I put them in my cart and then it went up 10 bucks. So maybe it'll go on sale again. So let's hold off on that.
And these gummies, you know, actually we've still got some left. We don't necessarily need those like right this second. But like my son needed some compression shorts and a mouth guard for TaeKwonDo because they were going to be sparring the next week. So I did buy those two things. Like those were like, no, these are urgent. Like we actually need these things. And it's interesting to look at items of our lives and be like, do I actually?
need this and I'm all for buying things out of just want and for the joy factor but as you're getting clear on truly where you want to spend your money you look at things differently on how you spend your money and like today I went and got groceries and yeah we got a couple of fun foods but after I was like I would really love to go get a smoothie bowl or a sandwich and that sounds really good but I was like you know what nah
Let's save that for another day. we just went to the grocery store. I got some really yummy soup I'm excited about. Let's go home and eat that today. And delay eating out for another day. So it's not that you can't, it's just, I don't know, just something about pausing, holding off, giving yourself actually a minute to think about it, ruminate about it, ⁓ change your mind even.
And that's been really a cool process to partake of this last month. And I still haven't even put in my order with Amazon. It's now February. I did not do one for January. That was crazy. And I do have some Valentine things that I do need to order. So there is a little bit more urgency to buy some of the things, but like those blender bottles, I thought I needed so desperately because we were plowing through our three bottles. It felt like so quickly.
⁓ I decided, you know what, we're actually doing okay with just the three. Let's hold off on those blender bottles for a while. And that doormat and a couple of other things that felt like I needed them. then I just, especially with this truck coming up, right? It's like, okay, actually we want to put as much money into making this dream happen right now. It's taking the forefront of our resources and energy. So we're gonna focus on that and these other things we can put on.
hold and that has been really awesome. So anyway, just some thoughts ⁓ about money, resources, time, what actually matters most to you and as you really zero in on that, it becomes this thrilling and exciting life ⁓ of solving problems and making dreams happen and yeah.
Get to it, my friend. Have a great one.