Announcer 0:48
Gloria Steinem once said, we will never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. Barbara Provost and Maggie Nielsen are the team at Purse Strings that will help you navigate the ins and outs of financial independence so that you can be financially fearless. This is Women and Money, The Shit We Don’t Talk About.

Maggie Nielsen 1:12
We’re so excited to have you on our podcast before we dive in with everything. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Jodie Stauffer 1:21
Sure, sure. Thanks for having me on and really excited. So yeah, who I am? I am a mother, a wife, an entrepreneur, a business owner. I’m all those things, but I’m also neurodivergent, so I have ADHD and I’ve been diagnosed. I was diagnosed late in life, but early compared to a lot of people. So in my mid 30s, when my daughter was diagnosed, they went, Whoa. Like, we know where it came from and we need so that’s kind of she was only eight. And they said, Yeah, she definitely has it. And then they pointed fingers at me. And so I’ve had lots and lots of years to be able to and I’m the type of person who’s a planner and a researcher, so spend lots of years figuring out anything and everything about the diagnosis. But even prior to being diagnosed, I was in the world of money and finance. I started my career when I was 21 years old with investors group bank Montreal. Went on to do lots of things, and even though I was undiagnosed, and I kind of refer to my before diagnosis and after diagnosis life, because one’s very chaotic, but yet I had a lot of success, but still very chaotic. And then the other one is probably a little more structured, with a little bit a little bit of chaos sprinkled in, I’ll say, yeah. So lots of years of experience. I took my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNING designation years ago, and what I realized then is so many people were always asking for advice, not for me to sell them things, not for me to, you know, they had investments and they had a mortgage and they had insurance, and they had lots of things in place, but nobody was giving them true, honest and authentic advice. And so I decided to start a business. And so I quit my corporate job, which was kind of scary, but my daughters were mostly grown at that point. My youngest one was in high school, and so we took a leap, and I started my business, and when I up until that point, I pretty much kept my diagnosis, like, between our family, like it was kind of just a very it was almost like a secretive thing, right in our family, like people knew my daughter was diagnosed, but, you know, we didn’t really talk about it, and especially in my career, because, you know, I I knew being in management, how that could affect it. So when I went out on my own, I thought, You know what? I think there’s people out there that could really hear my story. I went through a divorce. My daughter, just about, you know, died a couple months old. So lots of things that happened in my life that I just kind of bounced through. And I thought, well, you know, and from a lot of those early things, my finances were a mess, and going through divorce causes a lot of messy finances. And so as a professional who had all the experience and all the knowledge the fact that my life and money could be really messy, I thought was important to tell people like, let’s just be honest, right? Because everybody’s always like, Ooh, I’m doing great, and that’s not always the truth. So I started talking about it, and then I started talking about my diagnosis, and that was not how I intended on starting my business, but it just opened a floodgate of people coming to me and saying, me too. And like, do you understand? Can you help? And originally, it was probably maybe 30% of my clients came and they, they, you know, discussed this with me. Now we’re probably 80% people, either one of them or both of them, or they just feel like maybe they’re not even neurodivergent. They just feel like the traditional. Way of managing money just hasn’t worked for them, and so they’re looking for something creative and different. Wow, yeah,

Maggie Nielsen 5:07
I love everything that you’ve said, especially I think people can really just connect with that vulnerability of like, you know, this is who I am. You know, I’m not just this, you know, perfect financial advisor with this perfect money story, but I have my ups and my downs and my struggles as well, which is so awesome that you’re willing to share that and be vulnerable with the community. And so I know your business name is Parallax Planning. Does that have to do with any of these other themes that you’ve mentioned mentioned? Or how do you pick this name for your business?

Jodie Stauffer 5:40
Yeah, so yeah, great question. And so when I decided to start, so originally I started my business, I had come out of management, and I was like, I’m done being a leader. I’m done being a manager. I was exhausted and burnt out. And so I started my original company, and it was jails to offer financial so my name and it was just going to be me. And then when it started to boom, I realized that there was way more. Like I actually thought there was way more we could offer. So I changed from my own just name so that I could go grow my business to parallax. And the reason I picked parallax is because, I mean, there’s a lot of ways the words used and there’s a lot of context, but for us, it really just means that when, when you look at something, if all of us look at something together, we’re all going to see different things. Our brains are going to pick up on certain things. And that’s really what’s important is, you know, if, if somebody’s had a financial advisor, look at their stuff and says this, when I come in and look at it, I’m going to see something different. And if I bring one of my team in, they’re actually going to see something different as well. And with all that knowledge, we’re probably going to be able to find a solution or something that’s perfect for that client. So it’s that parallax when we’re looking at something. It’s not traditional, especially with ADHD and the way we work, it’s like, Hey, if you look at this, what do you see? What do I see? What do you see? And then what does the client see? And between that, we kind of pull it together. So that’s why we picked that name. Is it was really important for us to kind of put it out there that there’s not one way to do it, and there’s not one way to see it, and like the way the client may be looking at their money, and their finances might be right, but I’m just going to look at it differently, and maybe that difference will help.

Barbara Provost 7:23
Wow, that’s fantastic. And you’re right. I mean, everything is not cookie cutter or the same process for everyone. Isn’t what works for everyone, right? We all have different barriers, a different places we are in our life, different money allowances, all of that income and bills and things like that. So I love there’s more creativity around it, because it just seems so black and white, because it’s just numbers, but really, there is should be more creativity around it. But I was hoping that you could explain for me and for our audience, what exactly is neurodivergent and how would one know if they are or are not like? How did you get diagnosed? What were, what were some, I don’t know, observations. Can you share about that, about what that actually means and looks like?

Jodie Stauffer 8:14
Yeah. So I’ll start by saying I’m not a medical professional, so I done a ton of research. I refer to medical professionals in the field, both, you know, online, as well as my own. And so I’ve got a lot of knowledge, but this is not, this is not medical advice, per se. So yeah, so neurodivergent means different things to different people, but generally the word is used to describe somebody who either has ADHD or autism, and there’s a lot of overlap in those two diagnoses, as well as sometimes, you know, sometimes we use it just as a like, does your brain work different? Because it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re diagnosed or not, or whether you it’s formal or not. This is for us. This is just really is you’re not. So if you were neurotypical, it means that, like most people, could you grasp it the way most people do, and you know, it’s the way you learn. Seems pretty the traditional system has worked for you neurodivergent, like I said, there is a formal, you know, diagnosis for it, but or the way they use it, but really in the way we use it is like, does your brain just work differently? And are you just like, the things just work differently? Now, again, I have ADHD my the only reason I probably was diagnosed when I originally was was because my daughter was diagnosed and, you know, they just so we went to specialists. We went to doctors. And so the way that you get diagnosed is basically you go to a specialist. Hopefully, a lot of there are lots of GPS that will prescribe or will diagnose it, but I got a formal diagnosis from a psychiatrist. So. I went to a special ADHD clinic. That’s where we took our daughter. So went through all the steps and and then, you know, so there’s, there are lots of ways I know in the US, where you guys are, it’s a it’s different, because sometimes you have to pay for that extra clinic. Here in Canada, we were lucky that, you know, just a referral from our GP got us to the specialists. Those are the right place. But, like I said, a lot, and there’s lots of like nowadays, you can go online, and you can take a test and it’ll tell you, and you can take a course, you know, I think that the actual formal diagnosis is, if somebody’s really interested in tackling it, is probably the way to go. But if you don’t go that route, and you actually think, you know you have it, that’s okay, you can there’s a lot of the skills that people learn that could apply to anybody and do apply to everybody. So yeah, so that it’s really in our minds, the neurodivergent typically, most of our clients have either autism or ADHD and high fun, very high functioning often. So most of our clients are professionals. They’ve figured out a way to get, you know, a degree. I have doctors, I have lawyers, nurses, you know, psychiatrists. So we have lots of very highly educated people who are really good in the things they’re passionate about, and really bad with money because they don’t care. Like, not that they don’t care. That’s a bad way to say it. But it doesn’t resonate with them. It doesn’t excite them. It’s it’s just a nightmare in their life, right? And so, but yet, the whole world measure the the stick that a lot of us are being measured against is our success in finance and money, and you know what we have. And so it’s just, so there’s a lot of shame around that. You know, you see a doctor who lives in a nice house and they’re living paycheck to paycheck, the level of shame that person has versus, you know, somebody who maybe you know is, you know, making a lower income or minimum wage, and everybody knows that, so they don’t expect these things of them, right? So, so, yeah, so then, so the diagnosis piece, you know, it is a medical diagnosis. It is something in your brain. There’s lots of controversy. There are doctors that say, like, you can unlearn it or, you know, but a lot of it is, you know, genetics. So lots of time, more times than not, there’ll be somebody, a parent that has it, that passes it down. Often. There’s multiple parents so, so really, if you can manage it and tackle it or figure it out, I think there are some amazing things about it, but if you focus on the things that you’re really bad at when it comes to your ADHD, then that’s really where people end up really struggling, I think.

Barbara Provost 12:42
Interesting.

Maggie Nielsen 12:43
Yeah it’s easy to look at these things as kind of a barrier, since, like, none of the learnings you had before worked, or whatever that may be, but it is really just learning how to work with it, whether it’s a formal diagnosis or not, but learning how to, you know, use what your skill sets and new skill sets to, kind of, you know, make the best formula for yourself. And so, you know, when people work with you, or just in finances in general, it always seems, you know, paid on the debt make your savings invest, like, very linear, very like, these are the steps. There’s no other order than these steps. And so how, if you’re, you know, neurodivergent, how can you kind of go about this process differently? Or what are some of your tips, just for those listeners who are kind of thinking about this and getting started of like, how do I go about budgeting differently? Or, how do I go about these orders of operations differently? Because everyone’s always told me it’s the same linear fashion.

Jodie Stauffer 13:30
Yeah and that’s a really good question, and I love you’re using the word linear because at the end of the day, like money and finance and financial planning is linear, for sure. Like, there’s a starting point we’re trying to get to an end goal. And the way most of the world has been trained or works is it’s just like a straight line across. Well, with ADHD of with the clients that we work with, it’s still, we’re still looking to go from here, point A to point B, right? And succeed, but we know that it’s going to be like a zigzag line. There’s nothing linear about it, right? And, and that’s okay. And we build our plans and our programs and the way we work with our clients around the fact that it’s not, you know? So I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example, a traditional financial planner would say, okay, like, send me your documents. I need you to send me. They’ll send you a list of 20 things, and I need you to send me these things. And then they would wait and wait and wait and maybe follow up. Can you please send me these documents? And from a neurodivergent or an ADHD side, even for myself, I would be like, frozen, like, I don’t know where all those things are. I how do I get them? Like, that’s 20 things. This is going to take me years. I don’t know where half those documents are right. And so then likely, the person the client will back away, or the person, you know, their planner gets upset, or, you know, or they’re, you know, trying to figure out how they dig through. And it just becomes kind of a pain, like a real. A pain point for both people, where with us, you know, I, because I know a ton about all the there’s many different forms of ADHD and there’s many different traits. So if my, if I have ADHD, and so do you, too. So if all three of us have it, there’s going to be things that each of us struggle with or succeed with that the others don’t. So I know that, right? I’ve done a lot of my research. My work is not done based on my traits alone. So we said that, you know, we have this traditional way of like do it, and then, you know, finally, the you get your paperwork to your planner or whatever, and they do a plan for you, and they say, Here’s your plan, here’s your next steps. We’ll see in six months. Well, again, most people, that’s overwhelming. If you’re coming to somebody for help, that’s overwhelming for a nurse, a typical, a neurotypical person, but for a neurodiverse now, they’re like, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do next, because executive, executive function is a big thing, like breaking things down, thinking ahead, being able to, you know, live, be able to forecast what’s going to happen. Those are all struggles for people who have ADHD. So what we do differently is, you know, if we need 20 things free from you, we’re going to send you a list of two, and we’re going to give you five ways to get that to us, and if you can’t get it to us, or if you don’t, and we’re gonna say, we know this is difficult, we know you’re overwhelmed. If you don’t know how to find it, it’s okay. Lots of people don’t reach out to us. And so then the person goes, Oh, okay, they understand. So then I get an email back saying, I haven’t done my taxes in three years, so I don’t have tax returns. Well, that would be a shame point. And so we’re like, no problem. We’ll figure that out. Just send us the year that you did do and send me this instead, and eventually, so we get all the documents, but we just do it in a way that I know their brain will will work with. The other thing is, you know when? Well, one of the big things with ADHD is people are very overwhelmed. So when, when your ADHD starts to spiral, it’s very overwhelming, and it’s almost like we shut down. And so I will have clients who, you know, I know we’re working we’re working along in our process, and all of a sudden they just start ghosting us. They’re not answering any emails. And so we, instead of being like, you know, it’s your expectation, you know that you have to respond or, or just leaving them alone and making them pay for something that they’re not going to receive. We send them fun little emails, like, Hey, it’s okay that you’re ghosting me. We still love you reach out when you feel better. Like, so it’s a kind and compassionate thing. Like, and if I was to receive that email from someone who you know, I felt I owed something to I would laugh, I would breathe, and I would probably respond with, I’m feeling really overwhelmed. Can I get back to you in a couple weeks, right? But if I got an email that said we’ve been waiting for your stuff for three weeks where, you know, we’re getting a little frustrated, I would be like, okay, like for me, I’d go Mark unread, and it would sit in my inbox haunting me until I had the until I was able to get my, you know, get that motivation to get going. You know, Taylor, my my coach and my executive client manager, she always laughs because, like one of my clients, I just recently sent an email and it said she, she’s been kind of ghosting me. And I know there’s a family illness. I you know, somebody in the family passed away. There’s money moving. It’s and I said, Hey, there. I know it’s been a hot minute, was what my tagline was. And Taylor’s like, I don’t like, I can’t believe you send emails like that to your clients. And sure enough, she responded, hey, thanks for being so kind and whatever, right? So it’s that kind of stuff. It’s also stuff that, you know, I could easily say, here’s a spreadsheet. Here’s, you know, you get, you make $10,000 a month. You need to. You have 8000 in bills, so you only have 2000 to spend. Well, we all can logically get that, but someone with ADHD often, or who’s neurodivergent, goes, Okay, I get that math, but then they start spending, and there’s no controlled way to manage their cash flow, and we help them with that, but there’s no math. So they start spending, and they go, $20 $100 $50 whatever their ADHD mind actually isn’t doing the math. So somebody who’s neurotypical goes, I spent $100 I spent $100 now I only have 18 117 160 ADHD brains, often, or neuro diverse brains often, will go well. Then we spent $50 last week because they forgot about all the other $50 they spent because their brain is only larger lodging the immediate because $20.05 times, just logically, isn’t $100 to them.

Maggie Nielsen 19:45
I hate how much that just resonated. Just call me out, okay.

Jodie Stauffer 19:54
Yeah. And, I mean, that’s how, and there’s a lot of people, but that’s really, and that’s a, you know, back in the day, when we were. On cash. So finance has gotten very complicated, but back in the day when we worked on cash, this wasn’t as big a problem, because I could clearly look in my wallet, ADHD or not, and go, I have $40 left. That’s all I have right to spend. But that’s not the world we live in anymore, and so it’s much harder. So we actually build, I often say we build fences around our clients, or, you know, for that issue that we’re talking about, we actually make sure that we build a system where they clearly can see every minute of every day what they’re spending. So there are electronic means to do that. You just have to have somebody who can think outside the box and say what will work for you. Like some people, they actually have to go to a casual cash allowance system in their house. Other people, we have electronic means. Other people, you know, we say you’re only going to use this one credit card, and every time you log in, you’re going to it’s going to be blaring, seeing how much you spent, whatever it is. There’s lots of tools we build that aren’t the typical make a budget, stick to it simple math, because it’s obviously it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for a lot of neurotypical people, but it definitely doesn’t work for ADHD.

Maggie Nielsen 21:07
Yeah, those are some great examples, and I’m glad you shared those so people could really understand how that’s different, especially like we were talking about the before of the shame with finances, and so if you like, let’s say you know, haven’t done your taxes or don’t know where that paperwork is. It’s just, like, adding to that shame pile of like, I knew I shouldn’t have called them. Like, now I have to dig all this up. You know where it’s like, no, like, awesome. We’re gonna need to get those taxes done. We’ll take care of that, and we’ll keep moving. Um, because that’s the only way the situation is going to get better for sure.

Jodie Stauffer 21:36
Exactly is the keep moving. And then the other part of it is, I think, because I understand, you know, so when sometimes I’ll get on a call and somebody will go, and I’m like, my notes are, you would never read my notes, but I can read them. They’re very scratchy and but I’m I can keep up with the 17 conversations going, because my brain works like that too. So they’re like, here and there and everywhere, and then at the end, they’re like, Oh, I probably just, like, you probably didn’t get any of that. And I’m like, No, I got it all. We’re good, like, I can follow along, which I think is helpful too, because if you notice even ourselves, yourselves, I’m sure included is when you get nervous and you get, you know, embarrassed or whatever. Often people start talking really fast it, you know? And they just start, like, unloading, right? And the more nervous you are, the worse that gets. And with ADHD, some people have that trait too. So literally, like, I’ve had other people go, you know, who’ve been in the room, or people I’ve been trying to train who are, like, I couldn’t keep up, like, I, I don’t even know where to start, and I’m like, Oh, I’m good, like I got this and, and it’s just because my brain works that way. And, you know, and I have a daughter that, you know, talks a million miles an hour sometimes too, and I’ve had to keep up with that. And so, yeah, so it’s just for me, those types of things are not things that, you know, I have other planner friends who reach out to me and say, I need some help because I have an ADHD client and I just, I don’t know what to do, like, you know, this ghosting thing, or they’re all, I try to focus them in on something. They’re all over the map, and I have an agenda, and they won’t follow it for that meeting. We’re off on another tangent. And I’m like, that sounds all about normal, like, that’s okay, but we can still move forward. Send them a follow up, like I’ll often say, send them a follow up. Mean email after with three points in it that you got that you want them to move forward. Don’t send them a 20 page email, because they’re not going to read it. But tell them three things you’d like them to do at the end of the meeting, it’ll probably move them forward. But that’s not traditionally how the world works with money and finance.

Maggie Nielsen 23:39
And I like that. You don’t. I don’t feel like you feel rushed by time, like, you know, it’s always these, you know, I I have to send all these emails to get these 20 documents, and you’re like, I don’t mind getting two at a time, you know. Or I don’t mind having a longer meeting, or sending that follow up email where so many people, they’re like, No, you have your hour slot, and that’s your slot, and that’s all I have for Jodi, you know, and it doesn’t seem like you mind that. You know, through your client, they’re paying you. If they take two hours or 12 hours, we’ll get it done whatever it takes.

Jodie Stauffer 24:10
Yeah, yeah. And that’s why, like, our pricing system, when we start working with someone, first of all, especially if they’re neurodivergent, we tell them that generally it’s good, like we need a year, because they’re going to be all over the map, and, and, and we built, we priced it for the fact that it’s going to be a year, and we have kind of a, like a stable pricing like this is what you’re going to we’re going to quote you for the year. And if all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose in their life, and they need to see me, you know, once a week for a month, that doesn’t change their billing, because there will be times where they won’t see me for two or three months and they won’t need me. And also that’s part of the deal with this, right? And so I think that makes a little bit of a difference. The other thing is, like, we don’t leave our clients alone. If you’ve agreed to work with us and pay you, we and I say this, I’m going to be your naggy wife like and I say that. Females, males, like, I’m gonna nag you and be like, Hey, we haven’t seen you for a couple months. Or, you know, this was our timeline. Can Can we book something like and I think that accountability piece is huge, right? We need to be moving forward. And yet, when I do have clients who, you know, drop off the face of the earth, ghost me, whatever, for a short period of time, when they come back, usually they’re ready to go again. And we can move forward really fast, because that’s one of the things about ADHD, is it’s often you’re moving really slow or really fast. There’s not a lot of middle ground. And so you know, if somebody is back on track, they’re actually probably moving really fast, like they want to get everything done now, now, now. So you know if it, you know if they, if they stop moving for a month or two, and we’re just in contact with them, and you know it’s okay, but when they come back, usually we can get them all caught up. So it doesn’t, it’s not really as big a deal as it feels.

Announcer 25:58
Purse strings offers an available for hire network of vetted professionals who specialize in serving women. When you have a life event that has suddenly made money a priority, you can now move forward with a whole new confidence that you’re getting advice and services from Savvy professionals who are uniquely equipped to serve your needs. Go to purse strings.co and use our directory of hand picked financial professionals when you’re ready to plan for retirement, navigate divorce, buy your next home, fire up your new business and more, go to purse strings.co or check the link in the show notes. Now you can be financially fearless.

Barbara Provost 26:42
I have to say that I just wonder if a lot of light bulbs are going off for people who are listening to this like, oh, that’s why this or that is happening. But not only that, what I think is so brilliant about the way you work is you’re not making your clients fit into the typical financial routine. You are letting them kind of drive the direction, the time frame, and you’re following them, although you continue to follow them, like you said the neggy wife, you are still working at their pace, at their speed, at what they need, which I think is just brilliant. I think you must have patience beyond compare, because I don’t think a lot of financial institutions or professionals would really have the tenacity to keep up that kind of lengthy persistence. They might just say, you know, what if, if you can’t get it together, maybe we’re not the right fit, right?

Jodie Stauffer 27:45
Yeah, and I have had a lot of clients come to me and tell like, I actually have clients say to me all the time, please don’t fire me. I’m sorry. Like, that’ll get an email that says, I know I’ve been ignoring you. Please don’t fire me. I’m doing my best, and I go fire you. Like, who fight like, who fires clients because they’re having a time of their life, right? But they have been fired. They have had people say, you know, sorry that I don’t have time to work with this. And a lot of times those are people who are being paid commission or are being paid based on the product. So I get that like, that’s how their compensation model works, which is why it’s not how our compensation model works, right? Is because, and I often say to people when I start the process, yeah, well, Maggie might not understand this, but me and Barb, we will, back in the day, remember the Choose Your Own Adventure book. Oh yeah, get to a page and it says, Do you want to do this or this? Well, I always say to my clients, working together is going to be like, choose your own adventure like, we’re gonna come to certain crossroads, and I’m gonna say we can do this, this or this, and we’re still moving. We’re still gonna get to the end of the story. But, like, what is going to actually work? What is, you know, a big thing with ADHD is dopamine seeking. It’s a lot of the behaviors is, like, you know, is because there’s often the brain isn’t, doesn’t have enough dopamine, or isn’t processing it correctly. I’m not, again, I’m not a doctor, but Dopamine is a huge thing, and so you know, things that don’t you know supply you with a dopamine hit are often things that we stray away from or that are hard and the dopamine seeking so you know, spending or but even the choose your own adventure that gives them a dopamine hit, because they get to actually pick. Like, there’s a choice, it’s their choice. And what excites you, what’s more likely? Like, I often say, what are you more likely to do? Don’t tell me you’ll do it if you’re not going to. Let’s just tell just tell me you’re not going to do it, and we’ll figure out something else, right? Because that’s the truth. Like, you know, saying, yep, yep, I’ll do that like I have clients who I’ll say, you know, what do you spend your money on? You know your your discretion, non discretionary money. You know what your allowance you’re spending? What do you spend it on? They go and I go, okay, what are the things you’re not willing to give up? Even if I told you you should, you won’t. Well, I’m not willing to give up my. Tim Burton’s or my Starbucks, and I’m not really, or I’m not willing to give up, you know, whatever it is, and I go, All right, well, we’ll put that in the budget then, because the reality is, if we don’t, you’re going to do it anyway, and then your budget’s not going to work, and you’re going to think I failed you. So let’s just be honest and say we’re going to put a $40 budget in weekly for Starbucks. It’s okay. It’s not me. I don’t do Starbucks, but if that’s going to make you move forward and be happy, you have to stick to this budget. Then that works.

Maggie Nielsen 30:28
I love it. I love it. So do you have any tips for any women listening who think they’re neurodivergent or ADHD to start taking on their finances a little better or differently? Any just tips that you have?

Jodie Stauffer 30:42
Yeah, so a couple tips I have is one of the things we sometimes have to do with our clients that seems to help is body doubling with ADHD. So this is where either you get usually, online doesn’t work as good, but it does. Sometimes we do it with our clients and the other person is there not to talk to you, not but they’re just there with the intent that right now you’re going to spend one hour and I’m going to spend one hour sitting here doing my own thing, and while we’re here together, you have to find your taxes. That’s all you got to do, right? Because the account, that’s accountability again, right? So if you can find somebody to help you with some like, if you have hard tasks or you want to, you know, and you’re not at the place where you want to hire somebody, you know, find somebody who, who won’t distract you, but is there, you know. So when we do this with our clients, if our clients get up and leave, or where they’re talking on the phone or whatever, and that’s not what we’ll say to the like, we’ll be like, hello. Like, and then they’ll be like, Oh, yeah. So it’s almost like that, okay, focus back on task, right? And again, because it’s for a very select time frame, it might not be a full hour, maybe it’s a half an hour, but often in our heads, we think it’s going to take way longer to do something that we don’t know how to do, or that we think is yucky. And so getting started. We always talk about getting started, right? Well, this body doubling piece really helps. Okay? So it’s only for 30 minutes, and you get as much done, and at the end of 30 minutes, we’re gonna say thanks, and chit chat or visit or whatever we’re gonna do. And often that 30 minutes will roll into a lot longer, or the person will be like, Well, I’m done all my tasks, and we have an hour, and I’m like, great. Well, now you have free time. Go do whatever you want. You you way to go, right? So body doubling is a big one that I think people should, should look into. The other thing is just, you know, figuring out the diff, figuring out how much money you have left once your bills are paid. Like, truly. And people are like, Oh, it’s so many. There’s so many apps out there. I for years and years, I just took a piece of paper, wrote down my bills, wrote down my income, did that this minus this equals this, and knew and posted it and knew that that’s how much money I had, and then separating it out. So take it out of your out of your bank account, somehow separated out. And then probably the third one is the whole write it down, do it on a spreadsheet. However you’re going to do it, but post it, put it somewhere where. So for years, when I first met my current husband and we were amalgamating our family, we had three daughters between the two of us, and so we were, we both had gone through divorces. We were in our early 30s, really starting with nothing, and so we were on a very tight budget for a very long time. We actually had our budget posted on the fridge so you could see what our mortgage is every time we went to the fridge. Me, particularly my husband’s. He is great with money. He this wouldn’t be a problem for him, but for me, and also for our kids, because when they went into the fridge and they were like, Why is there no ice cream? And I would look, I’d say, because on the fridge it clearly says we don’t have extra money for that. Or, you know, do you know how much $2,000 is? Yeah, that’s a lot of money. Well, that’s what it costs to live in this house, and that, I think is bit was really useful for them. It’s not that they didn’t ask and we didn’t give them things, but when we said no, they could clearly see why. And I think a lot of people hide their finances. My parents never told me anything. I had no clue. But I think that helps, and it actually helps. You know, if you if you’re struggling to say no or to control that visual, like, right now, you know, Should I, should I order skip the dishes, and you’re standing in front of the fridge, and you look at it and you go, No, I can’t open the fridge and eat something, right? It’s those little reminders sometimes, is what people need.

Barbara Provost 34:41
I love that visual, you know, view of just the monthly expenses, because I think Maggie, I will have to say, like, sometimes she’ll say to me, I knew we had water and electricity and all this stuff, but I never really knew what it cost until I had to pay those bills.

Maggie Nielsen 34:57
Yeah, all the time. And. So I knew it was, like, expensive, but how much, like, what percent of your paycheck, or, you know, so it just never totally added up, until I got those bills. And then I was like, Oh, okay. So, you know, the ACU is really expensive in the summer. I get that now, while we were, you know, really being hounded about why it was, like, closing the window.

Jodie Stauffer 35:17
Stop turning it up, Maggie!

Maggie Nielsen 35:19
Oh, yeah. So now, you know, I’m like, All right, everyone, we’re just gonna sweat. It’s fine. No, I think those are some great tips. And, yeah, I love that visual aid that’s super helpful just to keep things front of mind. So I know we’re kind of coming up on our podcast here, but there is one more question I wanted to ask, and that is about your podcast that you have called smarter, faster, crazier. And I was watching a video you had on your site, and just you were amplifying the fact that it’s crazy in a good way. You know, it’s not like, oh, there’s psycho, but like crazy in a fun, awesome, successful way. And that ADHD, you have almost found to be like a superpower. So let’s end with a little highlight of, like, how is this your superpower? What are its benefits for you?

Jodie Stauffer 36:04
Yeah thanks. Yeah. So our podcast is really to show the authentic side of us. You know that that we don’t always. I have it together in a lot of areas in my business, my life, but there are so the word crazy, I grew up and it was not a good word like you. You said it to people who you know, were not, you know, but we use it in our house as silly. Ridiculous is another word, like, that’s crazy, you know. And so it doesn’t have a negative connotation in our household, but it also means, like, you know, creative, all these things, and that’s me, that’s my brain, right? Like it is crazy. I everyone goes, Oh, you look so put together. And I’m like, Oh, if you lived in my head, like it is a mess in there. And I work really hard to make sure that that’s not what comes up. But there are crazy things, like we tell stories about, you know, driving away with food on our trunk of our car, not once, by driving over curbs, like things that are just there. They’re crazy. They’re ridiculous. Crazy is ridiculous, right? But also that we laugh. Like, for many years, I had to teach my daughter that you just have to laugh at yourself, like when you when you trip in the middle of school and spill, you know, everything all over yourself. You have to just get up and go Ta da, because it’s gonna happen 50 more times this year. And if you can’t laugh, it’s gonna drive you crazy, literally, so silly, crazy. But yeah, our podcast, we wanna we talk about a lot of financial things, but also a lot of the like different ways, and then the authentic, the the craziness, the fun. You know that that you can have. And the superpower part, it takes a while. Like, there’s a lot of people that say, like, There’s nothing good you can find in it. Well, I can hyper focus. I actually have certain foods and drink that I know that if I eat those combination, put my headphones on, put my head down, I can get into hyper focus to the point where it could be two o’clock in the morning and my husband’s like, are you coming to bed? And I’m like, munching on my cheesies and drinking my Pepsi. And I’m like, right? And so, but it took me a long time. It took me studying for exams as an adult and things for me to figure out. So it’s the salt and the sugar mixed together, but things like that, things that I’m very charismatic. I can turn it on, I can turn it off. I’m very empathetic. Like, those are all things I’m extremely creative. I love to plan. Like, I’m always like planning everything. Those are things that I’ve honed in on. Those are my superpowers. I could list just as many things that I really suck at, and I know I suck at, and I have learned that like trying to focus or trying to get good at the things I suck at is doesn’t make any sense. I should really focus on getting good at the things I’m really good at, and acknowledgeing that there are things like that I suck at. So, you know, I’m not a great house cleaner. We have a really nice and tidy house, but it’s probably it takes everybody in our house to do that. I don’t I’m missing a lot of things a lot of times. I don’t know where stuff is. Stuff randomly shows up. I have multitude of everything. I probably have 15 pairs of headphones because this morning, I was even running around going, I don’t know where my headphones are. They’re all in my office at work. And then I was like, Oh, wait, I have a pair of my gym bag, right? So things like that, right? But, yeah, that superpower thing, I think you just have to figure out where you strive and focus more on that and less on the Where do I suck? The suck part I will fix for my clients. If you suck at finances, that’s what I can do for you, right? But so then, you know, focus on where you’re creative. I have lot of my clients are entrepreneurs, or they have jobs and they want to be entrepreneurs, and we’re working at transitioning them over, right? And that’s that creative, that’s that superpower, that they’re. A lot of people that even if they wanted to be an entrepreneur, they don’t have the they’re just not going to be able to and maybe that’s their superpower.

Barbara Provost 40:10
It’s fascinating. This conversation has got me really thinking and being more in tune to people’s actions and reactions and why they might be doing what they’re doing. Not that I’m labeling, but it just gives me an awareness, which is really fantastic. So I love this conversation, because, you know, financial services seem so conservative and so pragmatic, and so you just do this or that, and you’ve really looked at it from a whole different purview, and brought so many different skills and insights and thoughts about it, and patience to it. And I think what you’re doing is really fantastic.

Jodie Stauffer 40:47
Thanks.

Maggie Nielsen 40:47
Yeah, I second everything Barb just said, so I’ve had so much fun in this conversation field. Called out a couple times, but it’s okay, everyone’s related. And so Jody, what’s the best way if people you know want to work with you or reach out to you. What’s the best way for them to connect with you or follow you online?

Jodie Stauffer 41:05
Yeah, so usually, so one of my not super skills is social media. I’m not a huge fan of it, so my website, so it’s just parallaxplanning.ca, you can go on there. You can reach out. There’s a whole bunch of buttons to contact us. You can go through LinkedIn. You’ll be able to contact me through there. I am on Facebook, but you likely won’t see much on there, because I’m not real super active, but yeah, just, you know, Google it, even just Googling my name, I’ll come up. One of my two websites will come up, and you’ll be able to get a hold of us and we do a free 30 minute consultation, because I only take clients that I feel like I can really help. By the same token, the client deserves an opportunity to see who they’re going to work with. So we do that for clients, and often that conversation, you know, will help them, and if we’re not the right fit for them, we often find somebody or refer them to somewhere that is awesome.

Maggie Nielsen 41:58
Thank you so much, Jodie for coming on today and sharing your expertise. Jodi is also one of our purse strings approved professionals, so you can check her out on our site, purse strings.co and check out Jodi’s podcast, smarter, faster, crazier as well. So make sure whatever you do today, just take a little bit of action to move yourself forward, and we’ll talk to you all again soon. Have a great day.

Speaker 1 42:20
Information is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute tax investment or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified investment legal or tax professional before taking any action.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai