#269: Self-Care For Women [RERUN]

Anna Sergunina: 00:00:00

Hey, money boss parents. Anna's here, and welcome back to the Money Boss Parent podcast. As I am embracing the maternity leave for my daughter, Alice. And kind of in the midst of it, I wanted to surface back up for a bit. And one of the things that is top of mind for me right now is self care, and I have some interesting past episodes that I think would really be of interest to you to revisit. As I was just really sitting in my living room feeding Alice and looking at a bookshelf, and a couple of books really caught my attention, and then I remember that I actually had recorded an episode for you. So the book that I'm referring to is called, how are you really by Jenna Kucher, and it has a lot of interesting tools and strategies and ideas for you to sit down think through, pause and reflect and try to figure out it. I also think it's early in the year where we can take a look at what we want this next year to look like. So a lot of this is kind of bubbling up in my head, and as I'm trying to piecemeal all of these ideas for you together, I think it's a really wise step right now for us to revisit self care and think about what is going to be important for us this year, something else that my team and I decided to do and focus in 2025 is a theme for company, and this is for Main Street financial planning, and we are focusing On simplifying. So with that in mind, I am really looking with at things with this lens of, how can I simplify anything and everything, and how can it be easy? This is actually one of the questions that Jenna asks in her book, how can it be easy? So I hope you're inspired. I hope you are curious, and I hope you're excited to revisit this topic, which I think never really goes out of style. We just need to be reminded more that self care is something that we deserve. So happy listening, and I'd love to hear some of your ideas. Until then, remember, you are the bosses of your own money. Welcome to the Money boss parent podcast. I'm your host. Anna Sergunina, with International Women's Day approaching on March 8, it's a perfect opportunity for us to focus on empowering self care practices for women. And so this episode, I wanted to take a slightly different angle and discuss how we can build a sustainable self care regimen, including effective budgeting for both time and money, because let's face it, those are the most valuable resources that any one of us really wants to have right now. So let's explore practical tips, how we can find those resources, and how can we women that are on the mission to live the best life can prioritize self care and nurture our own well being, because everything depends on us. So without further ado, let's talk about a few things that I found it useful for myself and seeing others are doing and kind of building this well of practices, habits, resources and anything that comes around with that, and as well. If you find this interesting and have things that you already doing and they're working for you. Please reach out. I'd love to learn what it is that you're doing and how it's benefiting you. So one thing that I was astonished to find find out as I was doing some research for this topic, although it seems really intuitive that this kind of a discussion would be natural, right, but it's really not. It's it's more of those conversations where and ask a friend or ask a mom if you have a sister, and you know, question might be, what does your self care look like? And a lot of people pause and say, Yeah, I get my nails done once a month, and hair every six weeks, and maybe I get a massage once a quarter. So how do you define self care? What does that entail for you? Just because getting some of these pampering things are good, is that really nurturing your soul, your body, your mind? So that's how I think of this big self care topic. As we approach I found some interesting statistics that I think would be helpful for you to to be aware. According to a research conducted by Birchbox, and it's a beauty and wellness company, two in three people in America do not. Practice self care, only 32% of women do, and this is from psychology.com today. So it's like a very a third, right? It's like a very small percentage of people out there that really dedicate time and effort and energy to take care of themselves. So basically, like one of one in four Americans feel guilty about pampering themselves, and I know a lot of it is maybe still stemming from the pandemic that we're just came out of where the luxury of self care was not available because of all the things that happened. But when we look deep down like, what is it really that we need to to have this, you know, practices, regimen, schedule, time to take care of ourselves? I came to realize that if I don't do that first, then how am I going to show up as a mom, wife, business owner, financial planner, a friend, a sister, a daughter? You've heard this before. I'm not the first, first to preach this kind of idea, but you can't pour from an empty cup, so if your cup needs to be refilled, and whatever that is you get to define, then it needs to be refilled. So it's taken me some years to realize that I must focus on self care, and it's not selfish. It really is not. And if I can do that, then why not come up with some tools and practices that will be beneficial? So I want to share with you, and this is, since this is a podcast where we get to talk about money, I thought you would be really interested to hear how I approach this topic from an angle of actual budgeting and how to like really have a good idea of what you can afford to spend on self care if you don't have a particular plan for it, and maybe some of my ideas will spark an interest for you. So let's dive in, into talking about, how do we budget money for self care? That's, I think, the first kind of thought that comes to mind, because many people, as we already know from some statistics, don't really allocate money towards self care, and that may be a function of your budget altogether. Although as many spending plans as I have done in my last 20 years as financial planner, that's definitely not on the list. People put things like a massage or a facial or a hair or nails, but like beyond that, I don't see a whole lot of things. So I want you to start and think about where are you today? Like, assess your current resources. Like, what kind of allocation Do you have, not just in money, but also in time for your own self care? Next, you would kind of decide, what is the realistic budget that you want to allocate for these self care activities, and consider this in context of your other income and expenses, and, of course, all the savings and allocations for future goals that you're already doing, and you might be wondering, well, great, Anna, this is really helpful, but it's really not because we'd love to have a guideline. So I have a guideline for you, and really, probably more from looking at other people's budgets and kind of, you know, assessing that. But here's the guideline. So if you want something tangible, how about you set a target to have maybe five or 10% of your income to allocate toward your self care as a goal. Look at it on a monthly basis, if it helps you make numbers work better. Look at it on a yearly basis. Either way, you're going to come out to the same number. So I approached it from a different side. I didn't have any kind of allocations. What I did is that I made a list. It's like, okay, what is it that I do that not only gives me pleasure, makes me feel relaxed, beautiful, less stressed out more in tune. What are those activities? And so I made a list. And if things are like getting nails done, I love that. Have been doing that all my life. It's kind of like one of those things, hair, massages, right? Buying beauty products, skincare products, doing facials,

Anna Sergunina: 00:09:39

going to a yoga class. So I basically made a list. Not only that, I also wrote down what it was really costing because at the end of the day, if I looked at your spending and your budget allocations, you probably or even your credit card statement, I would probably find that in there. I think it's just you are doing a lot of this stuff. Maybe you just. Not giving it as much weight. So the first step in all of this is, what is it that you're already doing? I broke it down into two categories. What is the paid activities, such as the ones that I just named, that I am already involved, how often I'm doing those? And then the second was, what are some of the free things that I am doing unintentionally, but I'm doing them because somebody hasn't mentioned somebody I've read something somewhere. So what are those three things? I'll give you a few examples if you can't think of any just yet. For example, running in the morning, right? Journaling for five minutes per day, going to bed before 10 o'clock, or reading a book before I fall asleep. Some of these things, or all of these things, do not cost me money. They do cost me time. So free, in essence, of not costing you dollars, I also created a self care worksheet that I'd love for you to get your hands on. Happy to share it with you. So find me on Instagram at money, boss, parent, and send me a DM with the comment, self care, and I'll share that worksheet with you. Very simple. It's gonna walk you through, listing all of these things, helping you identify your budget. So then when we do go back to the target of maybe five to 10% of your income on the monthly basis. I want to know if you're surprised that you actually are spending that much of your budget, or maybe you're not, and that's totally okay. Maybe you're on the 5% range versus the 10% or maybe you're spending more than than you actually thought. So I am excited for you to to get your hands on this. I think it's going to open up your eyes for things that might be worth while for you to consider in context of the overall self care. I also want to focus a little bit of time today and talk to you about how do we manage time for self care? Because not only the objective, for the most part, for our busy lives, is that okay? How do we allocate financial resources? But as you're growing, growing your family, planning your careers, doing life time is of an essence, and one of the things that I have recently been focusing on is, how do I maximize the time that I have, somehow that's becoming more of a commodity for me, and life is measured in that. And so how, because I want to have the best time that I can allocate for these activities, I had to sit down and think a little bit about what does that mean to have time for self care. So I want to share just a couple of things with you on this on this section, I want you to do the same kind of exercise as you did with the financial part. Look at what time commitments you already have, like, open up your calendar. I'm a calendar focus person. I block my calendar all the time. I color code activities, personal stuff is on it. I know it's a mess. Cassie from Main Street here, kind of goes crazy, pulling her hair, trying to schedule appointments for me, and I apologize for that, but it helps me see my days. It helps me see what's going on. It includes my work, my family responsibilities, activities I'm doing with Liam, and in my personal obligation. So like, look at your calendar. I am of a belief is that if it's not scheduled, it is not going to happen. And so if you're thinking about that, or you're you know, have been thinking that, okay, one of these days I'm gonna go get a massage, one of these days I'm gonna go out for a walk. That is probably a good indicator that you need to put this on your calendar. So scheduling self care time is, is probably one of the first things that you should take away from this conversation, and also too, by the way, in the self care worksheet that I just mentioned to you, I have a monthly schedule that you can just use to map out in advance. And I think looking one month out in advance is a really good starting practice. What happened over time for me, even though I still put these things on a calendar, I made a lot of these appointments or blocks, recurring blocks, like, you know that maybe once a month you're going to get a massage, or maybe you get them more often. You know you're going to be running or doing some kind of exercise. You know that maybe taking a yoga class is something that you do regularly. Set that up for yourself. Let that be an automatic pilot, because everything else can fall into place. And so it's sort of this magical trick of automating things so that the time finds itself, and you kind of get away from this excuse of, I don't have time to do this stuff, so assess the time. Time commitments and your calendar where from where you are now, I know if you if you have to find people to help you watch your kids delegate other responsibilities, maybe it's grocery shopping or whatever it is. It is one of those things that you get to decide ahead of time. So hopefully that calendar template will help you put the time that's necessary for you to really, really, really get this done. One resource that I found really helpful, and I'm going through this training again. It is called time genius course by one of the famous business teachers advocates in the space that I am in. Her name is Maria Forleo, and so if you Google time genius, you'll find her course. Now this is my second time taking it, and it's really interesting training that she's put together with recorded videos, worksheets and stuff that actually anyone. It's not a business course, it's really more of a personal so how do you become time genius? How do you go from being stressed out, overworked, overwhelmed, always kind of operating in this mode of where I don't have time for everything. If one more request comes my way, my plate is going to burst, and that would be it to go into transition of where time is on your side. You're in charge of your life. You get to decide. And so it's really, it's really helped me transform these things, the thoughts and thinking where I am looking at the at the schedule. I'm looking at my days, my weeks, from a completely different lens. So we actually interesting side note, we are going through this course with Main Street financial planning team, so all of my advisors are going through that and actually really enjoying it. So I highly, highly recommend for you to check that out. I can't, can't find any other resources of where time has been really

Anna Sergunina: 00:17:06

a topic discussed in that much detail. All right, my friends, I also wanted to share with you a list of resources that are going to help you enhance your self care. Now. These are resources that I am currently using, trying and experimenting with some of them. And so again, want to give you tools to get this started. So take them experiment and see what works for you. And two, I'd love to hear, what are you already doing that's really giving you awesome results. So I broke this down into a couple of apps that you can download on your phone, and then some books, journals and maybe some in person events. So a couple of apps. This is really new. It just started. Just started using it on recently. It's called fabulous. So it's an application you download it on your phone. And one thing that's that's cool about it, you actually can try it for free for 30 days, and it allows you to develop healthy habits and routines, including self care practices. So like, if we're talking about having that regimen that you follow day out in, day out, week in, week out, and then so forth. This is a really cool application that allows you to have a schedule all kinds of stuff. I mean, I'm just dipping my toes into it, but it sort of goes beyond just putting, you know, blocks of time on your calendar. So really, really recommend one thing with fabulous app is that it is a paid app, but they're giving you, like 30 days to try it for free. I don't even remember. I think it's something like $30 a year, something insignificant, at least, you know, looking out in this space of all kinds of tracking tools and devices. So highly recommend for you to check it out. For those of you who are into meditation and mindfulness, headspace, headspace has been around for a while. They've acquired a lot of interesting companies, and so it does allow you to have practices around meditation, whether you do it for five minutes before you go to bed, but really been an awesome tool, or sometimes during the day, if you just need to disconnect, pop your head headset on turn and they have all kinds of different meditation guides. Pop headset on and take care of your stress, and it's been a really awesome tool to help improve the quality of sleep. So highly recommend headspace. My newest thing that I'm trying out, too, and it's been a few months now, is aura ring. It's been an adjustment to constantly have it on my finger, but it's it's a device that tracks sleep. It tracks. Your stress levels, activity levels, menstrual cycle. So it's really awesome. And I it's funny, because every day I wake up in the morning and let the data sync because I sleep with it. So actually, for those of you who may have Apple Watch, a lot of these things are tracked by Apple Watch or other devices, but oura ring does a lot better quality of what they track. I don't I'm not doing it justice right now, describing it just for the sake of time, but I get really excited in the morning when I look and say, All right, I know I woke up once in the middle of the night. Let me look what time it was, and then it really does specifically tell you, because it's tracking your body temperature and heart rate. So it knows, you know, it's very interesting. It knows when you fall asleep and knows when you wake up, and all of those different sleep cycles that you go in. So I'm always curious in the morning to see that I have a good night's sleep, like it feels like I'm rested, or on the day when when you wake up, you're like, I can't get out of bed. What is happening? So because sleep these days is so precious, I really want to stay on the top of it. And then my last app for today I wanted to share is called My Fitness Pal. I've had this on my phone for ages, and it's a it's an application that allows to track your food, what you eating, your activity level. So like, if you're logging in your exercises, if you're you know whatever activity you do in running, jogging, lifting, weights, yoga, you can log all of that to to a degree of even including fasting time. So like, if you do an intermittent fasting and you're not eating breakfast in the morning, or whatever your schedule is, that's actually the tool to go to. So I feel like it kind of covers sort of a robust array of things that anyone can adapt Now, a couple of books that have been really instrumental in helping me think about self care on a different way, beyond just body needs, right, but more kind of entering a space of like, what does my mind need? What does my soul need? And so one book that I'm still using today, and it also comes with the journal. Is called, how are you really by Jenna culture, and it's a really interesting read. She it's it's more of a workbook. It's a book, but it kind of is accompanied by a workbook that allows you to go through sections of of of each of the book and really start to dig deep, like this is, this is one of those books where it's not just a read, but it's really helps you work through, what is it that where is where is it that you are now? How are you doing? And really asking that question in a much deeper way? So highly recommend that. And then something new that I am I just started reading this book actually, rather listening on my runs in the morning. It's called, called Untamed by Glenn and Doyle, and it's a really, it's a memoir, but it's also centered around self care and societal expectations that are set for women, particularly. And some of the some of the examples and lessons that Glennon is teaching are really phenomenal, and so it kind of makes you pause and think and reflect and adjust. So those are kind of like the two, two guides that I think I want to share with you to get you start reading. And then I mentioned this on the previous podcast as well, but, but the five minute reflection journal that Jenna also has the author of The How are you really book? I'll and I'll link these resources in the show notes. I've been really happy with that. It's a quick five minute gratitude type of journal. It's like one page you fill in a couple of you know, things that you are on your mind. Some days my my journaling is a little longer. Other days are there are shorter lines. But it gets me in this practice to come back, keep asking myself that question, how are you? How am I really today, like, honestly, if I had to peel all the layers of of everything that's going on, and, you know, you kind of ask that question a lot, right? You meet somebody on the street, or friend calls you, and you casually ask, How are how are you doing? But there's a lot more than that, so I love this journal to kind of continue the discussion of what the book was about. And then finally, I was thinking about two and I did actually participate in one of the events. But I want you to think about what kind of local workshops or events are happening in your area. Yeah, what I did earlier, at beginning of the year, and this is one site that I think is really good for finding lots of these activities, is meetup.com I did a vision board workshop. It was a really cool, cool event. Now, for my purposes, and, you know, work activities and just my nature, I think I love to go out meet new people. So this was networking events, slash, you know, working on creating your digital vision board. I, you know, if this was not kind of of an interest the topic, I probably would have not signed up for it, but it sort of came together. So, like, think about wellness centers. Like, what kind of activities can you do there? What events do they have? Workshops? Maybe there's retreats. And in all of it could be centered a lot around self care practices that you really are interested in doing and have time for time and money as well. Most of them probably don't cost as much. So check out meetup.com. I think you're gonna find a lot of interesting stuff. If it's virtual. That's that's great as well. I always welcome that. So there it is, my friends. I want to close with reminding you that as we celebrate an initial Women's Day, and it's actually rather interesting that this holiday, I grew up in Eastern Europe, and so March 8 has always been this, this kind it's the beginning of spring, and it's like this big celebration of women. And I always, I remember, like a common practice used to be, is that you give to your friends, you know, things, whatever, material things, or you buy flowers. Like, you know, when I was a kid, I would buy my mom flowers

Anna Sergunina: 00:26:48

or go pick them at the park. So wasn't I wasn't always a bad buying, but I remember this holiday kind of bringing this like, new excitement, new inspiration, and like new admiration for women all over the world, and I want to, like reaffirm our commitment to that, as well as prioritize self care, because it really is necessary for us to continue nurturing our well being. And so if we can get better at budgeting our time, our money more effectively, and then we can use all of these resources, we can be really empowering ourselves and everyone we love. So that's kind of where I'm sitting with this idea of self care. And this holiday is just an awesome reminder of it's not a luxury for for us to be practicing self care, it's really a necessity for us to be awesome women in this demanding world, but yet we are striving and we are killing it. Can't think of a better closing line. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you have a minute, please leave us a review. I love getting those notifications when you leave me your comments. If you find this these topics interesting, let me know if you want to hear something else being discussed on this podcast. I'd love to know as well. But until next time, remember you are the bosses of your own money.

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