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Frequently Asked Questions About Working with a Financial Coach

 

I know that financial coaching is a newer industry, so I wanted to share some of the most commonly asked questions that I get, so you can understand more about it, what I do as a financial coach and how I can help you.

How Does Financial Coaching Work?

• If you’re interested in working with me, fill out my application form that asks you specific questions. This helps me to have a better understanding of your financial situation so when we speak, I already know this information going into the call.
• After you’ve filled out an application form, then we begin by having a free 20-min Q&A call to talk further and determine what your struggles currently are and what your goals are. We will decide if you would be a good fit for coaching and if you are, then I will talk to you about the enrollment process for the particular program that we decided is the best fit for you.
• If we determine that where you are at and what you are wanting helping with makes you a great candidate for my signature program Cash Flow Confidence, then we will get you on-boarded and you will receive your intake paperwork that you fill out before you start your financial journey. We do a lot of information gathering up front, so you get the most value for your time.
• My coaching programs are for those who want to go deeper with their money and to not just “organize” their finances, but to really make headway. My programs are great for people who need the accountability for putting their plan into place, for developing their new healthy financial habits and to not go back to their old ways and also for people who are already really good managing their finances, but want to achieve financial freedom and to do it much faster.
• During coaching, we work on putting the strategy into place, course correcting when you come up against obstacles so you keep making progress and you don’t quit. We also work on financial behaviors, your thought processes when it comes to your money and your money mindset.

Why Would I Hire a Financial Coach?

Financial coaching helps you to be able to achieve not only the financial goals that you have much sooner, but also your life goals. Financial coaching helps you to be able to do more of the things in your life, because you have improved your finances. It’s not just about getting your finances organized and paying off debt, it is so much more than that.

Improving your finances allows you to have more options, opportunities and choices in your life and I think that is one of the most valuable gifts of financial coaching. Saving money doesn’t have to be just for buying a home or a car, it can also mean freedom from doing something you don’t enjoy, freedom from an unhealthy relationship, the ability to spend more money on improving your health, being able to experience more cultures and travel the world, being able to give your children the life you want to give them, being able to take care of those around you, being able to give back financially to organizations you care about, etc.

If you are worried about money constantly, financial coaching can also help you to:

• Improve your actual financial situation
• Help you to reduce the feelings of anxiety around money and overcome those fears and worries about financial scarcity

Do I Have to Live Close to You to Come for Financial Coaching? What if I Live in a Different Country than You?

Nope! I coach my financial coaching clients via Zoom (over video, basically the same as Skype except easier to use!), so they can live anywhere. I have clients in Canada, the US, Qatar, Australia, Croatia and expanding. The essentials of personal finance are the same if you live in the same country as me or if you live somewhere else! Here is a photo of me coaching a client via Zoom.

I Already Have a Financial Advisor, Would I Need a Financial Coach?

This is a great question! A financial advisor and a financial coach do very different work and help you with your money in very different ways. I have a post that I have written that goes more into depth, How is a Financial Coach Different than a Financial Advisor?

Financial advisors help you with managing your wealth (investments, portfolios, retirement accounts, etc) and often making sure you have certain coverages in your life (ex: health or life insurance, disability insurance, critical illness, etc). A financial coach helps you with the everyday managing of your finances, the finer details of the how-to of improving your financial situation, building healthy money habits and they hold you accountable to making these changes. As a financial coach, I work more closely and I am more hands-on with helping my clients dive into their struggles and implementing taking action.

If you already have a financial advisor, that is wonderful. I work with clients who have financial advisors and I support the plans that they have with them. A financial coach can be a really great compliment to this and also be able to help you save more money, to then in turn, invest more to build your wealth even more rapidly.

When thinking about working with a financial advisor and a financial coach, it’s not an “either or,” they work very well together as both of them combined, help you with all aspects of your financial wealth building.

What if I Want to Get Financial Coaching but My Partner Doesn’t?

There are times when I have women who really want to improve their finances but their partners are not on board yet, so we get started together alone and then they notice the changes in their partner (not just the finances but how they are showing up in their daily life) and then they choose to get on board. Sometimes this is what it takes to get a partner who isn’t on the same page about financial coaching, to get on board.

What I do recommend when you are trying to figure it out, is to have your spouse or partner on your free 20-min call when you are considering coaching, so they can be a part of that conversation because it can be really powerful for them to hear what you have to say and also, how financial coaching with me can help you to improve your finances and your life. It all depends on your specific situation, but the choice is ultimately left up to you whether you do financial coaching with your partner or spouse or if you do the sessions with me, on your own.

I have also written an article that you might find really helpful: How to Improve Communicating about Money with Your Partner

I’m Not Struggling Financially, Would Financial Coaching Still Help Me?

Absolutely! In this case, we get to take you further on your journey which is very exciting. Often when people hear the words “financial coaching,” they think that it is only for people who are struggling with their money, but this is not the case. I actually work with client who are six figure earners, who are accountants and who have professional careers, but want clarity with their money and they have bigger goals that they want to achieve.

There are many different things that financial coaching can help you to work towards and achieve when you aren’t “struggling,” including:

• Ability to purchase a home, a vacation home or a rental property
• Traveling more often
• The ability to leave your job or start a side business or business
• Preparing to start a family
• More funds to improve your health
• More money available to invest to build your wealth quicker or diversify yourself more
• The ability to achieve financial and time freedom

How Can a Financial Coach Help Improve My Mental & Physical Health?

When we are constantly stressing about our finances, it affects every aspect of our lives. Many of the common areas that can be affected because of high stress (hello your money) are:

• Anxiety, depression
• Digestive problems
• Eating habits, overeating, stress & binge eating
• Brain fog
• Falling asleep and staying asleep
• Lack of energy, feelings of exhaustion

When you improve your finances and you aren’t constantly worrying, your stress levels go down and your body isn’t feeling so anxious all of the time. You are able to feel more peaceful and calmer and many areas of your health are able to improve. Here is an article I wrote that dives in deeper to explain the connection between your finances and your mental health: How Your Financial Stress is Truly Affecting Your Mental Health

Here is a photo below of my struggling health when I was struggling with my mindset around money. The really interesting part is that my actual finances were perfectly okay, I was earning 6-figures and I was managing my money very well, I was just worried about money because growing up, we didn’t have very much, so my mind was stuck in financial scarcity.

Once I worked on improving my mindset and feeling around money, my entire mental and physical health improved. Many of my clients come to me feeling anxiety around money amongst other mental and physical struggles and after they get their finances in order and put the time into improving their situation, they start to notice positive changes in their health too.

I Have a Variable Income, Can You Still Help Me?

Yes! Most of the clients that I work with actually have variable incomes. There are SO many elements that we can improve with your finances, even if you have a variable income. Most people allow the excuse that they can’t manage their cash flow due to variable income, but this is a limiting mindset! The vast majority of the clients that I work with have a variable income and they are succeeding with managing their cash flow and getting ahead financially!

Do You Sell Investments or Insurance Products or Services?

No, I do not sell insurances or investments. I do not work for a company that sells products, what I do sell is financial coaching services and financial coaching only.

My goal for you is to help you take back control of your finances, to feel confident how you are managing your cash flow and to be able to do more of what makes your heart & soul happy, because you have the financial means to do so. I want you to feel healthier mentally and physically because you are experiencing less financial stress in your life.

Click here to download my Realistic Budget template! 

How Can I Make Improving My Finances Feel Positive and Not Come From a Lack and Scarcity Mindset?

Diving deep into your finances to address and improve them now, is one of the highest forms of self-care.

The situation that you are in right now where you are constantly stressed, is you already living in a suffering state.

You might have to make a few sacrifices now, so you DON’T have to suffer going forward. That is true self-care and that is NOT coming from a scarcity mindset.

Is it Just “Woo Woo” or do You Teach Tangible Financial Information & Concepts?

There are a lot of coaches who coach on money mindset or law of attraction, but my program Cash Flow Confidence is structured to dive in deep with you on the actual management of your finances. It is great to work on mindset, but the help that you really truly need, especially in the beginning, is the correct knowledge for your specific situation, the strategy and systems and the habits and the accountability of implementing the knowledge that you learn.

I also have another program that dives in deep with you to get to the underlying factors that are causing you to sabotage your finances by:

• Underearning
• Emotional or impulsive spending
• Not intentionally managing your money
• Working through the emotions that you feel around money such as: guilt, shame, embarrassment, fear, scarcity, etc.
• We dive into and process the things that make it difficult to follow through with a plan, with the strategy and with the knowledge that you already have.

This program is called Unf*ck Your Money and it’s very different from my program Cash Flow Confidence which is the system, strategy and the tangible financial program. This is where I’m really a holistic financial coach and I take all aspects that affect your finances into account and address the areas that most people don’t really understand how significant the connections are, and that we actually do need to go beyond numbers, beyond the strategy, to really get at the patterns that play out in our lives, the reasons we avoid our money, procrastinate taking action, have a hard time sticking to or implementing our budgets.

How Much Does it Cost for Financial Coaching?

I don’t share the investment online for working with me because I want to first help you determine, are you a great fit to work with me and if so, what program is the specific one that’s right for you, because I do have multiple different options. Once we determine that, then we can discuss what the investment in yourself would be to move forward.

How Can I Afford to Pay for a Financial Coach, When I Am Struggling with My Money?

This is a great question and I understand the concern that you have.

What my clients actually find is that the amount of money that they save from me going through their numbers with them, is often more than enough to pay for their coaching program, making the information and strategies that they learned, actually turn out to be free.

One of my clients “A” (to keep her name confidential) was spending $170 each month in fees that she had no ideas she was paying and had been paying for years. She would have kept paying those fees because they were automatically coming out of her accounts and she had no idea until I brought it to her attention. Over ten years, that ONE fee alone would have cost her $1700!

I helped my one client “W” be able to save $3900 in interest alone, that does not include all of the other money we found for her to save!

It’s very important to not just ask, “how much is financial coaching,” but also, “how much is NOT receiving financial coaching costing me in my life?”

It’s Already Costing You In:

• High-interest debt, credit cards piling up (thousands in interest)
• The money you don’t have going to investments and retirement, it’s costing you in the compound interest you’re losing out on, and time is your greatest asset when it comes to building time. So the longer you have debt for and feel like you’re living paycheck to paycheck, the more money you’re not making in compound interest because of the time that’s flying by
• Your emotional health – the stress and anxiety and constantly worrying, that’s taking a huge toll on your emotional and mental health and you have to put a price on that, it’s your everyday quality of life that’s being reduced
• Relationship stress from money worries
• Physical health – when you’re stressed and turn to food and emotionally eat and how that affects your physical body from increased calories, from not sleeping as well, etc. Your physical health can be affected from digestive issues, anxiety, brain fog, etc.

I do also offer payment plans to make my services as financially accessible as possible, we can figure out what is best for you, during your free 20-min financial Q&A call.

Financial coaching absolutely can improve your finances, but there are many other areas that it can improve that you truly can’t put a price tag on including:

• Your relationships
• Your mental & emotional health
• Your physical health
• Your spiritual health

Here is a post I wrote about the 6 Reasons Why Paying for a Financial Coach is the Best Money You’ll Spend

A few years ago, I was really quite sick and the doctors weren’t able to help me figure out what it was. I went from doctor to doctor and had to seek help from the alternative health field. Because I knew how to manage my finances really well, I was able to get the help that I needed (which didn’t come cheap, it cost me over $30k in health-related costs). If I didn’t have my finances in a really good spot before this, I wouldn’t have been able to improved my health and lead the life that I do today, I would still be wondering and searching for answers and feeling like I was never going to be healthy again.

Related Content:

• 10 Ways to Reduce Your Anxiety About Money
• How My Exhaustion & Lack of Energy Was Connected to My Finances

Something that I often find, is when you say, “I can’t afford it, or it doesn’t fit in my budget,” you don’t actually know exactly what your budget is or what you can afford. Because you don’t already have that clarity with your finances, you aren’t managing your money really well to even know what the numbers really are. That is what my coaching will help you to figure out. So when you do want something, instead of you just saying “I can’t afford it,” because that’s what you are used to saying, you have a system in place to be able to figure out HOW you can afford it, if it’s important enough for you.

So make sure you know whether you truly can’t afford it because you’ve crunched the numbers and it’s just not possible, or if it’s just your habitual reaction because you’ve felt like most of the time you can’t afford something.

If you truly can’t afford financial coaching right now, here are some ideas of how you can become resourceful, to be able to make the funds necessary for financial coaching:

• Go through your house and sell items you’re not using. This is a very effective strategy and can help to cover some of your investment for coaching. In this post, I share how I’ve made $9000+ selling my items in Facebook groups alone. I ran a 5-day challenge teaching women how to do this and the total money made from selling items was $13,225!!!
• Cancel the “little” things you are paying for on a monthly basis because they add up, I have many clients who didn’t realize how much these “little” fees were costing them, many were spending $90-$300 a month that they didn’t even realize!
• Start tracking where your money is already going so you can figure out your “money leaks.” An easy way to do this is by using mint.com. You can sync your debit and credit card accounts and it will categorize your transactions for you. This can be super eye-opening! If you are just writing down a monthly budget on a piece of paper or a spreadsheet, you can be missing “little” expenses that are automatically coming out of your account. Here is an article that I have written that will also help you with getting your budget in order: Why You’ve Failed at Budgeting in the Past & How to Finally Succeed
• Narrow in on your grocery budget. This is one of the biggest areas of expenses that I help my clients tighten up right away when working together. The average American family of 4, wastes about $1500 on food each year by not using it in time, it expiring and going bad. Here is a post I wrote about saving money on groceries: 11 Ways to Save Money on Groceries
• Save money on the items that you are commonly overspending on, but typically don’t even realize it. You can find out more here in the article that I wrote: 9 Things You Are Spending Way More Money on Than You Think

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was taking my finances more seriously and I started working with my first mentor, I paid $9000 and I didn’t even have a credit card that went that high. I had to split the payments up in order to even pay for it. Yes, it was scary, but me taking that leap of faith and working with someone who had the knowledge that I needed and held me accountable, that is what really changed my life. So I know what it feels like to invest money (remember this is an INVESTMENT in you, not an “expense”), when you are scared.

Do I Really Need to Spend Money on Financial Coaching? Can’t I Do it on My Own?

I want to ask you a couple of questions and points for you to think about if this is what you are thinking.

• If you knew how to do it, you’d already have done it. Do you know how to get the results that you want?
• You can piece together information from blogs, Facebook, videos and books, but you won’t get the highest quality of information and strategies until you’re willing to invest in yourself. When you take in free or low-cost information, you still have to learn how to tweak everything for YOUR specific financial situation, it’s not custom made for you. But when you work with me for financial coaching, the plan IS custom made for you. That’s when the real change happens.
• If you have a big goal, you have to take an equally big risk.
• If you have trouble following through with what you already know (such as information you have read on a blog, seen on a video or read in a book), then what you need is someone who is going to hold you accountable and support you in making these changes, which you are currently struggling with.

How Do I Get Started Working with You?

Are you feeling motivated to not want to just get your money organized and to pay off debt, but to really improve your finances so you can truly feel less daily stress and do more of the things you want in your life? I sure hope so! You can click here to book in for a free 20-min Q&A call with me to find out if you would be a good fit for coaching. If you already know that you are ready to take your finances and your life to the next level,

you can Click here to download my Realistic Budget template! 

Want to find out where you really stand financially? Click “Cash Flow Confidence” Program.

 

In Regards to Business Finances Coaching [for Service-Based Entrepreneurs, Coaches,

Health, Fitness, Nutrition, Life & Business Coaches]:

What is the difference between what you do and what an accountant and bookkeeper do? If I already have an accountant or a bookkeeper, would this program benefit me? 

Great question!

• An accountant helps you with figuring out how much to set aside for taxes and then at the end of the year they file your taxes on your behalf.
• A bookkeeper is recording the transactions of what have already happened.

In my Business Finance Clarity & Profit Coaching program, I help you be proactive with your finances and I help you by starters with getting clarity with your business and your personal finances. No one else helps you to get a handle on your personal finances first, which is so important to be able to manage your business finances well. Then I help you with the cash flow management, which your accountant and a bookkeeper don’t help you with. When money comes in, I help you make sure you know what to do with that money when it comes in. We also work together to break down how to hit your revenue goals and I have systems in place that make it so easy for you to see at all times, how close you are to them.

Accountants and bookkeepers play important roles, but they don’t cover all of the aspects of your business finances. You can be working with both and still feel very confused and not feel like you are getting ahead like you want to be, which is where I come in and this program will be the absolute game-changer for you!

Do I really need coaching for my cash flow management? Can’t I just figure it out on my own or have my accountant or bookkeeper help me?

Did you know that 82% businesses fail because of cash flow problems?!? Let that statistic sink in for a moment.

• If you knew how to do it, you’d already have done it and you would see major success in your finances, but if you are reading this, you likely don’t have the results that you want.
• You can piece together information from blogs, videos and books, but you won’t get the highest quality of information and strategies until you’re willing to invest in yourself. When you take in free or low-cost information, you still have to learn how to tweak everything for YOUR specific financial situation, it’s not custom made for you. But when you work with me for financial coaching and cash flow management, the plan IS custom made for you. That’s when the real change happens.
• If you have a big goal, you have to take an equally big risk. 
• If you have trouble following through with what you already know (such as information you have read on a blog, seen on a video or read in a book), then what you need is someone who is going to hold you accountable and support you in making these changes, which you are currently struggling with.
• Accountants and bookkeepers are great and they have certain roles they plan in your business finances, but cash flow management is not what they specialize in!

Want to learn more about confidently managing your service based business cash flow and turning your business into a truly profitable business? Click here.

 

I am very active on Instagram, follow me here for more financial tips & tricks: http://instagram.com/mandyythomas (@intentionallywealthyco)

 

 

Do you have any questions or anything to add? Leave me a comment in the comments below and I will respond back to you!