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Most of us use the filter “can I afford it?” when making money decisions which leaves us feeling powerless when it comes to buying the life we want. But how much we make and how we spend our money is entirely in our control. In today’s podcast I interview money coach Nicole Stork-Hestad, who shares her mindset around money and money decisions. We talk about how to leverage debt, the discomfort of spending money on ourself and ultimately the mindset that is required to buy the life you dream of living.
Topics in this episode:
What it takes to “tell the dollars where to go”
Why talking to your future self is important and what to ask her about money
Debt and why it’s not bad
Feeling worthy to spend money on yourself
Irradiating the money decision filter – “can I afford it?” and what filter to use instead
The discomfort that comes with buying the life you want to live
Show Notes & References:
To learn more about Nicole Stork-Hestad and her work:
Ready to invest in the balanced and happy life that you desire? Hire me as a coach. The process starts with a free breakthrough call. You can schedule that here: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
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Transcript
Intro
Hello, ambitious working moms. I have a real treat for you today. On the podcast, I am interviewing Nicole Stork-Hestad. Nicole is a working mom of three. And she is a money coach. She coaches individuals and couples on how to love every money decision they make and how to make decisions to build a life that they feel amazing about.
This conversation is just gonna blow your mind because we talk about a way of thinking about money that's very different than how we're taught to think about money, in a more traditional sense. She starts out by saying that she never looks at her bank account to determine whether she can afford something or not.
Instead, she decides what she wants and then she tells the dollars what to do and you're gonna hear me actually wrestle with this concept and push back a little bit from her. Like, I really wanted to understand what she meant by that. How do you tell dollars what to do? That feels so woo woo and a little illogical on some level.
Freedom around money.
What you're gonna see as we talk about it, is a way that she thinks about money versus a way that I've thought about money, or probably you think about money, where she believes that she controls every single dollar that comes in and every future dollar that she has, and how the way she thinks about money brings about this sense of freedom and control and spaciousness and abundance that for many of us we just never experience.
We talk about debt and a new way to think about debt.
In the interview, we talk about debt and a new way to think about debt. We talk about the importance of delayed gratification and talking to your future self about your current money decision. We talk about how every money decision you make should have a return on the investment, and we talk a lot about feeling worthy of spending money on yourself and how to move past the discomfort and the selfishness or irresponsibility that many of us feel when we choose to spend money on ourself.
True to my style, this interview picks up mid conversation. Actually, when Nicole logged on for the interview, I was in the middle of reading her story on her website because I didn't actually know how she had become a money coach. Even though we've known each other for quite a while now, a couple of years. We are colleagues. We're in a mastermind together. So I was in the middle of reading this story. And I didn't have her up on my screen, and then all of a sudden she talked and I jumped because the story was so good and I was so engrossed in it that she startled me when she came on. And I just had to have her tell me in her own words how the rest of the story went so that I could capture it here on this podcast.
So you're gonna hear the latter half of her story on essentially how she became a money coach and how that all came about. All you really need to know, like the earlier part is that she got married in 2007, just after graduating college, and then of course the 2008 market crash happened and she and her husband just couldn't find full-time work.
They ended both getting a low paying job that was just part-time and they just started swimming in debt and they couldn't afford health coverage. And they had all of these student loans that were starting to come in that they couldn't pay back. And what she says is that the only thing that she and her husband could think of doing was just to apply for grad school. And she tells the story about how in order to afford the application fees, they ended up having to eat mac and cheese for two weeks.
Anyway, it's such a great story. So that's essentially where we pick up is that she and her husband have decided that they have to go to grad school and they have to figure out how to afford it and how to just pay to just get themselves there.
And then she's going to share the rest with you. It's so good. I can't wait for you to get to know Nicole and hear her story, and hear her thoughts about how to think about money. This is so good. Y'all ready? Let's get to it.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast. The place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.
Rebecca: Here is what I love. If I'm in the middle of reading your story, cuz I didn't know your story, I'm at the point where you had to decide if you were gonna go to graduate school or not, right? And you say, you know, this felt like an impossible decision. Like you couldn't afford it. Literally on paper you could not afford it.
And yet, your future could not afford for you to not do this. Tell me, tell me, just tell me in your own words what happens after.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yes, well, I go to grad school.
Rebecca Olson: You do end up going? And what do you go to grad school for?
Nicole’s Story
Nicole Stork-Hestad: The program that took me? And that's the honest truth, like, my husband and I, we made a decision to not pay our rent in full. Like, these were the choices we were up against.
Rebecca Olson: Wow, to not pay your rent in full.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Not pay our rent and full. And we decided to, I think that week, our dinner every night was like, craft mac and cheese. We literally did not buy anything for two weeks and we delayed paying our rent in full and we each made a deal. We had enough for both of us to pay two application fees each. And so we each got two programs and our goal was the program we thought would take us and pay us a stipend.
So we needed stipend-paying programs, so we each applied to two and charmed our landlord. I remember talking to our landlord and he was like, "Where's the rest?" I was like, "You'll get it". It felt like one of those movies, like, you'll get it when you get it right. And then we both did our best to try to work overtime, but it was the 2008 financial crisis.
And so literally, and we lived in this like tiny space south of Atlanta.
Rebecca Olson: And you describe it in here as being infested with cockroaches.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: I don't put this in there. At least I don't think I had it in there. We moved into our apartment, we came back from our honeymoon and we were like, "Everything's gonna be great." We got into our apartment and within the first five days we had our first shooting in the complex.
Rebecca Olson: My God, in the complex?
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So our unit was here and it was the unit that was like caddy corner to us. They had a shooting. And I say our first. So we lived in that complex for 11 months and I think we were privy to five different shootings, not including any other crimes.
Rebecca Olson: That's crazy. Okay, so what was this program though? Tell me about the program you got accepted to and you went to.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: I got accepted to the University of Kentucky, which, we live in Lexington now, so we actually ended up really loving it here. I got accepted into the University of Kentucky's family studies program
Rebecca Olson: Family Studies. I don't even know what that is.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Exactly.
Rebecca Olson: It's the study of families. What is that?
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So I got in based on my psychology degree and like my psychological stuff. But I got in and to be honest, I applied because I have family in Kentucky and I was like, we could be close to family. So if anything happens, we're an hour from family. So we applied to, and I don't even remember what the other program was that I applied to now, but I was like, I think I can get in cause this is a small enough program and I look good enough on paper that I think I can.
Taking a leap of faith.
And they had a stipend. That was the rule. If they didn't pay their grad students a stipend and cover tuition, we couldn't apply. Not every program does that, or the ones that do are super hyper-competitive. And so I was like, we can't. I said I need to be a bigger fish and a smaller pond. Like I don't even care what it is.
We have to do something different. So I won. I got in, I'm the one that got into grad school. I got the highest paying stipend with tuition covered.
Rebecca Olson: And you moved from basically outside Atlanta to kentucky?
Nicole Stork-Hestad: We moved from the south side of Atlanta to central Kentucky about an hour from where Stacy is.
Rebecca Olson: Oh, I see. Okay.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So where we were in Louisville, I'm a little bit, it's the coastline.
Rebecca Olson: Fast forward a little bit though for me, like how did that program lead you to being a money coach?
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Oh, so when you get there, you have a stipend, right? Which means you have to do work as a grad student, they can do a job, and it's usually a teacher's assistant or research assistant, or both. So you could have a full stipend where you did both. And I got a half stipend doing a teaching assistant. Well, the teacher I got paired with was the personal finance and family economics professor, part of the family science program.
They did these two or three courses in money and how it affects the family. And I got paired with him and he was like, "Great, you're gonna be grading." Cuz he's Korean. And so he was like, "I really don't like grading cuz I don't like reading in English that much. And so you're gonna be doing it all. So here's the textbook, here are all the journal articles. Become a money expert." And I was like, "I don't know if you know this, but I am $4,200 in credit card debt. Just trying to get here to this program." I don't know if I'm the one that should be here because we couldn't even just pay our bills two months ago. Okay…
Rebecca Olson: That's crazy. But something about that must have been super transformational for you.
Understanding this money stuff feels like the key to everything.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Well, it was one of those things where it was like, I literally know nothing about this, so I guess better get to work. So I read the textbook, three times cover to cover. I read every article he gave me, and then I was like, "This seems like the key to everything. Understanding this money stuff feels like the key to everything."
You know, as a student you get a library card to the university library and I probably wore a hole in mine. Like, I checked out every book. I started reading white papers on it. So I was reading economics journals, like everything, anything, finances. I was like, this is the shit, right? Like, knowing this is gonna change everything for me.
And so probably two months after I started that TA, I looked at my husband and I said, I want sole control over our finances. I was like, that doesn't mean I'm not gonna talk to you about it, but like I wanna do it. I'm gonna change everything. I think I'm getting something down. Do you trust me to figure this out for us? And he said yes. And he was like, yes, take it. Do it all. Please take it away. I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm exhausted. Don't even talk to me about it. I just, basically, I changed all of our rules. We were my first client, me and my husband,
Rebecca Olson: Okay. Wait, wait. I wanna hear some of these rules. so, When you say change the rules, what did you change?
Creating a system.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: I changed the rules. I changed the rules on literally everything from how we physically paid for stuff. I created a system for us that it became easy for me to see what we were paying for and how much money was left. This is how we paid for stuff. So if he paid for something in cash, I was like, what are you doing? That's not part of the system.
I created something for us that I could track with minimal effort. And then on top of that, I created a way for me to make money go exactly where I needed it to go at all times.
Rebecca Olson: That sounds very magical.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Well, and my husband, we reflect on that time and it was like we were in this chaotic space where every decision we would go look at our bank account to make the decision.
“I never check my bank account to make a decision.”
And what happened after I started doing this implementing and experimenting in this way, was we started making decisions and then I would make the money do the thing. Like, I never check my bank account to make a decision. I make a decision and then I tell my bank account, "Hey, we're doing this, so you better fund it."
Rebecca Olson: Hold on, we're going to talk about this for a second, because that feels so foreign to me, and I am sure a lot of people. You probably, I mean, I will for sure use parts of this on the podcast as hearing your story, so we're just gonna dive right into it. So the money is either there or it's not. I know you enough to know that you're also a very linear person, and it's very, I mean, you are a dreamer, but you don't live in that kind of outer rim space.
You're very linear, you're very logical. So am I. And the idea that you're telling me, to me it's like the money's either there or it's not, which is how you're telling me you approached it before. It's like, if we have it, then we'll pay for it, and if we don't, then we won't. I don't understand the other way of thinking about it. Tell me about that
“I have a deep-seated belief that the money is there because I said it was going to be there.”
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So the other way of thinking about it is really like, it's this deep seated belief that the money is there because I said it was going to be there. Of course, the money is there. I told it to go there. Does this make sense?
Rebecca Olson: I mean, how do you manifest that?
“I make it, I earn it. I don’t manifest”
Nicole Stork-Hestad: I don't. I make it. I don't manifest, I earn it. Just to put it in real terms, like prior to going into our own businesses, which is a whole different money craziness, but like, the highest income my family ever had combined prior to my husband and I jumping into our own businesses - he jumped in 2018, I jumped in 2019 - so 2018, we have been married and being a family since 2007. So from 2007 to 2018, the highest our joint income has ever been was $76,000. In that time with just $76,000, actually, lower than that.
Cuz when I think about everything we've made our money do in that time, our income was so much lower when we started doing these things. And that was when he finally got a job. For a while we were on one income, just me, and my highest at that point was 42,000 I think. And we went on our vacations. I bought a house and a car and we went on a trip to Aruba in the same year on 42K. And we had two kids.
"I've never been afraid of debt."
And the guy that did our mortgage for our house, he was like, "I've never seen a credit score like this. What are you doing?" And I was like, I think it's just the way I think about these things. This is how I wanna do it. And I've also, during that time I've leveraged debt too. I've never been afraid of debt and it's because I used it. I used it to further my life.
Debt, it's just an investment.
And so I always think, like, whenever I have debt, it's just an investment. I'm gonna get something back from that, as long as it was an intentional use. And so during this time I kept thinking, yeah, it seemed like we really didn't have enough money on paper. We didn't have enough money to be doing everything we were doing. And yet, we were doing it because we were resourceful.
“I think my number one thing is: my yes is yes.”
I did not outsource my choices to my inanimate object of dollars. I made my choices and then I just told the dollars what to do differently to make that choice happen. And at that income level, you are saying no to a lot of other things in order to say yes to the things you wanna say yes to. For me, I think my number one thing is: my yes is yes. And that means anything that's not that yes is just a no.
Just even like, okay, we're either gonna pay rent or we're gonna apply to get out of this hole. Okay. I guess we're gonna only pay half the rent. That's my yes. Like, I'm applying to these things, so I'm gonna have a mad landlord. I'm gonna have to call the electric company. We're only eating mac and cheese for the next two weeks. Those are the decisions, because that's not the yes. The thing that was the yes was like, we're getting out of this. Like this is the goal right now. And so depending on your income level, that lower income level, you do say no to a lot of things in order to say yes to something.
However, I have not stayed at that income level and our income level has still gone up every year. And now that I'm at a higher income level with my husband, like now that we're in six figures rather than, you know, Like, now that we're, you know, both have six..
Rebecca Olson: Above the poverty line…
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Like now that we're in our, you know, this higher level of bringing in money, it's one of those things where like continuing that mindset has really served us so that we can continue to do what we wanna do when we wanna do it.
Sometimes that means saying no to something that we really wanna do in favor of the thing that we really wanna do more.
Now we get to choose between two yeses a lot of times, but it's still serving because I tell the money, the money doesn't tell me anything. Does that make sense?
Rebecca Olson: Sort of. I mean, sort of. But when I think about what that would look like tangibly, I don't have any clue what you mean on a practical level. Gimme an example of something that you're telling the money to do today that maybe isn't in the bank right now.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So something that I'm telling my money to do right now that isn't technically in the bank is that my husband and I made the decision this year to buy a veterinarian clinic. And so that's another example too, of leveraging debt. We had to leverage a massive amount of debt, a very uncomfortable amount of debt, even for me.
Like it's a $1 million purchase, and so we're telling our dollars, that's the thing. And in order to get that kind of loan, I had to tell money - that I had not even created for this year, to go towards making that loan the best possible terms. So like, the lowest possible interest rate, the max amount of money that they would give so that he could have like revolving capital when he takes over.
You know, like just different reasons to channel our income and even like our credit, like our available credit, into being ready for this thing. And we decided that we were gonna go for the purchase in 2022, which we don't close, we're gonna close at the end of this month, but like we went for the purchase in 2022 with the goal of a December close.
So like we made that decision in April, and so like from April to December dollars, we hadn't even made, they were allocated to that space. And decisions we would've made are things that we would've done, we said no to. So last year we celebrated 15 years of marriage and we were supposed to go on a European vacation and we said no. We're like, no. We'll wait.
Rebecca Olson: Because you had allocated the money toward getting the best terms for this loan, and that is where you wanted the money to go.
Aiming for the bigger yes.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: That was the bigger yes. Like, Greece is still like, it was supposed to be a Greece vacation, right? Like it's still a yes, and we still want to go. It's just this year it was like one of those things where it's like, okay, we could do that, or I could take that money and invest it into this big Yes, and actually probably pay for Greece.
Knowing what your yes’s are.
Like maybe we could even do a bigger trip than we even planned before, because this one is an investment. And so it's just knowing where you're yes’s are. That's the other one too. Like yes’s should return something to you, either physical like return and money or an emotional return or a mental return.
In my mind, you should get some kind of capital back when you spend money.
Rebecca Olson: So sometimes when, I mean before as you were talking about, you know, telling the dollars what you want them to do, are you oftentimes telling the dollars in the future where you want them to go ultimately? I mean, you can move current money around. Obviously that's an easy thing to do potentially, but it's the future money that you're starting to say, here's where I'm at. Here's the yes. Here's where I'm allocating it. Here's the decision I'm making and here's what I'm not going to do. So there's no immediate gratification or, I mean, maybe sometimes there is, but this is, there's a lot of delay gratification
Nicole Stork-Hestad: There is a lot of delayed gratification, which I mean to, and in case anybody is out there thinking to themselves like, well, that's just impossible. Just know that I'm saying this and I am diagnosed ADHD, so impulse control and delayed gratification are not my natural. And really, money management is not a natural strong suit for those of us with differently wired brains and, or like anxieties, right?
Like anxiety changes the brain too. And so you're looking at neurodivergence and or like those with mental health struggles. And this concept, I'm telling you, works with, "I control every dollar. And if I don't have those dollars now I'm telling future dollars they're gonna go there too."
“I'm not afraid to leverage debt within my business.”
And this, I think is also why I'm not afraid to leverage debt within my business, especially because I know that you have a lot of really ambitious women. They're working in your - like, that's who your people are. When I, every time I've leveraged debt, it's another version of telling future dollars where to go. Unfortunately, I needed access to those future dollars now in order to make an investment that I wanted to make, like buying this clinic, right? I could have saved for the million, but I would've delayed making even more money if I could have that back now.
Because now I'm gonna be paying back that million, but I'm also going to be increasing our income, increasing our investment portfolio, right? So it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, no, I feel confident I'm gonna be able to tell my dollars what to do with that and not being afraid of it.
Rebecca Olson: I wanna jump into a conversation about debt because I think this is a really important subject as well. Before I do that, though, like this entire conversation even so far feels very vulnerable to me. And I wanna share that with my listeners because I've come a long way in the way I think about money and what I like to call my relationship to money.
Rebecca’s relationship with money.
Most of the time I still feel like I'm being kind of beat down by it. And I know we've had, we were having a little bit of an exchange of conversation about relationships to money. Like if you were literally to put it into a dating term. If you were to think about if money was the person you were dating or you were in some kind of romantic relationship, how would you describe it?
And as I started to think about that, at first I thought it was like somebody that maybe I was casually dating, and then I realized it probably isn't even that. It's like somebody that I'm almost abusively dating. Like, I'm dating and I know I shouldn't be. And they're so mean to me and they are so controlling and I never get to do what I want.
And there feels like no freedom. And yet I'm so tethered to them, like it feels really unhealthy or it has in the past. And I'm kind of edging out of that, for sure. And I'm moving into this place of like, I don't want that relationship anymore. It's time to let it go and move on.
But I know for many of us, even in the way you just initially were describing the big shift that you initially made, which was to stop looking at the bank account to make decisions and to make decisions, I assume, based on desire, want, goals, future you, all of those things. That's how you make your decisions and then you make the money happen and you then make the money happen either by moving current money around or allocating future money, which means you're probably gonna have to say no to things or what you're talking about now, or what we're about to talk about is leveraging debt, right, and taking on debt.
And I'm summarizing a little bit. I think that's where we are out of this conversation.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: That was like, that was a really good summarization.
Inherited money mindset.
Rebecca Olson: Yeah. So let's talk about leveraging debt a little bit, because I came from a kind of a money mindset was what was taught to me in my family, or at least the one that I adopted - actually would say my dad and my mom have very different views of money - but the one I adopted was that debt is bad and that you should never take it on, and you should only ever pay for things that you have money in the bank account for right now.
And there are some exceptions to things like a car, things like a house, things like education. But probably outside of those three things, like there probably isn't any other thing that you should ever be spending money on that would acquire debt. So that's what I learned growing up. And so my relationship with debt has been very tumultuous for sure. And I feel so much guilt for taking on debt and it's so uncomfortable and so insecure, and I would imagine lots and lots and lots and lots of people experience that same thing.
It becomes this almost identity to me. I'm doing something wrong. I'm irresponsible, I'm a bad person. I'm terrible with my money. I don't know what I'm doing. It's all of this identity stuff. Then that comes with the debt. You know, the choices that I make. And maybe you were there too, or not, early on. But I'm curious how you think about debt now and what you teach your clients to think about debt.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So what's interesting is like debt, I've always had a semi positive relationship with debt.
Rebecca Olson: Oh, interesting.
“I used debt in a moment to survive.”
Nicole Stork-Hestad: And it wasn't because I learned that from anybody or like my parents taught me that, or anything like that. It was because I used debt in a moment to survive, was the first time I used debt. I used it to survive. I needed something necessary and this was how I was gonna get it. And it was either do this or starve.
Rebecca Olson: Or live on the street.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: When you're in that situation where you're like, okay, I guess I'm gonna borrow money then so that I don't starve. You tend to have this like, "Oh, thank God this was here. I'm so glad I had access to this like lifeline when I needed it."
“When I use debt - I'm borrowing from future me's income.”
And now I think of it as, which I think this is, like I'm my own venture capitalist. When I use debt - I'm borrowing from future me's income, from future me's wealth, in order to actually ensure that that happens now. And so when I think about that, I'm like, well, yeah, of course future me doesn't mind to help create the future where she can be borrowed from.
Rebecca Olson: Hold on. So I wanna like sit with this image for you. Debt is borrowing from your future self. So you're taking dollars that your future self is going to earn. And you are just saying, "May I use these, please, right now, for something that I want today that I don't wanna wait for, for whatever reason, whatever that decision is."
Do you have like criteria on which that's okay to borrow from future you ? Like, is it anything and everything? Like how do you think about that?
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So when I think about going to my future self, like if you, it's a really fun exercise too, and when I think about borrowing from her, it's almost like walking into a banker's office. And she's sitting on one side of the desk and I sit on the other side of the desk and I say, "I would like this."
The golden question: Why?
And she always says the number one question, which is why? Why do you want this? And so that really makes me check in with the impulse control or like that sense of delayed gratification. Like, okay, yeah, if I'm gonna borrow money, right? And if you like to think about it too if it helps you to build into this exercise, like think about going to your parents for money, right?
Think about going to someone else for money and saying, I would like to borrow money from you that I intend to pay back by this deadline. They're gonna wanna know what that money's for so that they can ensure that you're gonna actually be able to pay it back. So like if you go to buy a house and you're like, I would like a mortgage, please.
The bank's like, what's your income? What kind of house are you buying? Nope. You can't afford that kind of house based on your income, according to our system or formula, right? That's too risky. This is the amount you're allowed to have. It's kind of that similar conversation.
And just like you wouldn't go to the bank to ask for a mortgage and then you would blow that on, you know, you're like, "Actually, I think I'm gonna go around the world in 80 days, you know, and not buy a house."
The bank would be like, "Nope. We need to see proof of the house. You have to go through these steps." So when you think about borrowing from your future self, it's very similar criteria. You wanna go to your future self and you wanna be like, " I am buying this. And that future version of you says, why? And you have to know, why am I doing this?
Rebecca Olson: What are the benefits? What's the gain? This comes back to you. You should gain something from your yes.
Gaining something from your yes.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Something from your Yes. Right. This, it ties in like, your yes should get you something back. And sometimes, I mean, I have made the case for emotional capital to my future self. I need this. I need this right now because I'm so low that this is what I need right now and this is why I want this thing.
Rebecca Olson: Just to be clear, what you're saying is like your happiness is an okay reason to borrow money from your future self.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Well, maybe not so much happiness, cuz that one, you know, is like, you can't be unhappy all the time. But it's like my mental stability and emotional stability needs this right now. So the example that I'm thinking of is when I hired my first coach, I did not have that money. I did not have that money anywhere.
Even as good as I was with money, I could not have anticipated the place my brain and my heart were in enough to have planned for something like that. And all of our dollars had already been told to go to different yes’s. And at the time I just had my, I just had my third kid who was unplanned. Bless his heart, we love him, but he was not supposed to be here, so that was a little thrown off too.
I had quit my job because of the emotional, like, it was killing me. And so it was one of those things where it was like literally not bringing in money right now. I am so at a place where something's gotta give and it felt like my decision to apply to grad school all over again.
Invest in getting out of the hole.
It was like, okay, either we're gonna apply to grad school and we're gonna have these terms and we're gonna invest in getting out of this hole, this mental pit that I've created for myself, or we're gonna pay rent in full this month. And so when I think about that, I didn't have to skip rent. My kids did not go hungry. Nobody ate mac and cheese for a week, but I leveraged the excellent credit that I had to secure debt and use debt, or the word I prefer is credit, right?
“...that investment has returned to me a hundredfold by now.”
I borrowed from my future self to pay for my first coach, and that investment has returned to me a hundred fold by now. Like my first coach was $800 a month and I'm like, cool. That was such a smart choice. That was such a good decision, you know, well done Nicole. Great job.
And so when you're talking about debt, like yes, and this is why going to the future self is so important because it checks your thing that you're buying. And if you have to check and you're like, I just wanna feel good, right? You're like, okay, great. Are you creating a sustainable way of feeling good? Like, it's just not like a moment of happiness, but like a way to actually create thriving in your life is very different.
Cuz I could have easily spent that $800 on like what I would've spent it on, now that I think about it. But you know, I could've gone away for the weekend or I could've found something that would've been more fleeting. But when checking with my future self, my future self's like, that's not gonna have the same returns as like this decision.
That's another one with leveraging debt too, that you get to be like, no, I'm not a terrible person. I'm actually creating a better me with this.
Rebecca Olson: And anything where you're creating a better you, probably worth borrowing from your future.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: 1000%.
Rebecca Olson: Which is why we're coaches, right? And I have this conversation with my clients all the time as they consider investing in coaching with me.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: They should, by the way, everybody just checking. Just letting you know. You should definitely do it. She's worth every penny. Go.
Rebecca Olson: Thank you, Nicole. But this conversation around irresponsibility. It feels irresponsible and usually it feels irresponsible because you're borrowing from your future self, yes. But you're also borrowing from what feels like your family might benefit from as well. Right? You are potentially deciding to not take the vacation, for example, or something along those lines where everybody in the household benefits.
And this feels like it's like an individual benefit and that feels terrible and it feels selfish and it feels irresponsible to do that. And, you know, people can go in circles around this, and I mean, I would imagine some of these conversations come up for you as well, and having to really think about the benefit of you being the best mom in your family and showing up as the best version of you and the effect that will have lifelong on your kids and on your marriage, and in your work, and so forth. Versus a seven day vacation or whatever it may be, which is gonna come and go, and you're gonna return to the life and the stress and the situation that you are in before. It can be hard to get our brains there to see it. And because for a lot of the women that listen to this podcast too, they're breadwinners in their family.
Investing in yourself doesn’t always feel easy.
And so they do, they feel the quote burden of making the most money and needing to be the breadwinner and keeping the family financially afloat. So the investment in ourself feels so difficult, and hard.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So let's just break down what is that actual feeling that we have, because I'm having a thought. Okay. I just wanna see, you used the word selfish and irresponsible.
Rebecca Olson: Yeah, those tend to be the ones that come up the most and they're the ones that I have felt, you know, for sure. Though I have now invested, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in at this point.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Which again, paying off. Right? Good call. Good call past, Rebecca. Well done. Right.
Rebecca Olson: Yes.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Thinking about these two words, and then you use the word difficult. But is it difficult because it feels irresponsible and selfish?
Rebecca Olson: Yes.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Okay, so difficult. Really, the difficult comes from the emotional difficultness of that experience. Like this guilt or selfishness or irresponsibility, and I would just like to offer that those feelings feel better and you choose selfish, irresponsible, or guilty. You would rather feel those feelings, than worthy of an investment.
Consider yourself worthy of investing in.
Because that is actually the more difficult feeling to feel is considering yourself worthy of investing in, because that concept really goes against all of our societal training as women and especially as mothers, right?
Rebecca Olson: Yeah.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: That we are to be the martyrs of our home. We're supposed to be these super humans that go out and work our jobs and bust it to make, like you said, a lot of these women are breadwinners, like they have to go out, they're providers for their home, right? So they're out in the world. Then they've gotta come home and they shift into that second shift of mom levels.
So they're running to karate or swim lessons or therapies or ball games or whatever after hours. And on the weekends, they're still primary grocery shoppers, house cleaners, a lot of them are still doing their laundry and they're making sure that dinner is served somehow, whether it's Chick-fil-A or pizza or they cook something. They're carrying that mental load as well. So you have these women who have been taught that.
Rebecca Olson: We're like conditioned. It's a regular experience to feel unworthy and to feel guilt or to feel heavy or weigh down.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: And this is just a personal theory. I can't prove this, but I think there's been this ultimate conditioning to keep women out of the workplace. I think that's why it's here. Because I look at my husband sometimes, and when we've had these conversations, he's very open to it, but he's like, yeah, it's just not as mentally hard for me as it is you.
And he's a doctor. Like he cuts things open for a living and performs surgeries, but, and like actually saves little furry lives every day. And I'm like, yeah, I do feel more mentally tired than you most of the time.
Rebecca Olson: Yeah.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: But it's been made easy. He is not emailing the school counselor actively. Right? Like I replied to that email before we got an hour before this call of like trying to book our IEP meeting for our kid, right? I'm like, "Hey, they wanna have the IEP meeting at this time on this day". And he is like, "Oh, I can't make that. I've got work". And I'm like, "Wait a minute. I have work." and I'm like moving around clients and I'm like cutting into my like actual…Why did you have to do that and not him?
This opens up a whole nother like…I feel like this is easier for you somehow, and I just wanna offer that that is a conditioning that we get to choose and have agency to step out of at any time just by deciding we're worth the investment, even if we need to leverage debt to do it because our actual feel better has an amazing ripple effect to our family.
It is easier sometimes to choose like, "Oh no, it's selfish", or, "Oh, I'm being irresponsible", or feeling that guilt over feeling powerful, worthy, and, and like I am an investment actually. Thank you. You know,
Rebecca Olson: Yeah, because you do have to get there at some point if you're going to make the investment in yourself and something like coaching or something that you want. I mean, if we even just move it outside of coaching, but just anything that you want.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Going back school...
Rebecca Olson: Right, going back to school or making a career pivot where you don't make as much money, or anything along those lines.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Or like, help with your health, or outsourcing at home, like getting someone to come clean your house rather than you trying to fit it in between all this. There are so many times where especially working moms deny themselves something that they, it would be tight now and it would be uncomfortable to do. We would have to figure out how to make it a part of our new system, but it would be so worth it for their overall growth and thriving as a person to do it, you know?
We use money as an excuse.
I think we use money as an excuse sometimes to not do the hard thing of like, "Okay, well if I hire a coach, I have to fit coaching in, right?"
Like I have to fit in, you know, like, what is your Rebecca, you do like an hour, right? So like you do an hour a week, they're like, "Where am I gonna fit that hour a week?" And rather than trying to figure that out, they're like, oh, I'm just selfish for investing. It just feels selfish. It just feels impossible. It just feels like I would be irresponsible to be doing that.
I’m going to figure out how to pay for it.
And really I just, I would like to offer that that feels better than like, okay, I'm gonna figure out how to pay for it and how to fit it in, and how to do the work that I'm gonna need to do in order to like make everybody's life better, starting with mine. Like, out of the outflow of my betterness, everybody benefits.
Rebecca Olson: Yes. I love that so much. And when you're convinced of that, it makes the investment, the spending of the dollars or the borrowing of the dollars easier. It starts to make logical sense, because you are really understanding the gain of it.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: You said earlier where you're like, "No, if the dollars aren't there, then we can't do it, and it doesn't make sense". Like, it wasn't making sense that you make a decision and then you tell the dollars where to go, even if they're not physically there yet. This is how it makes sense. Like you just said, like logically, this makes so much sense because this is a no-brainer to do so.
I'm gonna figure out how to pay for it in any way possible with my time, my energy, and my money.
Rebecca Olson: One of the things I coach on with my clients or my potential clients, but I have also done the work a lot in myself when it comes to money, is to never use money as an excuse. Not having the money is never an excuse. It is the most powerless way to make decisions is to say, I can't afford it, like eradicating it from your vocabulary.
You can absolutely afford everything and anything you ever want.
Whether it's current money that you have today or you're borrowing it from your future self, or it's a combination of saving and then borrowing in, whatever it may be. That belief that I could really afford any lifestyle or anything that I ever want.
It would be uncomfortable potentially to do lots of those things that would have to happen in order for me to make the life that I want, the purchase that I want, the coaching that I want, the car that I want, the house that I want, the whatever life, the housekeeper that I want, right? It might be very uncomfortable to do the things that it would require for me to have it, but it's possible.
And it's so important to take our brains to the point of, "How would I make this happen right now if I were to do it?" If I were to invest in the coaching, if I were to buy the car, if we were gonna get the house, like how would we do it? Go through the exercise of figuring it out, no matter how uncomfortable it would be. I'd have to ask my parents for money because I don't have enough credit to do it. We would have to eat mac and cheese for weeks. We would have to give up alcohol altogether, whatever it may be.
You can make it happen.
Figure out how you would make it happen so that your brain can see, it's possible. You don't have to allocate this decision out to your bank account. You can make it happen. And now it's just a decision on do you want to, is it worth whatever it's gonna take in order to do it, and having a really honest conversation with yourself if the answer's no.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yeah, I like to, like you said, this idea of like, "I can't afford it". I always like to say, okay, we spend a lot of time finding all, we're really primed, and it's like a default response to figure out how we can't afford it. Saying no to ourselves. It's just our natural state. And so I always like to be like, okay, now that I've answered that question, how can I not not afford it? Like put my double negative in there. Like, not even how, like why?
Rebecca Olson: Why can I not afford it?
Ask yourself, why can I not, NOT afford it.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Why is it that I can't not not afford this? Essentially saying, why do I have to afford this?
Rebecca Olson: Why is this the most important thing above all?
Nicole Stork-Hestad: And really create that list with the same passion and confidence that you create the "I can't afford it" evidence for. And just really compare the two for a second. Because a lot of times we just don't direct our brain to our own benefit. We just don't do it. We're not practiced at it.
We just go to no, when it's anything that feels uncomfortable.
Another reason to hire Rebecca as a life coach, just saying, but like you're not practiced at looking at your decisions in a way that you spend time in both the yes and the no. We just go to no, when it's anything that feels uncomfortable, new, or we could fall on our face doing it and not get a return. But if you say to yourself, "Yeah, I'm definitely gonna get a return", even if it's that I learn, I don't know, that I hate coaching and I need a therapist instead. I don't know, like, whatever it is, like you're gonna get a return and if you can guarantee yourself that and you are the only person you're relying on to get it, that's when you start to feel the agency and the power around your financial decisions and you stop outsourcing them as much.
“A lot of times, as women especially, and moms, we outsource our financial decisions.”
Because a lot of times, as women especially, and moms, we outsource our financial decisions, the ones that we know we need to make, and we permission seek with them. But it's only because the fear of the responsibility of that decision being all on us, and we would be to blame if something went wrong is so uncomfortable that we're like, "No, no, no, we need to - my husband said no. My husband said we can't do it. My husband doesn't think it's a good idea." That's because you asked permission rather than you pitched your husband. And if you're a working mom, you know what a pitch is. You know you have to go to people and be like, "This isn't working", or, "I think this could be working better."
And you've gotta go with like, "This is what we need to do. This is how we need to do it. This is where we're gonna get the funds from. This is what I wanna cut." This is like, especially if you're in any kind of like upper level position, you know how to do this lady, don't kid yourself. You just want somebody to tell you no because then you don't, you're off the hook.
Rebecca Olson: Then you don't have to go through the discomfort.
I really think when it comes to money, if you're using money as your excuse, or the reason why you cannot do something really it's just because you are afraid you can't do it.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: I really think when it comes to money, if you're using money as your excuse, or the reason why you cannot do something really it's just because you are afraid you can't do it. And everybody just accepts money as like, "Oh, right, you can afford-" like, it's a, everybody just accepts it. Unless of course they come to me, you, and we're like, "Um, no, no."
Rebecca Olson: I mean, it's kind of similar in the way that everybody understands, oh, my kid is sick. I can't do X, Y, or z. Or, I gotta go take care of this with my kid, or I gotta leave early to do something with my kid. But to say I'm going to leave or I'm going to take PTO because I want to, our brain gets, so there's so much uncomfortable feelings that surface, and our nervous system goes crazy because it feels so selfish and because we don't feel worthy of it. As you were saying earlier, because of all these things, but whenever it's our kid, it's like, oh yeah, everybody understands that. And it makes sense.
Same thing with spending money. Sometimes I talk to potential clients and I say, well, if your kid wanted to do this, let's just say they were older and they wanted to do this, and they pitched this to you, what would you tell them? And they'd be like, "oh, their happiness is everything I would tell them to go after it." and I'm like, what the heck?
They see it? You know? It's like, no, no, no.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: One of those things where, like the other thing, and I would like to put this, like I know that not every working mom has girls or humans that identify as girls. And I would just like to say that one of the things that I bring my brain back around to, cuz like we both know Rebecca, like our brains are human brains, too. We get stuck in these things too. We have come up against investments or like decisions where you are looking at bettering our lives for the simple fact that we deserve and want better and we come up with, "Oh, the money", right? And we have this thing.
And then I remember that I have two little girls. I remember I have two daughters who are watching me and who are already making their own money decisions. They get an allowance, they make money decisions for themselves, and I keep thinking, "How do I want them to make their money decisions with the dollars they earned?" They earned those dollars by doing hard work, and here they are. Do I want them to learn that by using those dollars that they worked their butts off for to get, I have the power to tell them what they can do with their money, or do I want them to feel they have the power that of what they can do with their money and let them just make those decisions and learn?
And I think that's something too, like if you were a woman, the chances of you making your own money decisions growing up, or ever, was probably very small until you got your first job. And even then you may have been checking your money decisions against someone else or like, because nobody taught you how to make money decisions at a young age, you felt irresponsible with your money when you first started making it because you didn't know what to do. You literally did not have a financial education.
And so I would just like to offer that one, there's still time to learn those things and learn them well. Life's not over. You're still here. Two, have grace for the you that didn't know you didn't know. Nobody taught you. That's not on you. What is on you, what you do now with the dollars that you earn and the mentality you wanna use for yourself moving forward.
Rebecca Olson: What strikes me is that process of learning. As with anything that we learn, it's uncomfortable.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: So uncomfortable.
We have to face the uncomfortable feelings.
Rebecca Olson: It's so hard to learn. We have to face the things that we don't have. We have to feel guilty about it. We have to feel selfish about, I mean, all these emotions are gonna come up at least momentarily that we have to face. They're all gonna feel terrible to us, and we're gonna come to the other side of it.
I feel like I faced this with my daughter who is eight and in second grade when we talk about things like math or reading. And she just wants it to be easy. And that's kind of what she tells me. It's like, I just want this to be easy and it's not. And like, yeah, the other hard work, the learning process is one of discomfort. And that to get to the other side, the benefits. Let's talk about the benefits. And we do talk about that every once in a while.
One of the ones that it's funny to me that comes up. It's like, "I can secretly read your texts if I know how to read" I'm like, "Yes, you can."
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Yes, I love it, but like it's just so good because like you're teaching the daughter and how doing the hard thing now and being uncomfortable now is actually, like, reading is gonna be easy for her one day.
Rebecca Olson: Yes, of course.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: You know, like basic subtraction is gonna be easier for her. Like it is gonna get easier because she is doing the work to make it easier.
Living in a tolerable version of our lives.
And it's when we just keep delaying that work and living in a tolerable version of our lives, we literally could be buying a better version of our lives just by investing in the thing we know we need to invest in. And I think as working moms specifically, like it is our obligation to set these examples because nobody taught us.
And right now a lot of us are not teaching our daughters or even our sons, how to, like, there are a lot of things with men and money that need to dissipate too. And so, I just feel strongly that if you're listening to this podcast, everyone, you know the value of coaching, and you would go through these discomforts like Rebecca said, but also you would have a coach to sit with you if you made that investment.
Buying the life that you wanna live.
Rebecca Olson: That is what the coaching industry is all about, essentially, right? It's helping you to live the life that you wanna live today instead of settling for the tolerable life that you currently live. And yes, there's a cost to that. You're buying the life that you wanna live, but why is that not worth it to you? I mean, that's such a big question to be asking. Why not?
Nicole Stork-Hestad: This is my favorite. And I tell my clients this all the time. You're gonna spend your money anyway and you're either gonna be spending it buying this tolerable version like this fine, "we're like dealing with it" version of your life. Like you're gonna use your money to buy that version of your life, or you're gonna use your money to buy the life you actually are proud to live and love and enjoy living.
You’re going to spend that money anyway.
And so, if you're spending your money either way, what are you gonna do? You're gonna go through the pain of spending anyway. What are you gonna buy? What kind of life are you going to buy? Because everything in life is bought. That's my ike money coaching philosophy.
Everything in life is bought. And so you're buying your experience of being burnt out or tired or unbalanced or like feeling stretched thin at home or whatever it is. You're buying that experience for yourself, and so you're spending that money anyway. So you might as well find the money for the coach, or the money for the housekeeper, or the money for like, whatever it is. You might as well be like, okay, well, cuz that actually buys me a life that I really wanna enjoy and thrive in.
Rebecca Olson: Oh, so good. So good. I feel like we could talk about this and we might have to have another podcast to talk about this as my, as I continue to ebb and flow and change in my own relationship with money, I have a feeling there'll be more conversations to come around money on this podcast. But this has been so great, nicole. Thank you for being here, for sharing with us.
Tell us, if somebody is interested in working with you, what should they do? How do they get ahold of you? Give me all of the details, and of course I'm gonna put all of it in the show notes too, but just share a little bit about who do you work with since we didn't really get through that and how they can get ahold of you.
How to get in touch with Nicole.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Hi, my name is Nicole Stork-Hestad. I'm the money coach. I work with individuals and families, couples at the same time. What I do is I teach them the process so that they can always love every money decision that they make, and they can use those decisions to buy and build a life that they're proud to live.
We do that within a four month process. If you're interested in learning more, come stalk me on the medias. I'm on Facebook and Instagram. I secretly have a TikTok. Everything is NSH Money Coaching nshmoneycoaching.com. You'll be able to find me on all of the places and spaces, and I would love to hear from you.
Rebecca Olson: So good. Thank you for being here, sharing your wisdom. You are amazing and have so much to offer us, and so just their world would be such a better place. Their lives would be like shook up, I think. You're gonna be a shake up for somebody to be living the life that they have always dreamed about living.
So, so good. So excited for people to connect with you.
Nicole Stork-Hestad: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Rebecca Olson: Of course. All right. Working moms till next week and let's get to it.
