We all know the basics of how personal finance works. It’s like the basics of dieting for weight loss, right? Spend less than you make and you will save money. Burn more calories than you eat and you will lose weight. If only life were that simple. But if it were, it would also be super boring. The great thing about life is that there is an infinite variety in what we can do, say, think, plan, eat, spend, buy, love, hate, accomplish and fail at every single day. In the same way that few of us ever get an honest-to-goodness decent education in how to eat and exercise for our optimal health, few of us ever get an actual education in how to use money in our lives for optimal wealth either.
And these days there are so many new ways to spend money! How easy is it to make an in-app purchase on our phone? Or to wave our phone at the checkout of Whole Foods with Apple Pay and not even notice quite what the exact total came to. That one-click option on Amazon leaves you no time to think about it while you enter in your credit card info, and Paypal makes paying anyone anywhere for anything super easy. With all of these different accounts that pull our money out, it can be hard to even see where all the money goes.
Cassie Parks knows this stuff is hard. She remembers herself heading over to the discount racks and stacks at Target and ending up with $200 worth of stuff she didn’t really need or want from a single shopping trip all the time. Come on, admit it, you’ve done it too. But when we decided she wanted to get serious about growing her wealth, she knew her own thoughts and feelings about money were the first thing that had to change.
The first thing she looked at was what really made her happy. How often do we all spend money out of habit or convenience when it isn’t going toward anything that actually increases our joy in life. How much do you love the last 10 things you bought? Would you be just as happy if you hadn’t bought any of them and still had that money in your account? Cassie realized that most of the time she would be happier with the money than the momentary boost of just buying. So she cut back on all the things that didn’t bring her joy, and did her best to only spend on the things that did.
She also had a great example in her mother who owned rental properties and showed Cassie that it wasn’t out of reach. The first home Cassie bought had extra bedrooms that she rented out to friends. When they all moved out she decided to downsize to a studio apartment just for her so she could rent the entire house out. By cutting back on things she didn’t want and renting instead of selling the house she was no longer using to its full potential, she was quickly able to save up enough to put another down payment on another property.
When I asked Cassie about the barriers that most people see to buying property, she said that we can all look around our lives and find unused capacity. Do you have a room in your house you could AirBnB? Or a car you only use certain times or certain days? Could you moonlight with Uber or Lyft? Or maybe get cash from enrolling your car in a car share service? What other skills do you have? What stuff do you have lying around your house that you could ebay? When we have the right mindset and get laser focused, it is possible to save up for that down payment. It might take two years, it might take six months. It depends on how important getting to that goal is and what you are willing to do in order to get there.
Now Cassie teaches others what she has learned herself about adjusting your mindset from being a consumer to a creator, from being a spender to a wealth builder. She realized it’s more than one thought or one behavior that needs to change in order to have a different money experience. She is teaching people how to change their money story. Her most recent Change Your Money Story Challenge, which is free, resulted in $52,252.80 manifested by 378 people in a week.
Cassie is passionate about helping her clients, like Michele Reynolds. Michele’s money story was one of survival, “I have always been able to create just enough money to do what I wanted or needed, but never more.” She’s now living the story of a thriving mompreneur who works less and makes more money.
To hear my entire conversation with Cassie, click here. You can get her best-selling book, Manifest $10,000: Learn How to Manifest 10,000 by Using the Law of Attraction and Improving Your Money Mindset, and check out her website and Manifest $10k program here.