233. You Can’t Delegate Your Dream Life (And Why That’s a Good Thing)
233. You Can't Delegate Your Dream Life (And Why That’s a Good Thing)
What happens when you step back from the spreadsheets and ask: What do I actually want my life to look like?
In this episode, I’m diving into:
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Why I’ve gone all-in on a holistic approach to money
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What “experiential wealth” really means—and how I used points to book a $20K trip to Korea ✈️
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The mindset shift that made me finally pull the trigger
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How rethinking school (hello, homeschooling!) is reshaping my business
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Why you might already be able to live your dream... you're just not giving yourself permission
💡 Plus: Get the scoop on the Happy & Rich Mastermind, the newly updated Money for Women Physicians course, and my brand new Personal CFO Dashboard.
Hey everyone. It has been a minute. I think, in fact it's been like two and a half months since I've talked to you and so much has happened in the last two and a half months. And I meant to do an episode after my Hawaii conference because I wanted to just talk about how it was, et cetera. I mean, it was amazing. It's like, how can you not have an amazing time at the Four Seasons in Hawaii?
It was amazing. And in case you missed it, you can actually get all of the talks. We recorded them. So go to my website, wealthymomd.com conference. At least I think that's what it is. But if you go to my website, you'll see a link to access it. And I, I'm pretty sure it's just $299 to get all the talks and it comes with 10 CME credits, so truly it's a no brainer.
And 100% of conference attendees basically said they would recommend this to another woman physician. Some of the talks were so powerful. I would say the talk that was the most popular was the one on boundaries and the one on startups. So anyway, if you want to catch the talks then go to my website, wealthymomady.com but what I really wanted to talk about today was first just kind of give you an update on things that are happening around here and tell you about the amazing trip I booked on points.
So one of the things that has been evolving is I've taken a more holistic view on money and I actually started the conference with that. And I don't know if I talked about this, but I started a new mastermind called the Happy and Rich Mastermind. Because at the end of the day, money's a tool. It's a tool to enrich your life, you know, experiences and connection, relationships. That's what makes our life feel rich.
It's the experiences, right? And so, and also like, what's the point of having all this money if you're not enjoying your life? Right? Ultimately it's like there's things that we enjoy and maybe we want to be able to enjoy it more. And some of those things Require money. So I've taken sort of that approach mainly to kind of help my clients and including myself, to kind of zoom out.
Because it's so easy to kind of get stuck in the details, like, should I pay off debt, what should I invest in? And it's like, okay, let's pause. What do you actually want your life to look like? What are the things you want to do more of? What are the things you want to do less of? Short term, long term? That's going to inform what you need to do to grow your money.
Okay. And so just to give you some quick examples, you know, if you're someone like, I really love being a doctor, but, yeah, maybe in five years I would like to work one or two days less, but I don't really see myself quitting completely anytime soon. You have different options than someone who's like, I want to go part time tomorrow, or I want to maybe be able to not work as a physician in the next five years.
So different decisions have to be made for that. And you have to be willing to do things that are outside of your comfort zone. Because the truth is, if you want to have choices sooner, investing in the stock market, specifically in your retirement accounts, isn't going to be enough. Short term anyway. Long term, sure. But if you want choices before age 65, 70, etcetera, you're going to have to do something else.
So then it's like, are you willing to do that? Are you willing to do something else? And I mention real estate a lot because that is really common. Or maybe it's starting a business so you can have a great income and then use that, some of that money, not just for yourself, but also to grow your money. And so again, it comes down to what do you want your life to look like?
And at the conference and in my Mastermind, I present the Life Wheel. And you could just Google Life Wheel. It's not like I invented it. And the Life Wheel is great because it lets you. It helps you assess your life by thinking about specific areas. But again, it's all interconnected. But sometimes when I ask the question, like, well, what do you want your life to look like? People often draw a blank because they're like, well, what part should I think about?
So, for example, it could be around relationships, and that could be a significant other, if you have one. Or maybe you want a significant other. It could be, you know, your children, so you can call that the family unit. It could be around hobbies. Maybe you really want to travel more. That's Pretty much. I would say most of my clients say they want to travel more and they want to work less.
That seems to be the common theme. And that also affects their ability or rather the amount of time they have to spend with their loved ones. Pretty much no one. No one has ever told me they want to work more. So they just want choices, and they want to be able to have the experiences that really enrich their lives. Okay, so once you have an idea of what your life is going to look like in those different areas, and obviously all those things together are your life, then we can have a conversation of, okay, what will it take to do that?
And there are a lot of things you can do now to help to have that. And that's actually one thing a lot of my clients are, oh, why aren't I doing that? Because I think almost we tell ourselves that we can't do things until we have a certain amount of time or money. And there are many things that don't necessarily require that. Some things require more money for sure, but a lot of things don't.
And so I just think it's a great way to kind of take inventory or stock of your life. I really recommend doing this at least annually. And, you know, if you have a partner, this is something both of you should do. I was talking to a client the other day and how, you know when you first meet someone and you're decided this is the person you're gonna spend the rest of your life with, like, all there is is future.
You're talking about your future, about the life you wanna build. And at some point you kind of stop doing that. Especially when kids come along because, you know, you're so busy doing that and taking care of them that it's like. It's like we almost stop dreaming a little bit and kind of go on autopilot. So one thing that I've been wanting to do for a while is to go to Korea.
I am Korean. I was actually there, but I moved here when I was around three years old. And I was waiting for Jack to be a little older because I wanted him to have memories and I wanted him to really be able to fully experience it. I was really attached to flying business class, specifically with Korean air. The last year. I'm like, okay, don't have to fly business class Korean air, because it's pretty hard to get to get point points flights with Korean air business class.
And so I was thinking, okay, maybe I'll just pay cash. And if I'm going to pay cash, well, I can't do that right now. That was kind of like. And I would just kind of go in a big circle. So one of the decisions we recently made. I almost forgot to mention this. If you're on my email list, I talked about it. I think this week or last week is we are going to homeschool Jack this fall.
Starting this fall, he's finishing first grade. So what does that mean? That means I. My travel is not restricted to. To school breaks, thank the Lord, because as you know, school breaks and the airlines know this and the hotels know this is everything will be expensive during those breaks. Even though obviously not every school in the country has the same breaks. But kind of similarly, right between basically March and April, it's like, good luck.
And then winter break. Good luck. Anyway, my mom told me that she's going to Korea this fall, the month of October. And she's obviously fluent in Korean. She grew up there. My Korean is. It's funny, people always ask me, like, oh, how good is your Korean? This is. When I'm speaking to a non Korean person, I'm like, well, I know more than you. You know, I'm probably not giving myself enough credit.
I can actually understand it pretty well. As long as they're not talking about super complicated topics. I probably could speak more than I think I can, but I'm probably just embarrassed. And I can read it because it's a phonetic language. I won't necessarily understand it. So anyway, she told me she was going and I was like, wait a minute, we can go too. Because we're not limited by, you know, school.
And so that's when I got to work with looking for tickets. And I was able to secure two round trip business class tickets for me and Jack. And I'm super excited. They are not Korean Air, but they're pretty damn good. It was Delta specifically, Delta 1 on the way there, on the way back, we're flying Cathay Pacific. I have never done Delta one or Cathay specific. I've only done first or business class with United.
I'm talking about Life Flat, specifically Air France and Emirates. So I'm excited to try some new airline products. That was a lot of points because it was not an optimal redemption. But I also did not spend $12,000 on business class flights because as you know, it's a very long flight. Direct flight from the US to Korea, 15 hours. Okay. Now I was able to book every night on points, as you know, or maybe you don't know.
I'm a Hyatt girl. I Have globalist or top tier status. And I get a lot of points. You know, the conference I had at the Four Seasons, I got a lot of points for that. I got three x points for what I had to pay to the Four Seasons, which was, you know, over a six figure amount. So I have a lot of points. And I charged it on my Chase card specifically because Chase transfers to Hyatt.
So I booked all 16 nights in Hyatt's. And fortunately there are Hyatts in all the major cities in Korea, at least where we're visiting. So. And there's like five of them in Seoul itself. So that was pretty easy. And I have tons of suite upgrade awards. And so what that means is if you book a standard room and a standard suite is available on points, you can upgrade for no additional points.
So I think every night is in a suite, except for the last two nights. I think I was able to use it, but I didn't want to, like, use all my suite certificates. And then I also was able to book a second room for my mom and my stepdad in two of the locations. So I used a lot of points. But I was, I am so excited that this is happening.
In fact, I texted some of my friends and I was like, why aren't you more excited? Like, I'm so excited. I think I'm more excited that I booked the whole trip on points because it's almost like a dream come true. Because this is not something I. I probably would have put this off for a while if I was not able to book that trip on points. The total value that I was able to book, I mean, think about it.
Flights and hotels. I kind of did the math. It's close to $20,000. Cause the flights themselves would have been at least $12,000 for two people, right? Round trip business class to Asia, so. And then 16 hotel nights. Like, just do the math. Like, that would have been a lot of money. And so basically I just. Money to eat and to, I don't know, buy some souvenirs. I mean, what else are we gonna do in Korea except for eat Korean food and like, you know, we'll visit some stuff.
I'm not really big on visiting sites and stuff like that, to be honest. Like, I kind of like just walking around and exploring and eating. So Jack is seven now. He'll be turning eight this fall. And so I'm just so grateful and appreciative that we're doing this now because again, I could totally see myself pushing it off and pushing it Off. And again, if I had to pay cash, I honestly truly don't know when I would have taken the leap to do that.
Okay, so this is a form of experiential wealth. And Devin Gimbel, you may know her as the points girl, she actually talked about that specifically at my conference that travel is experiential wealth. I would say for the people in my life and my clients, travel is such an important thing to them and it does create such an amazing experience and memories for ourselves and our families. And so that's why I'm super into credit card points.
I have a few episodes on credit Card points, so if you search for Devon D E V O N, you'll find episodes about her with her rather. And then I, I believe I had one or two episodes where I talk about Black Friday shopping and credit card points. Because around that time not only are there great deals in terms of price wise, but there are amazing credit card opportunities.
Credit card points, I should say opportunities as well. So we have a while for that. But just want you to, I just want to seed your mind that that's available later this year. And so personally I don't understand when someone's like, oh, I'm not really into credit card points or they don't do it. I just assume they just don't understand that. They just don't understand what's available to them.
In fact, I was that person not that long ago. And Devin would always be like, why aren't you interested in this as a money person? And basically my thoughts were, oh, it's too complicated and it takes up too much time. Honestly, Credit Card points is my video game. Okay. You know, a lot of people, mostly men, play video games that are completely useless and they spend money on money on them, on their phones.
And that's all well and good, but this is my video game and I'm already spending the money on a credit card, so I might as well get points and then learning how to use the points to again get $20,000 worth of value. Like that's just insane and amazing. And when I tell people I'm flying business class on points, they're always like perplexed, like, how did you do that?
And it's not as hard as you think. Okay, so my question to you is, what does experiential wealth mean to you? What does it look like? What are those experiences that you want to have more of? You know, one of the clients in my current mastermind said she would love to go to Italy for a month And I asked her, well, when are you going to do that?
And then she's like, you know what? I could do that next year. I forget when she said next spring or fall. But again, I said earlier, there are things that a lot of us want to do. And it's like, okay, why don't you do it? When they actually. That you may find that you actually have the ability to do it, you just haven't necessarily made it a priority.
So that's what I wanted to talk about today. Just to give you some updates around my business and my life. As I mentioned, we'll be homeschooling this fall. I might even have a whole episode on that, even though it's not really related to money, but I've actually always been interested in it since Jack was a baby. And you might be asking why. And also, there's a lot of misconceptions around homeschooling.
In fact, Matt was so against it and they finally gave in recently. But it's breaking the paradigm that school is what everyone should be doing. We're so indoctrinated that everyone should go to school. Traditional school, I should say, whether it's public school or private school, we don't even stop to think like, is that the most effective way to learn? And as I've done this work in terms of learning money, teaching money, and now I'm a full on entrepreneur, school doesn't teach us that many useful things.
It's actually not even that good at teaching you in a way where you're going to retain it because a lot of the stuff is taught out of context. So I think of. I hate the word homeschooling because that doesn't mean you're like home all day doing stuff. I think of it more as like, I guess you could call it self directed or I think of it as like immersive 3D learning.
And kids are naturally curious. And unfortunately for a lot of people, school kind of kills that curiosity because you're forced to learn things. And most of the things I hear is, oh, well, what about socialization? Or they're going to be isolated. And one of the things I say to that is, how is it normal for you to be in a room and being exposed to people your age?
Like, that just doesn't happen in real life. And I was listening to a podcast, I forget which one that talked about there is socialization and there's being social, and they're two different things. Also, what was shocking to me is that the actual academic time you need to learn when it's just like one on one. It's like 90 minutes to two hours a day at Jack's age. And it's not even Monday through Friday.
And then it's just like blowing up the whole paradigm and like totally like breaking our belief systems about what education should look like for a child. And we all know, especially when you have, if you have multiple kids, you know, your kids are different, they learn very differently, they need different things to support them. And unfortunately school, you know, it has to kind of be the same. And unfortunately, teachers are tasked to get teach everyone and they just can't, you know, because everyone learns differently.
Like you're teaching the same thing. Every kid is not going to internalize it the same way. And you know, Jack is good at, he's better at some things and there's some things that he's not so great at. He was recently diagnosed with dyslexia. And so he's going to need some pretty intense intervention to help him learn to read. So he's learning basically an Orton Gillingham methodology called Barton.
So we're going to be starting that this August. He already gets tutoring, just regular OG tutoring, but we're going to start specifically Barton this fall, so. And again, the actual academic time will just be a few hours a day. And which means he'll have lots of opportunities to be out and about, to be with other people, to be with other kids, and to do things that he wouldn't normally be able to do and do it during the daytime.
And also there's no homework in homeschool, by the way, because you get your work done and there's no death by worksheets. It's gonna look different for everyone. But the way that I envision it for ourselves is kind of what I discussed anyway. What was the point of me explaining that? Oh, the point of me explaining that was. And as a result of that, I've really had to sit down and sort of rethink my business because obviously it's gonna affect my ability to do work.
And so I do have to. I'm going to hire a part time nanny who, and I would love to hire someone who, you know, maybe was an educator in some capacity to help with the homeschooling. I don't really need this person to tutor. It's more just like supporting him while he does some stuff on his own, but also so that I can do work. And then I've really thought hard about simplifying my business.
It's been something that's been on my mind for the past year. And now with the homeschooling decision, I was like, okay, I really need to simplify my business. And so what does that mean? That means that. So I've had to really rethink what my business is going to do. What, what are the ways that you can work with me? And so I want to just tell you what they are because they are a little bit different than what I've been doing before.
So I'm not really taking one on one clients. I do have a few right now, but I generally do not take on one on one clients. I have the Happy and rich mastermind right now. There's 21 women in it and I love it so much. And again, it's a great combination of building wealth but also working on life goals. And I would say one of the big themes in the community is relationships.
Really working on creating your community, your chosen family. And when I say community, it's not just friendships. It's like, you know, your community maybe have kids at school, like your school community, your church community, all that kind of stuff. And so because people are, I think we're all a bit relationship starved. And it's not just because of COVID although definitely affected it is, I think women physicians, we just get so busy with our lives and then one day we realize that we don't have friends or, you know, don't have enough basically.
And then if you move like I did, then you're like, oh, I don't have any friends. And you have to really make an effort to make them. So that's been a theme and it's just been really beautiful to watch everyone really prioritize their lives and make changes. And so I've been loving doing it. It's a six month thing. The next cohort's gonna start probably September. And so if you're interested, you wanna go to my website, wealthymomad.com,
go to the Work with me page and you'll see information about the Mastermind and you can join the waitlist because there is a limit, it's not unlimited enrollment. And so I keep the number small on purpose so that there is a great sense, so that it is tight knit, a close sense of community in itself and also so that I can really be available for everyone in there.
Now, I may have said on an earlier podcast that I have officially retired my Money for Women Physicians program. And what I mean by that is I used to run it as a live program. What that means is I would do weekly or even twice a week coaching, slash office hours and do a lot of live teaching. And so I will not be running it live anymore. But you are still able to enroll in it as a standalone course and there will be quarterly office hours, but it's essentially self paced and so it is available at a lower price point.
And so for those of you who've been thinking about doing it but maybe didn't buy it before for a number of reasons, this would be a great time to enroll and grab it. And so again, just go to my website and you'll see more information about that. But you can buy it at any time. And once you buy it, you'll have 12 months to complete the program, although I really recommend you get it done in less than six months.
And so that's sort of what I'm doing now, my business. So just to recap my happy enriched mastermind that I run twice a year, go add yourself to the wait list because it's a limited number of spots and actually some of the spots are already filled, actually. And so if you're, if you're super interested, you can email us, we can book a short call and you can reserve your spot and actually you can get access to some of the workshops that are in the program already.
And the money for Women Physicians standalone course, you do have access it access to it if you are in the Happy and Rich Mastermind. In fact, if you end up buying the money for Women Physicians standalone course and you end up doing the Mastermind within a year, you'll actually be able to credit whatever you paid, what you paid for the money course towards the Mastermind. So I think that's pretty cool and I hope you take advantage of that.
And yes, I am back with the podcast. I can't promise weekly episodes. That is my goal, however. And so I'm so excited to be back in your ear. Thank you so much for sticking around. Maybe wondering, did she quit the podcast? No, I just took a bit of a hiatus where I had to like deal with a lot of life stuff. And so I hope you're doing well.
It's already May. I can't believe it. And that means at least in Florida there's only a few more weeks of school left, which is also strange to me as someone who's from New Jersey and used to school going towards the end of June. Oh, one more thing. I actually created this amazing, what I call personal CFO dashboard. And basically it is a spreadsheet on steroids to basically have all your information at your fingertips.
Like, I'm literally talking about, I don't know, accounts, locations of important documents, health information, a list of all your insurances, and a lot of stuff for estate planning as well, because that's super important, because I know many of you do not have this information organized. You know you need to do it, but you haven't. And the spreadsheet makes it really, really easy to use. It's a little fancy.
We have a video to walk you through how to get it. And so to get that, and it's $47, you have to go to wealthymomd.com dashboard. That's just no spaces. And so personal CFO dashboard. We just finished it and we just kind of put it out there in the world. And it's an amazing organization tool that I hope you'll take advantage of. Okay, I'll talk to you soon.
Bye. Hey there. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And if you're listening to this on Apple podcast, I'd love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome, and it will help women find this podcast so they too, can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at Wealthy Mom, Maryland.
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