The Therapy Business Podcast
We know how challenging growing a therapy practice can be, and don’t think it should require an accounting degree just to run your business. If you own a solo or a group practice, we’re here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people.
The Therapy Business Podcast
Breaking the Paycheck to Paycheck Cycle
Financial stress doesn't just stay in our personal lives—it seeps into our businesses, affecting our decision-making and causing us to make choices we wouldn't normally make just to get more money into our personal accounts. Breaking the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle requires understanding that money is emotional and developing a system that works without giving up everything you love.
• Money is emotional—it's our family, home, and to some extent, our identity
• Financial stress manifests as sleep loss, mental disconnection, and constant anxiety even when physically present with loved ones
• Making more money doesn't automatically solve financial problems—clients earning $25,000 and $250,000 face the same issues
• Key #1: Be proactive with finances by identifying meaningful financial goals that motivate you through difficult months
• Key #2: Create a system with three core accounts—bills, spending, and savings—to separate fixed expenses from variable spending
• Key #3: Find flexibility and sustainability by avoiding extreme approaches that lead to burnout and quitting
• 69% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, and 34% have zero savings according to recent studies
• Financial systems should match your personality and life stage—what works during single life might not work with young children
In the description is a link to meet with one of our coaches for a free 20-minute call where we'll get to know you and see if our program is a good fit for you. Whatever you do, take action. The worst place to be is spinning your wheels wishing things would change but not going anywhere.
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*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl
I know firsthand how being stressed about your personal finances can leak into your business. Sometimes the anxiety we have around where we stand financially budgeting debt, whatever it is that we're struggling with it can affect our day-to-day operations in the business and affect us as business owners. It can make us make emotional decisions and do things that maybe we wouldn't do normally because we are trying so desperately to get more money home and into our personal bank accounts. Well, sometimes the solution to this is to generate more revenue in the business so that we can pay ourselves more, and to get organized on the business side so that the business can afford to pay us bigger paychecks and we have plenty of episodes on that. But today I'm going to talk about the personal finance side of how can you break the paycheck to paycheck cycle without giving up everything that you love. My name is Craig and I'm the owner of Daisy Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people.
Speaker 1:This is the Therapy Business Podcast. Something that I think we often forget is that money is emotional. It's easy to look at it as numbers on a spreadsheet or dollars in a bank account, but truthfully it's emotional. It's our family, it's our home. To an extent, it can be our identity. It's how the world measures success and value. Whether that's true or not, it is the standard that we put ourselves against, and money is at the root of all of that. Now, I'm not saying that's how it should be. I don't think it should be that way, but when we come down to it and if we're trying to address this issue of getting organized, getting clarity, breaking the check-to-check cycle, we have to truly understand what money is to us and we have to try and realize that it's not as simple as maybe we've always thought it was. Yes, fixing this might be simple on paper, but there's a reason it's been challenging. There's a reason that maybe you've been stuck in this hamster wheel cycle that's gone around and around and haven't been able to break free of it.
Speaker 1:Money is emotional and when we are stressed about money, most people are feeling unconfident. They're feeling overworked and overwhelmed. They feel like they're on the brink of burnout or just like one emergency away from imploding. I don't know if any of those resonate with you. I know they do with me. I know that feeling when you don't have enough money in your bank account and you go to start the car and there's just like a little ping in the back of your brain of, oh my gosh, what if it doesn't start, or what if the tire goes out, or what if something happens? Or I've had times where I'm afraid to check my email out of fear that maybe a client's going to cancel and because I'm so stressed financially on the personal side that's leaking into the business and I'm freaking out over that. I'm preemptively afraid to even look because if that happens then great, I'm even in a bigger issue.
Speaker 1:Now that's how we're feeling, but that can even lead us to showing up differently in our world. It can show up in ways like losing sleep or maybe just not even sleeping well. Maybe you're not up all night just ruminating over the financial issues, but maybe you're just finding yourself fatigued all the time. We find a lot of times this is because our body is in that kind of fight or flight stance and it's truthfully, it has a hard time resting when we have this anxiety leaking in the back of our brain. Our body is trying to keep us safe, and so, therefore, we are naturally not sleeping very well. I mean, I've heard people say, if you're in danger, your body would not be doing you justice if it let you sleep. And right now, if you're in financial stress, you're sending signals to the body that you are in danger, so it's keeping you awake, it's keeping you from sleeping too deeply.
Speaker 1:A lot of times we feel like we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. We're working long hours just to make ends meet, and the way it shows up for me is that my body is present, but my mind isn't. My wife would always tell me she's like where are you right now? You feel like you've disconnected, and she's not wrong. When I'm feeling money stress, I disconnect. I can be sitting there playing with my son or my daughter and my body's there playing, but my brain is a million miles away and I know I know they pick up on it. If any of these resonate with you, just know that you're not alone. This is what we see all the time.
Speaker 1:When people come to meet with us as clients, when they come and sit down with us for the first time, we hear them say things like that. We hear them talk about how their accounts are always in the negative or they're living paycheck to paycheck, or they're struggling to make things ends meet, that things are a mess, that they've never really been able to stick to a system and they've always made it too complicated. Here's where the problem sometimes lies. Is that what most people think is the solution isn't? Sometimes we're thinking all I got to do is make more money and then the problem will be solved. Maybe if I just cut all the fun out of our budget? Or maybe if we try this budgeting software. Or hey, I've been listening to this podcast or this book or watching this YouTube channel or whatever it is, and I'm getting these ideas in my head and they think that that's the solution.
Speaker 1:One of the most common ones is going to the extreme. There are financial gurus out there like Dave Ramsey, who you know. I'm not dogging on Dave Ramsey. I think his methodology works for a lot of people. We used his plan to get ourselves out of debt and to get ourselves on a budget. However, I do know, as I've been doing this business, that a lot of people come to us and they've failed because of that extreme level.
Speaker 1:If you're not familiar, dave Ramsey is very big on what he would call scorched earth. You don't spend a dime anywhere, you don't go out to eat, you don't do anything. You focus all your money on debt and you focus on paying debt off immediately first. And what can often happen with that is sometimes people burn out. People don't quite make it to the end. They have tried it. They realize maybe their kids are you know. They're bouncing back and forth between soccer and volleyball and baseball practice and they have to go to a drive-through and then they throw up their hands and give up because it is just too challenging. So that scorched earth methodology doesn't work for everyone. It can lead to burnout.
Speaker 1:Earning more money doesn't always solve the problem. It can. Oftentimes our behaviors will expand with the money. If we have more money, we're just gonna start spending more and we're gonna be frustrated. We've worked with clients who make $25,000 a year and we've worked with clients who make more than $250,000 a year and they are struggling with the same issues. So it does not have anything to do with money. Yes, more income can help a lot of things, but if we don't address the deeper root problem, it's not going to solve anything. And then budgeting, softwares and things like that. Those are just tools that we can use, but we need a system under that.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to guide you through what we call just the three keys to solving this paycheck to paycheck cycle. And I'm going to warn you, these are going to sound really simple. They're going to sound probably almost obvious to you, but what I'm going to challenge you on this is yes, they may sound simple and obvious, but what we're going to look deep into ourselves with is, if it's so simple, if it's so obvious, why am I struggling with it? Why have I not been able to do it? And oftentimes, because it's so simple and because it's so obvious, we start beating ourselves up and we start talking down on ourselves and thinking negatively on ourselves because why can't I do this? It's not hard. What am I struggling with? So just know they're simple and obvious and you're not alone, because just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's easy.
Speaker 1:Step one is to be proactive with your finances. Our natural tendency is to be reactive. When money's good, we spend. When money's tight, we stress out. So this is kind of how we go about it we look at our bank account to make decisions as the month starts coming to a close and we're getting closer and closer to our next paycheck, we look down and we start freaking out because money's getting tight. So we tell everyone no more spending money. We just did this a couple months ago. I told my family I was like we are not going out to eat again until the month starts because we had just gone crazy going out to eat.
Speaker 1:To be proactive, we have to have goals. What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to do? What is that carrot that we're running toward? What do we really want? And just saying I want to get out of debt or I want to be more in control of my money, yeah, that's great. But realistically, what do we want? Do we want to be able to go shopping and not have to stress about what we have in the account? We want to be able to take those vacations multiple times a year. Maybe you want to quit your job and you want to get your finances stable enough so that you can leave and maybe take another job somewhere else or just go to a single income household. Whatever it is. What do you want?
Speaker 1:That's key. We have to have that in mind in order to be proactive, and then budgeting is great, but what is it supporting? So this kind of goes back to that carrot. Budgeting is challenging. You're gonna have great months and you're gonna have really, really difficult months, and to get through those difficult months, we have to know why we're doing this.
Speaker 1:What is really the core point? Now, like I said, this sounds crazy simple. Right, just be proactive. Right, hey, just get ahead of it. Stop reacting to everything. Just have a plan. Sounds simple, but here's the thing this is a skill that needs to be developed.
Speaker 1:No one is born proactive with money. No one is born with this, just in their DNA. It's something that we have to be taught and unfortunately, in America, we are not taught this at an early age. Our parents weren't taught this, their parents weren't taught this, and so we are usually thrust into the world to figure this out on our own, and the people who are teaching us these things are the banks and the credit card companies and commercials and all of those items or people that we find on YouTube who maybe are spouting out bad information. We don't know. We're learning it from all these outside sources and then, all of a sudden, we realize we don't have the skills to put some of these things into place. Even if it was good information that we're hearing, it's a skill that needs to be developed, that takes practice. That means, if you feel like you are bad with money which I don't think anyone's bad with money but if you're like you know, I'm just bad with it, I'm not good with money yet we're going to get you there. It's that growth mindset piece. How do we get there? Once we are proactive, once we have this idea of what are you running to and that's going to be a homework assignment for you.
Speaker 1:If you don't know why you want to get your money together, write it down. What does life look like for you on the other side of this? What are you trying to do? What do you want to do with your family? What do you want to do with your kids? Do you want to vacation more? Do you want to just be able to order whatever you want on Amazon without worrying about your bank account? What is it that you want to achieve at nicer restaurants and not get a heart attack when the bill comes or feel like you can't order a second drink. Figure out what that is, write it down so that you know. Deep down. It's what a lot of people call their quote unquote why.
Speaker 1:Why are we doing this? Step two is to have a system. Again, sounds obvious, but 69% of people in America have less than $1,000 in savings. That's according to Forbes. And according to CNBC, 34% have $0 in their savings accounts. 72% of people have no money plan at all, according to Charles Schwab. So we talk about having a system. That sounds so easy, it sounds so simple, but we're not doing it. Most people aren't doing it. Budgeting by itself isn't enough. So what is that plan that we're going to follow in order to make all these things happen? We want to keep it simple. We want to leverage your behavior. What are you already doing? We already talked about it. When we're reactive, we're looking at our bank account how much money do I have? And then we're making decisions based on that. We are believers in having. We are believers in utilizing what we're already doing to get ourselves organized.
Speaker 1:If you've listened to previous episodes of this podcast, I talk a lot about doing that in your business through a system called Profit First. We have personal finance coaches on our team who work with individuals and their personal finances and they teach them to utilize multiple bank accounts. I'm going to share the three that we genuinely believe every person should have, and a lot of people like to have more, but we think at least having three is going to really help give you some clarity With that, though. Budgeting software some of you may be trying to use every dollar. Some of you may be trying to use Monarch money, or you need a budget, and those are awesome. They're very good, but actually applying it is where we need something deeper than that. So you, that's kind of a like I said before, it's a tool. Those are tools to help you, but if you don't have a system below that, then it's really really difficult to get those up and off the ground.
Speaker 1:So, with that, a system for your personal finances, we believe in three core accounts. We want to have a bills account. This is for all your recurring bills, your fixed bills, so rent or mortgage, your electric bills, your utility bills, your phone bill, cable bill, whatever it is. If you have car payments, that's we're going to go here under bills those things that have to be paid every month, no matter what. They're always going to be there.
Speaker 1:I usually say my rule of thumb is these are things you can't impulse buy. So these are the things, where it is what it is. Maybe it fluctuates, like your electric bill or water bill, but you're not going to go out there and be like man. I really want to buy some extra water and just go run your faucet right. These are the fixed expenses. The next account we want is a spending account. This is those variable expenses. Then the next account we want is a spending account. This is those variable expenses. This is the things you spend money on where maybe you could go over budget groceries, gas, maybe it's restaurants, it's clothing, it's entertainment All of those other things go into this spending account. The beauty of this is, when you're making those day-to-day decisions, you can look at your bank account and see how am I doing financially in this account, knowing that your bills are covered. If you've ever been caught in that scenario where you thought a bill got paid and it didn't, or you forgot about a recurring expense and all of a sudden your bank account goes into the negative because yesterday you went out to eat, this will solve that, because your bills are in a different account and now you have a spending account just for that spending and you can keep a really good pulse and when you look at that account, you literally can see how much you have to spend and not have to worry about doing mental gymnastics trying to figure out okay, well, when's this bill coming out? Has this bill already come out? You're not going to be caught in that crosshair anymore. And then the third account we believe in is a savings account. We want this to be your emergency fund. You can have multiple savings accounts if you're saving for something like a vacation or a car, but having a savings account Now, we're big believers in having two different budgets, two different snapshots.
Speaker 1:We call them survive and thrive budgets. So a survive budget is what does it cost in your household to cover your bare minimum expenses? And then thrive budget is what does it cost to live your ideal lifestyle where your kids are doing all their sports activities, where you can go out to eat a few times a week. So you're getting to do all the things that you want to do. What do those look like? How much do we need to earn in order to do that survive budget? How much do we need to earn in order to do that thrive budget Having these? Then we can take that back to your therapy practice and figure out what does the practice need to be paying you in order to not be stressed and scraping by anymore and in order to pay you what you really the lifestyle you really want Because that's why we started business in the first place is typically for more time and more money and to live that lifestyle that you've always wanted, that working for someone else just didn't afford you All right. Step three is flexibility and sustainability.
Speaker 1:I spoke about it earlier, but extremism and rigidness can sometimes work. I'm going to say usually doesn't work for people Now a lot of people. Again, going back to Dave Ramsey, he's the greatest example of this extremist Cause. If you've listened to his show, it's very you do it this way and if you don't, then you're doing it wrong. It's great for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Some people need to go extreme or they're not going to be successful. Some people, like I, need to go pedal to the metal and focus on it so that I can get this out of the way and then I can go back to my life. But I know for us and you know as as I have kids now when we got out of debt we didn't have kids, so it was a little bit easier for us to go to extreme. But I'm thinking now, as I have kids who are currently, you know, eight and nine years old, and I think back to when they were toddlers if I was going through this process when they were two and three, I wouldn't want to miss out on those years, being able to go, do things and experience life with them in those years. I wouldn't want to miss that, and so I would have to find some balance. Now, of course, you can do things and make memories Not everything has to cost money but also I want to be able to do stuff and I want to be able to not feel like I missed out on those years because I'm working extra hours every night trying to pay off this debt and go extreme.
Speaker 1:So make sure what you're doing is balanced, it's not too rigid or too extreme. You know yourself. Are you somebody who's going to quit if it's too much, or are you somebody who needs it to be too much like a whole lot, so that you stay laser focused? Find your balance. Where are you in life? All of those things dictate what you should be doing and how quickly, and how all in you should be. You don't have to grind or give up everything, it's just finding your balance. Once you have those three keys, you're going to feel more confident, more in control. Money stress is no longer going to creep into your day-to-day life and you're going to feel more confident, more in control. Money stress is no longer going to creep into your day-to-day life and you're going to feel financially prepared for emergencies. This is the key. Again, money is emotional and I know these are all simple I've said that multiple, multiple times but they're not easy.
Speaker 1:Our team we have a team of coaches, and that's what we specialize in is taking these kind of simple ideas that I just outlined and helping put it into practice. Helping you create a custom plan to actually have that system in place, a plan that is proactive and a plan that sticks, one that is flexible and sustainable. That's what we do. I mean, imagine, 30 days from now, having that plan in your own personal finances, one that you have buy-in in, one that is balanced and where you're able to still do some life with your family and your friends and your kids, while also making huge progress on your goals. If that is what you have been looking for, we would love to meet with you and show you how it's possible.
Speaker 1:In the description, as always, is a link to meet with one of our coaches.
Speaker 1:It's a free 20-minute call where we're just going to get to know you and see is our program a good fit for you, and you can ask as many questions as you have to learn about our program and what we can do to help you finally make these changes in your personal finances and to make a positive change in your life. Whatever you do, I recommend you take action. The worst place you can be is in that land of the middle of like. I wish things would change, but we're not going anywhere. We're just spinning our wheels. So take what I talked about today and put it into practice, and if you are lost or stuck and you don't know what to do, schedule that free call with one of our coaches and we'll get you some help. Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a practice owner that you may know If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspodcom to learn how we can help.
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