OSR 017: Do You Want More Money? Inteview With Author Kate Northrup

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In this session you’ll discover:

Today we have a special guest. Her name is Kate Northrup.  She has a new book coming out called, “Money, A Love Story.”  I got my hands on the book and it’s a nice read. 

Kate shares how to love money, describes her journey, and gives tips on how to reduce your credit debt…right now.  She also talks about how to change your mindset when it comes to money.  Do you want more money, You might be thinking, “Come on. Mindset and money? How does that work?” Do you feel comfortable looking at your bank account right now?  If the answer is no, then you have a mental blockage when it comes to money.  Yes, a mental block.

You need to appreciate and love money.  Just as in life, if you give people positive energy they will give you the same in return, right?  The same applies to money.

Enjoy this great conversation with Kate!

Toady we talk about:

-How to get financial freedom

-Do you want more money?

-How can an 18-year-old start a business?

-Change your mindset about your life and money

-Get out of debt, easily

-What is the best way to learn about money?

-Do you currently want to look cool with your money?

-Fear of success and how to get over it

-What happens when you go big in life?

-Be honest, passionate, and love life

-Add value to everyone you meet

 My way to get rid of credit card debt.

-Call and gather all current credit card balances and interest rates

-Call the credit card companies again to ask if they can reduce your interest rates.  Ask them this, Hello my name is Jacob Nawrocki I am trying to reduce my credit credit card bills.  Is their any way to reduce the interest rate on my current credit card?

-Put the balances on your steering wheel.  Yes right smack in the middle as a mental reminder of how much you owe.  It should slow you down from buying useless items.

[spoiler]You’re listening to Operation Self Reset with Jake Nawrocki. Today we’re resetting our financial future.

What is going on, resetters? Welcome back to the podcast. This is the one and only place to change the person you are right now to that person that you strive, you want, you crave to be. Welcome back. Thanks for the emails. Thanks for the support. Thank you for the reviews. If you guys haven’t done so already, make sure to slide on over to iTunes, subscribe to the podcast, and then also leave a review if you have a second cause I know your time is very, very valuable so I really do greatly appreciate you guys taking the time right now and listening to this amazing podcast. Love it, love it so much.

So today we’re going to talk about something that could be awkward for you depending on how you handle the situation. So I’m gonna lay out here a little scenario and we’ll see what you guys think about it. So you go out to dinner with friends. There’re three other couples: it’s you and your boyfriend, you and your wife, whatever. And you guys are hanging out, having a good time, eating, drinking, laughing, crying, hugging, high-fiving, whatever. You guys are just having a blast. So you and your significant other are eating normal-sized meals. Maybe you’re not getting the steak dinner or the lobster, but you’re eating traditional pasta while others are drinking ungodly amounts of liquor, ordering all the appetizers, buying the biggest steak, buying the freshest lobster, the catch of the day, whatever the market price of this or that, and the bill you know in your head is like, “Geez, that’s a lot of money for that steak but whatever.” So the bill comes. And who usually grabs the bill is the person that usually spends the most. So then that person grabs the bill. He goes, “Okay.” His mouth is still full because he has this 90-ounce porterhouse steak in front of him that he’s still trying to mow down, and he opens the bill and he goes, “Whoa! This got out of control.” And then he goes, “We’re all friends here. How about we just split the bill evenly?”

And you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, that’s not fair because I didn’t order the 90-ounce porterhouse steak. I didn’t order the bottle of Cristal or I didn’t order the market-priced fish. Why I should split it?” But you say, “Fine. We’ll just split it,” and then you’re grumpy and then you’re angry and then you and your significant other just walk out of the restaurant screaming and complaining at each other, saying, “That was ridiculous. I can’t believe that.” I personally have been in that situation and I know you guys have too. Obviously not to that extent. But it just shows that unless we have a lot of money, it’s not easy for us to part ways like that because we feel it’s unfair. We don’t feel justified. I’m trying to hold back a little bit while these people are spending. Your mind’s a mess. You’re thinking, “How do they have all this money to buy this great steak while we’re trying to reserve ourselves? But yet we are in the same tax group per se.” And you’re thinking to yourself, “How does that work?” And then you get jealous and your mind gets all out of whack with the money about them, you’re jealous, all these different feelings. You’re probably thinking, “Jake, where does this wrap around?”

So the person I have on today, her name is Kate Northrup. She is the author of a book called Money, a Love Story: Untangle Your Financial Woes and Create the Life You Really Want [and Living Your Purpose – I checked on the title of the book and this phrase is not part of it. 03:39]. I brought her on the podcast today because she has a great little book here. It really helps people understand the emotional problems, situation, feelings that come along with money. Some people are really good with money. Some people are not so good with money, and it all depends on your upbringing—was your father in charge of the money? Was your mother in charge of the money? And there’s a lot of moving elements when it comes to money. We all know the benefits of it. We all enjoy it. We all use it every single day, but the question is do you really have a firm grasp on it emotionally, physically, and just a well-being with money? Do you love it? I love money and so does Kate and that is why she wrote this book to give clarity, understanding on how we can love money like we really should to get over judgmental ideas about others, how to be appreciative of other people that have money, how to get out of debt that you personally have, just a lot of things that I truly think that you guys can get out of this interview.

So here’s the interview with Kate Northrup, Money: A Love Story.

Alright, guys, welcome back to the podcast. Today we have a special guest. Her name is Kate Northrup, and she has a new book coming out Money: A Love Story. Because who doesn’t love money? Untangling your financial woes, creating the life you really want, and living your purpose. Kate, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

No problem. To begin, the way I really get my audience involved is knowing who you are. Give us a background on the person that you are, your upbringing, and where your journey led you to today.

I grew up in Yarmouth, ME. A small town in Maine, and I had two parents who were doctors, and so growing up, my story as it relates to what I’ve been up to work-wise, growing up we actually had plenty of money but what I noticed is that my parents didn’t have any freedom. So even though they had above-average incomes, they had below-average free time, and that’s a real common problem I think that people either have money or they have time but not usually both. And I just made a decision pretty early on and I really don’t know where this came from, but I just made this pact with myself that I wanted to create financial freedom by the time I had kids so that I could really hang out and play with them and be with them. And it’s not that my parents weren’t—they came to every single soccer game and managed to make it to all my dance recitals and stuff. So they were definitely there, but I just wanted a different flavor of freedom in my life, and so I started a business when I was 18 years old in the direct sales industry because I wanted to represent a product line that I could earn residual income from representing a consumable product line. And so I started that business, and I built it up and did quite well with it and I still have that business today as one of my income streams.

So I graduated from college in 2005 and had enough income from that business that I didn’t have to get a job, but I moved to New York City and within a matter of about two years I got myself into $20,000 worth of credit card debt. So that was a problem. And I wasn’t really doing anything about it. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and my emotional turmoil around it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and so it was through a lot of positive—I don’t want to call it positive thinking because that sounds oversimplified but it was through the changing my mindset and really working on myself and looking at some of the underlying psychological stuff behind my money and tendencies around money that helped me get out of debt and double my income, double my savings, and change a lot of things in my life as a result which sort of leads up to writing the book and why I wrote it.

Sure. So before we get into the book and the theories behind it and your story with that: you’re 18 years old, you start a business, and it’s in direct sales. Now your parents were doctors, very traditional, obviously very great profession. Was there an entrepreneurial uncle that got you in the direction of, “Hey, you should start this on your own”? Or were your parents just so supportive of anything and they were entrepreneurs in their own mindset that got you in that direction? Because, honestly, a lot of 18-year-old people, or, if we look back in our lives, when you’re 18 you’re not thinking of starting a company, starting businesses or what have you. How did you get that at that age?
My mom’s side of the family is fairly entrepreneurial. My uncle started a construction company when he was 18 and never went to college and my other uncle also never went to college and invented a power plant [unclear 08:58]. Another aunt and uncle on that side are the ones who introduced me to direct sales and the network marketing industry, and so I definitely had some familial support even though my parents were more traditional professionals. I definitely had the family support from aunts and uncles, and then my mom was learning about business and learning about money for the first time around the same time I started my business, so we were sort of on this journey together about learning about thinking about money in a new way. And she was thinking about being a business owner in a new way because as a doctor she was never taught to think about business or think about money, and even though she ran her own private practice, she never considered herself a business owner. She considered herself a healer.

Right. That’s really interesting because there is somebody that kind of pushes you in a direction, and if you have all those people around you that gave you input and you could look at as guidance, that’s awesome that you started that. So you graduate college, you’re $20,000 in debt. Then you start exploring yourself again. You’re taking a look at yourself. Everything that’s going on. What was the couple of things that you noticed that really dragged you down into spending that amount and not being able to pay it off? What did you realize when you reflected and thought, “Okay, this is the reasoning why”? Was it because there were emotional issues going on? You were free-spirited? You really didn’t care anymore? What was going on?

That’s such a great question. I’m glad you asked it. It really was I think wanting to look a certain way and wanting to look like I had it together. I started a business at a young age, and I was used to being the one in the room that everybody was like, “Oh, wow, you’re so young. It’s so impressive that you did this.” And I think I put pressure on myself to look more successful than I was because of my age and feeling insecure about that. So partially it was that. So I would, in terms of just like buying clothes and going to dinners and signing up for seminars and trainings and things, I just bought things that I thought I should have at the level I should be at even though I wasn’t actually there yet. So it was an over-inflation in that way. And then I think also just on a deeper level, there’s that whole—I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the Marianne Williamson quote about “It’s not our darkness that we’re afraid of. It’s actually our light.” And kind of like the whole fear of success aspect. I think that for myself and for other people that I’ve met as well, overspending and keeping ourselves in financial turmoil is a way of keeping ourselves small because it takes up a lot of emotional bandwidth, and financial stress weighs us down and so if we are afraid of shining as brightly as we can or being as great as we can, financial turmoil is a great way to keep us small and keep us safe and I know that that’s what was happening with me as well.

Right. One thing you hit on there was the fear of success, and it was actually a question I was going to ask later on but because we’re talking about it that is something that a lot of people are struggling with. It might not be only success, but it’s fear of taking a promotional exam. It’s a fear of getting yourself out there. It’s about the fear of going to those seminars and wanting to improve yourself or letting people know that you are trying to improve yourself. How do you control that fear and how do you get over that fear to let yourself be successful, be great, to really just love life and continue on your own journey and path?

Well, one of the ways to do it—I know for me fear of success came a lot from being afraid of what other people would think, what other people would say.

And that’s huge. That’s huge.

It’s huge! It’s people in our family. It’s friends. It’s people on social media. It’s whatever, wherever it comes from, and the truth is if you are going big in life there are going to be critics who have something to say about it. It just is, and so one of the practical things that I did and that you can do to is just choosing to surround yourself with other people who are going big. Because other people who are putting themselves out there and putting themselves on the line will not judge you and will not try to tear you down. They’ll celebrate it even when you fail. They will still celebrate it with you. So that’s a big thing.

Oh, for sure, and sorry to cut you off there. But it’s so true because, personally, I started this podcast, the blog, and all the videos and stuff, and I work in a very traditional, blue-collar job where this podcasting, internet kind of thing is—no, that’s not the way to go about it. And to be honest, I haven’t really told a lot of my co-workers about this because it is an insecurity. You never want to be put in that limelight. A couple of years ago, I made an invention. I put it on my truck and I drove around with it, so then everybody knew that I was always that kind of entrepreneurial guy. So I at least have that in my back pocket, but yet this is still very personal and close to me that it is tough for me to explore and say this to others. But you’re right about hanging out with people that are likeminded with you to get yourself in that atmosphere and realize, “I want to become successful like the people I’m hanging out with or better.” So you hit it on the head. Nice job. Good job.

Thank you. Thank you and thanks for sharing that. I think that that’s really—I grew up in a small town in Maine, and I still to this day—I’ll just be 100% honest—feel nervous talking about what I do with some of the people I grew up with. And I think that that’s okay. It’s okay and I talk to them about other things, and I think it’s still wonderful. It doesn’t have to be like, “Oh, well, if people aren’t on the same page or aren’t on the same path, then you can’t have them in your life.” I think that we just have different people in our lives for different parts of ourselves and different parts of our life, and that’s okay. That doesn’t have to be bad.

Speaking of being 100% honest, I have a question for you that I wasn’t going to ask but because you’re opening up here, you open the book saying, “I had a very good lifestyle growing up.” You had money. And there’re a lot of people that might open this book and say, “Oh, geez. I don’t want to listen to this. I don’t want to listen to Kate. She came from all this money, all this background.” Was it tough for you to put that in there? When you do explain your history, it’s not like you came from nothing and you built yourself into something great. You had a good raising and then obviously you made yourself better, but was that tough for you to get over and tell everybody about?

Yeah. I’m so glad you’re asking this question. Way to keep it real.

Yeah, thanks.

Our culture loves the rags to riches story and I was homeless and then I made a million dollars and that contrast. We love those stories, and those stories are awesome. I love them too. But it’s not my story. I think one of the most important things that I’ve learned is being honest and telling the truth and that everybody has something that we can learn from.

Right.

So would I have written a book about getting it together financially if I hadn’t had any financial struggle? No. Because if we haven’t struggled with something ourselves, I don’t think that we’re really as good teachers of it. So the fact that I was in debt and I dealt with some really difficult dynamics around family business and some self worth issues makes me feel like, “Okay, I actually did learn something. I have something to share.” And if you want a rags to riches story, mine isn’t that story.

Right. And you’re right. You’re just being 100% honest and there’s nothing better than that because it is tough to really build yourself up and think, “I need to have this from zero to hero mentality,” but at the same time, you do have great things to say. And like you said, “The more people you talk to the more little things you get from each person.” My father told me back in the day when I would be reading books—he would force me to read these biographies—like, “Why am I reading about this guy?” This has nothing to do with my life. This doesn’t interest me. He said, “If you’re able to get 10% from his life and implement it into your own, you’ll be that much better.” And you’re so right about learning from other people, the mistakes, the successes, everything because everybody has so much good stuff to share.

Yeah. Exactly. You can learn from anybody is the point.

Sure. So let’s continue down your path here. So you got the 20-grand in debt. You wanted to pump yourself up a little more than you obviously had the amount of money coming back in. How did you decrease that 20 grand? This can relate to some of your tactics in your book or just practical tips. How does somebody that does have 5, 10, 15, 20, 50,000 dollars in credit card debt get over that hurdle mentally and also tackling it and paying it down?

First of all, it’s really important to know what you owe to whom, by when, and what the APR rates are. Our country is so full of financial avoiders. They just kind of put their head in the sand. So, number one, just write it all down in one place and be honest and tell the truth, and that’s a huge step for a lot of people. Now some people listening are going to be like, “Okay, that’s really obvious. What’s next?” But it works. Like when you’re using a GPS to try to figure out how to get somewhere, you can’t figure out the directions to get somewhere if you don’t know your starting place, and that’s the same thing when it comes to paying off your debt. So that’s number one.

The other thing that’s a really obvious place to go but that people, I think, over look a lot is decreasing our spending and simplifying our lives. Now it doesn’t have to be that you do that forever, but for a period of time while you’re wanting to pay off debt, simplifying your life is really powerful. We talk so much in our culture about making more money and it’s always about more, more, more, more, more, but what about decreasing the things that we’re spending money on? So a woman in one of my courses, for example, had a pretty big car payment. Her car payment was around 400 or 500 dollars or something, and she was taking my Money Love course and she realized, “It would be so much better to have a less fancy car and have like a $150 car payment.” So she went and traded in her car and got a car that worked just as well and had a much lower car payment, and then she captured that additional $350 and had that to pay off debt. And so you can make powerful decisions like that. And again, it doesn’t mean living in lack. It doesn’t mean living in depravation. It just means simplifying in honor of getting your debt paid off faster, and then you can go back to including a few of those things maybe that you cut out that really make you feel abundant. So that’s one thing. And when I did that, what I did is I was living in New York City which is one of the most expensive cities in the world, so I left New York. I sold most of my stuff. I got rid of an apartment, and I did buy a car but that was the only thing I bought. And I went out on the road where I had very little living expenses for 10 months, and it was a really powerful choice to decrease my living expenses significantly so I could get that debt paid off.

And then the next step is to really look at, “Okay, how can I add more value in the world?” Because when you add more value when you’re providing value for somebody else, you make more money. And when you make more money, you can pay off your debt faster. So that’s also what I did was I looked at, “Okay, where in my life am I not giving it my all? Where am I keeping myself small? Where am I undervaluing my contribution?” And what I noticed is I was in a business relationship with my mom who I love and adore, but it was no longer working for either of us and as a result I wasn’t making as much money as I could. So I dismantled that business partnership—well, we dismantled that business partnership and within a couple of months I had increased my income from adding more value, providing more value to the world through blogging and speaking and giving workshops and I was able to pay off all my debt in a matter of months. So as a result of those three things: telling the truth, simplifying my life, increasing the amount of value I was providing to the world.

Speaking of the car thing, that is a great tip because a lot of us, like we were speaking earlier, you want to show that you’re bigger than what you really are. And one way to do that is buying a car that you know is a little higher than what you were originally going to pay when you walked into the dealer because then you added some features, you added this or that or whatever. But just taking the time and really going through and scraping everything, even the huge items, because everybody starts small, like, “Oh, I should stop drinking coffee for the week.” But the huge items make the biggest impacts too.

Yes.

So it is really, really looking at everything. Not just the little things, not just the little stuff that you buy on Amazon or whatever. That is easy to start, but you’re right about looking at the huge ticket items first and going from there, so good point.

Just a real quick tip [22:48].

Yeah, sure.

In a lot of personal finance books, they talk about the cost of a latte everyday and how that adds up in a year, but ire ally encourage people to also think about the emotional bang that they’re getting for their buck. Like for a lot of people, ultimately like getting into a slightly less nice car isn’t going to affect their daily life that much, but they love the ritual of going to the coffee shop and chatting with their barista and talking to everybody and it actually gives them a lot of value for that $2.50 spent or $3.50 spent. So really look at that as well and don’t go into deprivation mode and just assume that spending money is bad. Spending money is only bad if you’re not getting a lot of value for it and how much value you’re getting is going to be a really personal issue, so just think about that too.

That’s a really good point. So I’m looking at you actually on the screen here and you have your logo of the Freedom Tour. I’m assuming that kind of rolled into when you sold everything in New York, you got in the car and started traveling. Is that when the Freedom Tour kind of began?

Yeah, exactly. The Freedom Tour started as an indefinite road trip and it ended up being 10 months where I lived—I say I lived out of my car, but I never slept in my car cause it was a Prius. It’s just not big enough. I was going from different family’s houses to family’s houses to friends to occasionally hotels and teaching workshops called Women and Wealth which I was teaching how to think about money in new ways and how to think about cash flow in new ways and so that was teaching some of the concepts around emotional financial freedom and then also practical financial freedom that we’re talking about today, so really those workshops became the basis for my book, Money: A Love Story. And I traveled the country, and it was an amazing experience in practicing what freedom could feel like in more of an extreme sense of not having a home and having this kind of more amorphous existence. So that’s what I did. That was the Freedom Tour.

Was that tough mentally to get rid of everything in New York and jump in this car and travel around and stuff, emotionally, physically? Did you feel like, “What’s my purpose”? Were you soul-searching? Obviously there was time you’re driving for hours on end. Were you really reflecting on your life, thinking of your future? What was going through your head? Were you happy that you did this? Do you feel that this was part of your journey?

Yeah, all of the above. It was really hard. It’s hard not to have a routine and not to have a home. I’m actually kind of a homebody so that really shook it up for me. So when I left on the Freedom Tour, a couple weeks before I left, I invited a relatively new friend of mine who I had only hung out with a couple of times to drive across the country with me for the first five days. And just I didn’t think that doing that first segment alone would be a good idea. And his name was Mike, and Mike is now my fiancé. So I did the Freedom Tour with Mike and so there wasn’t as much soul-searching and driving for hours on end as I thought there was going to be because I had somebody with me and we were having a really great time. So it ended up being a very different trip than I had set out for, but what was interesting is I had kind of had this romanticized notion of like, “Oh, I’m gonna drive around and I’m gonna be free and I’m gonna contemplate my life,” and all of this stuff and then when Mike came along it really became not that at all. And it became about our relationship and sort of tackling some of those issues together, and so there was part of me that I felt like I did it wrong. Like, “Oh, I’m a fraud,” because I didn’t do it the way I had intended, as though there’s a right way to do the Freedom Tour. The whole thing was kind of insane, but it ended up being perfect and it was a great way to fall in love and really get to know somebody well. So hopefully a good foundation for an awesome marriage.

They say the best way to figure out if somebody’s a good fit for you is to be in a car and travel road trip style and you will get to know everything about that person. So I’m betting you guys had quite the time getting to know one another, especially if you only hung out a couple times. So that’s cool. Now let’s transition into the book. So you gather all this stuff that happens in your life; you roll it into one. What got you motivated to write this book? Did you just feel when you were doing the Freedom Tour that there was a need out there? There was a need for a good, hearty book to recalibrate our minds and the way that we look at money.

No.

Alright, sorry.

I wish that I had been that calculated. What happened is I was invited to teach my Women and Wealth workshop at a conference in New York for women and spirituality called Reveal and so I taught my Women and Wealth workshop, and my friend Patty who is an editor and Hay House came to my workshop. And I thought she was coming just as my friend, and as it turned out, she was kind of scouting me out for a potential book and so she ended up asking me pretty soon after that if I wanted to do a book with them. And the whole process totally freaked me out, and it took me over a year from that time to really start writing the book. So I worked through a lot, again, just the next layer of that fear of success stuff and kind of like the imposter complex of, “Who am I to write this book?” And all of that stuff came up, so I’ve really learned a lot about just like the power of the internet, like you being able to have this podcast and do what you do. We all can have a platform and we all have somebody to teach and so it’s really a matter of just deciding that you’re gonna start, and so that’s how the book came about. Then as I was writing it and certainly now that it’s written and getting out there, I am so glad I wrote this because there is this huge need and people’s response has been amazing. “Oh, this is the first financial book I’ve ever read that I can actually relate to” is a piece of feedback I’ve gotten many times. Things like that. So I’m glad that on some level I was tuned into that to write the book.

Like you said, people can relate to it because A) you’re honest, B) you’re talking about passion through your words and you have a good story and you have a good journey that people can associate with. And one thing, talking about, “Oh, I wasn’t expecting to write a book and this woman contacted me,” for the people listening this journey that you have been on, Kate, is more about putting yourself out there and the great benefits that have happened because of it. You sold everything in New York, you go in a car, you meet your husband. You go out there, you put yourself out there, you start speaking, people start contacting you because they want to get you to do other things related to business. So it just shows that if you really just step out of your boundaries, your comfort zone, and put yourself out there, there are successes to be had. It’s just the internal fear that you need to get over to take that first step like you said to really get out there and kill it in life. You’re right on, so congrats to all your success and future success.

One thing that I wanted to touch base on is the judgment of money that you spoke of in the book. A lot of people do feel jealous when they see a fancy car going down the road, they see somebody with that Louis Vuitton bag. It’s internal, like, “How do they have that money?” or “Why do they have this much money?” How do we get over that?

I love that question. I think that one of the best ways we can get over looking at other people and wishing we had what they had or even judging them for what they have—because that’s a really common response—is celebrating the abundance that other people have that we would also like to have as well because the things that we put our attention on in a positive way are the things that will expand in our lives. So what we put our attention on grows. And so if you want to have more prosperity, what you need to do is put your attention on prosperity, and one of the best ways to do that is to celebrate it in the people that you see. So if your neighbor has a fabulous car that you really love, go over and chat with him about it in the driveway and ask him questions about it.

And notice where your judgment comes up around money, especially in regards to other people who seem like they have more of it than you or seem like they’re doing better. Comparison is the thief of joy, and that’s a Teddy Roosevelt quote that I love, and any time we’re comparing ourselves to somebody else, we’re not taking into account the fact that they’re on a totally different journey than we are. We have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes and whether they bought that thing on cash or on credit or whether their husband’s in the middle of leaving them or whether they’re doing great. We just don’t know and so getting caught up and distracted by what other people seem to have is totally unproductive. So you can just celebrate the prosperity that you see in the world and say, “Okay, if my friend Susan can have the Louis Vuitton bag, that means it’s possible and I can have it too.” And then just really notice and redirect any judgments you have about it because if you’re judging other people who have wealth and prosperity, your subconscious mind will not let you have those things because if you think it’s bad, why would you allow yourself to have it?
Right. That’s very true because you feel like you want to be like, “That’s unfair.” But personally I know the benefits of being grateful to that person, of congratulating them on their success, of giving praise when necessary, because I know that that will help me stay positive. That will help me bring more good things to myself. And it sounds so weird. It’s like, “Oh, stay positive and all this stuff will come into your lap.” It’s weird to think like that but it’s honestly true because I think if you’re in a positive state, you will explore different avenues and it will allow you to go in different paths that you might not have if you were judgmental, if you were angry, if you were bitter, what have you. So going off of the positive kind of vibe, you’re a very positive, uplifting individual. Can you tell us how the positivity has given you the strength to get past some health issues in your life?

Yeah, absolutely. I had an experience where I had some abnormal—after I had a Pap smear, I had some abnormal cells, and my gynecologist thought that that was kind of showing some signs of pre-cancerous stuff going on. My mom is a holistic health doctor, and I do come from a background where I’ve really been taught about the mind-body connection and that we do have the ability to heal ourselves through reduction in stress and proper nutrition and changing our mindset. So to me, I saw it as an opportunity to practice some of those things, so I made some pretty dramatic changes in my life, including going on the Freedom Tour and splitting up some business relationships that were no longer serving me and speaking my truth a little bit more and owning my value and all of those things that we’ve been talking about here in this conversation. And then proper nutrition and taking some supplements, and so I did some things like that as well. As a result, I was able to heal that problem, and I’ve been free and clear ever since, and so that was a very powerful—my doctor did call me after she got back the test results after I had done some of that healing work over about a period of nine months or so, and she said, “What did you do? This is pretty phenomenal. You had some really funky stuff going on, and I was a little concerned and these test results are amazing. What did you do?” And I told her about everything that I did that I had just mentioned: positive thinking, mindset shift, changing relationships, changing my life, changing my career, changing everything. And she was like, “That’s a really powerful story. Do you mind if I tell that in some of my workshops with women around optimal healing?” And I think she was actually doing groups of women with cancer. So it didn’t seem all that dramatic to me I guess in the whole grand scheme of I was changing everything in my life anyway, but sometimes that’s what it takes to heal. Not every single thing, but there are pervasive things in our lives that cause resentment and anger and stress of all different kinds and those are the areas of your life that will cause disease. It’s those persistent areas of stress, of emotional stress that maybe we don’t deal with, and so dealing with them is the best way to create healing physically and otherwise.

Thanks for sharing that story. It’s funny because if you just told us this and everybody listening and the whole world has never heard this before of like, “Oh, positive thinking can cure disease or whatever.” You would be like, “Come on. That’s ridiculous.” But it has happened time and time again. You can look online. You hear from other people. It’s out there. It’s a proven theory. So the people that are nonbelievers: you’ve got to believe it! Cause it’s really, really true. And you said, there are some things that you might not think are a disease in your life, but they are. You need to reflect, take a step back, look at your life from a different angle, and you’re able to see that stuff. That’s really powerful stuff.

To kind of wrap this up because I know our time is limited, you have a 39-question quiz in the beginning of the book that breaks down your mindset with money, how you think of money, where you’re at with money. What is one thing that you have been seeing from the people that have taken this test and/or a couple of people that have gotten back to you that is a recurring theme that you can share with the people listening that they can take action on? What’s a problem and how do we solve it?

I think one of the most pervasive problems is just associating money with fear and with, “Oh, I’m not good at it,” and anything negative associated with money is a recurring theme that doesn’t help anybody. So it’s really important to look at the thoughts that you think about money, and the beliefs that you have about money, and rewire those things. That might sound hard. It doesn’t have to be hard. You can just make a decision to change your mind. It’s really that simple, and that will change your reality because our thoughts create our beliefs, our beliefs create our actions, and our actions create our reality. It’s not woo-woo, it’s kind of like physics. So it’s really important to know that you have the power to do that and that’s what I’ve been finding with people is realizing, “Oh, it’s possible to have a lightness and an enjoyment around money? Oh, okay. Well, let me just do that then.”

Now, it’s easier said than done. Because I know people are like, “Well, of course. I’ll just look at money and go, ‘Yay! I love money,’” but they do have that bitterness inside. Do you have a tip or a suggestion that can really kind of get them over that hump of total negative outlook on money?
Yeah. This is super simple. You can do it today. Rename your bills Invoices for Blessings Already Received. And that immediately changes the whole energy around it. And you start to realize, “Oh, wait! When I’m paying my electric bill or when I’m paying the cable company, I’m paying for the fact that for the entire previous month, I got to flip on a light switch and have electricity in my house and that I got to watch my episodes of Breaking Bad or Downton Abbey” or whatever you love to watch and that “I’m now just paying for that privilege now when I’m paying my Invoices for Blessings Already Received” as opposed to thinking, “Oh, the cable company wants my money again.” It’s like, no, it’s really not like that. You receive something of value, and now you just have to give the value back. So you really get to know what money’s about instead of making it about somebody who is trying to do it to you or like somebody’s being [40:18] about it.

No, that’s right on. Realizing the benefit of paying that bill. That’s a really good point. That’s a really good point. This is a great conversation because I really do believe money is a big mental thing that everybody has to encounter and everybody deals with it. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you’re listening to this podcast, I know you have money problems or you might even think, “My money situation’s good, but sometimes it gets a little out of hand,” and you’ve got to pull it back in. So it’s a give and take relationship. With these tips, I really think that everybody can at least get a little better idea of how to handle money in their own personal life. Personally, I’m going through bankruptcy right now. I just had a newborn, and I realize the benefits of staying positive through everything. The more you give the more you receive. Just understanding how the universe works, how you work, how everything around you coordinates with your heart, with your mind, with your passion and your soul. So, Kate, awesome, awesome interview. Great book by the way. And how can people get a hold of it and when is it coming out?

It comes out September 10th, and you can find all the details at MoneyALoveStory.com. and when you buy the book before September 24th, you’ll get access to a two-hour live online event I’m doing called A Course in Having Enough, and I’ll have guest experts Marianne Williamson who wrote a great book called A Return to Love as well as Barbara Stanny who wrote Overcoming Underearning and Amanda Steinberg who founded DailyWorth.com. So they’re all joining me for that, and when you buy the book you get that for free.

Awesome. Awesome. Kate, anything you want to leave the audience with?
No, that’s it. I just want everybody to know that they are enough and that that is the core belief that will change everything with your money.

Perfect. Thanks, Kate, for your time. We’ll talk soon.

Thank you.

So there you guys go. That is Kate Northrup. Money: A Love Story. Get it if you would like, and this brings up a good point. There have been some previous podcasts and probably going to be future ones too where there’s either going to be a book, a product, an idea, something that you might feel like I want you to buy. And to be honest, truly, truly, 100% honest here. So, open mike, literally. I don’t really care if you buy the book or you don’t, if you by that product or you don’t or if you buy that CD set or you don’t. It does not bother me one bit. So you can buy it if you like. You can not buy it. It doesn’t matter. Never feel like I’m pressuring you to do anything that you do not want to do. I’m not a sales-pitchy kind of guy. I’m not gonna up sell you. Sometimes do I personally get excited over things? Yes. But I’m never going to say, “You guys got to get this.” I will maybe suggest that it personally helped me, but I’m going to try not to be pushy in any way. And don’t feel that, “wow, he’s really excited about this. I must get it.” No, by no means. It’s your money. Just like we spoke of, you’ve got to know where your money’s going for good or bad things. And get a handle on it.

So I personally read this book. I enjoyed it. It doesn’t mean it’s the right fit for you. Kate gave some great information on how to get over obstacles, mental blocks when it comes to money. A couple of tips that she gave for reducing her debt: writing it down and getting rid of big ticket items and reducing that, like the car. Selling your car. That might be extreme for you. And I said in there we always look at the small things, but if you don’t want to get rid of your car you have to start at the small things, right? So it’s either the big items or the small items. And the small items are usually the ones to go first.

Personally, when I was going through my issues with credit card bills—a couple of years ago I had a property and I had to fix it up. Luckily at the time they had a lot of those credit cards that were zero percent APR for 18 months. So I racked up about 15-18,000 dollars in debt. And I remember, I kept on just doing the minimum payment month after month after month. It just hit me one day, “I’ve got to get a handle on this.” And I remember reading Inc. Magazine 500—it’s like the 500 top companies. And in there they had a financial section. And one of the financial companies was Reducing Credit Card Debt or Consolidating Credit Card Debt. So I called up that credit card company and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, sure. We’d love to help you.” Of course. They got all my information. They collected all the data and stuff like that and they said that I would have to stop paying the credit card bills so then they could step in and be the mediator between the credit card companies and myself, obviously, Jake. And I was talking to them, “Oh, that sounds risky. Not paying them for 90 days.” What happens if this company closes down? I’m delinquent of three months of payments and now these credit cards are really going to come down on me. So I was like, “Eh, I don’t know about this.” Well, luckily for me—they say good things happen for a reason or things happen for a reason—the company could not for some odd reason issue me their product or help me with their services because I lived in Wisconsin and it was a California company. It was something weird like that. So whatever. So either way, I was like, “Well, if this company can’t help me, I have to do it on my own.”

So these are the things that I personally did to get over my increased debt that was hanging over my head for about a year plus. So what I did first was I called all the credit card companies and I wrote down the current balance with the APR. From there I made a list, a little spreadsheet. Then I took the top credit cards with the biggest APR, and I thought, “Okay, I’m gonna start paying that down.” Well, I heard through somebody that if you call the credit card company you can ask them to reduce your APR. And there’s no real science behind it. You can buy products online that say, “Go here. Go there. Here, I’ll sell you this $20 information booklet to get in contact with these credit card companies.” So I thought, “I’m not gonna do that.” So I decided to do it on my own. I called the credit card companies again, and I said, “Hello, my name is so-and-so. I have a lot of debt, and I’m trying to reduce my debt and it would be really helpful if Capital One could help me reduce my APR so I’m able to pay off my credit card a little quicker. Are there any options for me out there that would apply to my score or my situation?” And they would say, “Oh, Mr. Nawrocki, we’d of course love to help you. Hold on please.” And it’s the run around game a little bit and they put you in contact with the manager and you’re saying the same speech over and over again but I was able to reduce my credit card interest rates. Not by a lot. Maybe 5 points, 8 points. But when you’re paying 20% APR and you reduce it by 8 points, that’s 12% compared to 20% which is huge! You multiply that by 5, 6, 8 cards that you have and it can be really beneficial.

So after I did that, I scaled them down somewhat. Either way I still had to pay down the X amount of dollars associated with that credit card. So I wrote out again a little spreadsheet, and I pasted it on my steering wheel. Yes, my steering wheel. I personally believe that your steering wheel is something that you look at almost as much as probably your cell phone, and for me the steering wheel was a key spot just because it was always there in front of me. When I would want to get something, say a coffee, ice cream, splurge on something, it was sitting there in front of me. Literally. It wasn’t in my phone or tucked away in my pocket or it wasn’t at home on the little clipboard or whatever. It was right in front of me. So I’m telling you, honestly, it really worked. If you have credit card debt and you don’t know how to get a handle on it, get all of your debt in line. Figure out who you owe the money to, like Kate said. But also, try just calling and asking politely and if they say, “No.” Then no big deal. Then you move onto the next credit card and try to get one or two of those credit card companies to reduce your APR and then thirdly make a little spreadsheet, a little list or whatever, put it on your steering wheel and that thing will be staring in your face. And then the best part is every month you’re able to cross out that old number and put a new number next to it so it shows progression that you’re paying this sucker off. So if you do have that craving for that triple venti macchiato extra caramel extra sprinkles that’s $7.97, you can just think, “I’m going to really hold off here for the next couple of months, pay down this credit card bill, and have at it.” So that’s what I personally did. If you guys have a good credit card story of how to pay it down, how to get in contact, how to reduce debt with your credit cards, I would love to hear it, honestly. Because everybody has credit card debt. It doesn’t matter who you are.

So anyway, so that is pretty much it for today. I appreciate you guys so much. Head on over to OperationSelfReset.com/podcast017. There you will find all the tips, comments, ideas, and even my process of getting rid of credit card debt. Money affects all of us. It really does. And it’s really just your outlook on it. You can be positive about it or you can be negative about it. You can either be grateful for people that have it or you can be selfish and not grateful with people who have money. So it’s really up to you. I truly believe that if you give positive vibes to people that have money, the money will come to you. Nate Holzapfel who spoke on this podcast in episode number three said a line that I truly, really do believe. He said, “If you let money go, it will come back at you.”

It’s one of those things. If you love something so much—think of yourself in high school again when you’re chasing that guy or girl around and like, “Oh my god, I love them so much. I love them so much.” If you love them so much, they’re not gonna love you, right? It’s the times when you don’t love that person or thing that it’s attracting you mostly. So it’s the same goes with money. That was a really weird observation/scenario there. I hope you guys understood what I was thinking of. Money is something we deal with. We need to overcome it, we need to get a handle on it, and we need to enjoy it in the right ways and give ourselves a better chance at restarting our financial future.

So there you go guys. Thanks again for everything. I appreciate you guys so much, honestly. You guys have a question or comment or want to get in contact with me: support@operationselfreset.com. We’ll see you in the next episode.
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