The Catch-22 of Paying for Money Coaching
transparency, honesty, and logic on the elephant in the room
As a financial coach going on my ninth year in business, I’m no stranger to the elephant in the room when it comes to the coach-prospective client relationship…
How backwards it may feel to PAY for money coaching.
It’s the sticking point for almost every person who has come to the realization that they can’t or don’t want to tackle their financial hurdles alone: how can they rationalize spending money to hire someone to help them stop spending money?
Feels ass-backwards when looking at the logic from the surface.
But I invite you today to dive deeper and join me in a little perspective shift.
a disclaimer before we begin:
This isn’t some ruse to try to coerce you into hiring me as your financial coach by shaming you for how you’ve been living or spending your money up to this point. Frankly, that’s none of my business.
I’m in no place to tell you that you can’t fix your finances without paying someone to help you do so… plenty of humans have bootstrapped their own budgets and financial strategies to get themselves out of a bind and set up for success. It takes time, discipline, research, and accountability, but it’s 1,000% possible to do!
But for those of you who have thought about making changes to improve your financial situation for months, maybe even years, and for some of you who have put the effort into improving your finances but can’t seem to wrangle the rhetoric, get things to add up, or stick with your own plan, then you might be sitting there seriously thinking that a financial coach is the best solution for you.
If only it wasn’t for the price-tag.
Like I said, I’m only interested in helping shift the perspective of the way you think about paying for financial coaching, and only really for those who have come to terms with the fact that they probably actually need it.
I know you’re out there because all of my clients have been in your position. And many of my clients tell me how they’re constantly talking to friends, family members, colleagues, and strangers on the street about the work we’re doing together and how it’s changing their lives with the common remarking concern being the cost.
My past and current clients are also fully aware of the cost of coaching and were similarly dubious that they could possibly make another larger-than-average line item work in their budget before beginning the process.
However, after working together, I’m often met with remarks such as “I wish we started doing this work sooner” and “I wish I knew how invaluable this coaching would be for me.”
I don’t want those regrets to bear down on you too, so let’s zoom out and logically look at the long-term impacts of paying for money coaching.
The Cost of Passivity
The question I want you to ask yourself is this:
Will continuing down my current path end up costing me more over the next two years than paying for a financial coach?
It’s hard to have that sort of perspective on your own finances if you’re so in the weeds, feeling like you couldn’t possibly cut anything more. But just consider if you have debt you’d like to pay off faster, debt you’d like to avoid, investments you’d like to make, employer benefits or tax benefits you’d like to take advantage of… if you’re current situation is hindering you from doing the above now, it’s likely costing you thousands in potential savings and earnings.
Example: Several of my clients have high-interest consumer debt that’s costing them nearly $500/month in interest. (woof!) Even though it takes a few months to get there, through working together, we not only keep my fee within budget beginning in month one, we also find ways to reduce, if not, eliminate that $500/month interest payment before our initial package ends - putting that $500/month they spent on coaching (plus so much more savings), right back into their pocket.
Investment vs. Service Charge
It’s common to look at the price of a service and immediately think about that money leaving your bank account, never to be seen again. But even though financial coaching is technically a service, it’s unlike many other services that provide you value upfront, but then that value diminishes over the day, weeks, or months ahead.
Instead, it’s best to think of financial coaching as investment. Although you receive an initial service of a one-to-one coaching call, budget updates, etc. the upfront value doesn’t simply hold, it often increases as you learn more and take action to spend less, save more, and make smarter financial decisions.
Example: An example of services that provide diminishing value are things like self-care (something I think we all prioritize in our budgets, including me). We easily spend thousands of dollars per year on the basics like hair & nail appointments, to the more costly and advanced aesthetic work. No matter how you slice it, these services provide an upfront value that diminish over time, needing regular maintenance and more money to keep up with it all. Financial coaching, instead, should be looked at as an investment you make in your future (one you can actually calculate the monetary value from) similar to investments you make in your education, career, mental and physical health.
The Best Time to Plant a Tree…
There’s one thing that we’re all running out of and we can never get back (no matter how hard some billionaires try) and that thing is… TIME.
It’s our most precious resource and plays an important role in almost everything that’s important in life.
When asked why she decided to take the plunge into financial coaching, a client of mine once said “they say the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago… the second best time is now.”
And man, isn’t that so right? Whether it’s planting a tree, taking care of our health, prioritizing time with loved ones, making a career move, or developing better spending habits and investing your money… doing it sooner than later in life is preferred, and it could also be life-changing.
We often wait for the time to be perfect and for all the numbers to make sense to take the leap, to ask for help, to hire the coach, to plant the tree.
But the best time has past, and the next best time is now. (Not to mention, time literally equals money when talking about investing… which is one of our ultimate goals, no? Every year you wait to invest is a lot of potential lost.)
My Promise
Ok, first my goal isn’t to scarcity-tactic you into signing up to work with me–I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve to help you get “caught up” if you’re starting to feel anxious about time running out on your financial compounding clock.
What’s even more important to me is that you know that I know that my fee is no small thing. It is my number one priority, when I first start working with clients, to make their budget make sense, to make sure all the bills can be paid with the income that comes in, and that absolutely includes my fee.
And because I have a different perspective on your budget than you do, 99% of the time we make the fee work easy as pie. In my 9 years, I’ve had two clients out of hundreds where I truly felt the fee and budget weren’t going to fit and we went our separate ways. I’m not doing my job, or being in integrity, if my fee does more harm than good, so we get that sorted right away.
My second priority is to get you towards your goals as fast as possible. That means finding even more money in your budget–beyond paying my fee–to save, put towards debt, invest, heck even spend if that’s your wish! I’m not doing my job if we aren’t working you towards ticking your big financial to-do’s.
So there you have it… I new way to think about paying for financial coaching and why it’s a totally rational decision to do so. I know there’s no way I can convince you that it’s 100% the best decision for you, but I invite you to look past the price tag and at least reach out for us to have a discussion if you’re seriously ready to clean things up this year. We can talk numbers, goals, obstacles, and worries and see if it will be a good fit… or not. And don’t just take it from me… feel free to snoop through all my client results saved here in this folder. They want you to know to “just do it!” too.