Bridge the Gap Between Your Vision Board & Your Bank Account | Interview with Nechelle Bartley
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Show Notes:
Nechelle Bartley is a financial strategist and the CEO of MoneyBasics, a Toronto-based financial strategy company. She helps both entrepreneurs and 9-to-5ers develop a financial action plan to help them reach their goals.
Put another way, Nechelle bridges the gap between what’s on your vision board, and what’s in your bank account.
The job title ‘financial strategist’ might conjure up images of stock reports, spreadsheets or words like currency appreciation & depreciation. But I was delightfully surprised to learn that the focus of Nechelle’s work is actually very human.
Financial strategy and success start with knowing what you want and why you want it, Nechelle says.
It’s not just, “I want to own a house,” or, “I want to take a vacation every year,” but knowing what those activities really mean to you. What is motivating those desires? What will change by attaining the given items, experiences or wealth?
It seems, the better you can answer questions about what’s motivating your financial goals, the better your relationship with money will be.
Nechelle has found that most people she works with have an idea of what things they want to do, have or be in life. And whether we recognize it or not, all of those things eventually boil down to a dollar amount.
Nechelle helps people work through the following foundational questions. While they may seem basic at first glance, they take an extraordinary amount of intentional work and mental barrier breakthroughs to answer in a way that will move the needle.
What is the lifestyle you’re trying to attain?
What do you need to do from an earning perspective to obtain that?
What do you need to do once the money comes in?
In a world that tends to revolve around money and constant advertisements designed to make you feel lack, people like Nechelle helps us stay grounded.
Money is tempting and can control us if we don’t control it.
People take jobs and stay in jobs they dislike, or that keep them from their main priorities (like family, for example) because the money is too good.
Business owners set arbitrary goals for the trendy dollar amount that supposedly marks success (6-figure, 7-figure, 10K/month, etc.), but in the process build businesses that drain them or lack integrity and authenticity.
Money for money’s sake is worthless. But money with intention and gratitude is powerful.
Nechelle started her career in finance as an investment advisor. What she noticed was that the clients she worked for often called and asked her questions like, “How much should I be investing in ‘x’ mutual fund?”
Because she was working for the bank, she was able to see their whole financial picture (many people have all their bank accounts/investments through the same institution).
“What I wanted to say was, ‘You shouldn’t be investing in anything right now!’” Nechelle told me.
Many people have fragmented knowledge about how finances work. When that’s coupled with the lack of clarity most people have about what they want their money to do for them, or how much money they need to do the things they want, you can start to understand why financial illiteracy is such a big problem.
Managing money well and having a purpose for your money is possibly one of the most practical ways to exercise foresight.
Because of that, I feel like I am way overdue having a financial strategist on this podcast. But I can’t imagine a better person than Nechelle to bring this topic to the show. My respect for her and her work runs deep, and I love the healthy, values-based perspective she brings to the money conversation.
If you know your relationship to your money has room for improvement, make sure to take a listen to this episode!
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