Money and Mentors

Get ready for a ride. The funds Dori has been living off of are suddenly -- or so it seems -- running dry.  Our host finds herself unmoored and scrambling for income, but grateful for the mentors who have supported her over the years and especially now. Find out why Dori believes people don't talk about money more than they should, and listen 'til the end to find out what to expect for the final episodes of Season 1 of Life Changing with Dori Fern.

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Life Changing with Dori Fern on Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/life-changing-with-dori-fern/id1623490090

Life Changing with Dori Fern on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Dw0aEwN8IuCNC8DlIkkdW?si=96df8dfb4965416c

Connect with me!
Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: lifechangingwithdorifern@gmail.com

Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary session.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dori Fern: Hello everyone. How is everyone doing in this hot, hot summer? I kind of wish you could see me right now. And then I'm kind of glad you cannot, because I am. Let's see if I can describe this scene to you. I'm sitting on the floor of a sauna. On the property of an Airbnb that my friend invited me to for the week upstate.

[00:00:31] Dori Fern: And it was the quietest place I could find to go also because I forgot the adapter for my microphones, which I, I have the microphone, but not an adapter. So I had no way to plug it into my laptop and I'm using the microphone on my laptop instead. Will not have the same quality. So hopefully my wonderful editor, [00:01:00] Dave Visaya can, um, do his magic here.

[00:01:03] Dori Fern: I wanted to take you on a bit of a ride today on this episode, two topics that have been clinking around inside my brain, like jump change recently, money. And mentors. 

[00:01:19] Dori Fern: I haven't discussed my financial situation much on this podcast because to be honest, it hasn't been a particularly messy theme of my Life-Changing thus far.

[00:01:29] Dori Fern: I had a nice little plan, which I prepped for before I quit my job. Take lockdown savings. From COVID including my nice little annual work bonus, combined that with my company, 401k, which totaled between two thirds and three quarters of my annual salary and which I was eligible at 55 to deduct from without penalty, even if still with a 20% tax hit.

[00:01:59] Dori Fern: [00:02:00] For the most part, my plan has worked out as expected. The thing about me and money though, is that I have this habit of making scary moves with one eye open to sensible matters and the other one closed. To dream I've said this, but I, I think it sounds a lot more poetic than saying what's probably closer to the truth, which is that there's bliss in ignorance, as they say. The benefit though of this one eye open technique is that it gives me permission to take leaps that my pragmatic mind, which knows just enough to suspect trouble, but not enough to know a clever way to form a more astute or clever alternative wouldn't otherwise be comfortable with taking. Of course, the problem with this approach is that sometimes I miss the [00:03:00] signs and the road that tell me I'm about to hit a wall.

Welcome to Life Changing with Dori Fern, a podcast about the messy middle between when you hit pause and what comes next.

[00:03:09] Dori Fern: I can't think of any American I know across all socioeconomic, ethnic racial lines, who wasn't raised with a, it's not polite to ask or talk about money, ethos. My hot take on this is that it has more to do with a spectrum of shame and fear than it does propriety. So let's just say you had a ruler or a measuring stick and shame was the left and fear on the right side.

[00:03:40] Dori Fern: The just right neutral as the little bears would say false smack in the center. So those with limited means in excessive debt may feel degrees of shame for not figuring out how to improve their fiscal lot. As might someone who say inherits wealth, they deep down [00:04:00] don't believe they deserve. And on the other side is the fear that great wealth will be stolen or taken away or revealed to have been gained by legally or ethically questionable means.

[00:04:14] Dori Fern: And then there are those of us who fall to the center of the fear, shame, measuring stick, possessing, some degree of fiscal security in a common sense, understanding of the basics, avoid debt you can't afford to pay off and save for retirement.

[00:04:30] Dori Fern: Invest in the stock market for long term gain and so forth. The wild card here is that given our lack of dialogue about money, most of us lack deep understanding and confidence about how exactly to manage it all. Especially if you don't have the kind of wealth that puts you in the market for say a professional financial advisor who can do it for you, or as was the case for me, [00:05:00] my late stepdad could manage my money up until his recent death and did an excellent job at it as it happened. So between losing him and plunging stock market returns, my fiscal fear level has moved much further to the right, even as my politics, fear left, but back to mentors.

[00:05:26] Dori Fern: I'm all for paying for expert help. If, and when I can afford it as I've talked about here, but there's a looser beauty in the generosity of mentors, whether that relationship is entered into more formally as is the case with my mentee, Brittany and I, or more loosely and circumstantially as is the case with the two women I have long considered mentors, Amy and Jenny.

[00:05:53] Dori Fern: They've never met each other, but I've always maintained that these two women would either really [00:06:00] like each other or really not. They're so fundamentally similar, both are intellectually brilliant and professionally formidable, pathologically organized, skilled, and quote together in their work and personal lives.

[00:06:18] Dori Fern: It's not that they lead perpetually charmed lives. It's that they are bosses, truly captains of their respective ships and good at navigating all kinds of waters at home and work. Both also share the most impressive trait of empathy, championing everyone close to them from their children and partners to their friends, colleagues, direct reports, and also the underrepresented and underserved people in their communities.

[00:06:49] Dori Fern: And beyond true leaders, both possessing the kind of smarts expertise and confidence that I value and aspire to. It's thanks [00:07:00] to advice from Amy, who I met in childbirth class in 1996, when we were both pregnant with our daughters, that indirectly led me to Jenny. It was 2006, the year my marriage ended. After searching for many months without luck for full-time work, I was growing increasingly despondent about my prospects and desperate to find a job once my husband and I officially separated late in the year.

[00:07:30] Dori Fern: Then I saw an opportunity that seemed perfect to produce the content for a brand sponsored contest for AOL called chief everything, officer women who do it all and do it well. I really wanted this gig, Amy who at the time had created a niche for herself as a qualitative research consultant with an internet expertise, something very rare at the time.

[00:07:58] Dori Fern: Coached me on how [00:08:00] best to position myself for this interview and said words to me that I know made all the difference in the outcome in which I regularly remind Brittany, my mentee and my children too. Remember she said, suggesting that as much as I wanted even needed this job, they want you. I went into that interview with a confidence and a clarity that I felt I had lost.

[00:08:31] Dori Fern: Jenny was the hiring manager. I got the job. Though she wasn't my boss, I learned important lessons from Jenny. While I struggled mostly unsuccessfully to manage the seemingly relentless demands of my new mid senior level job, after a decade home with my kids, Jenny seemed unflappable. Sure. [00:09:00] I was like Jenny at the time, single and a mom, but I was also fortunate to have an ex-husband I could count on to parent half the time.

[00:09:10] Dori Fern: Jenny, on the other hand, manage the demands of her high pressure job with those of being a then single mom of two kids with a difficult and unreliable X. On one, particularly hectic day. I saw Jenny calmly leaving work at five and asked her how she could manage to drop everything and go, it's such an early hour for our crazy business to which she replied.

[00:09:36] Dori Fern: I just do it. No, one's life is on the line. If I leave, it's not brain surgery, the work will wait until tomorrow. Over the years, my friendships with Amy and Jenny have evolved and deepened. And while I know that both women appreciate me for who I am and what I bring to our respective relationships, maybe especially my [00:10:00] cooking, I sometimes envy what they have that I do not happy marriages to excellent men, beautiful homes that they own and solid financial security.

[00:10:14] Dori Fern: I sometimes secretly feel like their eldest, not quite yet formed child. Even though Jenny is two years younger than I am. And Amy and I share the exact same birth date, June 4th, 1966. And as she would tell you, if she were here, she's hours younger than I am. Last weekend, I visited Jenny and her now husband at their beautiful home by a lake in con.

[00:10:45] Dori Fern: After 16 years as colleagues and friends, this was the most quality time we'd ever spent together. She asked me at one point about my work sabbatical and what I had gotten from it. Most of all, I told her I'd [00:11:00] learned to embrace slowness and the value of every small, intentional step towards my goal for the year to start a podcast, to gain clarity about my professional desires and my personal ones too.

[00:11:15] Dori Fern: To put shape to ideas and to trust in myself, to keep going without freaking out too much when things don't go according to plan. She remarked how good it would be. If more people in more fields were encouraged to take such a break and how valuable my insights could be for people in a similar moment of transition.

[00:11:38] Dori Fern: Later when we were hiking near her house, she shared the observation that though she had known me to be someone always restless and seeking something more. That what I had accomplished this year, like starting this podcast and the path that I'm laying to build a more creative service focused career is [00:12:00] perfectly consistent.

[00:12:01] Dori Fern: With what I've always said was important to me and wondered about and wanted to do.. Felt good to be gotten, to have my choices and results validated, especially now, because getting back to the money part, I'm in a bit of a pickle right now. When I arrived home from Europe, feeling all relaxed and self-satisfied, I hit that proverbial wall.

[00:12:29] Dori Fern: I just hadn't seen right in front of me. Before I went away. I made some money from a six week freelance gig, which cushioned me a bit, but for reasons that aren't interesting enough for me to detail for you here, I wound up forgoing half my expected fee. In other consulting projects I thought would move forward right when I got home, have not yet materialized, which happens and is happening a lot more now, given economic [00:13:00] factors, I have about two months of funds left with no clear idea where my next paycheck is coming from. And I only have that much because I opted to keep more cash on hand making only the minimum credit card payment this month.

[00:13:19] Dori Fern: Um, after it went up quite a bit, due to my travels in the hopes that by the time next month's bigger, bill comes due. I'll have funds on the way. Just this week, I took my final 401k payout on the account I've been living off of this past year. I've got a bit of agita. That said I won't be destitute.

[00:13:46] Dori Fern: I have an additional 401k I could tap into, but this would really be a last resort. Since investment accounts are down and that 20% tax gets taken off the. [00:14:00] Most of my wealth is safely untouchable for the most part in an IRA built on previous 401ks, dating back to the nineties. No one with any sense would encourage me to spend down any more of my retirement funds unless I absolutely must.

[00:14:15] Dori Fern: So let's hope that doesn't happen. I feel like I'm living a drama I've written for myself, that's unfolding in real time. And right now I'm at that crisis stage towards the end, you know, that high stress moment when the killer's about to get you, and you have to choose between jumping out of the burning building or waiting for your hero or heroin, who has just gotten way laid by say a Gorgon to arrive.

[00:14:47] Dori Fern: Will our protagonist find the job of her dreams. One where she gets to work for a great company that values and invests in its employees and sells goods and services that improve lives. Will [00:15:00] she find enough? Well paying freelance work to keep her afloat and with enough time left to create and build and play.

[00:15:07] Dori Fern: As she wishes

[00:15:11] Dori Fern: to raise the stakes, I made a big and exciting. A little bit scary decision this week, I decided to become a coach following in the footsteps of my own coach Carmen Hughes and enrolling in IPAC. The first module starts next week. Yikes. I'm not exactly sure yet what type of coaching specialty I'll build, but thinking it'll probably be some combination of executive leadership, coaching, transitions, coaching.

[00:15:43] Dori Fern: In other words, people like me and possibly DEI. The whole program will take about eight months to complete and I can work even full time while completing. For the first time in my adult life, I'm borrowing money from a close [00:16:00] family member who offered to loan it to me, interest free. This clenched my decision to move ahead, both eyes open and grateful for the privilege of generational wealth recently grown.

[00:16:14] Dori Fern: Also, I can start taking clients while I study. So reach out if you wanna work together. my rates will reflect my experience. I've also decided that to see this plan through and to navigate through my currently shallow fiscal waters, I'm going to scale back production of this podcast for the time being it's not super expensive to make a podcast, but the services of my excellent editor, Dave Vijaya, as I mentioned are worth every penny I don't currently possess.

[00:16:48] Dori Fern: And I need to spend a bigger chunk of my time too, getting this particular Life-Changing Life-changing journey to its closer than ever destination. Based on the [00:17:00] aforementioned dramatic arc

[00:17:01] Dori Fern: the end of season, one of Life-Changing with Dori. Fern is close for sure. You'll just have to wait a bit longer than a week for the last episode or two of the season to cross your ears. An editor once noted how good I am at writing kickers, you know, those punchy endings of essays and articles. But I'm reminded as I sit here wondering how to tie the particular pieces.

[00:17:29] Dori Fern: I've put out here today about money and mentors, decisions and dramatic arcs together that the whole point of this podcast is to sit in the beautifulness of it all. And you can take from that, what you will.

[00:17:50] Dori Fern: thank you for listening to Life-Changing with Dori Fern. I'm gonna ask you something now that would really help build my audience [00:18:00] here, which is super important as I talk about creating a sustainable piece of art that I continue making over time. 

[00:18:08] Dori Fern: If you go to my podcast website, which can be found at Life-Changing with Dori Fern dot com, you'll see links to apple to listen on Apple podcasts. And there you'll find ways to rate. If you scroll to the bottom. You can rate the podcast and if you have something great to share with other people, please leave a review there as well.