#227 – Self-Care For Women

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 useful for myself, and seeing others doing and kind of building this well of practices, habits, resources. And anything that comes around with that 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 in you know, question might be, what is your self care look like? And a lot of people pause and say, Yeah, I get my nails done once a month and pair 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 or 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 than it needs to be refilled. So if taking 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 since this 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 this particular plan for it and maybe some of my ideas will spark an interest for you. So let's die. vn 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 all together. Although as many spending plans as I have done in my last 20 years as a 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 just 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 the 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 it really probably more from looking at other people's budgets, and kind of, you know, assessing that. But here's the guidelines, if you want something tangible, how about you set a target to have maybe five, or 10% of your income to allocate toward yourself 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 gonna 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, I was 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 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, 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 would have in your credit card statement, I would probably find that in there. I think it's just your are doing a lot of this stuff, maybe you just haven't given 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 at 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 to 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 a comment, self care and I'll share that worksheet with you. Very simple, it's gonna walk you through the 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 a 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 in 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 gonna 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 I've 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, 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 focused person, I blocked 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 then my personal obligations. So like to 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 oh boy, okay, one of these days, I'm gonna go get a massage and 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 to 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, that you know that maybe once a month, you're going to get a massage, and 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 on 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 in and you kind of get away from this excuse of, I don't have time to do this stuff. So assess the time commitments and your calendar went from where you are. Now I know 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'm 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 is 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 you don't have time for everything if one more request comes my way my plate is gonna 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 the state 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, don't we actually interesting side note, we are going through this course with Mainstreet 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 a topic discuss in that much detail. Alright my friends. I also wanted to share with you a list of resources that are going to help you in enhance your self care. Now, these are resources that I am currently using, trying and experimenting with some of them. And so I again want to give you tools to get this started. So take them, experiment and see what works for you and to I'd love to hear what you are 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 in some books, journals, and maybe some in person events, to a couple of apps. This is really new, I 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 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, dope, highly recommend for you to check it out. For those of you 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 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, headset on and take care of your stress. And it's been 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 sink, 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 aura 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's 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 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 you to track your food what you eating your activity level. So like if you log in, in your exercises, if you're you know, whatever activity you're doing running, jogging, lifting, weights, yoga, you can log 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 through. So I feel like it kind of covers sort of a robust array of things that anyone can adopt. Now a couple of books that have been really instrumental in helping me think about self self care on a different way beyond just a body needs. Right but more kind of entering the 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 a journal is called How are you really, by Jenna Kutcher. And it's a really interesting read. She it's it's more of a workbook. It's a book by the Kennedys, accompanied by a workbook that allows you to go through sections 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's 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 Glennon 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 have 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 guys that I think I want to share with you to get you started reading. And then I mentioned this on the previous podcasts, as well. But but the five minute reflection journal that Jenna also has the author of the higher 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 they're 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 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 too, 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. What I did earlier at the 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 events. 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 an interest at 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 International 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 of 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, or go pick them at the park. So it wasn't, it wasn't always about 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 will 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. I 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.