The surprising parallels between Love + Money

Wanna know something crazy?

There are a billion similarities between love and money, and to have a long-lasting love affair between the sheets AND your bank balance... turns out you can take the same guiding foundations and apply 'em to both. 

Wanna be "lucky" in love AND money, then this ep's one you won't wanna miss! 

Don't forget to come join the facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/kissmymoney

xo
Simone

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If you want to keep on earn more and make more money you're in the right place. I spent over 10 years learning from the most brilliant minds in money, wealth, and investing to take myself from 20 K in debt to a seven figure investment portfolio. Join in. As I share the secrets towards growth, money investing and ultimately freedom. My name is Simone Mercer Huggins, and welcome to ms. Wealthy's kiss my money.

Hey babes. So today is a very special day and I thought I would take this day to talk about money and love and the insane interconnectedness between the two. There are so many parallels and similarities when it comes to relationship love and money love. And I want to talk about a bunch of things that are really similar and how it relates to money and how it relates to relationships and loves. And it could even be like relationships in terms of friends as well, and family. And I want to talk about this because of this big myth that like money is this physical thing. When it's not money is just energy, right? It was created thousands of years ago as a stand in for an energy exchange of like exchanging rice for milk or exchanging beans for, you know, poultry. And so, uh, they created like paper form and like coins to represent, you know, a price value so that they didn't have to cart like hails and hails with Bay, for example, bales and bales of hay to the market, or they didn't have to like bring the cow to the market.

And so it was great so long ago as a form of an energy exchange. And so really money is energy and so is love and, uh, maintaining and having a successful relationship, um, takes work and it takes a bunch of really specific things to make it work. And the reason I'm talking about this, I totally skipped over is today is our, my husband. And I's 14 years together, eight years married, but 14 together. This is a really long time when, when I think about it and I think my God, 14 years, and I'm only 35, like when I met him, I was 21. Uh, he was 23, almost 24. And I honestly, I was not expecting or looking to meet my longterm partner or the, my future husband. Um, and as they say, as when it always happens, when you're not looking, that's when you met him while I was well and truly not looking.

Um, but it's been 14 years. And as you can imagine during that time, like your twenties and even early thirties are massive, massive growth periods, right? Like it's when you make huge changes in yourself as a person, in terms of your interests, your values, your likes, like you go from being a massive adventurer and traveling to wanting to, you know, pursue a career or whatever. And I feel like that period of time is such a massive like change area, you know? And so, uh, it's a true Testament, really to meeting someone really amazing. My husband's name is pate. And, um, you know, we, we have so many values in common, but we've also grown over the years. And just because we have a really successful relationship and incredibly loving relationship doesn't mean that doesn't take work. And I want to talk about that because, you know, for a long time, people, women specifically have come to me for money, advice, investing, help, all that sort of stuff, which is how ms wealthy was created.

But my friends and friends of friends have also come to me for like relationship help, um, to, because from, you know, they see that we have a very successful relationship and it's not like we haven't had difficult times just like with money and it's not like it has just been awesome with sailing, but there are definite things that for me, I can definitely see that is required and maintains, you know, requires constant work, maintaining constant work, um, for it to be successful. And that's the same with money. And I've always said to so many friends and now clients and now members of investing bootcamp that, you know, our attention that we put into our money and a lot of the values and commitments that we bring to a relationship are exactly the same when it comes to money. So when you think about love, for example, in a relationship, um, and you think about that parallel when it comes to your money and your finances, like how many of you actually treat your money and your finances in the same way that you would treat your partner and you know, whether you like girls or whether you like guys, or whether you like both doesn't matter, but like how many of you actually treat money with in a loving kind, compassionate way?

And, you know, do you write them long? Like, do you write money, love letters? Like I am serious. You guys, one of the activities you can do right now. And as soon as he's progressed, finishes is to literally write money, a love letter. I'm not even kidding. The other thing you can do is write money, a future letter. So, you know, in six months time, or even a year's time, like this is actually an incredibly cathartic process because how many of us have actually taken the time to communicate with money, which is my second point. So it loves the first, how much do you actually love money and put your, you know, desire and intention and energy and focus and attention into it. And how many of us actually communicate with it? Meaning how many of us give it clarity? And by that, I mean, you know, I've spoken in past episodes about money management and like splitting your bank accounts.

So having sub-accounts, but, you know, based off your main card or checking accounts and having sub-accounts that are specifically set out to allocate different buckets of money or different amounts of money, different percentages to specific things in your life. So to specific savings for a holiday, for example, to specific things like bills to groceries, to blowing, or like having fun, uh, and really having a bunch of different sub accounts, that's split out your money every time you get paid, uh, and give your money, purpose and clarity. And that is a form of communicating with it because communication is all about clarity, right? That's all it is. It's like checking in and seeing that we're on the same wavelengths checking in and being like, okay, this is where I'm at. This is my intention. This is where, you know what I want to do. And so giving the clarity means giving money, purpose, and that's how you do it with money by specifically splitting it out into different accounts so that it's not vague.

And it's not, everything's just not all jumbled into one because just talk a relationship like it would die without communication or relationship would die without having clarity about, you know, where it stands. So that's number two, the third one is attention, and this is different to love and communication because actually giving it the time of day, like how much of us, and be honest with yourself, how much time do you spend on your finances, on your money stuff? And obviously tuning in listening to podcasts is one thing, reading books, but also like setting aside a time to have like a money date or finance date and get financially wealthy, like wealthy, like w E L L fi like your financial wellness is so important. And so having a financial date means that might been setting aside time to actually set up your bank accounts properly so that you are properly set up.

It might be setting aside time to learn about investing. It might be setting aside time to recheck in or where you are, or even just as basic and simple as calculating your current net worth. And so if you do that once a week, once every two weeks, once a month, it means you giving it the time of day, you're giving it attention. Just like a relationship would die if you never gave it any time, or if you never went on a date, money's the same. So if we expect to have the same, um, love, if we expect to have a successful relationship with money, we have to give it a time and attention. We have to give it love. We have to give it clarity in communication. Right. And the other one I want to talk about number four is appreciation. Like, could you imagine if your partner came home every day and every day you said to them, God, I just, there's just not enough of you, but how many of us, how many of us honestly actually say to money?

I don't have enough. And so imagine saying that to someone else, I didn't saying that even to a friend, like, there's just not, you don't give enough of yourself to me. Like there was not enough and I can't seem to get enough. And I always want more, like for a little bit, that person might be like, Oh, okay. They just want to like, spend more time with me or see me more. But then being told that every single day it would get pretty tiring. Then you'd get over it. Then you'd be like, you know what? I give everything to you. I give literally everything I possibly can and it's never enough. Well, it's the same thing with money. The number one, the number one worry stress complaint, belief thought is that there's not enough. Like hands down, the number one, worry and stress is all around.

You know, what if I just had more money, then I'd be able to manage it better. Then I would be able to get ahead. No, that's absolute crap. And I'm sorry to be so hard on this, but it is absolutely not true. Making more money, doesn't change behavior. It just amplifies more of the same. And I've said this before, this is why lottery winners go broke within a couple of years because they don't, I haven't actually changed their behaviors. I haven't actually learnt a proper money management method that I haven't actually changed their mindset on money. And they haven't calculated things and spend the time giving it the attention. They haven't changed their mindset on being in love, right. And actually learnt the tools of how to multiply that money instead of just going into massive spending mode. And so actually appreciating the money that you have and showing it gratitude rather than focusing on the scarcity of it and criticizing it constantly is really important.

And it seems really, uh, you know, one of those things that all coaches and augers and all like, whatever will tell you about in terms of this is how you should live your life practice gratitude. And I know that sometimes it feels like it gets a little bit repetitive thing is so many people say it cause it's true. You guys, it's sort of true. I don't know if I've spoken about this before, but when I first started practicing gratitude, um, like really properly like intensely, uh, meaning, you know, I gave it like a, give him a full commitment and I would practice gratitude, um, every single day. And I did it for a few months straight. And I remember, I remember the exact moment. It was like maybe like three weeks in. And I remember catching myself thinking really, really positive, appreciative, grateful thoughts about something that I would normally have thought, uh, well, not thought that way.

And I remember specifically realizing that my gratitude practice was actually rewiring my brain. And that's what they say. The science behind practicing gratitude, uh, says that it actually does rewire your brain. And it's definitely something that I experienced. And the thing with gratitude is it doesn't take any time at all. You can practice gratitude when you're in the shower, when you're driving, when you are, um, you know, on the bus, on the train, like when you're cleaning your teeth, you don't have to take time. It doesn't have to be more time consuming. You can literally write the three things down on a posted note or three things down in a journal or say three things out loud or say things to your partner every day. When you wake up before you go to bed, the three things you're grateful for, and you can specifically use it on money.

Like imagine the shift from one person that criticize their partner every day to appreciating their partner every day, that would change a relationship. Right? And it's exactly the same with money. It changes your relationship. It changes your perspective and depending on how, where you are, it also changes your frequency and your ability to manifest more money because we are all just vibrational beings. That's not, that's actually not. We're, that's literally quantum physics. We are all vibrational beings and everything that we attract into our world, into our environment actually already exists. It's just whether we are tapped into it or not. And gratitude is one of those things that essentially is the gateway to receiving more abundance. Okay. So the other one I want to talk about it was that number four, number five is constant evolution. So I mentioned this before about my relationship with pate and that we've grown a lot and it's no surprise because definitely for me, my number one value is growth.

So I've always been focused on self development, personal development, growing, learning, changing, evolving. It's also part of human beings, DNA. Like we are hardwired for growth. We are hardwired to evolve and learn new things. Otherwise we go stagnant, right? And even if you think that you're not growing, you haven't changed a lot. When you think back to the last 10 years, you have, you actually have changed a lot. Your interests have changed. Your intelligence has changed. Your wisdoms changed. And so constant evolution, not just in ourselves, but in our relationship is required. Like you can't stay the same people together as you were 10 years ago. Like, because there's nothing new. And so that dies out right? And so for our relationship to grow and evolve, so does our money. So we need to grow and evolve and not stay stagnant, not just, uh, in money terms like in actual numbers terms, but also our knowledge and our experience with it.

So that comes about through learning and growing and, um, you know, putting more all of that time and attention into it. But it also comes through evolving through the money levels. And I spoke about this in the last podcast. So if you haven't listened to that one yet after this, put that one on and I talk about the three levels of mastering money, essentially the whole money game, right? And the idea, well, for you, grass, through them, for you to evolve as a human being is actually required because we can't stay stagnant in the first one or even two levels. You have to evolve to the third because the third level is multiplying your money. The first is making it, the second is keeping it. And the third is multiplying. So if you're, if you'd never get to the point where you're multiplying your money, well, you could never actually re retire.

So for all of you thinking, Oh, I'll never be an investor, babe. Like you will event initially. So he may as well start earlier. Yeah. And take it use and make use of compound interest compound growth. Because the faster you start, the sooner you start means you actually make more money. The sooner used to heart, it means that you have more time to make more money in your sleep essentially. And all of us eventually become investors in some way, in some shape or form. And for anyone out there, which is a lot of us that has any form of retirement account, meaning super or 401k or pension, the reality is you are already an investor. You already invest in the stock market. If you have some form of a retirement account. So just bear that food for thought. So when I talk about constant evolution, the idea is if you can get fast stuff through those three levels of the money game, if you can evolve past just making money and focusing all your attention and time and energy on making more money and get past the point of keeping more, meaning not everything that you receive goes out and is spend meaning you keep more meaning you saved, you saved for the purpose of investing it not save to spend later.

And then the third level to actually it, the faster you do that, the faster you evolve. And then the faster you can start learning about even more ways to multiply your money. And that is the hack to becoming wealthy, right? The faster you progress through that, the faster you get them. And so just as relationship requires constant evolution. So does your money and you as a person with your financial, let's call it literacy. But I guess that's a kind of boring word, but your financial bad-ass rate let's call it that cause that's way cooler. And so for you to constantly evolve, it requires you to get there eventually, which you all will, but the sooner you do it, the better off you are. Okay. Number six is to forgive, Oh man. So many of us are so hard on ourselves. Me included how many times have we made mistakes?

Right? Um, in all areas, not just when it comes to money, but mistakes, we just beat ourselves up. [inaudible] Oh my God. I do this to myself so much. You guys, I'm getting way better at it though. Um, of, of just kind of letting it go. And just as you need to forgive your partner or your lover, um, for, you know, small things, cause everyone messes up and I'm not talking about cheating on you with your sister, cause that's not cool, but I'm talking about the small stuff, right? That we all need to forgive other human beings in like messing up or stuffing up, whatever. How much do you actually forgive yourself when it comes to like tiny financial mistakes or forgiving yourself for like not being further ahead than you thought you were going to be. When actually you can't change the past, all you can deal with is right now, the present here where you are right now, and all you can do is make changes and shifts to change your future and make that start happening now.

So if you haven't done that yet, forgive yourself, please do, please forgive, save yourself for whatever financial mess up you think you've made or whatever financial hole you feel like you're in that you regret, like there's got to come a point where you give, show yourself some self love and forgiveness so that you can move on because there's no point anymore you learned from it like it a lesson. Yes, yes. And so forgiveness, not just for our lover, but for ourselves is really important for the money step, you know, money stage where in Mike, if I had spent 10 years beating myself up over shoving myself into financial debt, when I was in my early twenties, then I would have spent 10 years, essentially never getting ahead. Um, you know, borrowing my head in to more financial mess probably, and probably just spending to bury my emotions instead of spending 10 years, getting serious about it, learning about how to get out of it, working my butt off and investing, which is now how I'm so far ahead and how I've got to where I am.

So investing is how I got there because I forgave myself because I realized that I was doing the best I could at the time with what I knew. And at that time, what I knew was not a lot about money. And at the time, what I, what I knew was that banks handed out credit cards like candy. And I just didn't have the financial bad-ass right knowledge, um, to not put myself in that position. And it was a really good lesson. I'm glad I learned to early, early on, cause it's put me on this path. Right? So everything that happens, even though it seems really crappy at the time means that we all learn something from it. Alright, final one number seven is to invest back in meaning in our relationship, we need to invest our time and energy and effort back into it, right?

It's I use this example all the time, but you don't go to the gym once and then expect to be like a marathon runner or you don't go to the gym once and expect to be fit for life. It's constant commitment. It's constant upkeep to maintain being healthy. And so same with our relationship. We don't just go on one date and like sweet. We're done, like see you never, um, relationships take investing your energy and time and effort back into it for it to grow and flourish. And our money is the same. Our finances are the same. Um, you know, just like you can't listen to one podcast, one book, you can't do one money exercise and call it quits. It's a constant work and that's not meant to sound heavy. It's just meant to be like, okay, what can I do for half an hour this week?

That puts me further ahead from where I was last week. That's it. Right. And so that's for you. What can your money on your mindset if that is for you? Um, you know, doing some physical resource stuff, getting your tools, right. Getting your management, right. Or if that is for you learning how to invest, how to stop multiplying your money, like investing back in is really important. And just like relationships investing your money is really important too, because that means that you're investing the money back in to make more money. And that is why it's so powerful because just in relation, just like in relationships, when you put that energy in it compounds over time, like a 14 year relationship is not the same as a 14 day relationship. Right. And that's why it's so important. Anyway, I feel like I have gone on a lot about those seven things.

I didn't expect for it to take that long. I actually thought I was going to talk to you about some other things to do with money in love. Like how to talk to your partner about your finances, like, um, the actual like money tools that you can do to merge your finances together, what stage you're in, in your relationship and what that looks like with your money. But I might do a part two, uh, and talk about, uh, all of those other things when it comes to like the actual, the practical stuff, how do you raise it? How do you talk about it? What if you fight about money, um, it, with, you know, with your partner or your lover and cause I know a lot of you guys, uh, uh, struggling with some of that, it is the number one reason that couples break up.

Uh, so it is a biggie. And part of that reason is because money is so emotionally charged, um, because we all have, you know, deep seated beliefs and sometimes blocks and guilt and shame and all of the stuff around it. And so it can bring out heightened emotions for a lot of us. Um, here's the thing you guys, when you actually spend time on your money, like all of that stuff, I just went through and you actually work on yourself and you get better at money, you get better at your finances, you increase into the levels of the money game. It actually means you get so much more competent and confident and the more confident and self-assured you are the less emotionally volatile you are. And so the less you're gonna, you know, not fly off the handle when it comes to talking about it or navigating it with your partner. And that's also amazing byproduct of why it's so important to do all of those things that you do with her relationship also with money. Okay, I'm going to leave it there and I'm going to work on part two. So stay tuned for that. And until next time I will see you then.