[00:00:06] Viktoriia Miracle: Hello. Hello and welcome back to happy time happy money podcast with Viktoriia Miracle. And today we have a guest Walli Miller. She's a financial coach and founder of financially thriving money coaching. She teaches high achieving young professionals who feel overwhelmed with their finances. She coaches millennials on how to budget save and invest while balancing what they want today.

[00:00:35] Today. Hi and welcome Walli.

[00:00:38] Walli Miller: Hi, I'm super excited to be here. Hi Viktoriia.

[00:00:42] Viktoriia Miracle: So excited to have you over and as always, I would love to hear more about you. Tell us your story on how you started on that journey?

[00:00:51] Walli Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in a relatively low income households where we never really talked about money much, except for the lack of it and I'm thinking about even using the terms like or building wealth or investing. We're not terms that we really use. We didn't really have conversations about that. So it wasn't until I was in my thirties where I really understood that, even though I had a good job, I was making really good income. I was a high income earner for being so young.

[00:01:29] I was paying my bills and I thought I was doing really good with money because I set a little bit of money aside, but the one piece I was missing was actually building wealth. I had no idea how to do it, and I didn't even know what that meant to me.

[00:01:46] Viktoriia Miracle: Okay. Well, You and then how did you start it? Give us more information.

[00:01:54] Walli Miller: Yeah. Yeah. So I really was lucky enough to find a career that I really enjoyed. I had a career that I found extremely fulfilling, but one of the things that I realized was that when management changed my ideal job, Became my ideal job became something that was less than ideal.

[00:02:15] It became very toxic. It was a toxic work environment and I sort of realized that even though I was making good money and I was able to stay out of like credit card debt, I really didn't have a whole lot to show for the amount of money that I was making. And so I did one, a lot of people do is go to the Googles, right.

[00:02:35] Go to the internet to really try to figure out how can I retire early? How can I quit my job? How can I build wealth? What am I doing wrong? And that was when I discovered something called The Fire Movement. It was a bunch of people who were able to retire in their thirties and forties by implementing some really key steps, some simple key steps.

[00:02:59] Viktoriia Miracle: What, so tell us more about fire movement?

[00:03:03] Walli Miller: Yeah. So the fire movement is basically an acronym. It stands for financially independent retire early. And when I heard this, when I said, wait a minute, there's people retiring early and we're not talking about from 65 to 60. We're talking about people retiring 55, 50, 45.

[00:03:21] Even at the age of 40 years old, it really piqued my interest. And what I realized is that they knew something that I did not, which was we've probably all heard, spend less than you earn, right. So make sure you're not spending every single dollar. But the second factor that I was missing was, invest the difference.

[00:03:43] And it was at that moment where I hit me, right? So many of us, we might bring in $4,000 a month and spend $4,000 a month. If you're lucky, right. There's some of us who make $4,000 a month and spend 5,000. But I thought I was doing it pretty good cause I said, okay, I'm definitely not spending every single dollar that I make.

[00:04:02] I'm putting a little bit of money aside. But the key thing that was missing was the ability to grow that money. And I basically spent an entire weekend listening to podcasts and blogs and reading books, watching YouTube videos on how to build wealth. How was it that these people were able to leverage the income that they were earning in order to retire at 40 years old.

[00:04:28] Viktoriia Miracle: Yeah, well, that's amazing. And I mean, everybody wish to retire early, right? Why not to? So what is the, what would you say like most common misconceptions about investing and saving money?

[00:04:46] Walli Miller: Yeah, I think so much for so long. I just thought it was really complicated and I also thought that the only people who invested were rich people, right.

[00:04:55] I thought that in order to start investing, you have to have 10, 20, 30, $40,000. And if you just had a few bucks, it wasn't even worth investing. And what I realized was that some of the lingo, the jargon, the words that were used to explain investing could really seem overwhelming. And it didn't need to be that complicated.

[00:05:18] So one of the first things that I ask people, when they're like, look, I make good money and I'm nothing to show for it. They relate to my story, or I see myself in them. The first thing I ask is, do you really know where your money is going? Do you really know how much money you're making? Because for so many, for so long for usually what people will say is, oh, I make $75,000 a year.

[00:05:42] Well, that's your salary, but after taxes and after you pay your health insurance, do you really know how much money you're bringing in every month? And then the second question is, do you really know what you're spending money on? When we think about things like food, Eating out groceries. Sometimes we give a ballpark number, but so many of us, when we actually take a look at 1, 2, 3 months worth of expenses of the amount of time we order, you know, grub hub, Uber eats, or we go out to eat or we buy groceries.

[00:06:16] We then realized how much money we're actually spending there and so the key thing is not about deprivation. It's not about cutting out all the fun things we love. It's about really aligning what you you're spending money on with what you value most and I think that's really important.

[00:06:33] Viktoriia Miracle: What do you get to think first before you investing in, like, what was your number one mistake that you've done?

[00:06:41] Walli Miller: Yeah. So I would say thinking that it was too complicated, to begin and that you needed a lot of money. So the first thing that I do that I did and what I recommend so many people to do is to leverage the tools you might have with your current employer. So if you're working on W2 job, take a look to see if they have some type of 401k, a 4 0 3 B, maybe a Roth, or a TSP if you work for the military or in government.

[00:07:09] Right. So see if there are any type of retirement plans. I'm available to you through your employer. Now, if you're, self-employed, don't worry there, plenty of options for you too, or if you don't have access to a 401k there's things like a Roth IRA rate or traditional IRA. Now I've mentioned a whole bunch of alphabet suit out there, which is why this thing of investing can seem really complicated, but really just remember there are some retirement acoounts available to you that really make it really easy to begin investing. And so many people don't realize that when you contribute to a 401k, you're actually investing money, you can actually make sure that those money go into investment. Yeah.

[00:07:58] Viktoriia Miracle: Awesome, and the last question that I have for everybody on this podcast, fill in the blank for me in this sentence.

[00:08:04] If you really knew me, you will know that I am blank.

[00:08:10] Walli Miller: Love this question. So if you really knew me, you would know how much of a money nerd I've always been. I didn't always get all of the money things right. But I always knew that making sure that you had a control of your finances was going to be a big key component to your financial success and wellbeing.

[00:08:34] Viktoriia Miracle: Beautiful. And I know you have a, some awesome gifts for my audience today. Could you share what it is?

[00:08:42] Walli Miller: Yeah. So I created the road to financial wellness. It's a road to finances, a wellness roadmap. And it is one of the things that people forget is that sometimes we want to start with the math when it comes to money, but I always say it's important to start with the mindset and your relationship with money.

[00:09:01] And so the road to financial wellness roadmap is one of those things that can really help you begin aligning or figuring out, making sure that you really understand what your relationship with money is.

[00:09:13] Viktoriia Miracle: Beautiful. Thank you so much and as always, you can just scroll down whether you watching or listening and find in description link to a web site episode of this episode, to the page of this episode.

[00:09:27] And there's going to be all links that were mentioned above and Instagram of Walli, my Instagram, if you have any, any ideas, questions, you just want to communicate, love to communicate anything, to send us message, send Walli message and I'm sure she will be happy to hear from you. Thank you so much for watching and listening today and I'll see you in the next one.

[00:09:48] Bye. Thank you, Walli.

[00:09:50] Walli Miller: Bye. Thank you so much, Viktoriia.