Why do I care about Investing In Yourself?

Do you know why I have held an Investing In Yourself Event with Ladies Living Out Loud EVERY YEAR since it started in October 2020? It’s because I know how important it is to invest in yourself, your future, and your legacy - on so many levels and in so many ways.

When I graduated from college, I worked in Advertising. And I LOVED it. I loved my company, my job, and my coworkers. But having a baby made working late nights, long weeks, and traveling a challenge to find balance and alignment with being a woman, wife, and mom. This was the late 90s and early 2000’s so it was a different time with technology and expectations. While I was working in Account Management, I was also teaching group fitness classes part time. Once I had my second child, it became clear that managing a full time career, being a mom, and paying for full time daycare for two babies was too much. I quit my full time job to teach group fitness part time as I raised my babies.

I started therapy after I had my first child. I didn’t know there was such a thing as Postpartum Anxiety, but I had it, and having my first child brought up every insecurity, anxiety, and fear that I had and I was determined to deal with them to be a better mom. I was also trying to save my marriage from alcohol and addiction when my husband went from being super fun to having a serious problem. I was just holding it all together. I put a smile on my face, taught step, kickboxing, bootcamp, pilates, and got my 200 hour yoga certification while being a mom and acting like everything was fine. I kept doing what I knew to do, which was exercise to feel better (I didn’t even know about the correlation between movement and mental health, but I knew it made me feel better), dump out my thoughts and feelings with journaling, run back to my faith for strength, patience, and comfort in the waiting, and therapy to understand, learn, and grow. Finally I started going to Al Anon and eventually my husband went to rehab and got sober when our babies were 3 and 18 months.

What I learned during this time and over the next decade was to invest in my faith, growth, and mental health. And not just for me, but for my future, and my family. If you don’t have your health - including your mental health - you don’t have anything. Investing and growing starts from the inside out. I have grown even more the last decade adding more holistic approaches to healing and growth like essential oils, functional medicine, holistic medicine, acupuncture, coaching, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, supplements, herbal tinctures, meditation, gratitude journaling, biohacking like infrared sauna, breathwork, and cold plunging. I am worth investing in. My health is worth investing in. I want to be an example of how to manage stress, emotions, and life in a healthy way. For me, my future, and my family.

Then we come to the practical ways of investing, like Financial and Estate Planning. If you worked in corporate you most likely had a 401K. When you are self-employed like I am, you have nothing, so I am grateful that I invested while I was in corporate and then found a financial advisor I trusted to guide and help us plan for our future. This included rolling over our 401K accounts into retirement accounts and we got life insurance after our third child was born. Having taken these steps was monumental. My husband was sober almost 7 years before he relapsed, a relapse that lasted 5 years with lots of prayers, therapy, hurt, heartbreak, separation, divorce, and trauma. He died in a car accident three weeks after our divorce was finalized. My kids were 15, 13, and 10 years old. I am forever grateful that we had chosen to invest in ourselves, our future, and our family and had retirement accounts to count on for the future and some 529 accounts and life insurance to put my three kids through college - which otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do on a single mom’s average salary.

Speaking of salary. Invest in your career. Are you happy? Seriously, life is too short to wake up every day hating what you do. Invest in your personal and professional growth. There is a quote that says something about your business will only grow as much as you do. There is also a quote about how you become the sum of the 5 people who you spend the most time with. So choose what you do and who you do it with wisely. Even in the corporate word, you can invest in yourself and your growth to find more purpose and passion. Find your joy, find a hobby, spend time doing things you love, and spend time with people you love. All of these investments can add richness and gratitude to your business by finding alignment with work AND what’s important to you. Did you know that 75% of businesses in the States are small businesses owned by entrepreneurs? Did you know that 1.3 million women owned businesses are in Texas alone? Perhaps you may be called to invest in yourself and create your own business - or even a side business. Invest in yourself, your voice, your identity, your growth, and your brand. You are your brand - no matter where you work.

I know we don’t want to talk about it. I know it’s not fun. It’s scary. But the worst can happen, and you don’t want to be unprepared when it does. You have so many emotions that you are dealing with and just trying to survive, the last thing you need to think about is how are you going to pay for a funeral, what would they want, how will you provide for your family, how you will pay for therapy for years and years and years, and how will you ever be ok. Talk and have a written plan and a will, so your people don’t have to add one more thing to their emotional plate during this time. My parents chose to sell their home and move into a retirement community where currently they are completely independent but can have assistance as needed. Now that we are taking care of my father in law, I am grateful that they made this choice for themselves, before a choice even had to be made. They are so happy and living their best life and there is a plan in place. They get the gift of having freedom and fun at this time in their life and I get the gift of always being their daughter and not their caregiver. Invest in your financial future - you, your future, and your family are worth it.

The last part I always share is investing in real estate. I always say that I didn’t find Real Estate, but that Real Estate found me, and I am forever grateful for the financial and time freedom it has given me. Home ownership isn’t just part of the American Dream, it’s also a vehicle for building wealth and generational wealth. Most other countries don’t put an emphasis on home ownership and renting is much more common. What that means is the wealthy get wealthier and everyone else stays where they are. There is a quote about buying land because they aren’t making any more and another one that says if you want to get rich, sell real estate, if you want to build wealth, BUY real estate. When you own a home, you are building wealth by building equity in yourself and your future…and even your legacy. Real estate investment can even be an alternative to college savings. There are suggestions on buying a home when your first child is born, rent it out and make passive income, and by the time they are 18 years old you can sell it and have enough money to put them through college.

My parents didn’t do that exactly, but before there were 529s they opened a savings account for me and every time they sold a home, they put a big percentage of it into the account. We were Air Force and moved plenty of times for this to be a big investment vehicle, especially on an Air Force salary. They kept a house from when I was 9 years old as a rental and my Senior year in high school, they sold it. Their real estate investments literally put me through four full years of college, covered everything, and I graduated without a single loan. I am forever grateful to them for that gift. I have two kids at the same college. As my son was finishing his freshman year, I realized that by the time I pay for two separate rents, I could be paying for a mortgage. So, I bought a house in my son’s name so it’s a primary residence and qualifies for Homestead Exemption which caps our property taxes. Both of my college kids live there together, and they will always have a safe place to land should they need it, or they take it over, or it can become a long-term rental. My WIG (Wildly Important Goal) would be to have a few long-term investments, a second lake house home where we could retire to, and a short-term rental. This is a BIG dream, but who doesn’t want to build wealth for ourselves…and our legacy?

Bottom line. Investing in yourself isn’t just sexy self-care. That is just a part of it. But the real work, the real investing is so much deeper, bigger, and creates so much more for us, for our futures, and our legacies - from the inside out.

I am here for wealth & wellness. For mine and yours.