Is Financial Fear Stopping You from Living the Life You Dream Of?

Mindy:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast, where we interview Tamar Hermes and talk about shifting your money mindset and removing limiting beliefs.

Tamar:
What I like to do is I like to chunk things down because when we think of, “I want to buy five properties this year.” It’s a lot. It’s overwhelming. You’ll be amazed how your mind works once you start chunking things down and putting it in motion. Set a smaller goal. Set something that’s palatable, that you feel like you can reach.

Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my super nerd co-host, Scott Trench.

Scott:
Mindy, a neutron walked into a bar and said, “I think I’ve lost an electron,” and the bartender says, “Are you sure?” and the neutron says, “I’m positive.”

Mindy:
I was trying to do some cell joke because the girls are studying them and I’m like, “Wait. Oh, what is that word again?” but you were going there. That was a good joke, Scott. I love it, and yes, you are a super nerd, and I say that in the most loving way possible. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone no matter when or where you’re starting.

Scott:
That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments and assets like real estate, start your own business or set effective 2023 goals, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams.

Mindy:
Scott, I am super excited to bring in Tamar Hermes today. She is an author, she’s a coach, and she grew up without any money. For the longest time, she felt like she didn’t deserve to have it, and then she changed her mind. She changed her mindset, and now she’s got some of it. She’s got quite a bit of it, and she is here to share with you how to change your money mindset so that you can go out and get what you deserve as well.

Scott:
Yeah. She’s a fantastic guest and I love talking about goal setting and having a great new year.

Mindy:
One thing that I have to say because my lawyers make me is the contents of this podcast are informational in nature and are not legal or tax advice, and neither Scott nor I nor BiggerPockets is engaged in the provision of legal, tax or any other advice. You should seek your own advice from professional advisors, including lawyers and accountants regarding the legal, tax, and financial implications of any financial decision you contemplate. Before we bring in Tamar, let’s take a quick break. Tamar Hermes, welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.

Tamar:
I am very excited to be here. I love to talk about money, and I am looking forward to a great conversation.

Mindy:
Oh, good. We love to talk about money too, so this is going to be awesome. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get started investing?

Tamar:
So investing happened for me when I was in my late 20s. I started dabbling in the stock market when I was working in entertainment, and let’s just say it wasn’t going that well for me. After I had lost about $20,000, I started looking at other options to see how I could make more money, and that’s when I bought my first duplex and purchased real estate. Now, since my portfolio has expanded, I do have stocks. I do believe in a diversified portfolio, although I am a huge fan of real estate, and that’s where predominantly 80% of my portfolio is today.

Mindy:
Ooh, that was going to be my next question in terms of percentages. So you’re 80% real estate and 20% stocks and things like that.

Tamar:
Well, actually, I’m probably about 3% stock and then I’m probably about 7% private equity, which is a very interesting area to invest, and I had a little bit of crypto, and I’m trying to think what else really. I know I didn’t add it up from 80 to 100. I’m better at math than that, but that’s how it works out. It’s that 20% of just a mix.

Mindy:
Okay. One of your pillars of success is overcoming fear and building concrete money habits. Let’s talk about that. How does someone do that? Because overcoming fear is it’s super easy to say, “I just said it twice,” but it’s really hard to do in reality.

Tamar:
It’s so hard to do. One of the things that I told myself when I was going to be on this podcast was that I wanted to be as vulnerable as I could and share truthfully that fear is very real for everybody. Even when you’re at a multimillion dollar level, you’re always dealing with new challenges, and when you deal with new challenges and things you’re not comfortable with, fear comes up. For me, I grew up really without money, and it was not a question of whether or not I was going to get money. For me, failure wasn’t an option because my life was not in such a way that I was willing to go through my entire life without any resources.

Scott:
Awesome. How does someone overcome these fears and work through past negative money mentalities to get on a better trajectory with money?

Tamar:
Yes. So the first thing I believe is to do what I just explained in terms of being vulnerable and in terms of getting in touch honestly with the feelings and where they come from, and just acknowledging the fact that you’re scared and it’s okay, and that most people are. I have friends that have billion dollar portfolios, and every time they invest in something, they get a little paying. So it’s just something that we need to understand that it’s part of our human nature. Then once you understand that it’s part of your human nature, then all of a sudden you can start to feel like, “Okay. Everybody else is feeling this too. I’m not the only person. I’m not the person that is going to fall down and lose money on a property or lose 20,000 in the stock market and be a complete loser.” That’s how we learn. That’s how we grow.
So once you start taking that approach, you are a lot further along. For me, it was really I’ve had a ton of failures. I am someone that is willing to fall down and get back up. I think when you decide that you want a certain life for yourself, and when you commit and commit and commit and recommit, you really have a wonderful chance of the success that you want to see with money.

Scott:
It’s one thing for a millionaire to invest 50 or 100 grand or those types of things, and it’s quite another for someone making their first investment in real estate from a risk and scale perspective. So I’ll give you an example. When I started out my career, I was making $48,000 a year. I had saved up $20,000 in my life, and I bought a duplex for $240,000. That was five times my annual income, and I’m levered 95 to five because I got a 5% down FHA loan. That is a whole different ballpark of risk and scale that I think a lot of folks can forget about once you’re multiple years on in the investing journey. You’re five, 10 years in your investing journey, you’ve got assets in that equity or net worth in excess of a million dollars. Oh, buying your first duplex, what is that?
Now, I think the scale, that problem is even bigger. I think that someone in that position may be earning $60,000 a year with inflation now, but they’re buying a $400,000 property, which is six or seven times their annual income. How do we get over that level of fear, and is a certain amount of fear healthy?

Tamar:
Yes. I think a certain amount of fear is very healthy because that lets you know that you’re stretching yourself and that you’re entering into an area of growth because all the fear is really just an opportunity to learn, and it is. I completely understand what you’re talking about, Scott, because my clients come to me all the time with similar scenarios, and what I do is the same thing that I do today, which is I look at what’s really going to happen, the mitigating of the risks, looking at if I take $60,000 and I buy a $400,000 property, what are my chances of not finding a tenant? What are my chances of not being able to cash flow the way I’m projecting having ACs go out, whatever CapEx expenses can happen that we may not be ready for?
So once I look at that, what I realize is that what we think the worst thing that will happen is generally not going to play out in that same way. I think that’s a really important thing to remember is that no matter what happens, even if let’s say you don’t have the money for the AC. You can get a partner to go in the property with you. You can talk to a friend or family and have them invest with you or loan you the money. There’s always solutions we can find, and we just have to remember that we’re more resourceful.
So yeah, I mean, it’s very scary. I’m not going to say that it’s not. To be investing is a big deal and everyone can do it, and there’s going to be that level where we need to talk to ourselves and remember that other people have done this and that we also can find the space inside of ourselves to take a mitigated risk to invest. Then like you said, it gets easier and easier and easier, and sometimes it’s hard and still, I mean, it is still challenging, although it does get easier as we go.

Mindy:
I like your point to think about the issues that you might be facing like, “Oh, what is it that scares me about this? These are the things.” Write a big list. I love writing lists, “These are my pros and cons of this investment strategy,” or, “These are the big fears I have.” Let’s use real estate as an example, “Oh, my tenant could trash my house.” Yeah, your tenant could trash your house. Does it happen frequently? No. You can mitigate your risk by buying in a neighborhood where people are traditionally going to take care of the properties.
We have grades of neighborhoods that real estate investors traditionally talk about, an A neighborhood, a B neighborhood, a C neighborhood. An A neighborhood is somebody who is a professional, a doctor, an attorney, a business person of some sort. They traditionally do not move into a house and trash it. Yeah, some do, but there’s outliers everywhere. If you have this huge fear of having your home trashed, then mitigate that risk by going in and buying a house in a neighborhood where you’re renting to people who are traditionally not going to trash the house.
There. Now you’ve crossed off that issue. That’s going to be a more expensive property most likely than a C neighborhood where people are more working class and people may lose their jobs more frequently, people may have more volatile relationships. I’m really, really, really trying not to say terrible, terrible things here, and I think I’m doing a terrible job of that, but I mean, you know what I’m saying? There are great neighborhoods and there are neighborhoods that are not so great. In a great neighborhood, your risks of a house being completely trashed are going to be a lot less. So what are your big fears?
I did a talk a few years ago at a conference called FinCon about real estate investing, and I interviewed four investors. I said, “How frequently do you get midnight phone calls?” There were four investors. One said never, one said never, one said never, and one said once. No. Two said never, one said once, and one said, “I never got that call, but somebody did tell me that there was an impromptu rap concert on my roof.”
So you don’t have these big fears that you think are these big problems that you think you’re going to have if you put some thought into it. Now, if you just go and buy the cheapest house you can find, you’re going to have a big problem, but I love the idea of making a list of your biggest fears of investing and then knocking those out. Let’s look at stocks. I fear that I’m going to lose my money. Okay, then maybe don’t invest in Tesla, Carl. We are recording this on January 3rd.

Tamar:
I personally love Tesla. It went up at very, very well for a long time. So even though it’s down now, I’m pretty happy with Tesla still.

Mindy:
It’s down a lot.

Tamar:
Right, right, yeah.

Scott:
It used to be 6% of tomorrow’s net worth.

Tamar:
Yeah, right, right. Yeah, exactly. That’s true, right? The other thing that I wanted to share, and this is a great point to the mindset and what you’re sharing, Mindy, is starting to be expansive in terms of the way we look at money. So the problems that we’re talking about are real. I actually have, it’s interesting that you were talking about places not getting trashed, I have several Airbnbs in Austin, and recently, I had long-term tenants in there, not too long, but the long short, the medium term rentals, the great medium term rentals.
One of my features is that I allowed pets. Now, I have to tell you, I’ve spent probably about a thousand dollars fixing two properties where people were not responsible with their pets, and it was really not a great time for me, but what I did was, in terms of thinking about the money, was I thought, okay, “I’m spending a thousand dollars, but I just made five, so it’s okay.” It’s like, “Yes, this was a hassle, but I was able to make more money.”
So in other words, I started to think in terms of expanding the amount of money that is made when you own a property just like the appreciation that people make over time, and even being in Tesla, if you were in Tesla for five years, you made money even though it’s down. Now, you made a certain amount of money. So starting to trust the process, which is a little bit of time and also believing that you can make more than what you have right now.

Scott:
Well, with that, are there any tips or tricks that you would have for folks that are trying to make a lot of headway in the early part of 2023 here? How can we take advantage of the new year to begin that process?

Tamar:
Yeah, absolutely. What I like to do is I like to chunk things down because when we think of, “I want to buy five properties this year,” it’s a lot, it’s overwhelming, and it’s a little daunting about where to start. So I might say, “Okay. I know what my year vision is. I know I maybe want to buy five, which is a lot, but maybe that’s what I want so I should put that down on paper and in my mind.” Then I would say, “Okay. So the first thing to do is to find one,” and I might say, “That’s my quarter goal,” and I might put that down for the first quarter, “I’m going to find a property.”
Then when I think about that, then I look at, “Okay. How much money do I realistically have to spend? I mean, if I have 60, I probably maybe have 40 to put down,” and then start looking at where I can find those properties, and then you’ll be amazed also how your mind works once you start chunking things down and putting it in motion, how you’ll be able to start finding solutions and people, “Oh, I know a realtor in that area that I can call that really knows investing,” or, “I know someone who could support me with a property management company,” or, “I know a wholesaler.” It’s amazing what we can find once we start to chunk things down.
So I would say set a smaller goal. Set something that’s palatable, that you feel like you can reach, and whatever you do, don’t look at Mindy, Scott or I and say, “Oh, but they have this,” because we’re all at different stages, everyone. I mean, we can all look at different people and look up and just think, “Oh, my gosh. How am I going to get there?” but you want to really honor where you’re at and enjoy the process as much as you can because it actually can be an exciting journey getting into investing and the fact that you’re listening to the money podcast and you’re learning about money, and we should be able to find joy in it, instead of getting it, as we feel the tension and the worry about what might happen, also realizing that we’re on our road and thinking about those things, those that really will help your mindset as you’re walking through challenges that are not that easy.

Mindy:
Speaking of challenges that are not that easy, how do you handle creating these habits and goals if your partner or your friend group isn’t on board? I mean, every real estate investor out there knows a thousand people who will say, “Oh, all landlords are slum lords and you’ll never make money, and here’s a bunch of stories about everybody I know who did it wrong.”

Tamar:
Yeah. There’s that old saying, “You’re the sum of the five people that you hang around.” I really do think that a lot of times if we are around a lot of negative people, we really need to ask ourselves. What are we asking the world for? What kind of life do we want? If you’re around someone that’s cons, if everyone around you is doomsday and telling you everything’s going to be bad and that you’re not going to be able to do things, you may want to reach out. Go to a meetup and meet some people that are excited about investing and connect with them and get excited together. It changes everything.
Obviously, if it’s a partner, I think that you need to have those conversations. What I like to do is meet in the middle because sometimes I’m a little more aggressive than my husband, and so he might say, “Okay. Well, I don’t want to refinance the house and take this much equity out. I’m not comfortable with that.” So we’ll find a happy medium. So maybe if there’s $80,000 in the bank account and some of it is in stocks, maybe a portion of that can be in real estate if that’s what you’re interested in, and you can meet in the middle together and partner that way.

Scott:
Yeah. I think another thing I’ll add on to that is you’ve mentioned process, and I think that’s a really important word here because I think personally, and I’d love to get your opinion on this, I think a bad goal, a bad goal is to say, “I’m going to buy a duplex in the next three to six months,” because that’s going to force you into action in an artificially constrained timeline versus, “I’m going to analyze 10 deals a week with the BP calculators, GoPro or join an accountability group or meet with five agents to go over the market and set up these feeds.”
If you analyze a hundred properties over the course of Q1, then you’re highly likely to be confident, and the best of those deals is probably a good deal in your market, and if that makes sense to you, you can pull the trigger on that. How do you feel about that, that framing of goals instead of as a process related goal rather than a outcome-based goal?

Tamar:
Well, I think that the process is really important, and I think that’s a great way to do it. Although I don’t mind giving myself a goal like, “I am going to buy a property,” but I know that if I don’t find that property, then I’m not going to buy it. I have to say that there have been times where I’ve gone into deals because I set a goal and I knew the numbers were good, but I was afraid, and the fact that I had that goal in mind pushed me to go forward.
So sometimes I think that as long as you’re rational with yourself, I mean, if you are just doing it, if you set yourself a goal and you realize, “You know what? The numbers don’t work. This is very risky and I don’t like the variables here,” then you have to pass on it, but if you really make something concrete for yourself and you are at that crossroads where you can actually say, “Okay. This is a good deal, and I said I was going to do this, so I’m going to go for it,” because sometimes it’s like if I don’t say I’m going to do it, there’s a lot of people that just end up analyzing and analyzing and analyzing. So maybe you have to look at yourself and meet in the middle somewhere of where you’re actually going to cross the finish line.

Scott:
So maybe a goal that was phrased this would check both of our boxes. I’m going to analyze 100 deals that catch my eye over Q1. They’re going to be in this part of town, and if one of them meets this level of criteria, I’m going to make an offer.

Tamar:
Yes.

Scott:
How’s that? Would that work?

Tamar:
Yeah, that’s great.

Scott:
I like that.

Tamar:
That’s great.

Mindy:
Yeah. I like the way you phrased that, Scott, because not every property that you make an offer on is going to be accepted. Your criteria for that property to work for you may not match what the seller needs, and that doesn’t mean that you’re a failure for making the offer that doesn’t work for the seller. I think that this is where a lot of people get tripped up. They’re like, “Oh, well, I made an offer but it wasn’t accepted.” Well, okay, so go make another offer on a property that fits your criteria. That doesn’t mean change your criteria and get a property at any price, and I have to own a property. No. If you want to be a real estate investor, you need to own a property that works for you financially. Just having a property, I mean, not every property makes good sense. Some properties don’t make sense at any price.

Tamar:
100%, and I also think that at a certain point we mitigate as many risks as we can, and there’s always going to be something where, “Yeah, I can see how this will play out.” I’ve had situations where an Airbnb couldn’t be Airbnbed anymore, but I had planned ahead so that I could turn it into a long-term rental. So I had another plan in place, so I was prepared. I mean, it was not my best case scenario because I didn’t make the cash flow that I had anticipated, but I still was able to make the property work.
So I think that some of that is really important, and I think that we need to understand that even though our projected numbers are a certain way, if we don’t make as much or if we lose a little money, it is part of learning and it is part of being an investor, which is that most investors have lost some money at some point along the way. Granted, we want to be careful, we want to be smart, we want to take mitigated risks, but we also can’t be so scared where we just don’t take any action because we’re afraid that the one thing that we think will happen will happen and then just not go forward with it, and I see that too often.

Scott:
This is fantastic. I can think of so many good goals that come out of this. First, listen to 30 to 50 BiggerPockets podcasts in Q1 to get educated. Read five of the books. Go meet five of the agents in your local area at biggerpockets.com/agents to begin your networking and use the GoPro and use the calculators to analyze a hundred deals over the first quarter and make an offer on any that meet your pre-established criteria once you’ve determined what good looks like. What a set of plugs for BiggerPockets. That’s the most I think we’ve ever been able to plug BiggerPockets and it’s all good stuff. You should do that if you’re interested in real estate investing.

Tamar:
Absolutely.

Mindy:
Scott, are you talking about biggerpockets.com?

Scott:
That’s the one.

Tamar:
The other thing is that while you’re going through all that, you need to do the mindset work. So you need to remember, one of the things I love is in James Clear’s book in Atomic Habits. If you haven’t read that, that’s a great book for discipline and for setting goals. One of the things he says is to ask yourself, “Am I the kind of person who would do this?” So if I want to invest in real estate or I want to invest in stocks or whatever it is, I have to ask myself, “Am I the kind of person that would analyze this many deals? Yes, I would. If I was really an serious investor, I would be that kind of person.” So remind yourself. When you get tired or you feel like you’re defeated or whatever happens, ask yourself, “What kind of person do I want to be?”
I do this even sometimes with snacking. I’ll say, “Well, am I the kind of person that snacks all the time or am I the kind of person that steps out of the kitchen and gets back to work?” I have to ask myself that. So it’s a really important to have these tools and to remember to take care of yourself and remind yourself that as you’re going through the journey and as you’re on that 99th deal of analyzing that you say, “I’m the kind of person that is going to invest in real estate.”

Mindy:
Wow.

Scott:
I love it. Go read Atomic Habits. That is a great book. I love that concept of, “I want to get to this goal. Who is the person I need to become?” This is universal across folks with the success mindset, folks that are in the personal success and self-educational space like Darren Hardy would say the same thing as James Clear, as Tamar. So I love it. What are some other habits that I can put in place that would help me become a more successful person? What are some other thought starters for New Year’s resolution goals?

Tamar:
Well, I think that in addition to a thought starter is to practice the miracle morning work or whatever you want to call it, that’s the Hal Elrod book, but there’s a million things that we can do to start out our day and take care of our health. I think that that really, it sounds like, “Well, wait, I’m trying to figure out a thought to invest in real estate, but I feel like a lot of my success has to do with the discipline, with me getting up in the morning and doing a cold plunge every day, with me doing all the things that step into what I want to create.”
I think the other thing that’s really helpful is if you’re setting yourself up, let’s say we have this plan to analyze a certain amount of properties, I think what’s really great is at the end of each day, do a checklist and see how far you’ve gotten and say, “Okay. Wait, did I analyze any deals today? If I didn’t,” then the next day write down, “okay, if I work a full-time job, then I’m going to get home and from 6:00 to 7:00 I’m going to analyze deals.” Make that a calendared time where you can actually find, commit to a block where you’re going to do that work, and then don’t be on your phone, don’t do anything else. Just do the work, and then you’ll see at the end, “Okay. I’ve analyzed five deals.” That might even be the time where you find the deal or maybe you say you’re going to go to a meetup and you calendar that in, you go to the meetup and then you meet your partner. That ends up … I can’t tell you how many people I know that I’ve met at meetups and turned themselves into big business partnerships from actually, “Oh, I’m tired. I don’t want to go. Oh, but I said I’m going to go to this meetup. So I get up, I go, and then I meet someone that changes my life.”

Mindy:
Yup, and if you are having trouble at the meetup, your first question should be to go up to somebody and say, “Hi, my name is … What kind of investing do you do?” Most people, even if you’re an introvert, you can listen to somebody talk and people want to talk about themselves. Most people want to talk about themselves. So you just say, “What kind of investing do you do?” “Oh, I do this, blah, blah, blah,” and 20 minutes later they’re still talking, and that’s okay. You’ve either realized, “This is somebody I really want to talk to,” or, “Oh, look at that. It’s time for me to go get another beer.”

Scott:
Here’s another good one. Bring a deal analysis to the meetup and see if anybody’s willing to talk about that. That’s a great conversation starter. I’d love if someone brought that. I’d say, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure about the rents there. Actually, no, I have a property right by there, and it rents for exactly the same amount. That’s a great projection.”

Tamar:
Yeah, that’s a great idea. The other thing that really helps with mindset I find that if I have certain goals and I’m getting frustrated and it’s not moving as quickly and maybe the quarter ends and I analyzed all these deals but I didn’t quite find the deal that worked for me, what really helps is to start thinking about how you can be in service of other people or how you can ask other people how they are. There’s always someone that needs a hand or maybe they need help with their deal analysis. It’s amazing how it releases this pressure of me, me, me and wanting to get that goal done and expanding into other people. That also opens a lot of energy where you can start to see that new things start to cultivate when you start thinking about how else you can help somebody else instead of worrying so much on your own ideas.

Scott:
I love that, coming at it with you can always be a mentor, and you can always be a mentee in these situations, and that’s a great … If you want to get a mentor or somebody that can help you achieve your goals, if you start first by saying, “Who are people that are behind me that I can help?” that’s a great way to do it. You can do that even if you are heavily in debt and have nothing. There’s always people who need to be tutored or helped out in some capacity. So I think that’s a great way to frame that.
One of the things I think that comes along with building wealth is for most people, most of the folks we interview on the BP Money Show who have had a successful money journey have gone through some version of what I call the grind, a three to five, maybe seven to 10-year journey where they just spend less than they earn, invest consistently, and the snowball begins to compound. They’re an overnight success in a decade of hard work, frugality, thrift, and iterative wealth building bit by bit.
There are a few examples of folks who get there seemingly overnight, who make really big deals and put all their chips in the table. I don’t think most people listening are in that camp where they’re willing to do that. There are a few really special entrepreneurs that are willing to do that, but for most of us, we, I think, are going to build wealth more iteratively. How should I think about that again going into 2023? What are some goals that will help me feel motivated but are still realistic in the context of starting or continuing that grind toward financial independence?

Tamar:
Yeah. This really speaks to me because I was definitely not the person that made money overnight. I think that it goes back to the conversations that I’m sure are often had but are great reminders, which is that you need to decide, one, what is the most important thing to you, and if the most important thing to you is to grow financial freedom and to have a life of financial independence, then maybe you need to move out of your 3,000 a month apartment in the neighborhood you love and live in a neighborhood that’s not as great or get a roommate or do some of the things. Like my first place, I had a duplex because I didn’t want to spend all the money on the house. I needed to save my money so that I could keep building.
So I think that some of the goals that you want to have going into 2023 are, one, have a sit down with yourself and ask yourself, “What is the most important thing to me?” and then really start to create a budget. I know that some people really like a lot of nice things, and I’ve had clients where they want to live in a nice area, in the place where they are by their friends. Sometimes there’s kids involved. They want the kids to be close to their friends, and there’s a lot of variables. I think what’s important is that we make choices that will inevitably allow us to have this money that we want to have, and that means cutting back on something.
The other thing is figure out a way to make another income stream. So even if you work a full-time job, maybe you like crafting and you make a craft business and that turns into something and then you have more money to invest later on. So I would say going in, it’s really important because you want to not be tortured on the journey. Some people can live in a van and it doesn’t bother them, and some people just that’s not going to work for them. So you have to find the happy medium, but you need to just make some concessions to be able to figure out how to make that money that you can use toward investing because let’s face it, I mean, we have living expenses, we have the things that we absolutely need, and then we have a bucket of money that is about choices.
Some people go to Acapulco and spend $10,000 on vacation. I always say when I bought my first property, it was many, many years ago, but I saved $40,000 and I could have just gone to Europe. I could have done a lot of things with that money, and I didn’t, I saved it, and I bought a property. So I made those choices back then. I still make choices about money today. I’ve always been very logical about what I’m spending, and I think it’s important to have a good relationship with money and to know that you can make more, but that at certain points we need to decide if we really want a certain kind of life, then we need to create boundaries for ourselves.

Scott:
I think a lot of people have trouble with their money mindset where they feel that they’re not meant to have money, they’re not supposed to become wealthy. How can those folks with that mentality overcome that in 2023 planning and start to work towards generational wealth?

Tamar:
This is a point that really speaks dear to my heart because I grew up feeling like it wasn’t okay to have money. I think that for a lot of the listeners, if they grew up without money, then there is a part of you that might feel like, “Well, I didn’t grow up with money. Nobody in my family had money. I’ve never known how to make money. Why am I supposed to have money? How can I be one of those people?” I think that it’s important to … The way that I got past it was to just show up again and again telling myself that I, in my heart, felt that I was going to figure out a way to make money.
I think that with the commitment, it really can make a huge difference in terms of your perception because what happens is that if I feel that it’s not okay for me to have money, and even sometimes I still get that pain because I just had it for so long not having money, so what I need to remind myself, what I do is I check in with myself, and then I just keep showing up as that person that really wants to have that life with financial security and keeps moving into that.
As I did that, I start to become a different person because I start to have more money and I start to see more wins. Then I changed the perception of who I am because the truth is is that we’re just stuck in the stories of what our life was, and it’s just part of our journeys. Unless we’re willing to stand up and say, “You know what? It’s okay for me to have money. It’s not bad, it’s not greedy. In fact, I can help more people. I can do more things. I can live the life I want. I can support my family. I can do all. I can have healthcare. I can do all the things that are really important to me.”
Once you step into really honoring that, it really will start to unfold for you step by step. It is a process. I have to say I am not a spring chicken, even though I look fabulous, but it’s taken me a very long time and a lot of reminders because there were a lot of scars about being poor as a child and not knowing money and just not feeling like it wasn’t for me, I wasn’t supposed to have it. I think it’s really important to have that dialogue with yourself and ask yourself if you’re falling into that. It’s one of the points actually in my book that a lot of women talk about that point to me where I talk about it’s okay to have money.
A lot of people really relate to that because I just think that there are people that grow up hearing you’re greedy if you want money or money’s bad, it’s the root of all evil, all these crazy things, and it’s really quite the opposite. So I think that once we continually step into it, into the action steps of learning and of being compassionate to ourselves because let’s face it, it’s not easy when you come from nothing and you’re trying to figure out how the heck to do this. So this is a process and we need to realize that we’re going to get there step by step, but we will get there.

Mindy:
Okay. I’m here to tell everybody who is listening, you deserve to have money. You can be wealthy if you put in the work and you do the research and take the leap. You are not greedy for wanting it. It isn’t the root of all evil and you can be wealthy. I give you permission.

Tamar:
I give you permission.

Mindy:
I give you permission. There you go, not that you needed my permission, but I understand what you’re saying. It’s really hard to change how you grew up. I mean, you can’t change how you grew up, but it’s hard to change the mindset that you grew up with. So there you go. In 2023, Mindy Jensen, giving you permission to be wealthy. All you have to do is do the work. I mean, I’m not going to give you the money. Don’t do the lottery. Don’t win the lottery.

Tamar:
Come on, Mindy. It’s 2023. That’s the best strategy. Mindy is going to give you all her money.

Mindy:
Yeah, that’s not going to … Whew! You’re breaking up, Tamar. Can’t hear you. Tamar, this has been so much fun. I really appreciate your time. Please tell people where they can find more about you.

Tamar:
Absolutely. You can find me on my website or on Instagram at Wealth Building Concierge, Concierge, C-O-N-C-I-E-R-G-E. Someone told me that that was too hard of a word and I said, “Well, you got to figure out how to spell it. That’s just how it’s going to be.” You can also go on tamarbook.com to get The Millionairess Mentality, my book on professional women’s guide of building wealth through real estate, where I really talk about all my mindset blocks and my story of how I grew up and how hard it was for me to make money and why I’m so passionate about others being able to change their mindset and to live the life that they really want with the money that they really want.

Mindy:
Awesome. Thank you. We will include links to these in our show notes. Tamar, thank you so much for your time today and we’ll talk to you soon.

Tamar:
Thanks for having me.

Mindy:
All right. That was Tamar and, Scott, I’m a little inspired by Tamar. Let’s come up with some of our own goals to help our listeners.

Scott:
Yeah, I thought it’d be fun to talk through a couple of high level goals that may be thought starters for you if you’re still wondering what to do in Q1 2023. Personally, I like to think with goals in terms of every quarter. So I set goals every quarter. I don’t even have any annual goals. I have three to five-year goals, and I have quarterly goals, and I find that’s work for me, but here are three potential ones for you to consider.
First in Q1 2023, draft and review with your partner, if you have one, your 2023 goals, your life vision, and artifact there, and then an investment philosophy. We talked about drafting an investment philosophy, and there’s a template provided in episode 362 of the BiggerPockets Money podcast.
If you’re a real estate investor, consider in Q1 analyzing 100 real estate deals with the BiggerPockets calculators, for example, meeting with three to five local real estate agents, writing down a crystal clear, maybe one to two paragraphs, strict definition of what a good deal means to you in your target market, and offer on at least one deal that meets that very strict criteria, even if it’s below the asking price.
Then third, prepare a household budget and review it with your significant other. By the way, I recommend that you have no more than one high level financial goal in a quarter, and the other two goals are in other areas of life like relationships, fitness, health, whatever.

Mindy:
I like that. Okay. Scott, tagging off of you, to use the BiggerPockets calculators, you will need a BiggerPockets Pro membership, but we’ve got a 20% discount code for you. Please use the code MoneyShow23, which is good for the entire year, 2023, to get a 20% off your BiggerPockets Pro membership.
All right. My money goal suggestions are set up a biweekly or monthly financial date to review your financial situation and plan. You can create this together with your partner or you can do it solo if you do not have a partner. For a little bit of advice and guidance, we did an episode all about how to set up a money date, and this is on episode 157 of the BiggerPockets Money podcast.
Another thing I want you to do is review your expenses like insurance and streaming services, things that you might not think about on a daily basis or a monthly basis even. Get new quotes or assess how frequently you’re using the product. I recently, personal experience, I got new quotes on my insurance. I had the bare minimum car insurance and pretty low homeowner’s insurance. We had a run up on home values in our area, so I reached out to my insurance company or a new insurance company and I said, “Hey, can you quote me a better policy?” For less than what I was paying, for the bottom of the barrel car and house insurance, I got a better car insurance policy, a better house insurance policy, and an umbrella policy. So your insurance company is not going to reward you for your loyalty, so don’t reward them with yours.
Also, how many of those streaming services do you really, really, really need? You don’t need all of them probably, so see the ones that you use the most and get rid of the rest or watch everything on that one streaming service and then stop paying for it and cancel it.
Number three, explore new investment strategies. Look up one to three new investment strategies and do a little bit of information. I’m sorry. Do a little bit of research into these and see if it’s something you want to explore further. Like we said in the episode today, if you don’t understand what you’re investing in, you’re not going to be doing yourself any favors investing, and you could very well lose a lot of money. So do some research. See if there’s a new investment strategy that might fit your investment philosophy a little bit better.

Scott:
Love it. Well, hopefully those are helpful. Obviously, your goals are your goals, so personalize them to your situation, and these are just thought starters. We appreciate you listening and hope you have a wonderful and successful 2023 and move towards financial freedom, whatever that means to you.

Mindy:
Scott, should we get out of here?

Scott:
Let’s do it.

Mindy:
From this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, “Got to kick it, cricket.”
BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kailyn Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.