Ep 41 - The Best Investment You Can Make for Binge Eating with Financial Coach Pam Reed
November 21,2024
Pamela H Reed is a certified Christian life coach and financial strategist dedicated to helping people reach their goals and live their best lives. With years of experience in government service and a passion for wealth building through real estate and stock investing, Pam empowers individuals to overcome financial obstacles and create lasting wealth.
Today we cover…
removing shame around money and debt
our first time experience investing in coaching
3 practical budgeting strategies
how to not feel restricted on a budget (and while eating)
Amber: Hello, confident eaters. Happy Thursday. Today we have a special guest coming to join us. We have Pam Reid, who is a financial freedom coach coming on to talk to us about strategies. If we have financial stress, how to manage that, how it might impact our relationship with food, how to save for coaching if you know that you want coaching, and really just a whole bunch of overall strategies for our mindset with money, which can oftentimes overlap with our mindset with food. So Pam, why don't you say hi and introduce yourself?
Pam: Well, hello out there to you all. I'm so excited to be here today as a guest. Yes, I am that financial freedom coach and I am so excited because, there's so many parallels between people who want to eat more confidently and people who want to actually handle their finances more confidently. This is a walk that I've walked pretty much most of my young adult life to adult life. I just always wanted to be in control of my finances. And I am a Christian and I grew up actually within the church community and within the church community, our faith was charged doing our services and we were told that we could even prosper financially.
But I would often see where we would leave that charged up. But often once we got home and into our daily lives, that wealth that we desired, I didn't really see that manifesting. Often I just saw where we would get charged and then life happens and everybody seems to just not really be having to have that financial prosperity in which they were looking to have.
And so I was like, well, what is missing here? What is missing here? Because we get charged, but then things fall apart. And so with seeing this and challenging within my mind, like, what is the answer, what is the answer? I've just constantly been on this quest to close that gap and to not only profess.
Or confess financial freedom and prosperity, but to possess it and to bridge that gap. So that's what I desire to do. That is my mission for people and specifically people who are like me, we're generation X people. And we're looking closer at retirement than we ever have been. Those years of retirement.
Now, many of us may choose to still do things we're passionate about. That work that we've been doing for year after year. Some of us that we don't like so much. want to get to that point where we can call it quits. And then I noticed that there's a movement on now where a lot of younger people, they want to retire early or be work optional.
So. I just want to help. I want to offer strategies. I want to help get our minds in line as well to know that we can have this wealth. It's not only for the person over there who we think is smarter and more savvy, but no, it's for you and me too. And that's what I want to share with people.
Hence my financial freedom coaching.
Amber: Love it. So main thing I wanted to have Pam on to talk about is this idea that coaching is an investment. Now, I once had someone tell me, like, Oh, you're just saying that coaching is an investment. And I'm like, no I truly believe that this is not a cost that we're having, but something that's very similar to buying a house or going to college, is we're getting education for our mind when we do. So, can you talk to us a little bit about why you think coaching is more of an investment in ourselves, versus a true expense?
Pam: Well, it's transformational often. So within finances, like you said, is this an expense versus an investment, which is a key differentiation to make when we go to spend money.
And in this particular case, sometimes people are even looking to Invest in where they have to put debt in place. They have to purchase coaching through actually using credit. Oftentimes I know that's how many times I've taken advantage of coaching. And so there's a difference though, when you use credit for consumer things like buying purses or buying clothes or.
Eating out or, you know, just using it in day to day spending where nothing is coming back as a return versus investing when we invest. That means we put in money that then brings us back a return. And so the return for coaching would be in our mental health. It would be in that we are more able to make deliberate decisions about what we do instead of being controlled by whims and urges within confident eating.
Of course, right. We look at urges. And we want to be more in control so that we can decide when we want to eat and to fall in prey to urges. So just to be able to have that command and that control, that's a return that keeps giving and keeps giving. That's the ROI, as we like to say in the financial world, the return on investment.
And that's one that is not necessarily in dollars and cents, but let's move over to dollars and cents. When you are in more in control and deliberate about your spending and intentional about your spending by investing, then you usually do have money that has come back in that you're not spending as much you're saving.
So sometimes You get money back in your pocket by not having put it out because you're saving. And when you're able to make better food choices and not be following to the whims of just buying food and extra food and more food and just doing those kinds of purchases that are not planned or not investments, then you can have more money financially that you can, you know, Then apply to different things to further build yourself up or that are more aligned with your purpose and your vision and your drive for bigger and better things in your life.
So with coaching, it's an investment. It gives back intangibly and tangibly even it can. And so that's a big difference than just consumer spending, which is what we associate with debt. And so debt in and of itself, there's a lot of shame around that. But. It doesn't have to be shame around that. In my coaching, I'm like, even if you have gotten yourself into consumer debt, first of all, we're getting rid of shame.
Shame doesn't do anything but block progress.
So whether you did it the wrong way and got in consumer debt, or if you wanna take advantage of coaching and you feel shame because you associate shame with all of that, let's get that out of the way. Right now, you don't have anything to be ashamed of. We go through life, we make choices.
Some of them were not the best choices, but we can move on from those and make better choices. So we silence the shame so that we can make steps forward. So then. This particular that if you do indeed do use debt for coaching, do not associate it with shame. Know that you are making an investment in your mental health, into your life, into your physical health even to be better.
And that's a gift that'll keep giving back and a great return on your investment even. So if you're doing that, of course we can talk about strategies for if you just want to plan out. And that's the thing with coaching is often that You kind of have to make an on the spot decision often. So it's like, where do I find this money?
Right. So with me, even I'm a financial coach. And then one of the things somebody could immediately say to me as well, like, how would I make this investment in coaching? When I'm trying to get myself out of these financial crunches, I'm in already like, that's just more money. But again, I go back to that statement about this being an investment.
And then furthermore, the longer you take often to invest in yourself, to get that extra help, to bring yourself into control, there's more money that's just going out and this being mismanaged, or in the instance of food, there's more harm being done to you mentally, and you're just living this thing out that's not benefiting you, and the longer that you do, there's The more in the hole you become.
So it's better to go in and get out of the hole and then to still be at risk of staying in the same habits that are getting you nowhere and basically costing you.
Amber: Yeah. I've had clients who have cut their grocery bills in half when they work with me because of how much. We are spending on this extra food.
Now, if someone has been binge eating for 50 years, they might not even recognize that this is a cost because they just become so accustomed to spending all this money on extra groceries. Sometimes people are struggling with like door dashing food, getting more of like these high end foods delivered.
I'm thinking of like crumble cookies. I don't know if you know crumble cookies, but they're like 5 a cookies. Right. The first time that Crumble came about, I was still like on the brink of struggling with binge eating. I was getting better, but I would binge on like three of those cookies at once. Like that was like 15 of cookies that I just ate.
And same thing with these really expensive like protein bars and protein snacks, which you know, sometimes I still buy, but I find a lot of times when people are in this dieting mindset, they need all this special food and they need all their safe foods. And that can cost a lot of money. So if you're trying to meal prep all these extra foods and Then you're not even eating them.
And then you're binge eating all the yummy food anyways, because your meal prep is disgusting. You're wasting food, you're wasting money. So yes, when you are doing something, that's going to save you later down the line, I think that's how we could define investment, right? Like if we spend money now to get more back later, also the mental health component, right, that it's more than just the money in our bank account.
And the only reason we want anything is so we can feel a certain way. So if you want. That new car, the next vacation, or a bigger house. You're only wanting that because you think it's going to make you feel happier in some way. But what really brings us happiness is health too. If we don't have health, we're not able to go out and have happy lives.
I always think health is like the first thing that we need to make sure is safe. Study other ways we can't do anything in our life in order to reach other goals.
Pam: Absolutely. I totally agree. Health is key, which is why one of the things I deal with first with my coaching is mindset, getting into your mind and your thinking and your identity as a whole, like who are you?
Often if the transformation, you take on a whole new identity of who you are. I'm a saver. I'm not a spender, just saying that like I save, I invest to be able to embrace new identities. So that's a part of mental health. So it definitely is key. It's the start for everything. And then you get into the strategy, but you got to deal with the mind, the emotions and all of that first.
I totally agree.
Amber: So let's expand a bit more on this identity piece because this is a big thing I work on in my program. It's actually my last pillar in maintaining progress. We work on shifting their identity to someone who is this natural confident eater and not a binge eater. Now I'm sure this is something we have to do with money too because there's a lot of social pressures.
To have the biggest, best house, the best purse, the most perfect looking family. And sometimes we have to let go of these perfect standards to get where we want to go. So for my people that often looks like we have to let go of these extreme weight loss goals because they're not serving us. And same thing with our money.
We might have to let go of these external pressures to have our life look a certain way in order to reach the financial goals we want to have and to spend on the things that actually matter.
Is this something that you see popping up for people of having to let go of this identity or a certain lifestyle?
And how do we work around that?
Pam: Well, lifestyle creep is a little different, but it is very much akin to just feeling like I have to look a certain way or I have to present myself in a certain way to be. feel accepted or to have the status that I desire to have. So to answer your question, a lot of times to get to your financial goals, you do have to abandon some of that.
Just get over the pressure. Well, I like to link finances to purpose. Like who am I? What do I feel like I'm called to do? Like what is my life about? And that can be a heavy subject. Some people really struggle with that part. I don't know what my purpose is. You know, I've felt that before. I've been there before, but most of the time people do have goals.
So you might not have your purpose all filled out, but we can do some questioning to kind of get you around to figuring it out. And then once you determine your purpose, and then you can begin to align your spending more with your purpose and your goals, instead of just spending. spending money, and that can help to overcome some of that pressure.
Because when you know that you're spending, this is tied to this, as opposed to just looking a certain way or presenting in a certain way or having certain things that. Usually it's brought on by what we see others have, then we can just be more focused. Focus is very key. Purpose helps bring in the focus.
And so the identity purpose, like, who am I, who do I aspire to be? And I desire to be in control of my finances. I desire to be an investor who grows my money. That's taking on a whole new way of seeing yourself, other than just basically not even defining yourself financially. I just am. But once you want to add a definition, no, I'm a saver very much in control.
I'm a confident spender. That's not like step one. And then my purpose is I want to help children who are struggling or whatever your purpose is. And then you say, okay, then I want to tie my finances. To some charitable actions. And I want to be able to grow my money so I can help fund these types of things as well as financial goals for my family.
And just defining those things, that clarity helps so much in us focused and not succumbing to all the pressures because now with social media, There's so many more pressures even. So we see it constantly, people that are doing the things that we feel like we want to do. But when we can have clear vision of what it is we're striving toward, then we can be more focused and not distracted by all the things that are calling us.
Amber: And that's such a good point to really find what you want your life to look like. Yes. I once had a client tell me that It was her, like, 90 year old grandma, like, on her deathbed, and they were trying to give her apple juice, and she was asking how many calories are in this. How many calories are in the apple juice?
Wow. And, like, this woman's about to die, and she's still worried about her calories. Oh my. And so I think if we don't take the time, To consider what's important to us, then we just run on autopilot with what society says we should be doing. Well, you should count calories forever. You should just be trying to get the biggest, best thing and purchasing everything on Amazon all the time.
So we have to take a minute and say like, well, what's important to me? What do I want my life to look like when I'm 90 years old or hopefully a hundred years old and on my deathbed? About the regrets of the people who are dying and oftentimes it's like they didn't take the rest. They didn't take the jump They didn't do the things that they their dreams were and That's what I want you to think about when you're thinking about, you know, do I need coaching?
Do I not need coaching? Is like, what happens if we don't, right? What happens if we don't make this investment? And then we continue on our entire life and end up like that lady, nine years old and worrying about apple juice. And so it's considering like, Yes. What are my values? What's important to me? What do I want my one unique life to look like?
And then it becomes so much easier to clarify what are our money goals? What are our health goals? What are whatever goals we have in our life?
Pam: Absolutely. Absolutely. You got to have the vision. What does financial freedom look like to me? You know, cause most people desire it. Then what does that look like?
And it looks different to each of us, but that's definitely where we start. Absolutely. What does it look like for me.
Amber: I wanted to back up a little because I thought of another story that I wanted to share, which was about my first time investing in coaching. And I would love to hear if you have a specific memory or time you first invested in coaching and were like, Oh shit, like maybe I have to put this on a credit card or.
How do I find the money for this in my very first time getting coaching was way back in, I think like 2015. And I had to ask a family member for money to help me. I couldn't afford it on my own, but I knew it was so important to me. That was when I was struggling with bulimia too. And I knew like, if I didn't get help for this, like I was going to absolutely wreck and ruin my health.
But then. I got coaching for a little, but then as it goes, the coaching program, wasn't everything I thought. And I need another coaching program, which is why I do what I do today to save people from the journey that I went on. But I joined this other weight loss coaching program. And I remember it was like, it ended up being like a fifth of my income for the month.
And I was like, Oh my gosh, like, how am I going to do this? And I really, really wanted this coaching because I just knew this is my next step. This is where I want to go to get support. And so. I personally, I didn't really have a lot of drama around it, but I want to normalize that sometimes it is normal to have like a little sticker shock or to be like, Oh my gosh, I'm spending all this money.
For me, it was always like, I just can't afford to stay stuck any longer. I was gaining weight rapidly. I gained like 30 pounds in a year. I didn't know how to stop eating. It was like consuming my entire life and thoughts. And I wasn't able to show up to work as productively. My friendships I was getting lashing out at because I was just so angry about myself all the time.
And then I was going shopping every weekend, buying like all these new clothes to try to make myself feel better in my body. And so I was wasting so much money already on that. I was like, Oh my gosh, I just cut back on one shopping trip a week. I'll be fine. Oh, and another thing that I bought a lot of was spray tans.
I hate the saying, but I'm going to say it anyways, that fat looks better tan. And I was in college at this time. So of course I was like, yeah, so I got spray tans like every week too. And that costs a lot of money. So I think the first time you like see. Oh my gosh. Coaching isn't like 5. Like I think some people like imagine in their heads, it can be like a little bit of a sticker shop, but also considering like all the ways you're spending extra money right now.
I told you about the grocery store, the extra clothes I was buying, the spray tan, how much I'm going to save with that. And also just knowing that I was finally going to feel in control around food was so worth it to me. Yeah. Where do I even start with this?
The first time you brought coaching, kind of talking about like what that experience was like for you and did you think about it as an investment at first or were you like, I don't really know?
Pam: Well, I'll, I was thinking as you were talking. I think one of my first time, if not the first time, was to a real estate investing seminar. So it was coaching ish. It was a few thousand dollars, maybe about 3, 000 or something like that. And oh my gosh, my children were young. I was definitely steeped deep in childcare expenses and things.
And so it was definitely a sacrifice. And then it was travel involved as well. So it was like, Oh my gosh, but I just knew I wanted passive income so bad that I knew real estate investing was a sure avenue to get me to begin to have passive income because my goal is always financial freedom. So passive income, I don't know if any.
Body might not know, but passive income is that money that comes in when we don't have to actively go out and put in time for the money and usually real estate, while people will argue that it's not completely passive. It is a lot more passive than just working jobs or things where you have to actually just give time.
To get the money. So anyway, I won passive income and then this real estate investment seminar was there. And I was just like, I want this so badly that I'm going to invest. I did see it as an investment. I felt like I was going to go there and learn how to buy homes and flip properties and have, you know, basically flip properties more than anything else.
But. That's what I was like. I want to learn this. I want to learn this. I'm in that situation where I'm sure you experienced with your clients. Sometimes you got to get the spouses buy in. So I had to bring it to my husband like, hey, we can do this. Thankfully he wasn't a hard, like he wasn't hard about it.
He was like, Wanting the opportunity as well. So we did it and it was trembling and trusting and the thing about it, even I am, or you didn't bring this up, but sometimes you don't readily see the return, like immediately, like within like five months, even sometimes it's like a year or two, some things are immediate, but then some things take time.
But you then see the return. So with this investment, as many people will make investments in coaching, you might not go home the next day and be like, I can eat whatever, you know, I'm so controlled in my eating. Or for me, like I have passive man coffee for the next day. They might not see that. But when you know that each bit you get from these coaching sessions and opportunities, there's usually something there that you can build upon.
And often it, when you're in a coaching program, there's successive sessions in which you just get more and more and more. So the transformation comes, but yes, indeed, Amber, it was quite a big step for me, it was, it really was. But I had my goal. My initial goal was a million dollar network. And that's what I just kept working to get million dollar net worth.
And so I then had to say, well, which channels can leave me there? And so this was one opportunity.
Amber: And through these programs and courses and coaching, What we're really learning is the skills, right? And that's something that never goes away. Yeah. Once you have these tools, we've learned them and we have access to them.
It's not like something where, you know, we buy a jacket and it starts falling apart after a few months of wear for buying the really cheap ones. Great example. These are skills that we're learning that we're going to be able to have in your, our toolbox forever. So it's after you took that real estate class, you now.
We're educated so much further on real estate, and that's something that's going to keep giving to you for the rest of your life too.
Pam: Absolutely. Tools I pull out and use regularly. That's just one coaching. I've done so many coaching sessions and I pull those tools out regularly, regularly. I absolutely do.
Amber: So one thing I'd also love you to talk about is, you know, we've been talking about how great coaching is, how it's an awesome investment and like, For sure for me, I can say like every single penny I've invested in coaching has paid back tenfold in my life and results that I've gotten. But if someone is deciding, okay, I want to do coaching, but I know I'm going to need to budget a bit for this.
What are some strategies you might recommend to help them go about budgeting for their goal of getting coaching?
Pam: Well, a few different budgeting strategies. Now this one is going to sound like really old school. But it is tried and true and very good for people who just kind of need to physically do it.
And sometimes they get, can get too distracted. They're doing online and that's a good old fashioned envelope system of budgeting. So basically with the envelope system, you're going to decide how much you're going to spend on your different budget line items. Your rent, your groceries, your whatever else, all of the budget items.
I'm not going to name them all, but your budget items. Or you can just do it for the discretionary ones, because sometimes, you know, it's just easier to just do those fixed expenses, like your rent, your electric bill, your phone bill, you know, those things that are fixed every month, you can just do those electronically.
But then for the other ones that vary, those variable expenses, like gas and groceries, and it's so funny that the items are escaping me, but all of those ones that fluctuate. You can then have the envelope system for those and you go on and put your average amount or maybe a little bit over that in an envelope for that particular thing.
So for example, for groceries, 300 in an envelope. And you put those amounts in there and once it's gone, it's gone because it's the swiping of the card often, it just gets us into so much trouble. We don't track it the way we need to. Most of us don't track it the way we need to. We just keep going at it.
And so our budget line item, we, we just bleed all over our line items and they just go. And, uh, we don't, we're just not following our budget. So that's one system, the envelope system where you would just really like have your money in different envelopes for different purposes. So yeah, a little old school, but
Amber: let me say this actually reminds me of a strategy I use with my clients, which is we want to plate our food out so we can see it as we're eating it versus just mindlessly, you know, grabbing the chip from the bag into like the endless hole that we don't even recognize it's happening.
Same thing with credit cards. It's like this lack of awareness. And what I normally talk about is that. When we can visualize our food, we actually recognize it's happening because we're very visual creatures. It's our number one sense. We use our vision more than any other, you know, scent, hearing, taste, all of that.
So because we can't see it, our brain has a harder time processing it. And I think it's the same thing with money, right? So it's like, we can't really I don't see the money leaving, but when we see, Oh, here's a dollar bill and now I'm handing it over like, Oh, here's a bowl of chips. And now I can see that there's three chips gone as I'm putting them in my mouth.
Absolutely. A lot more awareness around it.
Pam: Yes, it is definitely a lot more awareness. You just made me think about. Sometimes when I used to be on eating plans, I would count the number of chips and have 17 chips in a bag. So anytime you can visually do something and see it, it's a lot better than when you just swiping and spending it.
You're not really cautioning things out physically. So, yeah. So that's the envelope system. So definitely one of those envelopes could be for things like coaching or something that you're saving towards. So, zero based budgeting would be another one, and that's common in apps. Utilizing different apps is always helpful.
There are tools that we can use, and sometimes that can make the difference for us where we use an app. So, for example, a zero based budgeting app is one that I've used, and still use, is You Need a Budget. That's when YNAB is the acronym, you need a budget, but zero based budgeting means that you give a line item for every bit of money you have.
If 2, 000 flows into your account, you portion out all of that 2, 000 to the different areas that, that, that you need to spend money on. And so with that, that would mean that fun, like entertainment. Those kinds of things would also be line items and budgeted out. So every single dollar is budgeted out as opposed to like, just doing the main bills and then you're just saying all the rest is just for whatever it just makes it more detailed to where.
Every bit is planned out. So it helps a lot to just beat that point out. It prevents overspending. And so then the last one I'll give you is this method is really my favorite. And this is the 50, 30, 20, or some people do a 70, um, 2010. But basically, whatever amount of money, and this works well when you don't have the same amount of money that comes in all the time, you're doing a percentage.
So you'll do like, for this example, 50 percent would go for necessities, 30 percent would go for discretionary spending, and 20 percent would go for savings and debt. So whatever money you get. So if you got 100. 50 would be for necessities. 30 would be for discretionary spending. So that's your dining out, your hobbies, you're entertained.
And then 20 percent would be for your savings or 20 would be for your savings and debt. So that way, you know, it doesn't matter if you get thousand this week, you get 2000 this week, you just always doing your percentages that go to what those purposes. And then one of those is savings and debt at 20%. So within that could be those different things that you're saving toward, or you're paying off even, you know, within that, so with that, I love that with automation.
So that when your money comes in, it automatically goes out like that.
Well, a lot
of people. When you can have your employer, you can have allotments set up. If you have a regular W 2 job and for your employer, you can say, okay, I want this amount of money to go to this account as soon as it hits, like when your paycheck is directly deposited, it then goes into this account for like 50 goes over here or 200 goes over here.
So you can couple that automation with this, the way it's distributed. And that helps a lot too, because that money it's almost like. Uh, envelope system, sort of like, but electronically just down for you through automation.
So yeah, so that, those are three ways that you can do budgeting that just kind of help you have a system in place.
The envelope system, zero based budgeting, and that is often you can find through apps. You can find apps that mimic all of this, or that has this kind of thinking. And in the 50, 30, 20.
Amber: Yeah, those are great strategies. So one more thing I want to ask you about that I personally experienced when I've tried to budget before.
What's that? Is this feeling of restriction of I have to cut back. Now mirrors my relationship with food, right? Where it's like a lot of my clients, they think, well, I don't want to cut back on the binge eating. I want to cut back because the food's so good. I enjoy it so much. Like I don't want to have less of it.
And I think this mindset can happen to a lot of people in budgeting too, where it's Oh, now I have to cut back. I have to, you know, I guess I want coaching, but now I can't get my fun stuff this month, you know, so it's like this mindset around that we're cutting back and that we're losing something. How do we get around that when we have like this resistance to doing a budget?
Pam: Well, that definitely is a mindset and you have to shift away from Thinking of cutting back and thinking of giving to yourself. How much am I going to give to myself with this check? And the giving to yourself is the saving as opposed to, you know, thinking of it as like, I have to be restricted. It's technically you restricting yourself now, so you won't have to be restricted.
You know, and he like, I'm restricting, so I won't have to be restricted because ultimately when you don't restrict, you end up being restricted. So you're exercising discipline so that you can be more free. But one way to think of it, and I think it's a good shifting or reframing is to think of it as giving to yourself as opposed to cutting back.
You know,
so it is definitely a mindset, but you really are giving to yourself. I don't know if you've heard people, but people say pay yourself first. That's basically meaning to save, you know, to save as opposed to spend, or even if you're in debt and you can't necessarily Afford to save is a lot of people feel like, well, if I miss so much debt, I don't really have any money to say, get rid of the debt.
You're giving yourself money back to do what you want to do. So, you know, if you can just see it as giving back to yourself and you're going to do this through being intentional. You gotta be intentional. I think the more that people can begin to wrap their minds around being deliberate and being intentional, and you can be that you don't have to just feel like life just happens to you.
You do have a say in the things that happen to a certain extent. You get to decide. Basically how you respond to what happens is really what it is. I get a thousand dollars. I get to decide what I do with this thousand dollars. You know, somebody cuts my part of my pay. Okay. I get to decide how I'm going to operate now with this lesser amount of money.
You always are in a position where you get to decide, so let's get in a place where we make the best decisions and to be in front of our decisions and plan our decisions instead of just become being so reactionary and lacking the control to where then we have to do things we don't want to do because we've allowed our circumstances to just determine everything that we did.
Amber: Right. And that's how I kind of describe it with my clients too. Is. Let's focus on what you're gaining from this, not what, from what you're losing. So like, what are we gaining from getting food freedom? What are we gaining from cutting out our binge eating? What are we gaining from that, that's going to give back to our life?
Versus what are we losing? Because a lot of people when they're trying to stop binge eating, they think, while I'm losing out on pleasure. I'm going to miss out on all this extra pleasure that I've been getting. And I'm like, no, baked eating is not the pleasurable part. Food can be pleasurable, but food is only pleasurable when we're hungry.
And then it stops becoming pleasurable when we're full. So really we're increasing our joy and pleasure in our life because we actually get to feel good in our body. And I think it's the same thing with budgeting too. It's like, okay, it's not that I have to lose my weekly nail appointment or whatever.
It's like, no, but this is going to give me the gift of. Coaching or whatever it is you're trying to invest in yourself in. And that's going to give me my life back. And that's what I want to do. Not losing out on anything that's important to me, because if it was that important for me, we can keep it in.
But we're only cutting out that are causing us pain that are causing us emotional turmoil. The things that we don't really need. So that way we can have the things that we do want to need.
Pam: Absolutely. Like I'm not one of those ones who says no more Starbucks and no more treats. No, let's have the treats, but let's just plan for it, you know, let's just put them in there so we can have the treats and feel good about it and still work on the free life that we desire, you know,
Oh yeah.
Yes, we're giving to ourselves. We're gaining, absolutely, as opposed to losing and being restricted. Restricted is just a word that's just no good feeling about,
Amber: this is such a good conversation. I found it so valuable and I'm sure listeners will as well. So where can the people find you if they want to know more about Financial freedom and how to work with you.
Pam: Oh, great, great, great. Well, I would love to have you work with me and you can reach me at my website, which is Pamela H Reed. My name is with two E's R E E D. That's Pamela H reed. com from there. You can see how you can. Get coaching and anything new I have will always be on my website. I am on Instagram as well at Pamela H.
And my podcast is Confident Steps to Financial Freedom. You can find me on Spotify. You can find me on Apple, any of your places where you listen to your podcast, you can find me there. That's Confident Steps to Financial Freedom.
Amber: Amazing. And I'll have all the links in the show notes. And I was also on Pam's podcast, so whenever the episode comes out, you can hear me there as well.
We'll flip. But thank you so much for coming on today. And it was really great conversation, but I'll talk to you next week, company leaders. Bye. If you're loving the podcast, be sure to check out the show notes for a special free gift waiting for you. And hit follow for the show so you never miss an episode every Thursday.