Birthday Reflections: Beyond Financial Freedom

Laura's Less House More Moola podcast takes a personal turn this episode, sharing her birthday month reflections on growth, struggle, and the coalescing themes guiding her personal and professional life. This special episode, not shared on social media, delves into deeper concepts, resonating with those seeking more than just surface-level financial advice.

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Transcript

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Less House More Moola Podcast (00:01)
Hey everybody, Laura here. Welcome to Less House, More Moola podcast. This episode this week is going to be a little bit different. It is my birthday month and there is a lot going on in my mind and a lot going on in my soul. And I thought I would share some of these pieces with you.

This episode is not going to be shared on social media. It's really just for those of us that are following along with the things that I've been talking about that perhaps resonate with you.

So it's my birthday month and I have had quite a year and as I've been reflecting on the year and all of the growth that the year has brought all of the internal struggle that the year has brought and all of the breadcrumbs that I have been following in my learning and self development journey. There's been a lot of

themes that are starting to coalesce and really steer me forward both personally and professionally. And so I wanted to see what if any of this resonates with you. If I haven't mentioned to you lately at the, if you're listening to the podcast on an audio format, you can click a link in the show notes and send me a text.

So I'm super curious what I have to say resonates with you and some of these topics that I'm going to explore a little bit.

If you are watching on YouTube, obviously you can send me a message or make a comment. Again, super curious to hear what strikes a chord with you.

Less House More Moola Podcast (02:01)
So recently I've returned to a concept that I learned about maybe a couple years ago that

helps me frame up some of the experiences of my life and my way of processing. And that is of the research around highly sensitive people. So there are many aspects of my life that seem to match with the description of highly sensitive people in terms of a lot of deep processing, a lot of

Thinking a lot of internal world a lot of Being told I'm too sensitive all of these things ⁓ I never watch violent type movies anymore. I've had to remove social media completely from my phone in order to

regulate my own nervous system, just a lot of things like that. And so what this means is that perhaps I'm sensitive to the trends or the feelings that I have or the experiences of the world that I have and maybe less clued in to what is ⁓ trending on social media or what's going on in the news. So

even with those aspects being true, I have felt an increasing sense of urgency around preparing and being resilient in my life. definitely I don't have any prepper influencers or, or conspiracy theorists in my, in my LinkedIn feed that I look at. just really,

tend to try to view things through my own lens and judge the world through my own experience and not get caught up in fear or scarcity. With that said, I think that it's true that we can all acknowledge that our world and our society are in a state of conflict and challenge right now.

that we have not seen in our lifetime. Certainly there were struggles that we felt if you're my age in the 90s, we had challenges with economic downturns in the 2000s, and yet we feel more now than ever that all of the things that could possibly go wrong feel like that they're going wrong at the moment. And so,

In sort of following this thread and this deep sense within me, it's arisen a sense of urgency around creating notions of resilience and looking beyond just savings or investments in my business to help clients think about ways that they can build their more multi-dimensional or resilient or holistic. I go around with different terms.

for my wealth paradigm that I've been developing. And what this means personally is that we're really thinking about ways that we can be resilient ourselves and what we need to be working on now in case things ⁓ continue to get more inconsistent or more challenging in the future.

So I have a list of infrastructure projects that we're working on, skill-based projects that we're working on, relationship-based projects that we're working on, and all of these things under the umbrella of creating more resilience for the future and being prepared to help ourselves and others if things continue to be more more challenging for a period of time.

And so I bring this to you because I think that it is something that isn't being discussed in the primary financial services world. ⁓ In fact, I was just had a realization last night that when I was in my corporate financial advising life, it was really kind of the mantra to stay the course, stay the course, stay the course, time in the market versus timing the market.

market, which I don't disagree with now. But yet at the same time, I realized that all the charts on the walls only showed a relatively short period of time in history. And certainly there are cycles at work that go beyond just what we've seen happen over the last, say, 100 years since the last major crisis in our country or

crisis period in our country. And so I just want to ⁓ let you into the inner world of how I'm thinking about things as I'm moving this podcast forward, as I'm my business forward, as I'm personally moving forward. I think that the tiny living, alternative living, anything where there is a

intentional focus around your home and how your home is serving you personally and how it serves you in a multi-dimensional level and perhaps how it allows you to have less obligation in terms of high housing cost is an important piece of that financial resilience. It's an important piece not only from a logistical perspective in terms of

having less financial outlay that's required, having less debt, putting you at less risk of there being a crisis of that nature, but also allowing you to free up your bandwidth, to free up your mental capacity, to free up your spiritual capacity, to free up your...

overall burden in life to focus on other things that might be more contributory to the future for yourself and others that might create more resilience for yourself. When we're treadmilling always in order to pay that huge housing cost, we have a very short term focus. It's getting through the month and paying the bills of the month or maybe a year's timeframe.

But we're not thinking about what's happening in the whole cycle of history and where we are right now and what we can be doing to position ourselves in these modern times of uncertainty for resilience and for future. So I continue to be deeply rooted in this notion of financial freedom that comes from tiny or alternative or

you know, whatever you want to call it, some sort of ⁓ alternative American dream. And meanwhile, I'm also starting to grow that forward and expand that into a more comprehensive thought around resilience in these times that we're in and doing a lot of reading and deep thinking about what that looks like.

for our future and how we can best position ourselves to be a resource, no matter how the future unfolds for us. So that was a lot, a lot of really ⁓ kind of not surface level thoughts today, ⁓ but this is kind of a hint about where I'm heading.

And so if any of this resonates with you, I would love to hear about it. And you can reach out to me any number of ways. I'd love to know what's on your mind and heart so that I can be thinking through that and creating content that will be useful for you. So thanks for your time today.