103. Money & Career Synergy: Weekly Habits for a Strong 2025

In this episode of Money and Career Mastery from Overwhelm to Ownership, abundance and legacy coach Laura Sexton shares tips for achieving financial and career success in 2025. She emphasizes the importance of creating weekly financial and career habits, such as financial check-ins, expense audits, and career reflections. Laura also highlights the significance of visualizing long-term financial goals and maintaining open communication with a spouse or accountability partner through weekly budget meetings. Additionally, there are actionable steps provided for skill development, networking, and celebrating professional wins. Laura encourages listeners to implement these steps to build momentum and align with their financial and career aspirations.

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Transcript

Laura: 0:02

hello and welcome to money and career mastery from overwhelmed to ownership. I'm Laura Sexton, your abundance and legacy coach here to help you navigate the world of money, debt payoff, and career growth with confidence and clarity. In this podcast, we'll tackle the financial and career challenges, holding you back, optimize your income and build the freedom that comes with true ownership. If you're ready to break free from overwhelm, create a budget that aligns with your values and design a legacy that empowers future generations. You're in the right place. Hello, accelerators. Welcome to 2025. Thank you for coming along and being a part of my podcast. And this week on the money and career mastery podcast, we are going to be talking about money and career synergy. Let's talk about some weekly habits to start 2025 off strong. Your money and your career both have a lot of impact on your long term success. Let's face it, money touches absolutely everything we do, and our career is a major source of that money. So what can we do to make sure that we are optimizing? both. The consistent habits that we create in both of these areas will create momentum. Now, I have been reading a book about momentum by Dave Ramsey. It is an uber quick read. I've been able to put it in my purse and take it with me and read it anytime I'm waiting somewhere. And the cool thing about this book is it's called the momentum theorem, and He gives an equation for what momentum really looks like, and what he says is focused intensity over time multiplied by God equals unstoppable momentum, and I just love that. If you want momentum, you have to be focused, you have to be intense, you have to allow time and God to work their wonders, and then you're going to have momentum like never before. Your focused intensity comes with setting the stage for your financial success. So Let's talk about some things that we can do every week that are going to help you make the most of your money and your career. The first thing that you should do weekly is a weekly financial check in. This means regularly, weekly, we're going to review progress towards either a savings goal or a debt payoff goal. If you were saving up your initial emergency fund of 1, 000, that's wonderful. Let's try to get that done in the next four weeks. The longer you spend on this, the slower your momentum, the less likely you are to make progress. If you were in the slog of your debt payoff journey, what can we do while we're looking at this? What progress are we seeing and what can we do to increase the speed with which we are getting these things done? These are the things you need to ask yourself on a weekly check in, but I would also love it if you would do something to visually show your progress. That could be a debt payoff tracker. That could be a savings tracker. That could be, something that you color in when you get to the next mile marker. I know people that create paper chains and they tear off a chain link every time they pay a certain amount towards their mortgage. These are great visual representations of the success of momentum that you are creating every week. Every week I would like for you to also be doing an expense audit. That means every week you need to pick one category of spending. Let's not get crazy. We don't have to do all of it all the time, right? But let's pick one category of spending each week to audit and find savings. This is where you can actually optimize your spending. I love That sometimes we call a budget, we call it a spending plan, and I love that. Something I've been teaching my kids this week is we don't spend money just for the sake of spending money. Just because there's money in that category doesn't mean you have to spend it. You can do it guilt free up to that dollar amount. But if you're spending just to spend, we need to look at your motivation. And that might mean that it's time to give me a call so we can have a conversation about your spending habits. If you've never made a budget before, you can't even audit anything because you don't know what category things are supposed to be in. And I have an excellent resource that I want to suggest to you, and that is the Better Budget Boot Camp. Now, the Better Budget Boot Camp helps you create budget based on your values, based on the things that are most important to you, so that we make sure that we hone in exactly the trajectory that you need to get you aligned with where you want to go. Weekly tip number three, you should do a financial vision review. Spend time visualizing Your long term financial goal and what it will look like, what it will feel like, what it will taste like, what it will smell like when you get there. This can feel a little woo woo, but I promise you it is not. Athletes do this all the time. If you think Kobe Bryant wasn't visualizing that basketball making it through the hoop, you think he wasn't hearing the swish every time before that ball left the tips of his fingers, You are mistaken, my friend. Visualization is not a woo woo technique. It is something that very many people at a very high level do all the time. So go ahead and visualize what you want your life to look like in five to ten years. Let's visualize our long term goals and affirm them. Tell yourself, yes, that's what I want. Yes, that's possible. Yes, that feels good to me. This will help you stay motivated and make progress on whichever financial goal you are on right now. Again, if we are just chipping shots off at the tee, we're never gonna keep our ball on the green. If you want to sink that hole in one, if you want to get it close to the flag, you are going to have to pay attention, make a plan, and do the practice and checking in on your financial goals, visualizing your desired future. Auditing your expenses, all of that has to do with aligning yourself with where you want to be. Ultimately, if you're married, I want you to have one more very specific meeting, one more very specific weekly activity for you to do. And that is a weekly budget meeting with your spouse. If you're not married, you can do something similar with an accountability partner. That is totally fine. But I want you, if you are married, to have a weekly meeting with your spouse to discuss the budget. Now, what does that look like? Let's be honest. It doesn't have to look like, okay, we're going to sit down and we're going to talk about the numbers now because that's really boring. But what it could look like is A 60 to 90 minute family business meeting. So we are going to talk about the business of the family. That could be, what does your week look like? What kind of things do we have on the schedule? You're going to have to take the kids to the doctor this day. And I have a meeting on this time. You know, I have a speaking engagement this week, so I'm not going to be able to make it to band practice. So you're going to have to take them to band practice. Is that going to work out? That's when we're budgeting our time. We're looking at the calendar, what things we have coming up, and what needs to be done to take care of the logistics of things. After we're done looking at the calendar, we can look at things like meal plans, what kind of foods, you know, those days where we have to rush off to band practice because I'm in a speaking event, that may be a takeout night. We may be going to Chick fil a or McDonald's or wherever. Or it's, Hey, I put stuff in the crock pot early in the morning, so I make sure that you have a healthy home cooked meal when you get home. I think it's really important to have these open lines of communication. So we've talked about the calendar. We've talked about what we're eating, and now we have to have the conversation about the money. Now this can be one of those touchy meetings, right? If we're not used to talking about money, it can feel a little gross, but if you do this frequently enough, it just becomes another thing that we're just going to review. Hey, how are we doing on our grocery budget? How are we doing on our gas budget? Sounds great. I'm, you know, I'm coming up on my spending limit, so I'm going to have to really crack down this week. Okay, you know, I'm here for you. If you need something, let me know. That kind of thing. My husband, if he goes over on his spending, I'm happy to cover it for him. Because he does so much for me. I'm the most blessed wife in the entire world. My husband cooks, my husband cleans, my husband takes care of the children. He is not afraid to change a diaper. He is not afraid to come in and discipline. He is a man's man and he is so good at what he does. And I am very blessed. So I am going to not cry. I don't even know why that brought tears to my eyes, just how incredibly blessed I am with my husband, but it did. And we have no problem talking about our budget. Sometimes we get a little frustrated, like, oh, we really wanted to be saving, but something came up. Right now we are getting ready for baby number five to show up, and the medical bills, they don't stop. It's not like, hey, you've had a fifth child, so you don't have to go to the doctor as much. I'm technically, I'm a geriatric pregnancy because I'm over 35, which is the most disgusting term ever, but here we are. So I have to make sure that I go to the doctor frequently and that does cost money, which is really frustrating. Sometimes we can get a little frustrated, but sometimes we get really excited by the things that are happening and the growth and the savings and the ability to do extra fun things for our kids. It's just great. Another really great thing if you're married is these weekly family meetings should be done without your children present. It should be a time when you and your husband can just close the door, maybe lock it. I don't know. And, just have a conversation. We do 60 to 90 minutes. And guess what? If you finish all of your different things, if you've talked about the budget, the meal plan, the calendar. You have time to do other things. This 90 minutes, 60 to 90 minutes that you put on the calendar is very important. And what you do with the extra time is completely up to you. Now let's switch over to weekly career reflection and action plans that we can put in place. The purpose of which is to spend 15 to 30 minutes each week reflecting on your career progress and taking a small actionable step to grow your earning potential. So I'm going to give you four steps, four things that we can reflect on and take action on if needed. The first is every week you should review your career alignment. Now, this could turn into an every other week thing once you really feel dialed in to where you're at in your life. But for right now, if you're not feeling like you're in your sweet spot, every week I want you to review your career alignment. Ask yourself. Is my current role moving me closer to my ultimate goal? Is it moving me closer to my financial goals? These are two questions that you should be asking. Where I'm at today, does it move me closer to either where I want to be in my career or where I want to be financially? I have a client right now that I am working with and he is working very, very hard to get a job in a different location. One of his big goals is to move away from where he is right now. And in doing so, he is going to take a job that's going to pay him well, but it's not necessarily going to get him to where he wants to be in his career ultimately. So yes, it's helping him get to his financial goal and it's great for now, but we know it's not where he wants to be ultimately and we know that yes to one and no to the other means we're not in perfect alignment and we're going to have to keep our eyes open. We're going to have to keep our skill development happening so that we can get into the exact aligned career. Now that touched on step number two here. It's looking into skill development. You should dedicate time every week again 15 to 30 minutes, maybe Learning something new that adds value to your career that could be taking an online course, reading industry article, improving a key skill, that could be listening to my podcast, that could be having a meeting with me so I can help you coach on your career. There are many things that you can do to help in your skill development to get you moving forward, more aligned in your career goals. Step number three is just going ahead and doing a networking check in. Reach out to one professional contact each week. just to nurture a connection. You don't have to explore an opportunity. You don't have to be searching for a job. Reach out and say hello. How are things going? Hey, it's been a long time since we've talked. There's more value in you reaching out to say hello to someone than you submitting an application. People are longing for connections right now. And networking gets a dirty, negative connotation. I understand that. If you don't want to call it networking, don't call it that. Call it being a human and wanting to connect with somebody. Reach out to one person, say hello. Just nurture the connection. Don't ask for anything. When they're ready, you'll be top of mind because you are a human first. The fourth step in these weekly career reflection plans is to just log a win for the week. Record one professional accomplishment that you are proud of. Maybe it's something you can use in a future performance review. Maybe it's something you can use in a future application or maybe it's just I Was on a high level this week at work, and I'm really proud of the work that I did. Or I showed up even when I didn't want to and I'm so ecstatic about that. You have a win every week in your career. And if you go to work five days a week, eight hours a day, and you come home and you are crying because you hate your job that much, it is time for a change. I have another client that I'm working with right now, and that was her. She would come home crying, she'd wake up in the middle of the night with cold sweats, stressed about a situation at work, and that is not okay. It is okay for you to say, this is not where I need to be, this is not helping me develop, this is not good for me mentally, and I need to step away. The money at a truly toxic job is not worth it. Now, if you were like, my job's toxic because they're mean to me, but really they're just holding you to a standard, that's not being mean, that's holding you to a standard. It's time that you learn to do that, to hold yourself to the standard, but also to allow somebody else to hold you there as well. Because I am a financial coach, I tend to take a money first, career second approach. I want to make sure that whatever work you are doing right now is supporting your financial goals in your long term money plan. But I'm no dummy. I know that you want to be in a career that lights you up, and I know that over time, a career that gives you joy is going to make you more money. But right now, there are some goals that need to be achieved financially before we can strike out and hit our long term goals in a career. Make sure that whatever move you're making in your job is supporting your financial goals today. You can do things that help you, smart money moves that help you like negotiating your salary or really engaging in your benefits package. If your job does not currently offer a financial wellness plan and you would like to work with me as a financial coach, you can ask them to create a financial wellness benefit. Most companies have money. To add extra benefits to their employees and so if that is you and that is your job and you want to have a conversation about that, let's have a conversation about that. But what I really want to encourage you to do right now. This week is take one of these action steps in the money side and one of these action steps in the career side and Implement it this week and then come back to this podcast and implement another and then come back to this podcast and implement another I give you four Great actionable steps that you can take weekly to optimize both your money and your career I think that they are just absolutely invaluable. And if you've never made a budget before, or you could really use a revamp on the one you have right now, because it doesn't really feel aligned. Go download my Better Budget Bootcamp. You can find it on my website, accelerateyourlegacy.com/resources, or you can just scroll down into the description of this podcast and find it there. All right, Accelerators, I hope that you have an absolutely lovely beginning to the year. If I can help you in any way, I am always here for you. Go out and make a difference. thank you for spending time with us today on Money and Career Mastery from Overwhelm to Ownership. Remember, your legacy isn't just about financial freedom. It's about living with purpose, taking action, and building a foundation that lasts for generations. Don't just listen, implement what you've learned and share it with someone who could use a financial or career breakthrough. If you found value in today's episode, help us grow by rating, reviewing, and sharing the podcast. I'll be back next week with more strategies to help you master your money and career. Until then take ownership of your future and build your legacy with intention.