From Financial Challenges to Financial Celebrations – Penleope’s Story in Her Own Words

It’s amazing to recall all the struggles I used to experience around money.  One of my biggest challenges was my overall lack of knowledge about finances—I felt completely inadequate and money management seemed very complicated… Something other people were capable of succeeding at but not me.

I believed that I would never be successful at balancing the constant onslaught of money demands and needs for our large family (my husband and I have four girls).

I was afraid that if I took an honest look at our family’s expenses in relation to our income, I would feel like we had nothing to hang our hats on.  I also experienced a lot of resentment.  I blamed my financial inadequacies on my girls—my excuse was that I was too busy taking care of them to sit down and create a budget.

I also blamed my husband for not making more and managing better.  I resented that he made the majority of the money decisions in our family.”

Through our work with Leslie I realized that the reason my husband had more say with our finances was because I gave him more say. He made the money decisions because I wasn’t willing to step up and assume more responsibility! And yet I was secretly afraid that if I assumed more financial responsibility our situation would get worse and I would feel overburdened.

I experienced a breakthrough when through Leslie’s coaching and support I realized that I actually suffered more when I didn’t step up and assume financial responsibility.   Ironically, when I started taking on more responsibility around money I felt lighter, freer, and more empowered.

The Financial Freedom Light at the End of the Tunnel

Working with Leslie has brought me the confidence and peace around money that I never knew I could have. Learning to create a spending plan was especially empowering for me.  A spending plan gives us the flexibility to decide how we’re going to spend our money each month based on our needs and wants for a given month.

Instead of being locked into a budget that remains the same month after month, we decide each month exactly how we spend our money.  We base our decisions on our past month’s spending (which we track closely, looking at how much we spend in each area of our lives).

Creating our Financial Headquarters

One of the actions we took that made the biggest impact on our lives was creating what Leslie refers to as our ‘financial headquarters.’ We now have a specific place we keep our mail, our bills, our ‘bill pay calendar’ (which lists all our bill due dates) as well as an organizer that contains all the necessary items for paying bills like stamps, staplers, envelopes, pens and post-it notes.

During the week I open the day’s mail and sort it in the proper place, making sure the bill due dates are recorded correctly on our bill pay calendar. I recycle the day’s junk mail. Every week my husband and I sit down together and look at our bill-pay calendar to see what bills we need to pay.  We have truly created order out of chaos.

I used to equate spending money with love.  I thought that if I began to take control of my finances and reign in my spending habits I would be withholding love and freedom from my girls, our family, and myself.  But much to my surprise I discovered that love is really about being more conscious about my money decisions.

I realized that I’m not being loving when I randomly purchase things and don’t have a clear sense of how much I’m spending and what impact it will have.  I’ve learned I can say “no” from a loving and supportive space.  Saying “no” to an unplanned dinner out means that I get to say yes to something else that is more meaningful to me – like paying down our debt.

Creating a Break Through With Money

This work has been an amazing transformational process for me.  Just this last Christmas my teenage daughter told me that this had been one of the best Christmas’s ever.  Instead of fighting over money, my husband and I had a clear plan for our spending and were working together as a financial team.

Our commitment to our financial journey and working with Leslie has not only resulted in us getting rid of over $3,000 in debt but it has improved our relationship.  And because of that my husband and I are able to be role models of true financial responsibility for our girls.  I can’t imagine a better legacy to pass on to our children.

. Click here to sign up for my FREE webinar onWed.,  March 31st, “Personal Transformation Through Money: How to Consciously Achieve Your Money Goals And Create Financial Success in Your Life.”