#35: Investing As A Form of Self-Love

TRANSCRIPT – edited for clarity

Hi, dear moms, welcome again to my little corner of the world Doing Things On Purpose, the podcast that empowers women to take charge of their time, health, relationships, and money by doing things on purpose. 

I’m your host Suri Stahel, a self love and self empowerment coach for moms, passionate about helping you slow down, reconnect, and find your spark again.

You’re listening to episode 35. 

Looking back on my two-year investment journey

So I’ve realized that the tagline of this podcast is about time, health, relationships, and money. And that I haven’t spoken about the topic of money for quite a while now. I think I did a series on money about a year ago. 

And you can find that if you go to my website and click ‘podcast’ and go to the money category.

So what prompted this episode is that I received a notification from my online brokerage, which is Interactive Brokers, that we have been investing with them for two years now. 

Somehow it is suddenly the end of the year. It’s November, 2024. 

So I really wanted to celebrate this milestone with you because depending on where you are and your experience in investments, two years is really nothing – I am really still a baby investor, but I’ve learned some things and I thought I’d share them with you. 

And if you stick around till the end of the episode, I’ll also be sharing how my investments have been doing, following my money philosophy that I have already outlined as well on my website, which is at suristahel.com/money. 

So before we start, I just want to do a little disclaimer that I am not a financial advisor. I am a retail investor.

I have taken an online investment course before I started investing just to give me that extra push and confidence to begin. But, the truth is once you get the confidence to actually start investing, investing itself is not hard at all.

Investing as a form self-love…

So I’m going to share three things that I’ve learned over these past two years. And I hope, I hope it will empower you to start thinking and taking action towards investing for your future. 

Because to me, taking care of how you spend, how you save, how you grow your money is also a part of our self-love practice.

Because we’re taking care of the physical aspects of living in this human body, in this human existence. 

1. Notice the ‘Love Taps’ when you talk about money

And so my first tip is to listen to love taps that invite you to have money conversations. 

And what I mean by that is notice how in your relationship, some comments about money or how you spend money, or how your partner wants to spend money is triggering some strong emotions in you.

Or maybe it’s a recurring argument in your relationship. So what is that actually trying to tell you?

• Is it a sense that you don’t feel recognized for the work that you do as a mom and a wife who might or might not be working on the side, in addition to what you already do?
• Is it that there’s some kind of imbalance that you feel in your relationship that needs to be spoken about?
• Is it some kind of fear that you have been brought up to believe about being independent, not relying on anyone, making sure that whatever happens, if your relationship doesn’t survive, you’ll end up with something?
• Is it that safety net that you’re looking for that’s missing in your life?

There’s a lot of work that can come up from noticing what triggers us. And noticing what is our truth, and really not being afraid to look at it.

Often it’s catastrophizing thoughts that really bring us down when it comes to money.

How can you let go of some of that?

2. Make money decisions that strengthen – not out of fear

And then my second tip is choosing to make money decisions that strengthen you and your relationships. 

It’s not approaching the money conversation as something that ‘we have to solve right here and right now.’

• That we have to know by the time we’re 65 or 70 or 80, we’re going to have enough money
• That our children will have enough money for college
• That we can have a home of our own, and all of those things

So you’re asking for a ‘life plan’ or a financial plan to be perfect, before you can even take the first step.

❌ The problem with this perspective is that there are too many unknowns. And you’re letting those unknowns stop you from taking action.

What if you couldn’t know if your job was the perfect job for you for life? Would that stop you from applying for a position at a company?

So you see that we actually deal with unknowns, all the time. And we survive, we learn. And that’s how I want you to start thinking about managing your money.

You don’t have to know all the answers right now. You will learn in time.

✅ All you need to do, is to focus on the things that matter now, so you can start. Taking small actions to save and invest as little or as much as you can right now.

Because when I think about how we currently run our finances in the family, it is actually layers and layers of small steps that have added up over time.

And I feel like it’s not really useful or worthwhile for me to give you all the things that we do, because it’s just going to be overwhelming and it’s not going to suit your dreams and the way you like to manage things with your spouse.

If you love yourself and you love your relationship, you will take the time to figure this out because money is just a tool. 

It’s like the words that you use.

You can use it in a loving way, in an encouraging way, in a trusting and hopeful way, or you can use it in a way that threatens people, puts others down, or even put yourself down.

So the choice of how you use money and how you have the conversation around money, is entirely up to you.

3. Honor your time and energy

My third tip is to start investing in the simplest way, you know how. And in a way that honors your time and your energy.

Because if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re a busy mom, you don’t have time to spend hours a week looking at stock market charts or following individual companies and seeing who’s the CEO now, what’s their strategy for next year. 

You have other things that you want to spend your time on. 

So if you are somebody who is a beginner investor, or you want to start investing, don’t make it complicated. 

• Over these past two years, my husband and I have most of our savings set up in our retirement account, which gets invested into a global 100 fund automatically each month. We max that out for the year. 
• And on top of that, since we currently have more to save, we put it in a robo-advisor that again, invests and rebalances our investments automatically, each investment cycle. 

Basically what it really is, is a ‘set and forget’ system, which I highly recommend. And this is really all you have to do. 

Anything on top of that, whether it is investing in individual stocks or Bitcoin or whatever the future may bring – should only ever be an extra… on top of the basic and boring things that you do month in, month out, and year in, and year out. 

The big reveal: Our investment results (two years in)

So those are my three tips. 

As you can maybe hear, I am not really having such high energy talking about money because it’s really not something that excites me. But it’s something that I do believe is part of our self care.

The same way that you have to exercise or brush your teeth, it’s something that we all have to do to take care of our lives. 

And taking care of your money, making sure that you know how to grow it, how to make it strong, just like your muscles, and just like your mind – is part of taking care of you. 

So I’ll leave it at that.

Again, check out the links of the resources I’ve mentioned, which will be available with the transcript at suristahel.com/35 for this episode 35.

And I didn’t forget. As promised, I’m going to share the results of our investment so far.

💎 Starting with where most of our money is, which is in our retirement account – and that is currently performing at 24. 15% in plus.

💎 And then our robo-advisor, which is the second biggest investment account that we have – is currently performing at 28. 96%.

💎 And then I also have our online brokerage account, which is split in two – one for us ‘the parents,’ and then another one, where we just set aside a small amount for each kid per month:

• And for the kids – it is currently performing at a crazy 81. 56% in plus.
• And our personal account – is performing at 37. 67%.

So those are impressive numbers in my mind. Of course, if you start playing with Bitcoin and all those things, your vision of what is ‘normal’ starts to get a bit skewed, and you can get greedy.

And the actions that are driven by greed, can never be good and sustainable for life.

So I recommend just keeping grounded, not expecting too much, but just focusing on the basics as you begin.

If you’re interested, I’ll include the screenshots of these investment returns on the episode page of this podcast.