118: Darla Bishop — From Scarcity to Abundance: Transforming Financial Mindsets with Darla Bishop

[00:00:00] Darla Bishop: People don’t really know where their money’s going. One of the first steps that I take people through is, let’s look at your bank account, your Venmo feed your credit card statements for the last 90 days, and just see where your money went. And there are always these, aha. I didn’t realize I paid for that.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that thing. And so just bringing awareness to where the money is truly flowing is enough to shut down some of the things that it doesn’t need to flow to.

[00:00:33] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energy spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan Dio, and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of life.[00:01:00]

[00:01:03] Jonathan DeYoe: Hey, welcome back on this episode of the Mindful Money Podcast. I’m chatting with Dr. Darla Bishop. Dr. Bishop, also known as the FinanSis is the founder of Finansis LLC in Lansing, Michigan, and the author of How To Afford Everything. Motivated by a challenging childhood in Detroit, Dr. Bishop’s unique gift lies in her ability to motivate individuals to transcend limiting beliefs and cultivate a positive financial mindset. She believes that empowering individuals with financial knowledge creates prosperous families and resilient communities outside of her work. As a speaker and financial coach, Dr. Bishop is also a professor of health policy at George Washington University and a director of AmeriHealth Caritas DC.

I wanted to have her on the podcast to share her down to earth approach to money matters. My sense is Dr. Bishop’s simple guidance on mindset, budgeting, paying down debt and saving is practical and can be transformative for individuals and families. Dr. Bishop, [00:02:00] welcome to the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:02:01] Darla Bishop: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I have been studying up and listening to episodes or the past week, and so I’m so excited.

[00:02:09] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m, I’m excited to have you here. To begin, where do you call home and where are you connecting from?

[00:02:13] Darla Bishop: So, I split my time. I’m mostly in Lansing, Michigan, but I’m a military spouse, so our previous assignment was in Washington DC.

I do spend still a bit of time there because I’m still employed by a company based there, but holding in Laing, Michigan today. And you’re still, do you still work at George Washington as well? Yeah, I’m able to teach online, although I’m changing, I haven’t submitted my resignation yet by the time this goes long.

I, I will, I’m switching to institutions. I’ll be switching to Michigan State for this fall. Very cool. Very cool. Where’d you grow up? I grew up in Detroit, so I’m only about an hour and a half away from where I grew up.

[00:02:48] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m curious about what, uh, sort of lessons about money and entrepreneurship you might have learned growing up in Detroit.

[00:02:54] Darla Bishop: Many of my family members worked, of course, in the audio and auto industry, motor City, and so [00:03:00] what was interesting about seeing folks who maybe had a high school diploma or GED in some cases on some of the elders in my family. They were still able for a long time, really until the mid nineties, able to get very well paid union jobs and even had things like profit sharing.

So having some idea about what investing and having stock in a company could mean because there was profit sharing agreements with many of the union contracts, and then folks who also sort safe jobs. With other union shop jobs. I been transportation bus drivers. I working for the state of Michigan in various offices.

And so a lot of, a wide range of money lessons, right? So the folks who had the well paying secure safe jobs, which means something different now in 2024, had those stable paychecks and lived well, right? Didn’t worry for many things. Even a layoff at them because of the union protections. Had [00:04:00] some ways to make money during those off times or during factory shutdowns and never really had that mindset of being poor without, because there was this abundance sort of built into the way that they worked and the companies that they worked for and that they worked.

Things always available. Things like overtime, things like profit sharing, things like taking a second job. And so the folks around me were actually really open with how they used and spent their money. Then when things shifted, when economies changed, when those jobs changed, some of those behaviors and freedom with money actually got them into some trouble.

Mm. And so getting to see a wide range of how the different folks in my family managed their money, mismanaged their money, some recovered and some didn’t. And the lessons, depending on a family member, some lessons were really great. You know, you learn from your parents a lot of the same things you learn about sex.

They kind of tell [00:05:00] you a few things to really avoid, right? Don’t get pregnant, don’t open a credit card, but they don’t necessarily fill in the details. And so if you are going to have a different career, a different way of how you earn your money, I figured out that I had to kind of blaze that trail and do a lot of reading to understand money differently than the folks around me had showed me how to use or not the money that they had available to them.

[00:05:24] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m wondering if you can like point to a specific.

[00:05:26] Darla Bishop: Hmm. Experience, you know, around the kitchen table or you’re at the mall with mom and dad or you know, at a family outing, uncles arguing, anything that’s like, okay. And there was a lesson that you drew outta that experience.

Oh yeah. I. And excuse me for laughing. ’cause now that I look back at this moment, I’m like, this is hilarious.

This is probably why I do what I do. We were at a family barbecue, some of ’em for a party. Have a aunt who loves or a, a kind of a big birthday party every year. Usually English, barbecue. ’cause that’s for way up. Having a mini reunion. Everyone knows that. [00:06:00] Even if you’re fighting, you come to the barbecue and you bring your side dish and you get along for that one day because that’s how we roll.

I remember overhearing a couple of the Louis and probably an aunt and a cousin walking car. Well, you know, getting credit cards, that’s how your credit goes. Bad. And I remember thinking, ’cause I had to be a high school student by this time, it’s not the credit card that makes your credit that it’s been you and overusing and them not paying the bill on so.

So just kind of being like, well, I’m the dumb teenager who doesn’t know anything, so I’m just gonna mind my business and go get some more peach cobbler. But just like the misinformation and, but also knowing that the person who delivered that message was absolutely doing that from a place of love and trying to tell a younger person in the family how to avoid something that could lead to financial ruin, but didn’t do it all the way the right way.

[00:06:52] Jonathan DeYoe: I think it’s really important to call that out. I mean, people, people will give you financial advice from their hearts and they are clueless. [00:07:00] Like it is, it is mind blowing. The, especially today, like social media world, TikTok for, so really are we listening to people that do TikTok videos for financial advice?

Blows my mind. Can you give us a, a, a thumbnail sketch of your professional arc? How did you start get to the point where you’re gonna write a book on personal finance? Like where did that come from? I.

[00:07:20] Darla Bishop: So it came from, I had a, a big traumatic thing happen when I was in middle school where I wasn’t able to live with my mom.

And so I was living with her sister and her sister. My aunt had a very different lifestyle. She was a cook coupon, she was a checkbook balancer. She was a we to check all of our credit card balances and, and make sure that nothing is out of order. And she was very meticulous in the way that she managed her ISTs in a way that was different than the way that my mom was meticulous.

I remember in the, just after going to live with her, because we kind of, all the things calmed down and I sat on her bed when she was on the, [00:08:00] asked him, bro, will I be able to go to college? Because I knew I was smart enough and I knew that my mom may kind of possibly have her plan for me. Tim, though, we it out when we got there.

Now living with her sister who was not college educated but working at the job and this big traumatic family thing that happens. I didn’t know if I needed to just kind of take that off the list and my aunt kind of went and said, my mom baby, you’re smart. We’ll we’ll figure it out. We grade you. ’cause she wasn’t exactly sure.

I said, oh, I’m ninth grade. And she said, oh, that’s, we have time. Don worry. You keep getting your good grads. We will figure it out. We have time to do it out. Part of figuring out is she got me into this pre college program in Detroit, Detroit area free college engineering program, where I take like each Saturday robotics classes and we can, a classes perfect for any virtual nerd.

And one summer they offer, if you were a high school sophomore, you could actually go do math camp or we on a [00:09:00] college campus. So I applied and I wrote the letter and I got in. I remember like hacking up my little tote out of, you know, a couple of snacks because in the program we offered you breakfast and dinner, but you had to figure you’re out lunch on your own.

So the way that we managed that expense, because it wasn’t really what we had, is my aunt brought me a bunch of those little tuna fish sand chickens and the chicken salad that comes with a little king in with the crackers and some, you know, fruit carts. And thanksgiving. You know, you’ll, you’ll figure it out.

Just eat a big breakfast and eat a big dinner and you’ll be, I was like, oh yeah, that’ll be fine. But I had a class vote who drove this range? He got special permission through his parents to park his Range Rover on campus because he needed to leave campus. It was two days a week to go for the specialized lacrosse camp and his parents had already invested in, and so that he needed a way to be able to drive a third door from the campus to the campus and then return to the dorm.

So they made all these range. I’m like, okay. So I’ve got a classmate who is driving Rain Rover and I’m eating two A fish from the little tiny Qan [00:10:00] and he’s a really nice, and I kind of ignore. So if we made it to the same place, despite all the things it took me to get here, I can figure the money part out.

So I started ruining financial error notes because when people can’t tell you what to do, you look in a vote.

[00:10:16] Jonathan DeYoe: So I, I’m curious, do you remember what the, what one of the books you read

[00:10:20] Darla Bishop: might have been? Uh, the first two. I don’t remember which order what, you know, that big yellow one? Black, but it’s like personal finance for donuts.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that one. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. And. There was one by, not by Michelle Singletary, I can’t remember the author’s name, but Michelle Singletary wrote the commentary on the back of the book, and Michelle Singletary for a while time had a column, the Washington Post. And for me as a young black woman, that wasn’t a big deal.

Like this black woman didn’t writing on money in the Washington Post. And so when she wrote the comment on the back in the book, I said, why I read it? And the title of the book was Get your Credit Straight. It was also written in black op, who’s name of course I can’t remember. [00:11:00] That’s my note. So what, what’d you end up studying in college?

Nothing related to money, public health. So my degrees are in That makes sense. Yeah. Are in psychology, linguistics. ’cause I’ve always been a lover of languages and how the brain works and to process languages and Definitely. And Spanish because having at least one other.

[00:11:22] Jonathan DeYoe: I get kinda the experience, you know, family experience and some of the drama and some of the issues with the, with money. How does that inspire you to write the book? Like what is, is there a trigger event or something? Ooh, what, what book happened?

[00:11:33] Darla Bishop: Yeah. Thank you for asking. Part of it is I kept reading books because none of the books exactly gave me what I needed.

What I figured out is that I read last five column read more than around personal violence and mindset and career. Career specifically because that’s how I know how to earn money is through working for other people. But the function lack had different types of career than the career. I was going to get it by virtue of [00:12:00] being in college, doing university, going for higher education.

And so I was like, well, I need to know how to navigate that differently than going to the factory. They were going to the bus shit in the end. Once I asked to about both, I don’t know, 60 or 70, I was like, I could have wrote this. I just kind of kept verbalizing that like I could have wrote this book and they were missing something for me.

There were two things missing from all these books that I had to cobble together from different books is one very few, the one told me where to start and what to do next because as a millennial and as someone coming up and having sudden in lays the spring. The folks ahead of me did things differently and I needed to do it differently from them.

I was managing, okay, I’m gonna have a career, I’m gonna have student loan debt. I’m going to, I would go to buy a house because they said the is really important. I want go on vacation. I want have somebody in the bank and I want to be able to retire day. And so if things are like hurting, which do [00:13:00] I do first?

And which is okay to pause or stop. If temporarily while I figure out the type right. The other thing is almost all of the books had this really anger wagon to, you are in debt because of your bad decision. You don’t have money to say because you can’t control your indexes. And the way I grew up, that was so untrue.

That was so untrue. I had amazing self control. I knew more about money than anyone else because we had to really. Figure out how to use it, how to steal from Peter and all how to get this done and get this done, even if it wasn’t at the same time. And so I felt like actually a little disrespected anytime I’d read books with that told, because I should have been given credit if you didn’t assume that menu of options available wants to, the fact that I’ve made a heater, I should have a Tate Kuwait where my Wai mm-Hmm.

And so I wanted to write a book [00:14:00] that left room. Celebrate it and congratulated someone who had lots of practice living without hunting. Surviving. Yeah. Without hunting. So that they could flip those skills on that so that in to live. But I needed them book that like spoke like into someone who’s trying to figure it out and not sure where to start or where to go afterwards.

[00:14:23] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. No shame, right? No shame. That’s right. You, you, you are where you are. Let’s go from here. Right? Let’s go from here. So there’s, there’s three things I wanted to ask you about from the book itself. Uh, you, you actually started with mindset. Mm. Why start with mindset?

[00:14:35] Darla Bishop: Because so much of money is not math.

Like as if it was math. Really? The math ball money is third grade math. Most of us, even if we’ve had the craziest life circumstances, have at least it then expose to third grade plus minus. Subtracted by, right? But money isn’t math. So much of how we relate to the world, what we believe we can accomplish, what we believe we can do has to do with [00:15:00] money.

And if we can change the way that our mind thinks about, relates to plans or how money, if we can change all the other stuff, Waynes it. Mm-Hmm. Way more

[00:15:12] Jonathan DeYoe: intimate. Yeah. Where do you think the negative or not, maybe not negative, but unhelpful mindsets come from where do we get them?

[00:15:18] Darla Bishop: You know, it’s one of the first gifts I, parents gifts and whenever I talk with someone who kind of walk through, through, you know, you read the book, so in the first chapter I actually pose a series of questions and what I’m doing coaching with someone.

These are the questions that s art bar discovery sessions. Right. What are some of your personal ways of funded? What were the messages you got? What was the first dizziness you started? Because most kids have some entrepreneurial streak before it’s all skin out of the right. Things sell Mary gold seeds or they have to cut grass or clear snow because I from Michigan or um, have lemonade so, right.

Like all kids have some business that they wanna start at some point. And, you know, what are the, the gifts that the adult survivors [00:16:00] gave you about home? Usually from a place of wanting to protect you from making bad choices or getting into a, a pantry or a buying, but don’t actually think, view a current, something like, avoid all credit cards with something that I heard from all of my elders, right?

But I know that if it wasn’t for good credit and me leveraging the debt that I’ve had available to. There are some things that I would’ve never been able to accomplish because I didn’t have capital to start. So the loan, that is what helped me achieve the payment that didn’t let to a better life, right?

Like going into graduate school, I couldn’t afford to go to graduate school if I needed to pay for myself. So, but those student loans allowed managing, get a degree, met analog, has a lot of things to have a beautiful, fantastic, amazing career that is not a little good for me and. I to the world, but it doesn’t allowed me to help hundreds and thousands of people through the work that I do in my day job.

[00:16:55] Jonathan DeYoe: That’s where they come from. They come from sort of family of origin culture, wherever we are. Boom, boom. [00:17:00] How so? If you have these unhelpful mindsets, how does it show up in your life? Like where, where do you find it appears and how does it affect your decision making?

[00:17:08] Darla Bishop: Mm. So you save instead of invest, and the way this might really look is say.

Grandma’s house was passed down in the handbook. And we won’t even talk about whether it was done through the appropriate legal paperwork ’cause that’s a different conversation for a different day. But let’s say grandma’s house was passed out and so maybe a grandchild is not limiting the house and maybe because it’s been paid off.

And Chloe, they don’t have a bill other than the annual tax bill. But depending on their financial situation and mindset, they are probably less likely to fix through to repair it. Mm-Hmm. To they’ll replace the repair. They’ll hold off on the, on the order itself, there might not be any improvements linked to the home.

You know, it might be patched and corrected, but very rarely fully rejuvenate. And because of, well, I can’t spend that Obama money, [00:18:00] I can’t let go of that amount of money. I can’t take a loan to reju this art of the home, of that fear of letting go and making the investment in favor of saving. Maybe grandma’s house, but make it to election ratio because it’s in.

[00:18:17] Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. That’s a, that’s powerful. I, I have actually never thought about that. And this specifically investment in just maintaining the house, that as something that would stop happening just because you’ve inherited the house instead of maybe earned it yourself or paid for it yourself. That’s, that’s huge.

Okay. So you have a, you have this mindset, uh, it’s not necessarily a helpful mindset. How do you change it? How do you alter your mindset to be more positive and more into investment rather than saving?

[00:18:41] Darla Bishop: Paying attention to what inputs you’re getting. How do the people around you talk about money? Are they always stressed about money?

Are they always figuring out how to make it? What are they always talking negatively about? Paying attention. It’s gonna be words you speak. So this thing, when I say in every podcast that I’ve ever done always sends this. So people are probably sick of hearing, [00:19:00] but it’s so true. It works. That’s why I keep saying it.

It’s change the range about honey because your ears are the first to view your words. As much you can be in your head and keep inside. I am not afraid to in towards my future. I’m not afraid to invest. Money is on the way to it. I am work in in it in my favor. As much as you can repeat that in on silent, it is way more palatable.

Say it out loud. Instead of saying, I’m broke, we don’t say saying it. That’s not in my budget, that’s not in my plan. I’m for intro. Something different. One by you saying it out loud and your ears hearing that your brain sin access literally the makeup of your brain, the halfway that your brain takes start to shift.

And because you’ve said it out loud to other people, those people will also try to be put on notice that okay, they’re willing. Like when I was in college, I used to say this all the time. I had this fine that was, look, I’ve gotta work. I [00:20:00] can’t come to your party. Oh, it’s just gonna go really late because I’d rather be tired than broke.

Because that was true for me. I was willing to give up rest. I was willing to be on because I knew it was going to take kind of a big amount of bubble for me to be able to change the trajectory in my life. And so while I was young and have the energy, I was able to go work for the mother to change.

Treat period life. It got so good that people were like, oh, we know you’re working. You a tired and then broke. We know you’re gonna go work all over six Johnson. And they kind of say it with an eye goal, but even hearing them repeat it back to me. That’s like, oh, that’s right. Not only am I on this plan, they’re on the plane with me because they know to invite me to the party only if it’s gonna go until two.

The second

[00:20:41] Jonathan DeYoe: question I have has to do with budgeting, sort of the iron wire upon which all financial success is hung, you know, spending less than year earn, I’d say that half the stories and lessons in your book have something to do with spending less and saving more. Can you just give us a quick overview of some of the things that you’re suggesting people do to spend less and [00:21:00] save more?

[00:21:01] Darla Bishop: Part of it is there’s just a, a lack of awareness. People don’t really know where their money’s going. One of the first steps that I take people through is, let’s look at your bank account, your Venmo feed your credit card statements for the last 90 days, and just see where your money went. And there are always these, aha.

I didn’t realize I paid for that. Oh yeah, I forgot about that thing. And so just bringing awareness to where the money is truly flowing. Is enough to shut down some of the things that it doesn’t need to flow to. The other piece is look at your calendar. If you can look ahead to what’s coming up, because it’s not the everyday expenses that throw people off, right?

The rent, the groceries, the gas, that’s not what throw people off. It’s those periodic, not regular expenses that we think only happen every once in a while, but it turns out they actually come up every month. They just look a little different. And so if you can look at [00:22:00] your calendar and say, well, it’s, it’s July, which means back to school is coming soon, if I have children, which means we might try to do a family activity or go on a trip for Labor Day, which might mean as the weather gets colder, we might need to get new jackets or new boots, right?

Depending on what part of the country you’re in. And so if you can just think ahead to those who has a birthday. Who has a wedding, who has a baby shower that will need to spend money on whether it’s because we’re helping put the event together or we’re taking a gift. Because if you think ahead when you see the little toy that you know the baby will like in the store on sale, you can get it on sale instead of driving to the party and say, oh shoot, we forgot to get a gift.

And then you pay $30 for something that if, with a little bit of planning ahead, you could have paid 15 for. And so it’s really bringing awareness into where the money in your life is flowing from and to, and are those the right places?

[00:22:58] Jonathan DeYoe: So I think I, I’m gonna ask you this, [00:23:00] this is kind of a, a silly question probably, but I.

As a percentage of all the people you’ve ever talked to as a percentage, how many don’t have those little expenses that they, they, they forget about like the $10 this and the $6. That zero. Right? Zero. Yeah. Me too. Zero. 30 years in the business. Everyone has leakage. Everyone. You could always, everyone more saving.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. That’s right. So the, the third thing I wanna actually actually ask about, and I think this is something that you go into in a lot of depth, is debt. So lots of people struggle with. Es especially, especially today, younger generations coming outta college, they’ve got credit card debt already.

I think the average is like $3,500 a credit card debt for the average student coming outta college, which is insane to me. And student loans. On top of that, if someone finds themselves in debt, what do they do? What’s the best way for them to handle it?

[00:23:46] Darla Bishop: So the first thing you have to do is write down every dollar you owe to someone else, because again, that awareness matters, right?

So if you borrowed $20 from your mom. And you borrowed a hundred dollars from your [00:24:00] sister, write that down too, in addition to the credit card and the student loan and the car loan, because that’ll let you see how big your burden is. You might feel it, but actually the practice of writing it down on PI actually tell people to do this with pen and paper.

Remove some of that power because you get to release some of that heaviness that comes with carrying debt by writing it down and seeing it on a piece of paper. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is. Think about why you have the debt. When I talk to people, most of the reasons include I couldn’t afford to do this thing, but I really had to do it.

I needed to go to school, I needed to buy books. I had to fix my car. That was my way to work. And so that means that you have an income problem. We gotta figure out your income, and so how do we work to improve how much money is coming in the doors so that you don’t fall deeper into debt? So that might mean we dust off that college degree and we get you a different job, that we build you [00:25:00] a new resume, that you go find a free or low cost certification program so that you can get a higher paying salary.

It might mean side hust it up. I love a side hustle. I. On my website, I’ve got a list of all types of side hosts you can do that are app based, that are in-person based, that are freelance, because sometimes the real issue is that you just didn’t have enough money coming in to cover things you had to do, right?

You can’t not feed your children. You can’t leave your car broken if that’s the way you get to work. And so let’s check the income piece, and then once we figured out, okay, yeah, actually the problem is not the income, it’s how I spend it. Then let’s figure out why you’re spending money that way and shift it and make sure that we put a plan towards getting rid of the debt.

And I 100% of the time, the different financial folks who are out in the world discuss these two main methods of paying off debt, either avalanche or snowball, right? Where you either pay highest interest first, or you pay smallest amount first. And the [00:26:00] reason that I could care less about the interest rates is because the, with the snowball effect, you get a win.

More quickly, and when you’re in the process of changing how you live your life when it comes to money, you need wins early and often, or else you’re gonna give up and go right back to those bad habits because the bad habits were easier.

[00:26:22] Jonathan DeYoe: I’ve never heard it put quite that way. I mean, I’ve read it, but I’ve never heard put quite that way.

I always advise the other, and I’m,

[00:26:29] Darla Bishop: because you’re thinking about math, that’s logical. Right? Right. That’s logical because when you pay avalanche, you’re paying the highest interest. You’ll pay the least amount of interest over time.

[00:26:39] Jonathan DeYoe: Right.

[00:26:40] Darla Bishop: But I told you earlier, money ain’t math,

[00:26:42] Jonathan DeYoe: right? No. And and that’s, I think it’s, I think what I was gonna say is that’s, that’s coming from a place of, I have the privilege of just looking at the math.

’cause I don’t struggle anymore. I did like, I did a lot when I was younger and growing up till like, maybe even 10 years ago. Right. But now I’m like, oh yeah, it’s just the math. Just do the math. [00:27:00] Right. But that’s not easy. You can’t just do the math. It is emotional. It’s very much emotional.

[00:27:04] Darla Bishop: You’ve gotta build folks.

If they haven’t had a win ever. Right. Or in a long time. Right. Or they’re so feeling so down about their financial situation, their confidence is shot. You do not say, well, let’s go pay off this $10,000 debt that you have at 20% interest. Yeah, it’s

[00:27:21] Jonathan DeYoe: too much.

[00:27:21] Darla Bishop: It’s too much. It’s too much. I. Yeah. So you have to say, okay, you owe your cousin $20.

What’s the plan for that? Look, we, we got you some scores on the board, we crossed something off. Let’s have a party, a small party where you clap for yourself and don’t spend any money but a party. Right, right, right. And then, okay, the next stat is that a hundred dollars credit card bill from your gas credit card.

Alright, let’s get that taken care of. So within three or four months, usually you can clear two or three small debts off of the board. And do you know how triumphant that feels? If you haven’t had a financial win in so long, and that’s just enough to keep you [00:28:00] going and you’ll feel good, it’ll prove to you.

That you’ve been doing it, that you can do it. You’ve already done it. Yeah. Look at the board, look at the sheet of paper, look at the spreadsheet. And so then you might even have enough energy and brain space to get a little creative like, Hmm, well what if I had another $50 to throw at this? How much faster could I go?

What if I had another a hundred dollars to throw at this? How much faster could I go? I. So we’ve gotta build that momentum. And yes, if you look at studies, if you actually look at the financial studies that look at people who pay off their debt, avalanche versus snowball, the debt differential for people who actually complete the task of paying off their debt is really small percentage.

It’s a less than 5% difference in how much they’ve paid in interest. Hmm. And so, yes, the math. Is important, but if you’re helping someone who needs to completely diametrically change how they relate to money and how they feel about money, they need to win. Yeah. Get them that win.

[00:28:57] Jonathan DeYoe: Yep. Yep. No, I see it. This is a [00:29:00] personal question.

I hope you don’t mind. You’ve got the job, you’re the coach. How many streams of income have you created for yourself? And you said you had this list of side hustles and, and second jobs, and that, how many streams have you created and is that something you actually coach people to do? Hey, let’s start up another thing.

Let’s do another thing. Let’s add a hundred bucks from something else.

[00:29:15] Darla Bishop: Yeah, we’ll, we’ll have to count them because part of my coping mechanism call is that I just do what feels great and what I’m good at. But I don’t always quantify them together because then I’d get overwhelmed Uhhuh. So we’ll count them live if that’s okay with you.

Okay. So go ahead. I, I’ve got my day job. Yep. I have the business. This business. We have, um, real estate. So I have a property management business, but that was accidental. We are a military family, so every time we move, we have to figure out what to do at the house. Sometimes it’s sell it, sometimes it’s rented.

So we’re kind of accidental property managers. Yeah. In that way I teach, so I get income from teaching at universities. So I’m an adjunct professor. That’s how I keep my, my brain sharp. I do speeches and so I have another [00:30:00] LLC that covers my professional speaking for tax purposes. So five.

[00:30:05] Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. Yeah. That’s awesome.

What do you think about having multiple streams versus going deep in a single stream?

[00:30:11] Darla Bishop: This is one of my pet peeves, is people like, I’ve got multiple streams of interim because they talk about having two or three jobs. Well, first of all, that’s the same stream. That’s the same stream of earned income. Hmm.

So, yeah. So I have multiple sources of income, but almost all of them involve me trading my time for money. The only one that has some passive income attached to it is the book business, because I already wrote the book. I already did the work, so the money comes in. So that’s passive.

[00:30:36] Jonathan DeYoe: But everything else, and that’s not a lot of money.

I’m an author too. There’s not a lot of money coming in. It’s not a lot of money. It’s,

[00:30:41] Darla Bishop: you know, three to, depending on which platform it’s sold on three to $11 per copy, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so my passive income stream is really a trickle. And almost everything else, all my other sources of income involved me trading my time and my talents for money.

And so, yeah, I, it’s, I think in any economy it’s [00:31:00] always a good idea to have more than one place that can give you money. Because you could get sick. You could just not feel like working the job or for the company you’re working for, you might have a different level of energy and excitement about one part of it.

I frequently coach people through what does your job give you, and are you asking it to give you things that are not supposed to get from your job, like fulfillment and happiness? Mm-Hmm. That’s not what your job is for. Your job is for benefits. Your job is for as much pay as you can get. And to make sure that it’s not ruining your health, physical, mental, or spiritual.

Mm-hmm. As long as it’s meeting those other things, you gotta look somewhere else for the happiness and for the fulfillment.

[00:31:39] Jonathan DeYoe: I mean, and I’m, so, I’m wondering, I’m questioning now if that’s, I think there’s a whole generation of people growing up thinking they’re gonna get their, I. Kudos. Their fulfillment, their joy, their relational contact from their, from their work.

I think, I think that that’s like, whether it’s millennial, which I think you’re a millennial, right? Or if it’s even Gen Z is, is looking for that when they come outta college, like, ah, this is gonna be the place where I have my [00:32:00] community. Uh, you’re just saying

[00:32:01] Darla Bishop: no.

[00:32:02] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. No. Okay. Mm-Hmm.

[00:32:03] Darla Bishop: No. And I am totally biased because remember.

I’ve told you at a couple points in this, I knew when I was in college, I had to go make as much money as possible to change my life, right? Yep, yep. Because it was, I had obligations in the past, right? I’d taken on a little debt to get through school. I needed to save money in case I wanted to move to a different city.

And moving cost money, you need a first month’s rent. You might need a moving truck. You might go a few weeks without working depending on how you’ve negotiated your job offer, right? And I needed money for the present because I also recognized that if I lived too tights, if I didn’t give myself any pleasure.

If I didn’t let myself buy the apple that I actually like to eat, versus the one that was on sale, that my body was not going to trust that we were leaving poverty for good. So I had to build in pleasure and happiness and experiences and spending time with my friends and having good things and living a good life practice.

Having a good [00:33:00] life. So I need money for all three things. So my priority was going out and getting the money, and then if the job, as long as it wasn’t hurting my mental health. As long as it wasn’t hurting my physical health, it paid the bills and it had my benefits, I could get the other things I needed to feel like a whole person from church, from my sorority or my social clubs.

From my family job is 40 to 60 hours. What am I doing with the other 108 that I have in a week? Right, right. Work isn’t for everything. Now, some people are incredibly lucky and blessed, and most of these people are business owners because they’ve built the business they want. Yep. To have many of those things built into how they earn their money.

But I don’t think it’s a, a fair pressure. It’s not a fair thing to put on your employer.

[00:33:45] Jonathan DeYoe: Right. It’s impossible to expect it. Right.

[00:33:48] Darla Bishop: Impossible. Yeah.

[00:33:49] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So there’s, there’s this enormous amount of noise out there, and I want to just kind of really simplify it. So, you know, you meet someone out there for the first time and she’s like, how do I get more successful?

What’s one thing [00:34:00] she can do today that’s gonna lead to greater personal financial success?

[00:34:03] Darla Bishop: The fir very first thing is see where your money went the last 90 days and just how do you feel about it? Play investigator. Get real curious. No judgment about it. No should on yourself. We don’t. Should on ourselves.

’cause it sounds really bad, right? I should have. I should. No, no, we don’t Should on ourself. It’s just, you’re literally getting real curious. I wonder, I wonder how I spent my money the last 90 days. Hmm, that’s interesting that, that’s where my money went. Hmm. Do I want to so do something different in the next 90 days?

[00:34:29] Jonathan DeYoe: I, I, I just love your no-nonsense approach. I think you could really help a lot of people. So I hope, I hope you get a, a, I hope you write another book and I hope you get a larger platform. So follow up to that question is, what is one thing that if they’re doing it, they should stop doing it to get to that, you know, financial success,

[00:34:45] Darla Bishop: what is it called?

Spray and pray. Kind of like, I’ll swipe my car and it’ll work out. Like, no, no, no, no, no. It that, that’s, that’s not how it works. I know it feels like magic, but it’s not actually. And so, so stop,

[00:34:58] Jonathan DeYoe: stop. Just stop. [00:35:00] Fair enough. Stop, stop using the card. Uh, Dr. Bishop, uh, just before we wrap up, I always like to loop back around a couple personal things.

These are the things I kind of warned you about that might be zingers, but you’re gonna be like, it’s gonna be fine. What was the last thing you changed your mind about?

[00:35:12] Darla Bishop: So, as a business owner, one of the things that I’ve had to change my mind about is what successes. Because for instance, in my book, I went to a book fair and I invested quite a bit to do this book fair.

You know, I hired a helper to be there ’cause they said there was gonna be a big turnout. I invested in the materials so that the table in the booth would look great. I ordered additional copies of the book so I have enough on hand. And so this was a sizable investment. Plus I drove, you know, two hours away to go to the events.

And got my hair done and put on a cute outfit. So also spent, you know, a day and a half away from my family. That is usually our family day. And I remember, like I sold four books. Ooh. So again, three to $11, right? So I didn’t even make [00:36:00] the hairstyle back, right? And so I had to really change my mind about how I was going to measure success for that event.

Otherwise I would’ve been really upset and would’ve said no to the next one that I was invited into, which end up being a fantastic way to connect, where I’m probably gonna get three very well paying corporate speaking gigs. So I had to change how I define success. Yeah, and I’m gonna have to do that all the time as a business owner.

’cause business is real different than working for someone. For sure. Real different when you, when you’re on your own boss and you’re and your own peer and your own subordinate, like it’s weird

[00:36:32] Jonathan DeYoe: and all, you have to make all the decisions and all the choices and everything comes your way and you, you screw it up and it’s on you and Yeah, totally.

[00:36:39] Darla Bishop: Right? You’re looking in the mirror saying, Hey, why’d you do that?

[00:36:42] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m an idiot. And your partner is saying, why’d you do that? You know, you right. That, all that story. Oh, luckily I’m married to,

[00:36:49] Darla Bishop: I am married to the best person in the world, so he, he just lifts me up in every situation, thank goodness.

[00:36:54] Jonathan DeYoe: Oh my God, that’s great.

But you need someone to kind of, you need someone to ask you the question though sometimes too. [00:37:00] Like why?

[00:37:00] Darla Bishop: No, he knows I do it to myself enough. Okay. So he, he, he, so he’s the lover to, to kind of counteract the internal voice.

[00:37:06] Jonathan DeYoe: Okay. Good. Good, good, good. I think I have the inner voice and my wife is act actually.

Ask the question too, which doesn’t maybe help double. Double whammy. Can you name a place that you visited that had a real impact on who you are today and what was that impact?

[00:37:20] Darla Bishop: When my husband was deployed to the Middle East, he had told me that instead of coming to the US for his two weeks off that they get during a deployment, he said, well, don’t you meet me in Europe.

Let’s go to Spain. You’ve al, you said you’ve always wanted to go to Spain, meet me in Spain, and then if we can work it out, maybe we’ll go to Paris. I hear Europe’s really small, so maybe we can take a train or something. He’s like, but you know, I’m deployed so I can’t play anything. You plan the trip and just, I’ll tell you which days my leave got approved for so you can buy the tickets and all that.

So I said, okay. And I remember when we got to Paris, I like cried. I cried. I remember just thinking like, how the hell did this girl from Detroit? With a [00:38:00] jailbird mom and a drug addicted dad end up in Europe on her own money. How?

[00:38:06] Jonathan DeYoe: Lots of work. I’m here, lots of work, lots of planning.

[00:38:09] Darla Bishop: Following your own advice.

It brought tears. It brought tears to my eyes thinking about it again.

[00:38:13] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:38:13] Darla Bishop: And he proposed while we were there. So then that was another set of tears.

[00:38:17] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, yeah, of course. Lots of tears. What, when’s the next trip?

[00:38:21] Darla Bishop: Uh, we’re going to Vegas. We love Las Vegas. Uh, we love Vegas. We go to Vegas almost every year, so we’re going to Vegas for some holiday.

Coming up some three day, four week, day weekend.

[00:38:31] Jonathan DeYoe: Labor Day. Yeah. Labor Day. Labor Day. All right, Dr. Bishop, thanks for coming on. Tell people how to connect with you. When do they find you?

[00:38:37] Darla Bishop: Yes. The easiest way to find me is darla bishop.com, and I am most active on Instagram at my finances. Sounds like finances, but has a little sister in the end.

[00:38:48] Jonathan DeYoe: I appreciate it. This has been great and I hope people get a lot out of it and I hope they buy the book.

[00:38:52] Darla Bishop: Yes. I. Thank you.

[00:38:58] Outro: Thanks for listening. [00:39:00] Full show notes for each episode, which includes a summary key takeaways, quotes, and any resources mentioned are available at mindful.money. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and if you’re enjoying the content and getting value from these episodes, please leave us a rating and review at ratethispodcast.com/mindfulmoney. We’ll be sure. Sure to read those out on future episodes.