164. Do You Know Your Financial Personality with Mikelann Valterra

I tell you all the time, you don’t have to do business the way everyone else does business. Well, today’s guest, money coach Mikelann Valterra tells us how important it is to personalize how we deal with our money.  Mikelann is an author, keynote speaker and money coach who helps women transform their relationship with money to create a life they love. For more than 20 years, she has been a thought leader in the field of financial psychology. Her strong background in emotional intelligence, paired with her practical money strategies, enable her clients to consciously design their life, while escaping financial stress and anxiety. We deal with money emotionally – and Mikelann is going to help us find our financial personality. We all have goals around things like retirement money, saving money, or even investing money. Every single one of those decisions is emotional and if left unexamined, could cause problems. Mikelann tells us there is no wrong or bad money personality; it’s about knowing yourself. There are four main types: liberty, safe harbor, mission-driven, and giving personalities. Liberty types, motivated by freedom, and safe harbor types, motivated by safety and security, tend to be the ones we hear about the most. And these two types tend to pair up and complement each other in long-term relationships such as marriages and business partnerships. Since everyone is motivated by different things, it’s important that each person have their own happy place – especially couples.  Mikelann notes people tend to talk about money in the past and future. In the past, it was all about debt, and the future is about retirement. A real nourishing spending plan is about our life in the present that also honors the past and future. If you don’t make a plan where you’re enjoying your current life, it’s going to be really hard to make progress on other money goals.  People can be complicated about money, and there is a lot of different advice to take in. Problems arise when people read financial advice written for a different personality type, and they take it on. An example from Mikelann’s money coaching is people with too many accounts. They might have too many credit cards, checking accounts, and savings accounts, which induces a money fog. They don’t know what they spend or what they need to earn. How much they have in debt. Because there are so many places to look. For that reason, she’s an advocate for simplifying their finances. When people are starting a new chapter, say after getting divorced, they look at their accounts. She says it’s very rare that multiple accounts are helpful for people. Limiting the accounts lets you focus on where you want the money to go.  Mikelann notes that she works with women who are rocking their business but they tend to feel like money is the only area that is not working for them. Having money “figured out” is really about feeling in control of your finances and feeling peaceful around money. Everybody has different values. You know, we got to figure that piece out, but when you feel in control, when you feel like you are the captain of your own ship, there's nothing you can't do, and so we want money to be a helper, not a hinderer. Other Game On Girlfriend podcast episodes you might want to check out:  The Secret to Your Business Numbers Will Change Everything: https://sarahwalton.com/understand-business-numbers/  How to Talk About Money Management as a Family: https://sarahwalton.com/family-money-management-amanda-neely/  When Your Life Falls Apart Because of Money (And Your Career is Born): https://sarahwalton.com/michelle/  How Your Values Can Make You Money: https://sarahwalton.com/jennifer-kem/  You can check out our podcast interviews on YouTube, too! http://bit.ly/YouTubeSWalton   Thank you so much for listening. I’m honored that you’re here and would be so grateful if you could leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts by clicking here, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking “Write a review.” Then we’ll get to inspire even more people! (If you’re not sure how to leave a review, you can watch this quick tutorial.)