Money Lessons From Being Really Bad at Yoga

Money Lessons From Being Really Bad at Yoga

by | Aug 8, 2017 | Money Meditations

“Okay, now what I want you to do is plant your left foot and bring your right foot above your knee" 

… there were words that came after that, but my legs were already shaking hard enough to demand most of my attention.

It was yoga. One of the most humbling activities that has crossed my path of late.

But then my teacher said something that cut through the series of panicked impulses being sent from my lower body.

She said…

“Remember that balance is not a static state. It is a process of a thousand tiny adjustments.”

Amazing, and also…exactly the right thing to say. My mind calmed, even though my body kept right on shaking.

The truth was, I was balancing.

It may not have felt particularly stable, but that morning on that day my version of balance was comprised of a whole lot of not so tiny movements.

Balanced from the outside VS balanced from the inside

There’s something about the word ‘balance’ that conjures up images of stillness, or at least it does to me.

It seems like when I look at someone ‘in balance’ it seems they’re caught within a moment of complete control, whether that’s physical, emotional, or financial, everything seems calm.

That’s how it can look from the outside, but it’s not always the reality.

From the inside, that same ‘zen’ master might be doing a thousand things to keep body and soul together. They might not be feeling all that balanced at all.

… or at least I can only hope that’s how it feels for them… cause that’s how it feels to me…

‘Balancing’ my finances

That yoga lesson felt instantly recognizable as a truth dragged from another part of my life… the financial part.

It’s something I say to clients all the time… in a much less poetic way. And this old idea of ‘balance’ was something I really used to think about budgets: that they were static and the people who used them were different than me.

For those people, a budget was set, and then followed… all taking a minimum amount of time and strain. It worked perfectly for their perfect, orderly lives, and there was no way it would ever work for my chaotic right-brained existence.

But it turns out balance comes in a ton of different shapes.

These days, I feel very much in control of my finances, but my budget is anything but still. My financial ‘balance’ comes from… a thousand tiny adjustments.

Constant tinkering. Moving money from place to place. Changing the plan every few days.

I guarantee it would look like chaos if someone stepped inside, but it’s not for anyone else… it’s for me… and the outward feeling it gives me is the same one that I’ve recognized in so many others.

Chaos to control

My moving, and changing, and adjusting, and re-evaluating can definitely look like chaos, but it feels like balance.

Which is crazy right?

But the thing is, over the years of budgeting it’s not that I adjust less… I just no longer think that having to change things around means I’m failing.

I didn’t stop shaking… but I learned not to panic when it starts. I learned how to listen to my body, accept the reality of the situation, and the resources that i have available. And then… to stay focused on what I was trying to do, and get as close as I can with what I have.

That’s my version of financial balance, and it’s taken me years to get that far.

So I should probably stop being so frustrated that I haven’t achieved it in three yoga classes…

… I won’t…

But I probably should.

Emily Nixon

Emily Nixon

Rags to Reasonable Community Outreach Coordinator

Emily Nixon is an actor/writer/director/filmmaking Swiss Army Knife. She is also a big money nerd and Community Outreach Coordinator for Rags to Reasonable.

She came to this work after becoming completely fed up with living paycheque-to-paycheque and being too afraid to look in her chequing account. She is passionate about empowering other artists and variable income earners to keep doing what they love and feel confident about their finances.

Email Emily at emily@ragstoreasonable.com

Want to start getting control of your money? How can I help?

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Money Lessons from my Oma’s Tomatoes… 

Money Lessons from my Oma’s Tomatoes… 

by | Jul 25, 2017 | Getting Started with your Money, Money Meditations, My Financial Journey

I’ve been missing home lately… I always do in the summer/fall.

I grew up on the prairies, and there’s nothing like the prairies when everything is green and growing and producing tasty things.

Here in Toronto I don’t grow things. The few plants in my house are not thriving. I blame the light levels, but I think if they could talk they might mention my inconsistent watering habits.

Whenever I go home, one of the stops I make is my Oma’s garden. Oma is what I call my grandmother. She and my Opa continue to have an incredible garden, even though they’re well into their 80s.

They grow carrots, corn, potatoes, peas, flowers, beans, cucumbers and of course… tomatoes.

And those tomatoes… they surprise me every time.

You see… If you focus just on the plants… they look like the ones in my apartment: very few leaves, barely able to hold themselves up… not the picture of health.

But on every sick-looking branch …. there are bunches of fruit.

Honestly, they look like grape vines, there are so many tomatoes.

And no matter the look of the plants, my grandparents reap huge tomato crops almost every year.

The secret of tomatoes:

How? When I asked, I could see the twinkle in my Oma’s eyes.

"We cut them back. We cut all that extra growth, that way all the nutrients go right into making the fruit, instead of being spilt between the fruit and a bushy looking plant."

Turns out the point of growing a tomato plant is not to have the healthiest looking tomato plan, it’s to grow lots of really good tomatoes.

CUE METAPHOR

Cutting back in order to get more of what you want…

No one really likes cutting back.

Cutting back on tasty dessert, cutting back on Netflix, or cutting back on your spending all seem to be things you know you ‘should’ do… but will definitely suck.

And the spending one can be especially tricky because some of you might look at your spending and say… this all makes sense. I want all these things. They’re important to me.

But there are lots of reasons to cut back.

Sometimes you have to because you can’t afford your life, and sometimes it’s about trying to focus your ‘nutrients’ on growing fruit, instead of growing out the plant.

Sometimes cutting back is the gateway to getting more of what you want…

Your plant VS your fruit

In my mind there are two things that we spend money on:

• maintaining the life we have

• pushing our life forward

Other people might use the word ‘lifestyle’ expenses to describe maintaining your life. But it’s basically the cost of your life - your monthly and annual costs that you’ve pretty much already decided you’re going to spend.

Then we have the big stuff we want to do. It might be paying off our debt, taking an awesome trip, saving for later in your life, or investing in your business.

It pushes our lives forward.

I know that the second one sounds way more sexy, but you can’t spend your money on ‘extra’ stuff until your life costs are taken care of.

In a way, it’s like your plant and your fruit.

Your plant’s health is essential in the growing of your fruit… but… like we see in my Oma’s garden, sometimes too many resources put into your ‘plant’ can reduce the amount of fruit you can grow.

There are a limited amount of resources, and you have to decide where you want to put them.

How to grow bigger, better life tomatoes…

Is there some big life stuff that you really want to get done?

Maybe you need to think about cutting back. Not because you’re not allowed to have nice things, but because you want to use your nutrients differently.

And here’s where we can learn from Oma’s tomatoes again.

There are all kinds of preconceived notions we carry around about what we need to do to ‘create fruit’.

But maybe that’s not the case.

Maybe we can do way more with way less, and the only way you’re going to find out is by doubling down on some experiments.

How much can you cut back before the base health of your life suffers? Which are the right places to cut back, and which places are non-negotiable?

I can’t encourage you enough to start to play with these ideas.. AND don’t decided before you start what the non-negotiables are.

Everything is on the table.

Talk to people who live differently than you do. Talk to people who are older than you and are way ahead in terms of experimentation. Come talk to me, either during OFFICE HOURS or through EMAIL… I’ve got lots of stories of how creative people are figuring it out.

Don’t assume you know the best way to grow a tomato… because maybe you don’t.

I sure didn’t.

Emily Nixon

Emily Nixon

Rags to Reasonable Community Outreach Coordinator

Emily Nixon is an actor/writer/director/filmmaking Swiss Army Knife. She is also a big money nerd and Community Outreach Coordinator for Rags to Reasonable.

She came to this work after becoming completely fed up with living paycheque-to-paycheque and being too afraid to look in her chequing account. She is passionate about empowering other artists and variable income earners to keep doing what they love and feel confident about their finances.

Email Emily at emily@ragstoreasonable.com

Want to start getting control of your money? How can I help?

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Dear Personal Finance World: We’re talking about money wrong

Dear Personal Finance World: We’re talking about money wrong

by | Nov 23, 2016 | Banks, Money Meditations

There’s something seriously screwed up about the way we talk about money.

On one hand it’s really hard to get people to have a conversation about it… an actual conversation… not just one about how there’s not enough of it.

And yet, away from the regular 'every day'… the financial conversation is raging on. There are hundreds of blogs, dozens of shows, and tons of books filling the shelves on how we should be handling our money.

But most people honestly don’t care. They’re not interested in the conversation that’s going on… why is that?

Why, when money is a big part of everyone’s life, and… as the banks, bloggers, and other members of the financial world are so quick to tell us…. there is a ‘huge financial literacy problem’ in North America… why aren’t people looking for help?

"They should get involved!"

"Pick up a book. Read a blog. Log in to the latest twitter chat hosted by some big bank or another."

"They should GET EDUCATED."

It sounds like a great idea… except the problem isn’t them… it's that the financial conversation we’re having is full of shit.

The New Guy on the Block

I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but it’s driving me absolutely crazy.

I’m new to this conversation. I was one of those people that the financial sector was seeking to educate. One of those people who didn’t track their spending, didn’t save, didn’t invest, didn’t do any of the things I was supposed to be doing.

Then I hit my own financial rock bottom, dipped my toe into the personal finance world and two years later passed my financial planning certification exam.

I’m not a numbers guy.

I’m an opera singer.

But I have huge passion for the conversation we have around money. And it’s a conversation that isn’t serving a lot of people.

Serving money… not people…

I was recently messaging with a friend who was attending a conference this summer somewhere in Canada (I’m not being vague… I really don’t remember where). There, one of the big bank guys, a major curator of the conversation, stood up and said… clients only care about three things: investing, estate planning, and taxes.

Wait.

What?

This blew me away, because the people that I work with care about a ton more things than that. They care about affording education, and managing cashflow (whether they use the word ‘cashflow’ or not… and they probably don’t… because no one says ‘cashflow’), they care about matching financial resources to their values. They care about the life money can help them build… not really the making of more money.

But then I realized.

The ‘client’ the big bank guy was talking about isn’t a person.

The ‘client’ is the money.

Talking about money wrong - From Rags to Reasonable

When you take "the person" out of it he’s completely right. Money only cares about the things that will affect it. Investments make it grow. Estate planning keeps it from disappearing in a sea of taxes and probate. And taxes… well… tax is clearly the "client's" biggest threat.

A major portion of the industry wants to serve your money…. and if you end up benefiting… that’s great. But ‘you’ are a side product… not a major part of the conversation.

What if people aren’t dumb… what if they just don’t care about what we’re talking about… or maybe… they just don’t trust us.

I’ve talked to so many people in and around the financial industry who honestly don’t understand why people keep making ‘dumb’ money choices.

  • Why don’t they just invest in index funds?
  • Why don’t they have the will power to stay out of debt?
  • Why don’t they understand why they need insurance?

They must need more education. They must need more articles about budgets and TFSAs vs RRSPs.

Or maybe they don’t need to change.

Maybe we do.

Maybe the whole freaking conversation needs to change.

Because the tools are great. Okay… they’re not great… but they’re pretty good. They can totally help people manage money, invest, protect assets, etc...

But the way that we’re connecting people to them… is messed up.

And they know it.

Talking about money wrong - From Rags to Reasonable

They see through the salesperson bullshit. They see insurance companies and banks worth billions that are charging more and more fees for simple services.

They see bloggers that only seem to recommend products that have affiliate programs.

Whether they can put their finger on it or not…they know that the general conversation isn’t about them.

It’s about money.

The people who don’t really care about money… they’re not going to participate in that conversation … and I really wish they would.

A different kind of conversation

I know I might sound like an angry hippy artist yelling about things I don’t completely understand.

You may think that the ‘conversation’ doesn’t really matter… people who don’t like it can look up other stuff on their own.

But it matters.

One of the major things I’ve learned from years in the arts is that it really matters how we talk about things.

It matters when the companies that create and sell financial products are also the ones that provide advice.

It matters when the only stats that we measure are based in asset accumulation and net worth building.

It matters when sources that people assume to be independent are heavily influenced by those same sellers of products.

It matters because people flat out don’t trust us.

And why should they?

We have not proven to them that they come first. We have not taken the extra effort to demonstrate that their goals and wants are much more important than finding the most ‘efficient’ solutions.

People aren’t supposed to fit into the tools available… the tools available should be changed and moulded to fit a person's needs, values, and wants.

That isn’t the conversation we’ve been having.

There are so many individuals in the financial industry who passionately care about people. Who passionately believe in finance's ability to make lives better, to protect their clients, and to empower those who work so hard.

I think we can all learn something from them, and change the way that we talk about money.

Maybe then we’ll start to see some change in those financial literacy stats that we all like to complain about.

Maybe then people will start coming back to the conversation.

Want to start getting control of your money? How can I help?

Chris Enns

Chris Enns

Financial Planner/Opera Singer

Money never came naturally to me. In fact... I was a bit of a disaster. I remember (very clearly) what it feels like to be 'financially out of control'.

And honestly, I still get stressed about money... that doesn't stop... the difference is that now I have the tools to deal with that stress.

And those tools are what's made it possible for me to build a life full of the things I want: art, creativity, travel, family and more.

If you want to start getting control of your money I'd love to help. You can start with THIS QUIZ, visiting my GETTING STARTED PAGE or by checking out my SERVICES page.

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Don’t let audition season destroy your bank account

Don’t let audition season destroy your bank account

by | Nov 18, 2016 | Budgets, Getting Started, Money Meditations, Saving, Variable Income

This post originally appeared on Schmopera: an excellent site for all things opera.

Auditioning is so freaking expensive.

This is a fact. And it feels like it’s getting worse.

After application fees, travel, accommodation, food, accompanist fees, and the 3 beers you need after they decided to only hear one aria even though you were banking on them asking for the Bellini...

...you’re probably not sitting on a whole lot of leftover cash.

But you have to do it, right? How are you supposed to get work if you don’t show up?

That’s right. You do have to audition. You do have to pay all the fees, whether you think they’re ethical or not.

But you don’t have to let it destroy your bank account.

AUDITION SEASON HAPPENS EVERY YEAR:

Every year. It’s like Christmas or Flag day. So why not save ahead?

People are always complaining about how it’s impossible to budget in this business. The income is too variable! The costs are too variable!! Well, there are SOLUTIONS FOR THE VARIABLE INCOME, and I’d like to challenge the idea of variable costs as well.

A tree falling on your car is an unexpected cost. Audition season is a totally 100% expected cost, one that you can completely plan for.

No, you don’t ever know exactly how much it’s going to cost every year, but you can make a pretty good guess. If you’ve been through it before, take a look at what it cost you last year. If it’s your first time… think it through. A few trips to New York or Toronto: where are you going to stay? How much does that cost? What do accompanists charge? How many applications are you putting in?

You can get exact about the number, or you can just pick a number out of thin air.

I’m going to save 2000 dollars for audition season.

Wait...what? Where am I supposed to get 2000 dollars...? That’s insane.

LIFE LESSON: BIG NUMBERS ARE MADE OF SMALL NUMBERS

The thing about these big one-time costs.. Christmas, car insurance, or audition season.. is that they seem like too much to set aside out of any given month’s income.

When you’re pulling in just enough to make it through, it’s impossible to set aside two grand in one month. So why not break it up into chunks?

What if last January you had taken a look at the year in front of you, and thought… "man… I want to make a big push next audition season. Last year it cost me around 2000 dollars, so if I just sock away 200 bucks a month, I’ll be ready to roll come November."

200 bucks a month 47 bucks a week 6.78 a day

And hey presto, come audition season you’re ready to roll!

BUT I DON’T HAVE 200 BUCKS A MONTH TO SPEND ON... SAVINGS...

When I talk about savings, it sounds like I’m outlining a luxury: something to do with all your ‘extra’ money. So if you don’t have any ‘extra’ money, saving seems impossible.

But I’m not talking about how you can spend your ‘extra’ money. I’m talking about how you’re going to find the money to afford to support what you’re already spending.

You’re going to audition. We talked about it in the first paragraph. You have to.

So if you don’t put aside the money, where’s it going to come from?

Planning for major once a year expenses, like Christmas, birthdays, or… audition season, isn’t about adding another cost to every month. It’s acknowledging the fact that you’re already spending the money, and breaking up the cost over more time to make it easier to collect it.

 

 

IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, IT’S CALLED A PLAN

You can choose to be blindsided by the same stuff every year.

"How did I spend that much on Christmas???" "Plane tickets cost HOW MUCH???"

Or you can stop budgeting bullshit. It’s fine that you spend money at Christmas. Christmas is great!! And if you put away 25 bucks a month all year, you can do all that spending, without the guilt. I’ve been doing it for the last few years, and I love Christmas now… it’s all the fun, with none of the pain.

Audition season is such a stressful time. There’s so much that you can’t control. There’s so much that is really hard. Why not try to take the pressure off of yourself?

Look ahead. Make a little sketch of the costs, and starting this January put away a little cash every month to make next year’s auditions just a little less awful.

Want to start getting control of your money? How can I help?

Chris Enns

Chris Enns

Financial Planner/Opera Singer

Money never came naturally to me. In fact... I was a bit of a disaster. I remember (very clearly) what it feels like to be 'financially out of control'.

And honestly, I still get stressed about money... that doesn't stop... the difference is that now I have the tools to deal with that stress.

And those tools are what's made it possible for me to build a life full of the things I want: art, creativity, travel, family and more.

If you want to start getting control of your money I'd love to help. You can start with THIS QUIZ, visiting my GETTING STARTED PAGE by checking out my SERVICES page.

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What crippling stage fright taught me about money

What crippling stage fright taught me about money

by | Nov 14, 2016 | Getting Started, Making Money, Money Meditations

Who it's for: Singers, Actors, Musicians (Performers)
What it's about: How building a solid technique solved my stage fright, and can do the same thing for your money.
What you get: Three places to start building a solid money technique.

For the last 5 years I’ve been battling some fairly serious stage fright. 

It started off mildly enough, but slowly grew into a completely debilitating force that took away any joy I used to have for being on stage.

One of the many thoughts that started taking over my head was …

“What if I open my mouth and my voice just… doesn’t work?”

Not a great mental dialogue for a professional singer.

And the truth was… sometimes I opened my mouth and my voice really didn’t work.

It came from a mix of mental and technical problems, and normally I got through the show. But eventually it got bad enough that I completely crashed. It was not a great time in my life, and it sent me running.

I ran to my family farm. I sat on a tractor for 2 months and thought about how much I wanted to quit.

But I just couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t leave this thing that used to bring me so much joy… at least not like this.

So. I found a new teacher and we got to work…

… by painstakingly building up my technique and my shattered confidence.

TECHNIQUE IS A FUNNY THING...

A director once told me: ‘technique is for the times when things go wrong.’ His theory was that when things are good… you don’t need it… but when shit hits the fan, you have something to fall back on.

That might be an oversimplification, but here’s what I know.

After 2 and a half years of technical work… I’m actually enjoying performing again.

Hours of work doing onsets, breathing, and encouraging my soft palette to lift just a little bit more, has given me a technical base that I actually trust.

And somehow knowing that I have that base has slowly (and I mean slowly) decreased that stress and given me the confidence to do my thing.

For the first time in years I’ve had a run of stress free performances.

I can’t tell you what that means to me.

WHAT CRIPPLING STAGE FRIGHT TAUGHT ME ABOUT MONEY

And so, as I was sitting backstage last week, about to put on my 2nd dance belt and pretend to be a greek demigod… I couldn’t help but see the parallels between my two worlds: art and money.

Money is a huge cause of stress for so many people (especially variable-income, no-safety-net opera singers).

The stress that surrounds money can completely take over your life. The only problem is you can’t run away from money (at least not as easily as I ran away from opera).

Luckily… the solution is the same.

Building up a money technique.

And I know that might not be what you want to hear. You might be like me… just hoping that every day you might wake up and things will be okay. That things will just get better.

You might think you don’t have the skills to build a money technique… that you’re not good at math, that you can’t budget…

But I promise you. If you can go through the painstakingly slow work of building up an artistic technique… you have everything you need to build a money technique, too.

A money technique is built in the same way, by investing hours of time into building solid fundamentals. Instead of breath, it's cashflow (the daily ins and outs of your money), instead of onsets it's deliberate decision making (learning to stop making default money decisions and make the ones you really want), and instead of working with someone to lift your soft palette, you work with someone to find one of a thousand little ways you can make your money life easier (by building a safety net, learning to save, and eliminating debt).

And, let me be clear, that technique isn’t about becoming rich and it’s NOT not about finally becoming ‘an adult’.

Just like building my singing technique wasn’t about becoming the greatest tenor of my generation (because I’m really not).

You build a technique so that you can forget about it and just … live your life… knowing that if something goes wrong, you have a system to fall back on.

Where do I start?

Okay, that might sounds good? But where do you start building that kind of technique?

I'm not going to just serve up a bunch of nice ideas and a fun story about a tenor who likes to sing opera again... that's why I build a quiz to help find the perfect place for YOU to start. 

TAKE THE 'HOW THE HECK DO I GET STARTED' QUIZ

You're a few questions away from the perfect next step for you and your money. 

TAKE THE QUIZ

And if you just need someone to talk to… I have weekly office hours… where you can schedule a free 30 minute Skype session to talk to a real person about your money. It’s a great place to come to if you really don’t know what to do first.

come chat with me about your money (for free)

Low key (and free) money coachings over skype.

LEARN MORE

It's not impossible

Despite what that voice in your head is saying, it’s not impossible.

That’s how I felt as I drove my tractor up and down the fields wondering how I would ever step out on a stage again.

But I did.

And it wasn’t better right away, there were lots of bad days over those two plus years… but eventually everything changed.

I got my joy back.

Want to start getting control of your money? How can I help?

Chris Enns

Chris Enns

Financial Planner/Opera Singer

Money never came naturally to me. In fact... I was a bit of a disaster. I remember (very clearly) what it feels like to be 'financially out of control'.

And honestly, I still get stressed about money... that doesn't stop... the difference is that now I have the tools to deal with that stress.

And those tools are what's made it possible for me to build a life full of the things I want: art, creativity, travel, family and more.

If you want to start getting control of your money I'd love to help. You can start with THIS QUIZ, visiting my GETTING STARTED PAGE by checking out my SERVICES page.

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What I learned about money from eating a thousand peaches

What I learned about money from eating a thousand peaches

by | Sep 19, 2016 | Credit, Getting Started, Money Meditations, Retirement, Saving

Who it's for: Everyone (but especially peach lovers)
What it's about: Saving is about prolonging enjoyment of something you love, and sometimes things that look like money.... aren't money. 
What you get: TWO FREE WORKSHEETS - one to help you start saving, and one to get you saving better than you already are.

I love peach season.

And this year has been a pleasure pandemonium (#fancywords).

The last few weeks I've been gorging myself on fresh peaches at nearly every meal.

And because my mind has no ability to structure itself, my peach fanaticism and my constant money thoughts have melded into two peach-related money metaphors I thought I'd share with y'all.

I hope you enjoy both of them, and the end of peach season. (more…)

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