Learn how to make more confident money decisions on the road with financial coach Sarah Jones from Keeping Up With The Joneses Financial Coaching on The RV Entrepreneur podcast episode #329.
Sarah is a full-time RVer traveling the US with her husband. Together, they’ve been debt-free TWICE and now find themselves in the top 25% of Americans for Net Worth. Through her work, Sarah helps people feel safe, secure, and confident in their money decisions, both personally and professionally — and she does it without shame, guilt, or restriction.
Connect with Sarah:
www.instagram.com/keepingupwiththejonesesfc.com
www.threads.net/@keepingupwiththejonesesfc
Making More Confident Money Decisions on the Road
With Sarah Jones
Your Host: Kimberly Crossland
RESOURCES MENTIONED
www.keepingupwiththejonesesfc.com
Listen to The RV Entrepreneur Episode #329
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The RV Entrepreneur #329 Full Episode Transcript:
Making More Confident Money Decisions with Sarah Jones
SARAH: So much of what we hear about money out there is about restriction, and there’s a lot of shame and a lot of guilt surrounding money. And so my big thing is we get rid of the shame and the guilt, and we do all of this without restriction. So I want to help you spend more in the areas that bring value.
RV LIFE: Welcome to the RV Entrepreneur podcast. The weekly show for nomads, work campers, RV ers and entrepreneurs looking to earn a living or build a business while enjoying the RV lifestyle. This week’s host is Kimberly Crosland. Let’s settle in and enjoy the RV entrepreneur podcast brought to you by RV life.
KIMBERLY: Welcome to the RV Entrepreneur podcast. I’m your host for this week, Kimberly Crosland, and I am so looking forward to sharing our next guest with you. Sarah Jones is a full time RV or traveling across the United States with her husband, and her and her husband have been debt free not once, but twice. They now find themselves in the top 25% of Americans for net worth. And as a result of the lessons that they’ve learned that you’re going to hear about on this episode, you’re going to also understand why she has now devoted herself to being an entrepreneur who helps other people feel safe and secure and confident in their money decisions, both personally and professionally in their business. She also does this without making you feel any kind of shame or guilt or restriction, which I know you’re going to hear as you hear her speak. I absolutely got so much out of this episode. I know that you will too. So let’s dive right into it. But first, here’s a short break to hear from our sponsors who make this show possible.
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KIMBERLY: Sarah, thank you so much for joining us on the RV entrepreneur podcast. I’m really excited to talk to you about this because I have to admit, money is not really my thing. I don’t want to say I’m bad with money, because I think that you’re probably going to talk a little bit about that, but I don’t feel like it is my strong suit. I am not the expert with it, and it sounds like you are, and you have the most compelling story before we get into your story, because I’m really excited to dive into that. I would love to hear what is your RV lifestyle? Tell us a little bit about how you’re traveling right now in your RV and how you’re living the RV life.
SARAH: Yeah. Thank you. I am very excited to be here and talk with you as well. My husband and I, we are full time RV years. We travel so we’re not stationary. We actually travel all throughout the United States. We’re hitting our third year, so just kind of entering our third year of full time RV life. We do spend some of our winters in Arizona, but we travel all the rest of the year. So we’re upgrading some equipment, which I think is kind of fun. I’m sure a lot of people, a lot of listeners, right, are in the RV world here, but we’re moving into the heavy duty trucks. We bought a semi, so we are upgrading some of our stuff. So we’re getting rid of our pickup. We’ve got this semi, we’re buying a little car to go on there. We’ve got a motorcycle. So this year when we take off is going to be a whole new adventure and very different from even the past couple of years. So that’s both really exciting and a little terrifying at the same time.
KIMBERLY: That’s awesome. I think that’s one of the beauties of the RV lifestyle, though, is that we can always change like nothing’s ever the same. It sounds like even our travel styles, even the vehicles that we use to travel with those always change and it always just continuously adds this element of adventure. I absolutely love that. So obviously we’re on the RV entrepreneur podcast, so why don’t you tell us a little bit also about what you do to be able to bring in some money to afford this lifestyle, and how do you bring in that money and earn that money so that you can buy the semi to pull your trailer and to to get all the fun things?
SARAH: Yeah, sure. You know, and I really love sharing this because in my experience has been kind of a misconception with how we’ve been able to do this lifestyle. And we did sell our home a couple of years ago. Our intention was not to be full time RVers though, so we did not sell everything to go into the RV life. We lived in Colorado, so we sold our stuff with the anticipation and planning to move and buy a home in Arizona. And long story short, things didn’t necessarily work out the way that we had planned them to work out. And so we found ourselves living in a fifth wheel for just like the interim. Right? Because we needed to, like, get out of Colorado and get to Arizona and then get established so we could buy a home. And Kimberly, what’s great is I had a business beforehand. And so that business was established. I am what we call financial coach. So I actually help people in this area of money and specifically like the behavior side of money. So putting together good money plans, we don’t use the B word here. So no budgets allowed. So we put together money plans helping people build their again no emergency funds.
SARAH: We call them peace of mind funds here. Really helping people to not feel like they’re terrible with money. That’s what I do. That’s what I thrive in because I live so much of my life in such a negative space with money. And so I had established that business. So when we decided to go full time and travel, thankfully we already had that business that was bringing in income. That transition was fairly easy. And within this past year, we’ve started another business out of our RV where we do metal prints, so we print directly on metal, directly on wood. We were doing t shirts, but we’re kind of moving out of the t shirt realm because we enjoy the other mediums a little bit better, but we do all of that directly from our RV as we travel. So not new to business. I call myself kind of that serial entrepreneur. And aren’t we all? I mean, I think once you start one business, you kind of like, you dig in and you start more and more and more as the years go on.
KIMBERLY: Oh yes you do. I feel that in my core. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it. I think it’s great when you have an idea and you’re excited about that idea and you want to get it out there, why not? Why not try it? Why not start it? I mean, you’d be hard pressed to find an entrepreneurs like I did one business and that was all I ever wanted to do. I think most people love the serial entrepreneurship lifestyle, and I know that our audience specifically is going to say yes. That’s why I have so many ideas. I’m not alone. So thank you for sharing that. It’s always, always nice to know that there’s some solidarity, especially in the RV community. So you kind of started to allude to this a little bit, but how did you become debt free? Because you weren’t always debt free, right.
SARAH: No, no. And actually we’ve been debt free twice. You know, I grew up with this kind of this scarcity mentality where I was literally lived for so many years, even having a job. Right. But still scared of where the next dollar was going to come from. So I was terrified. I grew up terrified to spend money, and it wasn’t necessarily my parents fault. They did the best that they could, right? But I picked up a lot of stuff from them growing up, you know? And a lot of that for me turned into this scarcity mindset, the scarcity mentality. And so I’m going to kind of skip a few of my early adult years, but I want to talk specifically when I met my husband and when him and I got married, literally the night we got married, people freak out when I tell them this story. But it was literally the night we got married. We didn’t go on a honeymoon. We pulled up a couple of chairs outside of our home. We grabbed a couple of drinks, I grabbed a notebook, and I literally told him, okay, what are all of your debts? Because we need to get this debt taken care of. Like, tell me what credit cards you have. Because in my mind, I did have some debt. I did have a mortgage. I had a car loan. I did have a personal loan. He had a couple of credit cards, a personal loan and a couple of vehicle loans.
SARAH: And I didn’t feel good with having debt. I didn’t like making payments. I still don’t like making payments to people. There’s something about it that just felt like it didn’t feel like it was mine, and I didn’t work hard enough, you know, if I owed other people money. Now, I want to put a caveat here. I don’t think that all debt is bad. I don’t think it’s all negative. It’s not the villain here. Right? That I think sometimes debt is made to, you know, kind of made to be the villain and it really isn’t. But in my world, I didn’t want to have debt. I wasn’t living the life that I really wanted to live. So from 2006 to 2010, my husband and I followed kind of one of the big name plans out there. I’m not going to mention what it was, but we paid off about $60,000 worth of debt, and we did it by a lot of restriction. We had two young kids at the time, a lot of stuff, you know, life happens to all of us, right? And so we were able to literally scrimp and save and paid off $60,000 worth of debt. But what that big plan out there that we followed, what it did is it did give us the skills needed to get out of debt, but it did not give us the skills needed to communicate more effectively about money.
SARAH: It didn’t give us the skills to really plan ahead for life, throwing a lot of crap our direction. And you know what it does? It happens. And so our debt free life that first go round lasted only four months. So by the end of 2010, we were back in debt again. And I will say, a lot of people are like, Sarah, don’t be so hard on yourself. A lot of it was medical. My son was diagnosed with type one diabetes. That brought in a lot of additional medical expenses that we were not anticipating. We sold a home and bought a new one. So our mortgage was three times what, you know, the new mortgage was three times what the old mortgage was. I had a couple of surgeries, so we had deductibles and out of pocket. So yeah, a lot of medical, but we also had a vehicle that needed to be replaced. So we found ourselves with a new car loan. And then my dad was killed in a motorcycle accident and he didn’t have a will, didn’t have any life insurance anything. And my siblings weren’t able to help. And so those final expenses really fell on my husband and I, you know, to take care of. And while that’s a lot of life to happen in, in a year, the fact is, is that had we planned better and had we had the skills, we could have been able to make it through that, I think a lot easier if we would have had some other things in place, right, and had a better plan, a better financial foundation.
SARAH: So then we get into 2011 to 2018, I will tell you, we accrued an additional $54,000 worth of debt. And then we were able to pay it off and we put $50,000 in our savings. So over $100,000 turnaround, you know, in those seven years. But I’ll tell you, Kimberly, part of that story, while we were getting out of debt and while we were feeling a little bit better about our money, our relationship was getting so much worse. We were making more money than we had ever made before, and we were on the verge of divorce, literally filing paperwork. It was awful. It was literally awful. And I think that, you know, a lot of times we hear stories, right? Like people get divorced because of money. I actually don’t believe that. I believe it’s communication that we don’t have the skills necessary to communicate effectively about anything that’s going on, particularly money, but in so many other areas. Right. And that’s exactly what was happening with us. We were basically living two different lives. So while we were getting the debt paid off, we were growing farther and farther and farther apart. And I know this is long, but I want people to hear this story because they think it’s really important, right? That things don’t just change overnight.
SARAH: And it’s so much more than just getting out of debt to. Right. It’s really about your relationship with yourself, your relationship with money, your relationship with your partner and how you communicate. And so really about 2017, we were in a really, really bad spot with our marriage. And, you know, our kids are around this as well, right? They’re hearing this. They’re seeing it. We had our son was getting ready to graduate high school. And so there were some. Financial pressures coming on, you know, going to college and all of this. And I had to really take a look at what is it that I can do in this situation, because we followed the same plan a second time. And while we are getting out of debt, we are in a worse place than we’ve ever been. Right? And I didn’t want to be there. I did not want to be there. It felt so heavy. It was so stressful. And so I really started taking a look at, okay, Sarah, you like to have your way. You kind of like to be in control here, but maybe, you know, maybe your husband would like to, you know, have a little bit more input here. And I had to really step back and say, okay, how can I hear him differently? Right. How can I ask him, how can I have some different conversations with him? And I really started kind of going inward, not trying to fix our problem with us, but really trying to fix the issues with me and my own mindset with money and how I viewed money.
SARAH: And I really started digging into that. And it wasn’t until then that I started hearing him differently. I started hearing what he actually valued spending his dollars on. I started really hearing about why those things were important to him, why he valued that. It’s not just something he wanted to do, quote unquote, right. Why that really brought value into his life. And then I started to really look at what do I actually value spending money on, right. Like, what do I actually want to spend my dollars on? And our relationship started to improve because we started to have different types of conversations surrounding money and different conversations just around our, you know, our relationship. And when we broke through that, it was almost like, why didn’t somebody tell me this? Why has nobody told me these things in the past? Right. Like, why do we not talk about these things? We we talk about the new house that we buy and we talk about the new car, but we don’t really talk about the really hard conversations and the struggles that we’re going through financially. And that is exactly why I became a coach, because I wanted to talk about it, but I wanted to help people through it.
KIMBERLY: I think that’s so good. And the name of your business is Keeping Up with the Joneses, and I think that what you just said is so important because we are told all the time, don’t try and keep up with the Joneses, because then you’re spending just to spend. And to your point about communication around money and and your relationship with money, it’s really important to understand, like you had said, that big breakthrough for you and your husband was to have that moment of, oh, hold on, maybe I should look at why I want to buy what I want to buy, and also understand why he wants to buy, what he wants to buy and let that be a conversation. Then you have that foundation of communication and understanding. It almost takes this like financial freedom and the debt free lifestyle. And, you know, all the the keywords around money and, you know, and finances, it almost makes that into almost like a commodity. But there’s layers that are deeper. I’ve never heard someone do this before. Sarah, I love what you’re saying. You’re going deeper and you’re peeling back those layers and you’re pulling out the emotion behind it.
KIMBERLY: Because I heard there’s a study out there that says people who’ve had a stroke, and it affects their emotional part of their brain, and we’re really hard time making decisions. And when you’re thinking about the way you’re spending your money and your budgeting, although you know, you don’t like that B word, but when you’re making a plan for how you’re going to use your money and you don’t have that emotional, you know, understanding behind it that can really affect you and that can make it very difficult to stay out of debt and to continue to not fall back into old ways. So you’ve really unpacked something here, so kudos to you. I absolutely love what you’re saying. This next question that I have for you might actually lead right into where we left off in that emotional response and where you want to spend your money, but what factors really played into you guys becoming full time Rv’ers was any of that? Like, we don’t want to spend our money on this triple mortgage or or what went into that decision.
SARAH: Yeah. So this is a crazy story as well. So we again, had planned to sell our home in Colorado and move to Arizona. We had been planning it for a couple of years, but what was so crazy, this is so crazy. It really hit kind of in this. Like my pride. I’ll be real honest. It kind of hit in my pride and a little bit of my ego. But we couldn’t qualify for a mortgage in Arizona even though we were debt free, even though we had 55 0% down on a home, we could not qualify for a mortgage. And part of that is because my husband was leaving his job in Colorado and didn’t have, you know, new employment in Arizona, which I get, but my business, because it hadn’t been registered for at least the 24 months, they couldn’t count my income. So it looked like we had no income.
KIMBERLY: Oh, wow.
SARAH: We’re literally getting down. And when I say this, this was like two weeks. We had a contract on our house already. We were within two weeks of closing on our home. And we’re finding out after, I don’t know how many different lenders we had talked to find out. Yeah, we’re not actually qualifying for a mortgage, so. Now let’s look at renting. Let’s find a place to rent for, you know, a couple of months. Let’s rent for six months. And then he had a job lined up. He just hadn’t started yet. So again, there was no it didn’t look like he had employment. And I’ll tell you, Kimberly, we called in, I called, I don’t know, hundreds of places nobody would rent to us because we couldn’t show income, we could not show employment. And I offered to pay six months in advance or a year in advance. And they said, nope. And I really do understand it. But they didn’t need to change the way that they did business just to accommodate us. Right. They wanted monthly payments. They didn’t want to have to deal with, you know, collecting six months and, you know, in advance. And then, you know, the thought of maybe having to refund because we were leaving or, you know, anything like that. But that does not negate the fact that we were now two weeks a week from closing on our home, and we had no place to go. The anxieties really coming up here, option C, that we didn’t even know was an option in the beginning, right? Turns out that my husband’s aunt had an older fifth wheel for sale. We had zero experience and we thought, okay, let’s just get this fifth wheel.
SARAH: We can find a place to park it. We can live in it for, you know, again a couple of months and continue on with buying a home. So we did buy the fifth wheel. We had to come to Arizona because we also brought our daughter back. So in the midst of this moving it was move in day for college. And so we’re getting her moved in and we’re trying to find, you know, an RV park. And if you’re familiar with Arizona, a lot of them are 55 and older communities. We are not 55 or older. And some of the ones that were not, honestly weren’t in the best neighborhoods. Long story short, we found a place we got down here, we moved in, and a couple of months later we were just getting to know the people in this RV park, and we kept hearing over and over and over again that people they wish they would have traveled more when they had the money to do it and when they had their health to do it. And my husband and I literally looked at each other and said, what is stopping us from traveling? What is stopping us from being full time RV years? And the answer was nothing. So we sold that other fifth wheel. We bought our new to us. It was a used one. We bought bigger because I’m like, okay, I need more than 29ft. You know, I need a little bit more room from you if we’re going to spend that much time together. And literally the rest is history. We bought our newer fifth wheel and we’ve been on the road ever since.
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KIMBERLY: Oh my goodness. I love how life just can take us on this adventure. You don’t even expect it’s going to happen and all of a sudden you’re living this dream life. So now you guys travel. Obviously you said you’re full time. How often are you traveling between places? Like, how long do you stay in one place?
SARAH: Yeah, we usually stay about a month in each location that we’re there, and that’s for financial reasons, because oftentimes you get a better rate if you stay a full month at an RV park versus, you know, nightly or weekly and being at a place for a month, it allows us to really experience, get to know the culture, get to know some of the people and really get to explore because that is part of this journey for us. It’s not necessarily just being on the road. We want to really get to know the places that we stay and get to know all the freebie spots, right. And this isn’t about, you know, necessarily doing it all as cheaply as possible, but I think there’s a lot of power in doing those kind of those hidden gems or finding those hidden gems along the way. And being in a spot for a month at a time really allows us to find those places and to really explore and get to know them a lot better. So generally, a month at a time, although when we’re in Arizona, we do spend 3 or 4 months here during the winter.
KIMBERLY: Yeah. I mean, being from Arizona, I understand why it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful outside during this time of year. But I also understand wanting to go and find those, you know, kind of off the beaten path areas and really dig into a location that just speaks again, back to your business of like how you’re really digging into the why and like the culture of around money and the culture around the places that you’re visiting. So many different parallels between your lifestyle and your business. I absolutely love that. So talk to me about what you want people to know. So we’re hearing your story. It is a powerful story. I love hearing your story. I could hear you talk all day. I just I’m like soaking up every single word. You’re so well spoken. But I’m really curious, what are the big takeaways or someone who’s listening right now and saying, oh yeah, I do feel this about money. You know, like I was saying earlier, I’m bad with money. I’m not necessarily bad. That was a B word I thought you were going to say, not budget. I guess you could say both. But someone who’s like, you know, I’m not great with budgeting. I don’t love budgeting. This is why I just kind of continued, like, I can’t kind of keep up or I’ve found myself in these situations. What’s something that you want them to know about money in general?
SARAH: Yeah. So the big thing is, is I believe that nobody is actually terrible with money. I believe that you just don’t know what you value spending it on. And so it feels yucky because you’re spending in areas that don’t actually feel good for you. And so what I love doing and people are like, they never hear this, but I love to help you spend more in the areas that bring value to your life. So much of what we hear about money out there is about restriction, right? And there’s a lot of shame and a lot of guilt surrounding money. And so my big thing is we get rid of the shame and the guilt and we do all of this, you know, without restrictions. So I want to help you spend more in the areas that bring value. So how do we do that? Well, we need to kind of dig down and figure out what that is, right? What do you actually want to be spending your money on? And I hear so often people wish they could travel more, right? I hear it almost daily, right? Like, oh, I wish I could travel more. And when I start talking with them, I’m like, well, how come you don’t feel like you can? Well, vacations are expensive and oh, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, right. So there’s a lot of which I’m not going to get into, but a lot of our language that we use with money that really holds us back in, you know, those areas, you know, then we start kind of digging into the numbers.
SARAH: And I find that, again, this is no judgment. But if you are, you know, going out to lunch, you know, five days a week because you’re not packing your lunch at home, or because maybe you’ve got a couple of hire car payments. You know, the fact is, is you have so many choices when it comes to your money that I think sometimes people forget that. And you really do have the ability to travel more. You’re just choosing to spend your money in other areas right now, and that’s okay. It’s all okay as long as you start to recognize it and you start to realize what your choices really are. Right? And so I think what I want people to know is that you can do the things that you want to do, but you have to be willing to look at what choices you’ve been making and to decide, is this really where I want to be spending my dollars, right? Is this really how I want to be spending them? Am I getting gas, you know, filling my car up? And then am I going in to grab snacks and a drink every time? You know, I do that. Will those little dollars, it’s not the amount that you’re spending.
SARAH: It’s the energy that’s attached with that. Right. And so all of those little spends that don’t actually bring value to your life, that’s creating more negativity in the long run when it comes to money. So when you’re spending in areas that feel good, guess what? You start to feel these little wins. You start to feel these little debts. You know you’re making more progress. You’re growing your savings account. You’re taking the vacations that you want to take. Right? You are going to the concerts, right? You’re not associating with guilt. You know, you’re not feeling guilty that you spent this money and you’re not justifying it because you deserve it. Right? Like we’re we’re eliminating this language. When you start to really spend in the areas that feel good and you’ve. Planned it out, you almost instantly start to change the way that you believe about money and the way that you feel about money, and then from there have seen it happen. Better things start coming in. You start to use your money in ways that are so different, and you start to recognize all the choices that you’ve been making. Right? And so it’s it’s not about restriction. It’s not that you’re terrible with money. I believe. It’s just that you don’t know where to spend it in ways that feel good for you. And that’s not something that we’re taught.
KIMBERLY: Yeah, it really isn’t. So to that point, what happens when you have a couple and, you know, you had talked very openly and vulnerably, which I very much appreciate about your relationship and how money was coming in between your relationship. This happens a lot. Let’s think about like the five love languages, for example. I’m very much an acts of service person. Take me to lunch and I’m happy, you know? And that’s where I feel really good because it’s quality time together. That’s what I enjoy. Um, maybe that’s quality time, not acts of service. Regardless, this is not a Love Languages episode, but there’s other people who are physical gifts. They like to get flowers. If they get flowers in the mail, then they’re feeling loved. If they buy, you know, the gear for their hobbies. They’re feeling that love because they’re like, yes, I got what makes me happy and what lights me up. What happens in these two people are married and they have a hard time differentiating between the two. So one person’s like, well, I just got all this gear. We don’t need to go to lunch. We can’t afford to go to lunch now because I’ve got all this gear over here. I’m using gear as an example. It can be anything. Maybe it’s, you know, all these tools. It doesn’t matter a physical thing versus someone who’s like, I don’t need the material stuff. I just want these experiences or these memories or these. I want to go to lunch, for example, because you said lunch. That’s what makes you think of it. And there’s no judgment on I mean, nobody’s wrong in that situation, right? I mean, if it brings you joy and the energy is good around it, then that should be good. But as a cohesive unit, do you have any good talking points for those types of couples that might feel that friction?
SARAH: Yeah, and if I’m being honest, this is probably like 99% of married couples. Like if they’re really being honest, like it really is everybody. Yeah. A couple of things with this. Number one, I think talking about it, why these things really are important for you. A lot of people aren’t really familiar with the love languages, right. But really sharing with your spouse why those things are important for you, why getting flowers in the mail makes you feel loved. Like, what is it about that act? So breaking it down, digging a little bit deeper, right? Why those are important for you? Because oftentimes we might say that they make us feel good. We like them, but we don’t really dig down and share. Like, what’s the core feeling? What is that deep seated emotion that’s attached to that? And why does that make you feel good? Right. Why do you need that as part of your life. So that’s number one is is sharing more of those intimate details with your partner to give them insight? The second piece is you can do both, but this is where the money plan is really important, right? That you guys sit down and you decide where that fits in the priority, right? Like what are you working towards? Where do those things fit in priority level and dedicate, you know, a certain amount of money? I’ll give you guys a really great example that I and coming from the full time RV or now, I never used to like to travel. Not a traveler. I liked to be in my home. It was my safe space, you know, and my husband’s like, hey, let’s go away for a weekend. And I’m just like, also, he’s the spontaneous one. I’m the planner, right? And so if he’s like, let’s go away for a weekend.
SARAH: What were my words? No. We’re broke. No, we don’t have the money for that. No, we can’t do that. Right. It was literally or if I did say yes, which isn’t appropriate to say yes or no. But if I did say yes, it caused a tremendous amount of anxiety. But once we sat down and I learned why those weekend getaways were important for him, what it was, you know, for him, then it allowed me to then say, okay, here’s how we can make this happen. We can plan to be spontaneous. We can create a separate sinking fund for these weekend getaways, because I know this is important for you, which he never really fully expressed. So, Kimberly, I think part of it is just expressing to your partner, which I truthfully believe a lot of times we simply don’t do. And then you can make these things happen. So maybe you cut back on a couple of subscriptions, right? Because those aren’t the priority. Maybe it’s the going out for the lunches and, you know, getting flowers delivered for your spouse. Those are the higher priority things. So you get to make the choice of where you spend those dollars. So it’s about the communication and it’s about putting that into your plan by way of priority. Right. So those are the two first steps I would say to bridge those gaps. Literally. We all have them. We all have them in one way or another. Sometimes they’ve created bigger, you know, cracks in relationships, you know, and some people haven’t experienced those big cracks and hopefully they don’t at all. But we all have them. We have to be willing to share right with our partners and get to know each other a little bit better.
KIMBERLY: Yeah, I love that. This is the side of money that, like I’ve said before, people aren’t talking enough about. Which is why I love your message. It’s about coming closer together and really living life. Which something as RV ers, I feel like we can really resonate with that message. We can really resonate with the idea of we can feel really good about how we’re living our life, how we’re building our business, and then what happens on the other side of those decisions of entrepreneurship and the RV lifestyle? It’s really, really good. Final question I want to ask you, because you have talked a lot about the scarcity mindset. And like, that’s a very deep rooted thing. Like you said, you grew up hearing it. I grew up hearing it too. Money doesn’t grow on trees. You know, there’s all the different phrases that we hear. How do we move past that? How do we wrestle with it and consciously say, I’m not going to stay stuck in that scarcity mindset?
SARAH: Yeah, I think this is where it gets to be kind of challenging. And I talk about. So scarcity is one there’s lack mindset. There’s fixed. There’s victim mindset. Those are all kind of the negative energy. You know when it comes to money. And then there’s also growth and abundance when it comes to money. And so I talk very openly about all six of them because we all have a little bit of all of them within us. But moving through part of it is really recognizing the language that you use. Can’ts, you know, I can’t do this or I have to, you know, those are really powerful words when it comes to money. I’m broke. Nope. We can’t spend any more money. You know, for me, literally terrified to spend money. And so what I did to start working through that is number one, I really started looking at when I spend money, what goes through my head. And I started kind of journaling it, writing it down, really taking note of it. What language am I using? Over and over and over? I asked my husband, you know, what do you hear me saying? Because they hear differently than what we hear it right? We’re speaking something out and what is going on our head, how we think we’re communicating. It is different than how other people receive it. And so having him share with me what he hears from me a lot, that was I’m broke. And actually one thing I’ll share what he mentioned. He said, Sarah, we always seem to come up with the money for the things that you want to do, but when I suggest something, it’s we’re broke or we’re poor.
SARAH: And that really hit me hard because I felt like I’m not doing anything that I want to do. Right. And so that really hit home with, here’s some mindset work that both of us need to do, but this is where the communication comes in with it, the language that we use. So getting back to really moving through, start to recognize when you make a purchase, when you sit down to write your bills, write and pay bills, write down how you feel. Do you feel like peace? Do you feel like, oh dang, I had the money to pay this like, this feels good? Or is it like, oh my gosh, this is way more than I thought it was going to be. I have no idea how I’m going to do this. Every time you go to the grocery store. If you are so frustrated with the price of, you know, groceries and it’s okay to be frustrated, let’s be honest, guys. I mean, prices have skyrocketed, right? But if it’s really bringing up this feeling of true dread and worry and you’re like, I have to put this on a credit card because I do not have money to pay for groceries. And knowing that that doesn’t make you feel good, start writing those down and really start recognizing what those feelings are. So much of the time that these have become almost second nature.
SARAH: So we do it without recognizing it. And so we have to really recognize it first before then we can start making adjustments. Right. And so we need that data I call it collecting the data. This is no shame. This is no guilt. This is no judgment on yourself. This is not about being hard on yourself here. This is about really recognizing what’s the story that you’ve been telling yourself over and over and over. That’s the first step. Second step then, would be I’m always a big believer in working with a coach and this is not selling my service. This this is really about getting a third perspective. Somebody that’s outside of it that can pull out some things that you can’t see yourself. We all have these blind spots, but if that’s not in the, you know, your money plan, not in the budget right now, then really start to take a look at and go through, okay. What happens if, you know, we all play that I don’t have enough money for groceries. I’m the queen of like making things worse in my head than what they might really be in reality. Right. Like, I hate to say that, but it’s true. And so really being honest with myself and saying, hey, what happens if these things, you know, like really playing the scenario out? What am I really afraid of here? I shared not too long ago a reel about things that I wish people would have told me, and it really spoke to my scarcity mindset of I wish somebody would have said that spending $2 a week on ice cream cones for my kids wasn’t going to derail my debt payoff, and it wasn’t going to drain my savings account.
SARAH: And while some of you might be thinking, oh my gosh, that’s ridiculous, Sarah, of course it wouldn’t. In that moment for me, I definitely felt that those two things were going to happen, right? Nobody told me that it wasn’t. And I didn’t take the time to really look at what are the effects of that choice. And so again, I was making things way worse in my head. So, Kim, this is really deep and. I don’t want to scare a lot of listeners off, but I think the first two steps really start to write down and really take note of what do you feel when you’re making these purchases or paying bills, or when money is leaving your account, or when money is coming in? You know, take note of the emotion and the words that you’re using. And the second one is kind of play out the scenarios like actually write down what is I don’t want to say worst case scenario, but really write down kind of the what ifs. What happens if I spend $2 a week on ice cream for my kids? That’s $8 a month, right? Like, how does that really affect me? It really wouldn’t have the way that I thought it would have.
KIMBERLY: Yeah, that’s so good. And it’s it’s such a great place to start. So I’m glad that you gave us that actionable takeaway. It’s something we can take into motion, and we can really start paying attention to that soundtrack that we have going in our mind and what we’re telling ourselves every single time we bring out that credit card or now the phone. Just a tap to pay. It’s wild. But that’s a whole other story and a whole other topic. Okay, I have learned a lot from you and I have. I feel just so inspired by how you talk about money and your approach to it. So I know I’ve already started following you in all the places. Where can our listeners also go and follow you in all the places?
SARAH: Yeah, so I am on Instagram and it’s under Keeping Up with the Joneses FC for financial coaching. Same thing on Facebook. And so that’s the main you know the money account. We’ve got a couple others you know that highlight more of our travel account and then our other product based business as well that I talk about kind of on the money account. But yeah keeping up with the Joneses FC is the main account where you can learn all things money. And I’m very open about, you know, both business and personal because I do work with a lot of business people, you know, in their business finances. And let me just tell you, I’m just going to throw this out there. Guys, if your personal finances are kind of in disarray, your business finances are going to be as well. Just because you have a business doesn’t mean you automatically learn how to handle money differently, and doesn’t mean that you automatically think about money differently. So I’m just going to put that out there that there’s so evenly, you know, and so intertwined. But that’s why I love doing what I do is, is to bring light some of these things that we hadn’t considered before.
KIMBERLY: Yes, absolutely. And I will link to all of those in the show notes. So you can just go and click and follow. And I know you won’t be disappointed. Sarah, thank you for joining us. It was really good to hear from you.
SARAH: Oh my gosh, thank you. I had such a great time and thank you for having me so much.
KIMBERLY: Wasn’t that such a good episode? I love hearing people talk about money in a really refreshing way, and that’s how Sarah talks about it. She makes money feel approachable and makes it feel like it’s part of a bigger picture. It’s not the one and only thing to focus on. It is something that helps us live life to the fullest, which I know as RV entrepreneurs. We can all really relate to a few things that she said really stood out to me. First off, she talks a lot about the scarcity mindset. Actually, she talks a lot about six different mindsets when it comes to money, but scarcity is the one that really stood out the most, and the one that we talked about the most on this episode. And she shared some really valuable tips for how to move away from the scarcity mindset so you can start spending money more freely and feeling really good about it, not worrying so much about, as she said, spending $2 a week on some ice cream for her kids. Also, I love that she talks about the fact that when you’re spending in areas that feel good to you, you can really enjoy spending money. This goes against a lot of things that you would think that somebody who’s, you know, talking about being debt free would speak to, but it makes so much sense. When we enjoy spending money, we can do so without guilt or restriction. And we can also prioritize where we spend our money so that we’re not spending it in the wrong areas for us, the wrong areas for us specifically, and we can really get more out of our finances that way.
KIMBERLY: Finally, I love the way that she talked about communication, whether it’s communication with yourself and really journaling on and getting introspective with how we feel when we spend money. That’s one thing, but also communication with our spouse and making sure that we’re on the same page when it comes to spending money, how we want to spend money, what brings us joy to spend money on? When you can really open up those floodgates, amazing things can happen for you and your family, just as happened for Sarah and her husband. I hope that you really enjoyed this episode, and if you did, we would love for you to go and share your comments with us. Inside the Facebook group, there’s an RV Entrepreneur Facebook group. If you’re not part of it yet, definitely come and join us and let us know what stood out to you in this episode. What really hit home to you? What made you feel something more about money and changed the way you think about your. I’m going to say the B word even though Sarah doesn’t always love it. It’s. How do you feel about your budget? How do you feel about where you put your money and how do you feel about that spending? Let’s continue this conversation over in that Facebook group, and I cannot wait to talk to you more over there. Have a good one.
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The RV Entrepreneur is presented by RV Life – Tools that Make Camping Simple
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