NFA with Money. Dr. Amanda Barrientez

[00:00:00] Bob Wheeler: Welcome to another episode of money you should ask where everyone has something they can teach you. I’m your host, Bob Wheeler. In this episode, we are going to explore why we do what we do when it comes to money as a CPA for the past 30 years. Wait, let me say 25, because that makes me sound younger. I have seen it all when it comes to money and emotions.

And if you think I’m talking about my clients, I’m not. I’m talking about myself. My relationship with money has been, and sometimes still is an emotional roller coaster. Maybe that’s something you’re also familiar with. Good news. You and I are not the only ones. Our next guest is going to share their money, beliefs, money blocks, and life challenges as well.

Buckle your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.

Our next guest is Dr. Amanda Barrientez. She’s the founder of NFA, no f***ing around-money, and is also known as the money healer. She helps coaches and online entrepreneurs experience money-making breakthroughs using her proprietary NFA moneymaker methods. Higher profits are guaranteed. Her PhD is in sociology and she specializes in human behavior.

And. After going from food stamps to building a six-figure business fast, she’s been driven to teach business builders strategies to make more money doing exactly what they love to do. Dr. Amanda, welcome to the show. Hey Bob. Good to be here. Well, I’m super excited about this because you know what really there should be no around.

Let’s get to it. There’s no excuses. No, wait a minute. Wait a minute, but let me ask you this. This is what you dreamed of when you were saying. Is this the vision you

[00:01:57] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: had? No, you know, when I was seven, my dad was a real estate broker and agent, and he took me to this house on the mountain and they had like a climate controlled room in the house.

And I remember thinking I want the house. And I asked my dad, what are the people who live here do? And he said, they’re doctors. And so when I was little, I said, I want to be a doctor. So became a doctor, just not the same kind of doctor.

[00:02:22] Bob Wheeler: Hey, well, that’s great motivation. I see a house. I want it. How do I get that?

So you were asking the right questions when you were early on. Yeah,

[00:02:30] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: because I wanted that fun house. It’s snowed inside the house. That’s pretty cool.

[00:02:35] Bob Wheeler: That’s

[00:02:35] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: pretty, pretty fun.

[00:02:37] Bob Wheeler: And did your parents talk to you about money or did they encourage you or what was that like growing up in your family as a kid?

[00:02:47] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: No, I love talking about money, obviously. NFA money. The name money is in my business name. And I think a lot about how our parents don’t talk to us. And it’s not usually because they’re trying to hide anything from us. It’s just a conversation that most people don’t like to have. And. Most people don’t teach their kids money, confidence, values about money that helped them become wealthy.

I noticed even with the people I work with, like their families, if they were really wealthy, they still don’t even talk about it. It’s modeled and people follow what their family. But we learn a lot of limiting beliefs about money, a lot of fear and doubt. And one thing I think is really powerful is shame around money.

It’s embarrassing to talk about. And especially if we don’t know what we’re doing, we’re like, where do I go? Who do I talk to about this? And so in my family, there was a lot of stress around money. My parents were entrepreneurs, so they had this, you know, boom bust cycle going on. And so stress about money was talked about a lot, but it was never directly really to me about.

Yeah.

[00:03:49] Bob Wheeler: And when you talk about that famine or feast, like it’s one minutes, this is part of that. Do you think the thrill of it? Like, why can’t we just get on the merry-go-round and sort of keep it going at a nice pace once we hit that magic number, do you think part of it’s the, oh, well the, now I’m too comfortable.

I need it to be exciting again. Well, I think it

[00:04:10] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: can be that, but more than that, I think it’s that we’re addicted to stress. Most people actually feel more comfortable feeling stress than they do feeling mellow and calm and relaxed. And so especially high achievers and entrepreneurs tend to push themselves really hard.

So a lot of that I think of as imposter syndrome, like they’re proving themselves. So we set the bar really high, like, oh, what’s the next 10 X goal. Push to get there. And I’m going to create the belief that when I get there, I’ll be happy. And then when I get there, I’ve already stretched the bar so far again.

And I never just sit in the relaxation and joy of having fun, building my business or building wealth, you know, whatever it is. And so I think people are really addicted

[00:04:49] Bob Wheeler: to stress. Yeah, absolutely. And when you get to that mountain, how long should you sit and enjoy the view before you like jumped to the next mountain?

Like, is there a timeframe

[00:05:00] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: every single day? I tell people. I think it’s interesting because it’s a great question. There’s this Neville Goddard, I think it was Neville Goddard said the end of longing is. Yeah. So the end of longing as being, so then what would we do if we never longed for anything, we would just sit there and do nothing really.

Right. So there is something about having that desire to create what’s next? The thing that I like to teach people to do is to sit in the joy of it every day. Instead of always thinking that it’s the destination that will make you happy. How do you align yourself every single day to feel good? Because you never know when it’s going to.

Every minute. We don’t know when we have the last minute. So really becoming masterful with yourself, meaning like mindful feeling good, focusing on joy and then everyday feels fun. And it’s not like you’re focused on the next mountain to climb. You’re just taking steps up the mountain every day and you’re enjoying the whole journey.

You’re enjoying the process at the bottom, the middle, the top. When you see the whole view, then you see the next valley and the next dip on the next mountain. And you just keep going and you enjoy the whole process, instead of thinking that somehow when you get to a certain point of success that you’ve made up in your mind that you’re going to feel better and that’s when you’ll be successful, you know, you get to choose to be successful every day.

Yeah.

[00:06:15] Bob Wheeler: I feel like that’s so true. And what it reminds me of in a different way is when clients will tell me, oh, I’ve just inherited a hundred thousand dollars or 500,000. Or they’ll have success business-wise and I’ll ask them to just leave the money in the bank account for 30 days. Yeah. Like don’t pay down the debt, like just keep doing what you’re normally doing and just go in and look and go, oh look, there’s an extra $300,000.

Instead of let me get it right back to where I feel comfortable. Let me like pay down everything and not actually have the joy of that money sitting in and blessing. My life with some flow towards me. I

[00:06:53] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: love that, Bob. That’s awesome. That’s a really good tip because a lot of people, there’s a money block where people have a fear of too much.

It’s like a fear of abundance. Right. And so right when they get a big influx, they spend it all to get exactly like you’re talking about back to like a money set point where it feels safe and comfortable to them. And so you’ve got to raise that slowly over time. So I love that idea, you know, just leave the money there and don’t do anything with it and just look at it, you know?

Oh, yeah. I have 500 grand in the bank. That’s awesome. And it

[00:07:20] Bob Wheeler: terrifies people. Yeah. It’s amazing how just looking and seeing the money. I’ve got an older client that has a couple of million dollars in the bank and they’re so terrified that everything’s going to be taken tomorrow. Yeah. And. It’s been sitting there for a while.

Maybe some of it will go, but it’s great to look at it, but it’s also to let it be of service to us, for me, money has to be a flow. We can’t hoard it and we can’t just spend it all. It’s finding that flow of letting it come in and bringing some of their friends and then heading out and bringing me other things with the money that them and their friends can do.

Like I’m like bring all your friends, bring the bends, bring the. So it’s just interesting. So I want to ask you we’re if I’m correct a single mom and you’re on food stamps, and then you had to turn it around, can you sorta tell me how that ha like what that journey was like, because that can happen to anybody like, oh, life is good.

Life is good. All of a sudden I’m living out of my.

[00:08:24] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: Yeah, for me, it was a lot of relationship fallout. So it started by me ending my 15 year marriage having an affair, so huge relationship fallout. And the next relationship I was in wasn’t working, we had moved in together and here I was one day we had broken up and he was moving out of this house that we had gotten together.

And so the basement was empty and I’m looking out at it and I’m going, oh my God, no, one’s coming to save me. I thought my ex-husband and I were making repair and getting along. And he had just moved in with his new person. And he wrote me this email that said, you know, it had the word boundaries on the subject line and him and his new person that decided they didn’t want me to like come into their house because they needed to set up their new space.

And I just was sitting there. So I get this email, my boyfriend had moved out. My counselor had just talked me into going on a food stamps because they didn’t have enough. I’d spent the day looking on Craigslist for houses and I couldn’t afford anything because here I am in grad school, I have three kids.

The place I lived in Boulder, Colorado was super expensive. And so my income did not even close to make rent money even. And so I was just crying and crying and I just had this epiphany, like, what’s the problem here? And I was like, it’s me like, I’m the problem. I’m the one that’s creating this. And so I decided in that moment that I was willing to do whatever it took to have a healthy, good relationship and have more money.

And what it led me to was listening to podcasts because I was already super busy. I would listen to podcasts while I was driving my kids to school, cleaning the dishes in between walking from my classes, I would just listen to podcasts. And I started learning and realizing that there were answers. And these were things that people had never really talked to me about.

It was interesting because I was in grad school and I was learning a lot, but I was learning a lot of theoretical stuff and I was learning a lot about macro systems as a sociology. Macro systems of oppression, marginalization, which in a lot of ways kept teaching me that like, I’m really screwed because I’m a brown, single mom.

I’m a first gen college student, like all these things. I’m like, I’m never going to be wealthy. I’m never going to make it. And so listening to these podcasts, they were all done by coach type people. And I realized like, oh, there are answers. And these are things that everybody needs to know, life skills, relationship skills, money, skills, confidence skills.

And so I decided. As I was coming to the end of my program and in a kind of interesting way, we also had in my department, this national news fallout where professors were leaving and people were stressed and I just was sitting there going, I don’t want to be a professor, which was what I had spent, lots of time and energy and money moving toward.

And so I just had this day after I went to this workshop, I thought, screw it. I’m going to take the leap and be an entrepreneur and see what happens at least as a coach. Get paid to do something I enjoy doing. Yeah. And who knows what will happen. And so when I graduated, I took the leap in that first year of business, I went six figures.

And so ever since then, it’s just been this amazing process of learning how to build my wealth, learning how to be an entrepreneur, learning how to change my money mindset, and then helping other people do the same. Yeah.

[00:11:30] Bob Wheeler: Well, let me ask you this, cause this is the big piece that I’m curious about for listeners.

There’s that in-between time you’re going to start learning new information and I’m imagining it took longer than three days to turn your life around.

[00:11:46] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: So in

[00:11:46] Bob Wheeler: that time, whether it’s three months, whether it’s a year, whatever, how do you keep it together? How do you keep it together through the. Through the frustration through the bill, collectors the kids saying, mommy, mommy, I need a new clothes.

I mean, was it the kids that kept you going? Was it something like that’s a lot, it’s a big mountain to climb. Yeah, they

[00:12:07] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: did spend a lot of nights crying myself to sleep by myself. No one really knew what I was struggling with because I lived. The university I went to at CU Boulder. Like a lot of the people are very wealthy and grad students, you know, even though a lot of them were taking out loans and living on the cheap, they weren’t on food stamps and they didn’t have kids to feed.

And so it wasn’t really sharing that I was going to bed crying every night. So for me, It was hope. Once I started listening to the podcast and I started hearing that there were solutions and answers, it was like, oh, I just never knew that you could learn how to be wealthy. I always thought that you just were stuck where you were and that wealthy people were kind of like these.

I mean, it sounds ridiculous to say, but it’s almost like they were magical unicorns of some sort to me. It was like, I don’t know how to get. I saw people going to Europe and new and all the fun things and going on family trips and having these huge houses and none of those things I had, and it was like, I don’t know how to get that.

And in some ways I thought being a professor was going to be the solution to that. And then as it wasn’t that world, I realized like, oh, professors work really hard and don’t make a lot of money at all. And so I kept reinforcing that belief. Like women don’t make a lot of money, women aren’t powerful. And so when I started listening to this podcast, that gave me hope.

And so what I did was I started. Programming my brain and saturating my brain every single day with messages like that. And that’s what would get me through. Honestly, it was like, I would feel sad and then I go, I’m going to listen to podcasts and it would completely change my mindset and my thinking.

And then I’d get sad and I’d do it again and do it again and do it again. And to just started reprogramming my brain in a whole new way.

[00:13:41] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. I’m wondering if you’re familiar, I’m reading a book right now called outliers and being in the right place at the right time. As part of success, but also having tools available and accessible to one and as a person of color, as a brown woman, where are there some things that in your mind, like you just said, I’m a woman, so then I’m not going to be able to go.

Was there a lot of that. And culturally that said, you’re just going to be a single mom with three kids and just hope for whatever comes your way. Be grateful. Yeah. You

[00:14:16] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: know, for me, it got like the story might work with people on money stories and my money started kept getting reinforced, but from different angles, because I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian.

So in that story, women are not supposed to be the breadwinners and they’re not supposed to be financially powerful. And so I got that story told to me my whole childhood and I watched a lot of the women in my. Not have financial power or financial intelligence. And not be driven in that way because they weren’t even supposed to want that.

Right. And so that was my whole childhood. And then when I grew up and I got pregnant really young, I got pregnant at 20 and my husband was too stressed to go to school for both of us. So he talked me into dropping out of college. So I dropped out. He stayed, never finished. So then we had this crazy financial reality and the whole time I was just going, but I know that.

I know I’m capable of more. And then that’s why I went back to school. And when I went back to school, it was an interesting reinforcement of the same story, but from a different perspective in sociology, it was like women, women of color, definitely single women. I was first gen and so came from a lower middle class background.

I kept getting that story. Like I’m never going to be financially powerful. And so it kept stacking on itself and whatever you believe to be true, you find in your reality and you create that in your reality. So once I started learning that I could have personal power and change my reality in a new way, like outliers book, I read a lot about quantum physics, metaphysics, law of attraction, those kinds of things, because I realize that.

I’m the one creating my reality and I can choose to create anything I want to create. And so it was like light bulb moments going off every day where it was like, oh, I don’t have to stay stuck in this way of being, I don’t have to. And I still it’s something that I worked through. Like I still have this inferiority complex.

I would say, you know, imposter syndrome and it’s stuff. I work on all the time and it’s why I love working with people on it because I’m going through it too. I

[00:16:11] Bob Wheeler: think that’s so important. And I like to reiterate this all the time. You don’t just arrive. Yeah. And that’s the good news and the bad news is we’re going to keep working on this in a way it’s good news because I’m not surprised that, oh, I have the next level of work to do or, oh, I’m circling back to some stuff that I thought I dealt with, but it’s from a new angle.

And I think for some people they’re like, well, I just want to get there and be done, but money success. A healthy relationship that all takes continual work. Just like a relationship with another person, whether it’s romantic or children or parents, it requires conscious, intentional, active doing the work, staying for painful conversations, difficult conversations, not running away from it and learning to stay and work through it.

It’s not an overnight success kind of thing. And I know for some people that can sound daunting for me, the payoff is so worth it. And there are times I go into a kicking and screaming,

[00:17:16] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: but it’s so worth it. I mean, you’re so right. You know, we have that. There’s no such thing as overnight success. And yet most people want it and they think they can get it.

And then they start doing the work that it takes to master themselves. And it’s like, oh, this is a lot. You got to work through all kinds of stuff. And it is a journey and it is a process. And I mean, my eyes are filling up with tears talking about, because I know what it feels like to be stuck and scared.

And then I know what it’s like to have. I’m remarried to my best friend, like love of my life, super happy. We just bought a house. We got married in Hawaii. I have a six figure business on my way to seven figures. Like that feels a lot better than crying on the floor, like so much better. And so I know both sides and it’s worth.

I called the comforts and the curse of the comfort zone, because sometimes when people, they’re not at rock bottom, they’re not willing to do what we’re talking about, which is like digging their stuff and bring that stuff to the conscious level so that they can then break through to the next level, because there’s not really the motivation for it.

[00:18:20] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. You sorta gotta have the tiers. Yeah. I, you know, there’ve been a lot of tears and I don’t regret them because I needed to go through. I needed to like trial by fire. It was horrific. And the other side is so much better. You know, it’s always that you can’t go around the fire. You got to go through it.

You got to go through the fire and that’s, it’s hard. I want to ask you this piece because I know this was true for me. I think it’s true for other people. Sometimes our family and not that they mean to be, can be our worst. Or in the fact that wait a minute, you’re breaking barriers. You’re doing what I didn’t get to do.

You’re having success and feeling good about it. And either they may have to feel some shame. They may have to feel some disappointed. Whatever they have to feel. And so they may, oh, Amanda, don’t do that. Like don’t put yourself through that. Why don’t, you know, come and like sit down and relax a little relax.

You don’t you doing too much? Did

[00:19:29] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: you have any of that? I hear this from people all the time. It’s one of the things people ask me a lot. Like, what do you do when your growth causes you to lose the people in your life? Because it does happen. It’s been interesting for me. My parents cheer me on really beautifully.

Like my family are big cheerleaders of me. I would say it’s been in my relationships that weren’t so it’s interesting because. The person I, that I said had an affair, the guy moved out and then we had this kind of toxic bond where we just couldn’t seem to break up. We were in grad school together and we couldn’t get away from each other.

So we moved in, moved out, moved in, moved out, like had this ongoing relationship. And in the end he ended up leaving, having an affair saying exactly what you’re saying. Like, could you stop growing? I can’t keep up. I don’t want to grow. I don’t want to focus on personal growth and develop. And we’d go on a vacation.

That’d be like, Ooh, let’s like talk about our vision and read books and he’d be like, can we just have fun? And I’d be like, oh, that is fun to me. So we really just grew apart. And so you will weave people behind and you will go different paths. And so it’s something that scares people, I think, in this growth journey, like you’ve got to decide to align with people who are on a growth journey too, and, or hang out with.

Maybe a somewhat compartmentalized way. If they’re not on the same growth path as you that’s okay. Hang out with them, go to dinner, go on. Some runs, have some fun and then have your community of people who are gonna support you and lift you up in your dreams. And if there are people who are directly telling you, like, don’t do this and they’re dragging you down, you gotta make some hard choices sometimes and go, you know what I’m growing.

And this is the one life I get to live. And I’m going to choose to be surrounded by people who we cheer each other.

[00:21:15] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, I think one of the things for me. Stepping out meant people might judge me. People might not rally for me. People might not think I should be the one giving voice to whatever I’m giving voice to.

And so like, oh, let me just stay small. And for people out there, the reality is, yeah, people are going to judge you. People are not going to rally for you. People will try to sabotage. People will say you are not the expert or the person that should be sharing that story. And I would argue do it anyway.

Advocate for yourself. Don’t listen to the naysayers, listen to that little voice or that inner light. That’s telling you to get up and shine because there are a lot of people that try and blow it out. And it’s your right to just keep bringing that light.

[00:22:03] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: I did an interview with someone recently and her name is Diane winger and she’s a coach.

Something that stuck in my mind forever. She said, you will never be criticized by somebody doing better than you. Right. So it’s like the naysayers are pulling you down because they feel bad about where they’re at. Right. So are you going to be the one who leads or are you going to be the one who gets pulled down by the people who feel negative?

You know, it’s that misery loves company idea. And do you choose to break out of that? Part of the light or do you choose to stay around people who are complaining, playing small? Not really getting what they want feeling kind of crappy. Like it’s a choice.

[00:22:41] Bob Wheeler: It’s a choice. It’s a choice. How do you talk to your children?

Do you have deep conversations? Oh yeah. Yeah. Tell

[00:22:49] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: me about that. Yeah. My parenting changed a lot when I started to really discover these, I would say universal truths, ways of being different, personal growth and development. My oldest daughter is in one of my masterminds, so it’s really amazing to be able to change the intergenerational path of women in my family, especially.

And so, you know, my kids, we talk all the time by the wealth books, we have conversations, they talk about investing, saving, what is it that they love to do? And my kids are older, so I don’t force it. There’s something about being inspired to do something very different than your parents telling you. Right?

Because they were quite a bit older when I started down this road. Now I get to attract them to ask the questions instead of force feeding it to them. Because sometimes when you force it on your kids, they go the other way. Right. They’re like, I don’t want to hear this from my parents. So I really invite and model.

And when they come to me to talk to me about it, yeah. We talk a lot and it’s really important to me. My youngest, I have four kids, but once my stepson and we talk about it all the time, because I still have a ton of influence on him. He’s nine. And so it was really fun. We were in the car the other day, having this fun conversation about money.

And then he said like, oh, we were talking about having money, make money for you. And he’s like, oh, so money is like your employee. And I’m like, yes, you got it. And people don’t teach their kids. You know, it’s like go to school, get good grades, work hard. Hopefully someday I’ll retire. Happy. Now. Like let’s teach our kids easy ways to make money.

Have it be fun, have your money make money for you. Invest wisely, start practicing those habits when they’re little and doing what they love to make money and get that to be their paradigm of belief. Instead of you got to work hard to make money and feel miserable. And everyone’s kind of just, that’s just the way it is.

[00:24:37] Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. So then let me ask you this. Should everybody’s goal be to make seven figures and focus on the money.

[00:24:47] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: Absolutely not. Your goal needs to be whatever feels fulfilling to you. Right. And that’s going to be dramatically different for people. Some people live very simply and they don’t need as much money to get by.

Right. Some people want to live. The lifestyles are so different. So what I always tell people is to reverse engineer from the lifestyle. You’d really want to have some people want big fancy houses and go on trips all the time in big fancy cars. Awesome. Create your life and your business around that.

Create your money making around that. Some people don’t want that. And so I don’t think there’s a set number for anybody. I do believe that you want to have your money making money for you, and you do want to plan so that you’re. 65 years old going crap. I can’t retire because I have no savings, no investments.

And now I’ve got to work the rest of my life doing something I don’t enjoy doing. Yeah,

[00:25:38] Bob Wheeler: absolutely. How do boundaries and gratitude play into your money story? If at all,

[00:25:46] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: so much. You know, I talked to people a lot about their frequency, because lots through law of attraction, you attract the vibrational frequency that you’re set at.

So if you’re in a state of complaining versus gratitude, the complaining is going to attract your way stuff to complain about. If you’re in the frequency of gratitude, you’re going to attract your way stuff to be grateful for. And so gratitude is huge for me. It’s like even being grateful for the stuff that you think was not great in your head.

I would never take back those crying moments. I wouldn’t take back any of the affairs, the fights, the tears, the worry, because it got me to exactly where I am today. And so it’s always choosing to see the perspective of the upside of everything that’s happened to you, which shifts your mindset in a new direction.

And has you in a state of gratitude? Boundaries are another critical, important thing, because a lot of people, especially because I work with entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck with people pleasing if they’re people pleasers, like especially coach types, because they have huge hearts and they really want to serve the world.

They tend to over-give. And so boundaries are really important because they’ve got to start to learn what to say no to what to say yes, to, and really to maximize their time and their energy. They’ve got to start being able to. Important boundaries. And this is a huge thing that we work on in money world.

[00:27:08] Bob Wheeler: Why is it important for you to pay it forward?

[00:27:11] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: Oh, because the law of cause and effect, sowing and reaping you get back what you put out. So paying it forward is something that brings back a wealth of abundance to you because you are giving, then you get to receive and it’s a cycle that just continues on and

[00:27:29] Bob Wheeler: on.

What do you hope your legacy to be,

[00:27:33] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: uh, to end the intergenerational cycle of poverty for women in my family. So really empower women financially. And for my business, my quest is to impact a minimum of 5 million people and help them have money confidence so that they can choose and have freedom to choose whatever life they deserve.

[00:27:54] Bob Wheeler: That’s awesome. And I just want to name that it’s so important to be specific. I think so I love that it’s 5 million, if it’s more than that. Fantastic. But it’s so important really to get clear. It’s so important. So I really, I appreciate it. So we are at our fast five fast five is brought to you by cube money.

A cash envelope system made easy real-time financial awareness without the hassle of tracking expenses and carrying cash. For more information, click on the link in the show notes. All right. So Dr. Amanda five down and dirty fast, here we go. Let’s see what happens. What is something you feel or have felt pressured by your family to spend money on, but didn’t want to go on.

That

[00:28:36] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: is a hard one. I can’t think of anything. Maybe let’s say, we’ll say fancier clothes. I can’t think of anything.

[00:28:48] Bob Wheeler: When you were a kid, did you ever take money from your mom’s purse? And if so, what did you spend it on? Oh yeah,

[00:28:52] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: my brother and I actually, it was my parents own the laundry mat and they had this coin jar that was filled with, we didn’t know at the time, but it was like couple of thousand dollars.

Right. My brother and I, when my parents would go, we would sneak the money and spend it on Domino’s pizza. And they never looked at it until we were going to go on a family vacation. And when they let to look at it, there was only a couple hundred dollars left. We didn’t know we were supposed to go to Disneyland with that money.

Oh, no. Yeah. So instead of going to Disneyland, we got to do a lot of chores.

[00:29:24] Bob Wheeler: Ah, that’s a bummer. What do you love to spend money on besides pizza books?

[00:29:29] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: I love books. Yeah, I love books. I it’s like my greatest joy.

[00:29:37] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. Books are great. Books are great. What money beliefs do you still catch yourself saying or thinking?

Sometimes

[00:29:44] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: I think the big one for me would be. I can’t afford it still comes in. Sometimes it doesn’t always come in those words. It’s like, I don’t have money for that. Well, it’ll pop in and I’ll catch it and go, Ooh, Nope. Let’s reframe that. But yeah, I don’t have money for that.

[00:29:59] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. I think that’s a big one for a lot of people.

Yeah. I’m guilty of that. Have you ever re gifted a gift? What was it and who did you give it to?

[00:30:09] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: I love these questions. Yes, definitely. Um, we had, it was like this statue. I went to a white elephant party and I got this funny bird statue, and I re gifted it. I had another white elephant party

[00:30:23] Bob Wheeler: actually. Oh, that’s fine.

Yeah. I’ve occasionally given a present where people aren’t sure if they’re supposed to appreciate it, you know, they’re like, oh, that’s interesting. I’m going to ask you another half a question since the first one, you weren’t sure if it was closed. So let’s just see this. If you won the lottery, would you tell anybody, or would you keep it a secret?

[00:30:43] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: I would definitely want to keep it a secret. I would spend the money generously with people in the life, but I would definitely prefer to have it be a secret. They think that it would cause interesting complications depending on the amount of.

[00:30:57] Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we are at our sweet spot, our M and M moment money and motivation.

And I’m wondering if you have a practical financial tip or a piece of wealth wisdom that has served you personally

[00:31:09] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: definitely start auto savings. So have it draw straight out of your account at 10% every month, and then every quarter up it by a 10%. You increase that amount and keep increasing it over time and you will see magic happen in your bank account because you’re triggering and signaling to the university responsible with money, and then you’ve never missed the 10%.

And then when you just slightly increase it over time, you’ll save more and more and more and more. And I did this when I was on food stamps and I built up an investment account and built up a, I call it a money magnet account and my whole money world completely changed. That’s a really practical, actionable strategy.

[00:31:49] Bob Wheeler: That’s awesome. I am a big proponent of autosaving trick yourself, whatever you need to do to get you on track, because I know for myself, I get into that mindset of, oh, I can’t afford that, or, oh, I’m not going to be able to save. And when I have multiple bank accounts pulling out money here and there. And they’re just expenses all of a sudden, oh, look, yeah.

Wow. How did that happen? Because we love to be at least myself. Sometimes I just unconsciously self-sabotage if I’m not, if I let myself, yeah. I got to stay conscious, got to stay conscious because

[00:32:21] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: you don’t miss the money. You don’t notice it when it’s on auto it’s just becomes another bill and then it goes, and then when you increase it over time, you’ll see your savings build up fast.

And then it gets really fun and you’re like, Ooh, how much more could I save?

[00:32:33] Bob Wheeler: It’s so true. And I tell people because a lot of times people say, well, I’m waiting for that bonus, or I’m waiting for that extra paycheck. Well, it’s not coming. And if you know it does, you’ve got a story for it. So five bucks, just start five bucks a week.

There are so many programs that will let you start with $5 or $10. And it is when you get to, oh, I’m at 500 bucks. It feels like monumental in the beginning. Other people might be like, oh, it’s only 500 bucks, but then when you. I want to get to a thousand. Let me see if I can get it to 5,000 and it does amplify and you get really incentivized or at least I did.

[00:33:07] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: And everyone I teach it to it works really well.

[00:33:10] Bob Wheeler: Yeah. That’s so awesome. Well, Amanda, what I’ve really appreciated about this conversation today is one thing is clear. There’s no time for talking around. Let’s get to it. Let’s don’t waste time. And what I didn’t hear was a lot of. And even talking about fractured relationships, toxic relationships, really about taking responsibility, realizing you were the common denominator in your life and that it was up to you to make the decision to do better.

And so instead of playing victim, you started listening, you started educating, you started making difficult choices and all the while having three kids. It’s a lot. And what gives me hope is that you focused on hope. And I think for so many people, it does feel hope. And there are amazing people out there, whether it’s a coach on a podcast, whether it’s a friend who’s been through something, if we’re willing to seek, help or ask for help, sometimes reaching out an arm to the left or the right.

You may get a lot of nos, but you got to keep asking until you get a, yes, it may be just reaching to somebody through social media and finding something like that. But there is help out there for people that are not quite feeling the hope. So I really appreciate that. You’re out. Wanting to make a difference.

And I know that you’re impacting 5 million people and breaking that generational cycle that so many families have these stories that have kept people small. And so I just love to see you out there doing this work, getting people conscious, intentional, and making choices that serve their passion, not just their pocketbooks.

So thank you so much.

[00:34:48] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: You are welcome. I love all the things you just said because the NFA motto is radical responsibility. Ah, yeah.

[00:34:55] Bob Wheeler: So you got super, where can people find you online and social media

[00:35:00] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: for more inspiration? Watch my YouTube channel. We release a ton of videos. So NFA money. If they just go to YouTube, they money, Instagram and FAA money.

And if they want free access to all kinds of awesome resources, NFA money, formula dot. That’ll lead them to a money mindset, quiz, a money story, a program. I created all kinds of cool stuff, free and paid. And so NFA money, formula.com is where they

[00:35:25] Bob Wheeler: would go for that. Do you want people to go to the money blocks, profile.com?

They can.

[00:35:29] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: If they go to NFA money formula, the first thing on there is the money blocks profile. So you can put both, but the NFA money formula leads

the.

[00:35:38] Bob Wheeler: Awesome. We’ll be sure to put all that in the show notes, Dr. Amanda, it’s been so awesome. I so appreciate you taking time out of your day to share your wisdom with our listeners.

[00:35:48] Dr. Amanda Barrientez: Welcome. Thanks for having.

[00:35:56] Bob Wheeler: we hope you enjoyed this episode. Did you learn something new about your relationship to money today? Maybe you have a friend who has some financial blocks or beliefs that are holding them back. Please share this podcast. So they too can get off the roller coaster ride a financial. And journey towards financial freedom to learn how to have a healthy relationship with money, visit the money nerve.com.

That’s nerve not nerd. We’ll be back next week with another perspective on money and the emotions that bind us. .