The Get Ready Money Podcast

Transform Your Money Story! Featuring Katherine Pomerantz

• Tony Steuer

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On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Katherine Pomerantz, Founder of The Bookkeeping Artist and Creator of the Money Storyteller Method™  about changing the way we think about money and writing your future money story. 


In this episode we discussed:

  • The importance of understanding your money story. 
  • Why you should reflect on your money decisions. 
  • Money is abundant,
  • Anyone can be financially successful.
  • Think about money as a resource (as a tool).
  • Compound interest is magic.


Katherine Pomerantz is the Founder of The Bookkeeping Artist. Katherine is an actress turned accountant, has capitalized on her artistic background to create the Money Storyteller MethodTM - a mindset and accounting framework that helps business owners master the creative language of money to map out and easily achieve ambitious goals. She believes every idea has the ability to change the world if given the right financial support. She leads an accounting firm & financial education company, and her expertise has been featured by VICE Media, Discover Card, The Penny Hoarder, and the Stacking Benjamins Podcast. She loves yoga, walking dogs, and throwing rad birthday parties. 


Connect with Katherine Pomerantz:


Website: https://www.katherinepomerantz.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherinepomerantz/


Mentioned in this episode:


The Get Ready Money Podcast: The Power of Compound Interest episode (here)

Headspace app (learn more here)

Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (Amazon)

The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work by Joseph Campbell (Amazon)

Support the show

The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.

Speaker 1:

Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Katherine Pomerantz. Katherine is the founder of the Bookkeeping Artist and creator of the Money Storyteller Method. In this episode, we'll be discussing Katherine's insights on how we change the way we think about money and writing your future money story. Catherine, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 3:

Oh, thank you. I've been really looking forward to this conversation. Since the bookkeeping artist is an accounting firm, I don't have to talk taxes and technical things. Today we're going to talk about the more fun side of money. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 2:

Oh, definitely yeah, and you're doing so many interesting things that I've been looking forward to this as well, because I think money storytelling is such an interesting way to look at things and money stories are just so overlooked in our conversations and who we are. So you know, but let's back up and, you know, find out a little bit more about you. What is your origin story?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely so. I am an actress, turned accountant and money coach, and I was able to utilize my background as a storyteller in order to realize that money is a storytelling medium and to create my method.

Speaker 3:

But at the very very beginning, when I was just getting started and I was still doing art full time, I was just stressed about money all the time. All the time it was the thing I thought the most about and I had a lot of fun doing what I was doing. But I was working 60, 80 hour work weeks. I was working three and four jobs and genuinely it was a good week when I made $300 a week, so that's like you know. $1,500 a month would be like stellar, which was very, very, very little money and that's very hard to live off of. And I saw friends and I saw colleagues who were perhaps making more of it and doing this longer, who were still struggling. They just added mortgages and kids and credit cards to the mix of what they were doing and I was like something isn't right.

Speaker 3:

I was very fortunate to grow up having exposure to different people and different like economic and like social, like levels, and so I knew that there were ways to live where money didn't stress you out and that it wasn't necessarily dependent on how much money you had. And I also realized I cannot work more hours to make more money. So I'm missing something, something about money. I just don't understand something about how this works and I thought, if I could go learn that, then I could help a lot of people. And about a year from having that thought, about a year later, I started my own accounting firm, because what I discovered was amazing. I fell in love with money and I couldn't stop talking about it and I knew that I wanted to make that my job. And so that's what I do. I help entrepreneurs and experts master the creative language of money using my method, so that they can map out and measure their progress and then actually achieve ambitious goals. And it's such a fun job, it's a blast. I'm still enjoying it.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's cool. I haven't heard many people say that they're just having a blast at accounting, so that's, that's awesome, especially coming from something like acting. But it's interesting because, you know, it sounds like when you're acting that it kind of became a grind and it wasn't fulfilling.

Speaker 3:

The work itself was never a grind and I never burned out. But when you are not earning enough or you don't even you feel like you don't have enough, right, because you may be earning significantly more than I was. I literally wasn't earning enough, but there are plenty of people who have far more abundance than they realize or feel, because that's not how we're taught to use our money, and when you are living with that stress, it's going to affect everything.

Speaker 3:

Money stress is the number one reason couples get divorced. It's the number one reason people fight, and so stress is a chronic stress. It breaks down our bodies. Stress makes us slower and ineffective at things that we like doing, makes us slower and ineffective at things we don't like doing. It makes us not as good at our jobs any job and so while I don't think I ever really like stopped enjoying being an artist when you're stressed about money, you're just stressed, and stress is not good for us, and so I think that one of the reasons I enjoy what I do so much is that money stress is so prevalent, and if I can reduce that, I'm just genuinely making your life better.

Speaker 2:

That's cool. So you know, was that part of it, you know, in making that career jump, is you know that you could help other people, or was it more just about your internal journey?

Speaker 3:

A hundred percent. I did joke with my husband at the time right before I decided yeah, I'm going to do this. I was like I am spending so much time on this money stuff. I had better make it my job, because I'm not actually working at any of my other jobs anymore. I'm just researching and reading tax code and playing with our, our investments, and you know all the things you start to do when you start to engage with your own personal finances. But it was always my mission. My mission is to like pursue my own unique path towards creative fulfillment and financial freedom, and then I'm providing the tools and the leadership and the inspiration for others to do the same. So I am. I've always been mission drivendriven in this work.

Speaker 2:

Well, that is awesome. Tell us a little bit more about what you're working on. What is the oh boy? I forgot the name of your company the bookkeeping artist about.

Speaker 3:

Sure, absolutely so. We're a full accounting firm and a financial education company, so we can do the taxes, the bookkeeping, the payroll, anything your business needs and I've got all my coaching. The thing I'm most excited about creating this year or coming into 2025, this is probably when it will come out is we're building a little micro app, because so many of the people that I work with they need my creative approach to money to make it accessible. They've been avoiding it, either because it's too stressful or they're too busy, and it's frustrating, it's confusing, it's overwhelming.

Speaker 3:

They don't have time, and so those are the people who need, everybody needs this work. Everybody needs to understand and feel like they have control over their money, but they're also not going to get in the spreadsheets and play with it the way I do, or the way you do, or the way many of the people listening might do. So I'm building a little micro app that will get rid of the spreadsheets and just give you a simple here. Upload your PNL and let's give you a quick analysis on it. Let's measure how close you are to your goal. Let's help you save for taxes this month based on what you actually made. So that's what I'm most excited to create, doesn't it's? The name might be coming this week, so it's very, very new, but that's that is what we're doing. We want to make a lot of what?

Speaker 2:

I do in my coaching program, just that much faster and easier, and you don't necessarily have to have a coach to figure it out. Tools can do a lot and you can serve more people that way. So you know how do you feel about. How does the intersection of art and money work for you, cause that's not something a lot of people talk about.

Speaker 3:

Right, yeah, a lot of people are like, ooh, the creative language of money, what's that? So when I started work, I really thought you know I was I'm an idealist, obviously listening to me very mission driven, I'm the artist, right? I really thought, oh, I'll just teach you know business owners and all my fellow creators like how this money stuff works. And then they're going to get it and their lives are going to be changed, just like mine. And sometimes that was true. But I had just as many clients that, even if externally we could change like they had better tax strategy, they had a better organization, their businesses could be growing but their experience remained as chaotic as ever and I realized I need to keep looking at. There's still something more about money to learn. And then I started to get curious about my own story.

Speaker 3:

I know this is a podcast, you can't see me, but I'm like cute and blonde, I'm an actress. I'm not trained in this and I actress I'm not trained in this and I'm really, really good at it. I'm I'm really good at it and my team is really good at it. We're very, very good at very difficult. Most people find difficult, right? I mean, as you laughed at me earlier.

Speaker 3:

How are you having so much fun doing taxes? Nobody does that, right? So that's kind of a weird story, right? How? How did that happen? So that's kind of a weird story, right? How did that happen? I started to get curious about that and I realized I'm so good at this. I never stopped being a storyteller. I was a dancer, and so I did a lot of like weird abstract, like choreography or like shape or color theory. All of that stuff is important when you're making movies or when you're making theater pieces, and so I was already trained in how to use abstract languages to tell stories, and the audience didn't have to be fluent in the language to totally like follow along.

Speaker 1:

And that's all money is.

Speaker 3:

Money was invented by humans, and humans cannot help but tell stories. We are wired that way. Joseph Campbell, who was the researcher and the literature professor who created the Hero's Journey. He studied every culture in the world and realized that there's so many repetitive storylines because humans have a natural, inherent need to make sense of their chaos, and they do that through storytelling. And so he called the framework the hero's journey.

Speaker 3:

It's a storytelling medium, and I use that to teach people about money. I'm going to literally teach you the tools of a storyteller as we approach your accounting, and when we do that, your numbers become a story that is easy to understand and to analyze. So, instead of seeing all the math, you are reading through the numbers to get to the underlying cause and effect of what's happening in your life or in your business. And it was so fun when I discovered and learned about this, because so many of the people that I really admire are the mentors that I follow, like Warren Buffett, the best investors in the world. This is how they talk about money If you go and listen to them Warren's right-hand man, charlie Munger, who has passed now.

Speaker 3:

He gave an interview to the BBC where he talked about the five things they look for in a company to have these incredible 30% returns year after year after year. And he doesn't talk math, he talks about well, do they have a competitive advantage? Do they have smart leadership? Do you understand the industry? And so he's talking about the story of the business. And so when we think about money that way, it's like well, no wonder they're so good at investing.

Speaker 3:

We all know when we are getting fed a BS story and they just don't put their money there. So when we look at the intersection of art and play, to me money is just another expression, another way to make stories or to play with things, and I think a lot of people who have done accounting will be nodding their head. They're like yeah, I can arrange your numbers into many, many different ways to tell many different types of stories, so it's important for you. Well, what story do we need to be telling? What story? How are we going to organize this to make sense for your goals and what you want out of your life? Does that make sense, tony?

Speaker 2:

That makes perfect sense. Actually, I was thinking when I was a kid, my grandmother had a book how to Lie with Statistics, Ah yeah, and so it was a lot of this theory with the numbers, how you can make the numbers tell any story that you wanted them to.

Speaker 3:

Yes, you can be unethical here, but I'm very, very fortunate that because I'm mission driven, I'm teaching other mission driven people how to do this well. So so far, I think we're doing a net good.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's awesome and I think this is you know. I recorded another episode this week about elder financial abuse and a lot of financial abuse is just that is, you know, people telling a different story that other people fall for. Unfortunately, financial predators are very good at telling stories that other people are susceptible to, so I love that you're bringing it down, the story tone and also a shout out to Charlie Munger. I'm going to link to Charlie's book, which I've done in multiple episodes, because I think Poor Charlie's Almanac is a wonderful book for people to read.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a great resource.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so awesome. So you know. Tell us, let's go a little bit deeper. You know what is the money storyteller method? What have you developed? Tell us, let's go a little bit deeper.

Speaker 3:

You know what is the money storyteller method. What have you developed? Absolutely Well, let's define a money story first, because I didn't invent that term. Right, this is the internal experience that you have with money. So it's going to start with our thoughts, and so anytime that you saw your parents fighting about money, or that you see how your partner is using money, or how your friends are using money, or if you're out at a coffee shop and there is a beautiful woman in designer shoes berating like yelling at the barista, that's going to inform your money story, right? So all of the different ways that the media talks about money, or that our cultural experiences, our family history not just your parents but your grandparents and their grandparents that all kind of collects into us and unconsciously we start to say things about money that we've heard before, and sometimes these things conflict, but they all inform how we emotionally then react and then use. So, psychologically speaking and this is a huge simplification our thoughts will lead to an emotion, which will lead to an action, and so the first layer of your money story is let's get clear on your thoughts so that we can get clear on your emotions. So that way, even if you do feel stressed or nervous, you can still act in ways that are going to be supportive. You recognize, ah, I am stressed and so maybe I don't need to trust all of my decision-making today, but I still need to pay my bills right. So the way that I am unique in money stories is that it's not just your internal, it is also the external.

Speaker 3:

You are actively creating a story with your money, and what does that story want to? What do you want that story to look like? And so we do a lot of vision work of like let's set some goals, let's get clear on where the story is headed, and then, in real time, we'll make a money map. We'll build out money systems to get all that data organized right. So, as a business, this is your bookkeeping, this is your tax strategies. But as a personal household, this is your budget, this is the conversations you have with your spouse or your kids or your parents, right, speaking of elder abuse and all the different ways we would need to support the people in our lives with their money.

Speaker 3:

And then we put that system in place and we can have the vision, we can have the data and then we can make a map and that points us where we're headed and every day or every month, in real time, you can update your numbers and compare it against that map and control that external story and point yourself in the direction of where you want to go. So that, in a nutshell, is my method. We've got the money story, which is pillar one, money systems, which is pillar two, and then the money map, which is pillar three. They're all interdependent, they all play with each other, but you need all three of them to be truly successful and I think that there's a lot of people who are teaching one of those very well. But putting them all together into a framework that's actually fun and makes sense and isn't overwhelming to play with, I think that you have something really special when that happens.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree, because you need all those things. You need that recognition of what's driving you is because oftentimes you know I know from my advisory practice is it was really hard to puzzle out sometimes why people made the decisions that they did, when you could say, mathematically, this decision makes no sense and the client would say, yeah, no, I agree, I get the math, but that's still what I want to do. So you have to go deeper and really understand what's driving your decision making. So I love it and that you put such an emphasis on goals, because I think that's what our financial decisions should really be about is what are our goals, not somebody else's goals. So it's great that you're helping clients define that. So you know, let's switch up a little bit and go through some of the get ready questions. The first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?

Speaker 3:

Oh, I mean, I'll cheat and just say money story.

Speaker 2:

That's fine, that's perfectly fine. Yeah, and I mean obviously'll cheat and just say money story, that's fine, that's perfectly fine.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm biased, but I do think this drives so much of how we react to our like. I mean again, this is the number one reason couples fight. So it affects our relationships, it affects our jobs and where we choose to work and we spend most of our time at our jobs. So if we can understand our money stories and how our finance, the financial impact, is affecting our day-to-day lives, ooh, it's like a whole new layer unlocks in your life and you get a lot more clarity. And then you can also feel like you have a lot more control because you recognize the way that this is driving what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, that's. That's an awesome tip, I think, yeah, as we've talked about money, stories are not talked about enough and they have such a dramatic impact on our financial decision-making and on our financial success. It's oftentimes the thing that's holding people back from being financially successful. Yeah, so what is one simple thing people can do each year to set themselves up for financial success?

Speaker 3:

Since we've been talking about money stories, I'll stay there, write your money autobiography, ask yourself some questions around what has happened to me this year and re-answer questions about, like, okay, what happened in my past? Like when did I first start making money? How, how did it feel? How did my mom treat money? How did my dad treat money? Um, just doing that check-in once a year and then compare to okay, now, what do I want different about the story? That's going to be really helpful, cause it's gonna. I mean, I say do it every year Cause you think, oh, I'll do it once and I'm done, but new things happen every year and that money story is going to update itself every year. So just be mindful about that. I think it's a I I do it more than once a year because I do it my coaching program and I do it with my people. But it's a really, really interesting how much the same answer and the same events you interpret differently because of who you are now and this time period and where you want to go next.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome and, as part of the people following the Get Ready Financial Calendar, that is something I urge people to do. Quarterly is to reflect on. You know what they've done, what their wins are, what their challenges were and what they'd like to do different. And I think that that's so important is, if you don't take time to do that, you're not really going to be able to make changes going forward. You're just going to do the same thing over and over again.

Speaker 3:

A hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, I, you can't again. We're on a podcast, you can't see me, but I literally was like fist pumping when you mentioned that. I was like yeah, great, Everybody get that tool.

Speaker 2:

Do that? The video is going to be published on YouTube. So, if you want, to see me look like a fool. Go watch some of you guys. So what is one?

Speaker 3:

habit that people can change when it comes to their money. Okay, I really appreciate. If you are not experienced at like mindfulness and bringing your attention into that internal experience and the body experience, right, you may not even know what that means. The tool of, as a meditation tool, called noting, where you just sit and notice the thoughts as they come through your head. The goal is to do it without passing judgment, because your brain is supposed to be thinking, just like your eyes are supposed to be seeing, your ears are supposed to be hearing, like your skin feels the wind on it and you know whatever else, at all times, without you doing anything. Your brain is doing that all the time.

Speaker 3:

It's supposed to be thinking thoughts, and so the exercise of noting is the best way I know to train that muscle of oh I just had a money story thought. Is that going to be? Is that a good or bad thought? Is that going to be helpful for my? You know, do I want to keep this money story or do I want to rewrite it? But first you have to be able to notice your thoughts. So noting is a really powerful meditation exercise. You can do it in a minute and then you just move on and just practice that muscle.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome and for people watching and listening. I will find a link. Do you have a link to an article on that?

Speaker 3:

I do, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Headspace app is like a two-minute training on how to do noting and that's a good video I will point people to.

Speaker 2:

Okay, awesome, awesome, that'd be great. So and everybody watching and listening that will be in the show notes so you can check that out. So the next question is what money myth are you trying to break?

Speaker 3:

Scarcity. I am trying to break the myth of scarcity. Money is a creative force, and I mean that literally as an accountant. We call this compound interest. It makes more of itself. We call this cash flow. Money cannot sit still, so you don't ever really get to keep money. And if I can help people understand that abundance, that flow, that storytelling of money moving around, you're going to be a lot less afraid of getting it and you're going to be a lot more focused on how to use it. Well, that's why I work with business people. Business people like like that, that we have to do that. That's what being in business means, and so that's the myth I'm here to break. There is more than enough for all of us all the time.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's awesome. Enough money for everyone, and I hear that from so many other guests. And the other thing I hear a lot is the word compounding. Let's go deeper on compounding for just a minute. Why do you think compounding is such an important component of our financial lives?

Speaker 3:

So Albert Einstein called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world one of my favorite quotes. And so if this is the guy that explains gravity and he thought that this was one of the wonders of our universe, and it's all about money, how cool is that? So compound interest is what happens to money when you invest it and what actually happens. Right, because people talk about investing and they talk about compound interest and they'll break down like oh, the rate of return and how often your money is going to double. But let's actually look at the flow here, because when you're investing your money, what you're doing is you are giving that money to new stocks, just because that's a very common investment. You're giving your money to a business and the business is going to take that money and it's going to put it into a system where it's going to pay. People buy supplies and materials and they're going to create. They're going to give physical form to an idea that didn't exist before, they're going to create a product or they're going to create a service. Money goes into that system, money comes back out of that system. That business makes profit. Some of the money flows back to you.

Speaker 3:

So compound interest is, I mean, to me it's like magic, right. I mean, I talk about it's how we give physical form to things that weren't there before, and that's what business does. That's just literally what happens, right? I'm describing it in these flowery ways, but I'm also not describing a particularly flowery thing. I am an accountant, y'all. So I love that perspective on compounding and what it is, because you're putting your money into flow and it's going to flow through a system and it's going to come back to you and then it can just keep doing that forever and ever and making more of itself. And I, if that's not magic, I don't know what is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it almost makes me think of a snowball. Yes, you know how it keeps rolling and picking up more snow and getting bigger as it goes.

Speaker 3:

Yeah Well, and then look at the whole big system. There's always going to be more snow falling. There's always going to be more snow to collect. It goes back into the water system, it goes back in the air and it rains Like it's just. You can expand that metaphor out too, and I think money's that way. It can always be more expansive in how we think about it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and for everybody watching and listening, you may remember that I have a dedicated episode just about compound interest, so I'll share a link to that. Again, all about compound interest, so title's pretty clear on that. So definitely share about it, because I think this is such a great concept for people to know. So, catherine, how can people improve the money conversation? How can we improve our conversations on money?

Speaker 3:

That is such a good question. I actually have a mini course if anyone is interested in having better conversations about money. So it's called you know, making Money your Teammate. It's designed for talking to a partner about money so that could be a spouse or a business partner or, frankly, ourselves a partner about money, so that could be a spouse or a business partner or, frankly, ourselves. It will guide you through not only great ways to talk, but also some of this thinking and this money autobiography experience we talked about. So it's a little tiny mini course. That's at katherinepomerantzcom slash conflict and grab it if you want.

Speaker 2:

All right, and I will also put a link to that in the show notes. So you know, let's get out the time machine for a minute. What advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time, knowing what you know now about money?

Speaker 3:

You know what it might be cheating, but I wouldn't change anything. Um I, I drank the kool-aid at a young age and so I I set a strong financial foundation for myself that has helped me through many personal and professional difficulties, so I'm really proud of what I accomplished and that's what I hope to teach other people how to do. So I don't think I don't think we need to do anything differently. We can just put the foundational things in now and keep them, keep making them stronger.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, well, and I think the takeaway from there is to start early. Start early.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, if you start early. Yeah, yeah, I guess give myself encouragement. Yeah, really, go for it. You're doing good. But even if you don't feel like you're early, if anyone listening to this doesn't feel like they're early, you're still not late. There's no timeline here. You really can start today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, that's awesome, and I would emphasize that the best day to start is today if you're not happy with where you are, because you can't go back in time and change things. But we can learn, yeah. So what is your favorite money resource, your number one resource, whether it's a podcast, book, newsletter, app or website on money.

Speaker 3:

Um, overcoming under earning by Barbara Stanny is a book that, if you feel like you listening to me, you need to do some money story work. That is the best resource to get started on money mindset stuff.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, and is that especially helpful for women, who may be underpaid because of the gender pay gap and other people who are underpaid?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, barbara does mostly work with women, but I think that this is a valuable work, even if you feel like you're not being underpaid but you still want more, underearning isn't necessarily I'm impoverished, it's just I am capable of more. So I revisit that book whenever I want to uplevel my business Right.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. That's a great tip. So, close out, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, are we okay on time?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're doing great, we're doing great.

Speaker 3:

Okay, my number one tip takes up five minutes to explain, but I'm going to teach you something from the money storyteller method. I mentioned earlier the hero's journey, which is a tool that Joseph Campbell identified for storytelling, and we talked a lot about your money thoughts. So let's take your money thoughts and let's put them in the hero's journey. This is my number one tip. Everyone always loves this part on the hero's journey. I'm going to super simplify it, but there's different parts of every story. So there's the hero, and the hero has an inciting incident that sends them off on their journey. They're going to find a guide that will teach them what they need. Their journey. They're going to find a guide that will teach them what they need to know. They're going to have their training montage scene where they're going to, like, practice their superpowers, get their magic sword, find all their friends right, like, assemble the Avengers team. Then they're going to defeat their villain and they're going to win their treasure. And when we think about money because stories are how we make sense of our world our thoughts are often story driven and money will fill one of these six spots, and we tend to think about money in two spots where it doesn't really work for us. And if we change the story a little bit so that money starts acting in a different spot in our thought, in our storytelling, we're going to get a lot more effective. So a lot of people will say well, money's the treasure. Because in a lot of stories you actually win a big bucket of money, right, ocean's 11. You pull off the heist and you walk away with millions of dollars. But if you look at the story, treasure only comes at the end of it. And I've lived a life where I didn't have a lot of money, and so if you're trying to live your life or run a business and money only comes at the end, that kind of sucks. I don't want you to have that experience. Don't do that to yourself. We're not waiting around for money. Money is treasure. Thoughts are anything that is I'm not ready, I'm not smart enough, I'm not lucky enough, I need to study more. I don't deserve All of those kinds of thoughts are pushing money into our future rather than seeing the opportunity right now.

Speaker 3:

The other place that people will put money is. Money is villain. They will inadvertently make money, the bad guy. This is really obvious when people are like well, money is the root of all evil. Eat the rich, right? Oh, the barista example from earlier of like oh well, you know she's so privileged and rude and I don't want to be like that, you know. Or I have enough, I don't need more, I'm not in it for the money. All of these are money as villain thoughts. This also can be anytime you're giving your power away to an external system.

Speaker 3:

Now I say that with the full recognition of there are historical and cultural reasons that certain groups of people do not have the same amount of money or the same access to money. That is true. I'm just talking about how you're thinking about it, how you think about money itself. Because money is neutral, right, it's a creative force. It flows through things. We get to choose how we use it. So we don't want it to be our treasure, because we don't want to, like, inadvertently, make it only something we deserve at the end of our story and we certainly don't want to be fighting it off. So when you think about money, money should be your teammate. It needs to be part of the training montage. You want money to fight alongside you to get those goals, to fight off that villain and to win the actual treasure. So money is teammate.

Speaker 3:

Thoughts are all about money. I need you to do some jobs for me. Go forth and do that. We already talked about compound interest. When you invest your money, that money is going to keep making more of itself in retirement. Great, take care of my future self in an HSA. I want to be healthy. Money Go be invested into a health savings account for me. Or buying a new pair of shoes. I want to feel powerful and look good. Help me have that experience money. So that is money as teammate, and so we want to think about our thoughts and identify. Am I thinking of money as a resource, as a tool, but also acknowledging that emotional component we spent so long talking about today? That's why I use the word teammate. There is an emotional side to it. Are we managing our emotions and treating money with respect and putting it in places where it can thrive and giving it clear jobs for it to work hard on our behalf, and putting it in places where it?

Speaker 2:

can thrive and giving it clear jobs for it to work hard on our behalf. I love that and you know that is something that you know I share your feelings on and quite a few guests have shared is that money is neutral and it is a tool. Money helps you accomplish certain things, but on its own, money really has no thing. You know, if you don't do anything with money, it's just going to sit there. It has no life of its own. So that is awesome advice. So I love it and appreciate you sharing the story. You know, actually, I will make a note to share about the hero's journey with just Campbellbell, although I'm sure many people learned that, uh, when they were in school, with all the mythology and everything else yeah, so it's.

Speaker 3:

It's used in marketing. It's used in film school. Like you, you can find really good teachers on that if you want to learn more about it, for sure definitely, definitely so, katherine.

Speaker 2:

Where can people find out more about you, the bookkeeping artist and the storyteller method?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. You can always head to my website, CatherinePomerantzcom Catherine with a K, Pomerantz with a Z. I'm also very active on LinkedIn, again under Catherine Pomerantz, and if you want to test drive this method for yourself genuinely, that Tackling Money as a Team mini course I mentioned, that would be a great place to get started if you want to start working on this yourself.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, awesome. And for everybody watching and listening, as always, I will share links to all of those resources and to Catherine's social media profiles so you can get in touch and follow her and check out what she's up to. So, catherine, thank you very much for joining us today on the Get Ready Money podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. This was as much fun as I was expecting it to be. Thank you so much, Tony.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, you're welcome. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. This was always fun and thank you everyone, as always, for tuning into this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something today to change the way you think about money, please be sure to subscribe and tell a friend. Until next time let's change the way we think about money. Thank you.

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Tony Steuer

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