Ep 143: Guest Dr. Darla Bishop

Have you ever wished for a big sister who can teach you about money? Someone who can guide you, laugh with you, and also be firm when you have to set goals or need a reality check? Dr. Darla is it!

When Darla was in college, budgeting and learning about money, she started to read financial books and realized that not one of them offered a decision tree or step-by-step guide that helped her where she was in her particular situation. She has since read over 100 financial books and still didn’t find what she thought would be most helpful – so she wrote it.

That is what How to Afford Everything is all about. It includes many worksheets and thought-provoking questions and exercises to help you where you are right now.

Who is This Book For?

The target audience for this book is people who are under 40, may (or may not) come from a disadvantaged background, now have a good job and money coming in, and want to take their money management to the next level. People who are managing lots of things. Managing careers and sometimes the salary negotiations that come along with that. Thinking about their parents as they get older. Raising children and trying to think about whether they will go to college and what we want to contribute to that. Maybe paying off student loans.

Q&A

Nick: “What advice do you give to people when you have multiple competing conflicting things for your resources? How do you help walk people through figuring out which one makes the most sense for them because it’s not always black and white plain vanilla right?

Darla: “What I figure out when I’ve talked to multiple people who’ve been in that situation is because it’s been so stressful over some period of time. Maybe a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years. They haven’t taken the time and probably because they haven’t had the energy or the guts to truly look at their financial situation, right? They just kind of feel like they’re swimming tread in water and and haven’t asked for help.

Until this point because they thought maybe someone was going tell them they needed to budget more and spend less money and they can’t imagine even how they would do that. So the approach I take is to first write down every cent that you owe to anyone whether it’s a traditional debt a credit card, a loan student loan, your mom, your cousin, or your coworker who loans you $10 for gas money. We’re going to write everything down and it’s gonna hurt a little bit at first. But once we put it on paper we take away its power because now we can do something about it.

So we got to get over that first hurdle and then we’re going write down every piece of money, every cent, that comes through your door, and if there is a difference between the money that goes out and the money that comes in we have to figure out where we can cut or my personal favorite where we can increase.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about Dr. Bishop’s journey to writing a book and for more advice.

About Shotwell Rutter Baer

Shotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.

Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.

Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.