Finances can be so tricky. I anticipate more conversations around budgeting, etc. (just like time, how we spend money matters just as much as what we make/have), and this is a wonderful kick off episode with Emilie Dayan Hill.
To learn more from Emilie:
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Full Transcript
Kelly Nolan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally.
Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.
Hey, hey. So today we’re gonna dig into finances. Now whether we want them to or not. Finances obviously have a big bearing on our lives. They factor into why many of us work in the jobs that we do. Our financial situation has an impact on our ability to invest in getting support at home in the ways that we crave.
How we invest and manage our money has a bearing on how we can support our kids in their pursuit of college degrees or some other post school. Experience and so much more money is [00:01:00] important and also also complicated both logistically and emotionally. I was therefore delighted when a friend, Emily Diane Hill reached out to see if we’d wanna talk finance here, specifically digging into the financial habits we should all be calendaring and bringing into our lives so that we have more confidence when it comes to our finances.
A bit about Emily, before we dig in. Emily Diane Hill, a CFA is a principal and portfolio manager at an investment management firm in Atlanta, Georgia. As a chartered financial analyst, CFA, she has dedicated her career to helping individuals and organizations achieve their financial goals. Early in her career, Emily discovered that financial success is about so much more than money.
In fact, it isn’t about how much money you have, it’s about how you relate to it and what you do with it. Mindset and behavior are the cornerstones of long-term financial success, recognizing a gap in the traditional financial services industry. Emily launched finance that [00:02:00] feels a newsletter designed to empower women to transform the way they think and feel about money.
In the publication, she dives into the psychology and behavioral patterns behind financial decision making, offering insights and strategies to build confidence and clarity by addressing the feelings, beliefs, and behaviors that shape your relationship with money. Emily aims to help women live lives rich with meaning and enjoyment.
All right, let’s get to the good stuff. Well, Emily, thank you so much for being here. Do you mind introducing yourself and just giving us some context of how you got into investment and wealth management in the first place?
Emilie Dayan Hill: Absolutely, and thank you so much, Kelly, for having me. I am really excited to have this conversation and it is such an important conversation for women that we do not have enough.
So my hill, I.
Based investment management firm. So what that means is I work with my clients to invest their portfolio and advise [00:03:00] on their finances to help them reach their financial goals and live the life that they wanna live. I have been in this industry for 11 years now, which is hard to believe. And my background in school was economics.
And when I started my career, I sat for the chartered financial Analyst. Designation design, which is very esteemed in this field. But what I realized very early on in my career is that education and training, as wonderful as they were, they did not prepare me for the emotional and psychological complexity of working with real people with real money.
And that just really struck me and the further I got in my career, realizing not only that, but. The financial industry in general does a very poor job of talking to women specifically about money in a way that resonates [00:04:00] with the way women actually experience money. Mm-hmm. In their life. So five years ago, I decided that I wanted to start addressing that side of.
Money, which is more psychological and behavior focused. And so I started talking about it on Instagram and now also on Substack, and I call it finance. That feels, because money touches every aspect of our life, if of course it’s going to make us emotional and have baggage associated with it. Some of us make it out to mean more than it actually is in our lives, and the industry doesn’t address that.
So that is what I’m trying to do through finance. That feels, and then also taking that back for my clients that I work with for my, my job. Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: And I, I love this point because I do feel like that I grew up thinking. Financial investment and using money [00:05:00] wisely and all this was somewhat supposed to be like a neutral fact and like you just do these things and you set yourself up well and it’s like this neutral path you follow.
But there is so much emotion that can go into what do we spend money on? How do we prioritize it? Should we able to do this on our own or like get guidance and
appreciate. Not only that, you guide people on the complexity of some of this stuff, but also support the emotional feelings that I don’t think we always can explain what’s going on. I mean, I get it when I have to spend a lot of money. It’s like this immediate constrictive feeling in me that I like kind of lash out at other people around me, and it can be really complicated.
And so I appreciate that you acknowledge that because it’s a reality and we shouldn’t feel weird feeling it, but we also can like address it as well.
Emilie Dayan Hill: And have tools and tactics to help us manage the feelings and the [00:06:00] psychology and the natural biases that we have as individuals, that once you’re aware of your own biases, you can just have a toolkit to help you navigate it so that every time you face a financial question, it’s not this huge ordeal that you have to face, that you avoid or you obsess about, but toolkit.
Yeah, I mean, we just need your toolkit.
Kelly Nolan: And before we go into the practical like tool things that we’re gonna talk about, just so people have an idea of what you talk about on Substack or on Instagram, when it comes particularly to women and whether it’s investing or spending or making money, what are some of the common patterns?
And I’m sure there are many, but just like a few patterns that you see women experience that maybe men don’t. And you don’t even have to go into how you address it, but just so people can understand what they might learn from you on that side of things before we turn to the really practical stuff.
Emilie Dayan Hill: Yeah.
So a [00:07:00] couple things I will say that are completely out of order and hopefully I don’t forget because it’s such a big question. The first most important thing, and this is probably the topic I talk about the most on Instagram and studies.
Is so much more indicative of financial success and financial wellness than is financial knowledge or iq. And I find with women there is a proven knowledge gap with finances and it’s not even a real knowledge gap that women self report knowing less about finances, even if you were to test men and women, they would know about the same.
This. Lesser confidence to the table. And so in my experience, what I have seen is more women tend to avoid their finances or obsess about it, and neither [00:08:00] of those are healthy. Those are two extremes. And so you want to find the middle ground and recognize that. Just very simple behaviors. We’ll get you where you need to be financially.
It’s not about knowing what a cap ratio is or price to earnings like you don’t have to.
Ingraining, very simple behaviors into your day-to-day will get you where you need to go. And then the other thing I’ll say about women specifically is one of my favorite features on Instagram is being able to poll the audience. And so I’m able to learn so much about how women think about money. And I have a lot of male followers too, and, and they participate.
And it’s really educational for me. Again, because this is very. Lacking in academic study. Yep. People do not really study the [00:09:00] gender psychology of money. But my favorite question to ask with groups or on Instagram is, what does financial success look like to you? Or what words describe financial success to you?
And what I find for men is they tend to respond with words like net worth, liquidity, performance. Things that are measurable and that are external. And women on the other hand, tend to respond with words like peace of mind, confidence, generosity, being able to take care of my family. These things that are impossible to measure, but they’re so internal and you have to have the external measurable performance, for example, to achieve that internal feeling.
But. Approach money, they tend to approach money from that perspective as opposed to on [00:10:00] paper, how are my investments performing? How much has my net worth grown this year? Yeah. For example.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah, I can see that. And I, I think what’s so interesting about that too is without, you know, some of the things we’re gonna talk about today and more what on larger scale beyond.
Things like confidence or wanting to take care of family. I think when you dig deep into it of like, what does that mean? And you can get at those measurable things, but we’re not taught really how to do that or we don’t feel confident on how to do that. And because of that I do feel like there’s just a constant like unease or anxiety about need work.
I you take on more, make more money because I make more, make more, make more, versus slowing down and really analyzing, you know, what do I need? Even though the dream stuff on top of it. I had this business mentor a long time ago who. Really broke that [00:11:00] down on a business side of things. Like, you know, when you’re, you, there’s such a striving and business to like make more money in the seven figure business and all this kind of stuff.
Mm-hmm. And she was like slow down. Like you probably don’t need a seven figure business. Like on top of your monthly expenses, what are your dream things you want? Factor that into your budget, factor in expenses and taxes and then back out. What do you down when you feel like you’ve. Kind of captured all the things you want in life and can put a more financial figure on that, including wiggle room.
I guess I’m going off on a tangent, but I just think that you’re right that if women strive for a little bit more of these amorphous things and don’t dig deeper into what do those actually mean, there’s a lot of anxiety and pressure that comes with that and stress, and then avoidance, as you said, obsessiveness and it.
Find that middle ground and like make these concepts a.
The behavior things you were talking about. You had reached out to [00:12:00] me with this great idea of tying the activities that you think all women should be doing personalized in their own way to making finances more realistic and doable and in a way that like fits into our lives in a realistic way using the technology and approach that I love, which is, and so on front.
That you think women should be doing to become familiar with and understand and manage their finances?
Emilie Dayan Hill: Women need to make their financial wellness a part of their overall wellness routine, the same way that we take care of our bodies by brushing our teeth or scheduling doctor’s appointments. Again, it’s those behaviors are lead to.
Knowing the ins and outs of what different companies were doing and their balance sheets and et cetera, et cetera. So [00:13:00] I truly believe in the bright method that you’ve developed of calendaring, everything. Money should be on your calendar. It is one of the most important things in your life. People have a really hard time saying that out loud.
Yeah. Because they don’t wanna sound greedy. Or you know, some people who money just makes them so uncomfortable, they don’t even want to acknowledge that. But money, it touches everything. So it needs to be, you need to foster your relationship with it, and by having regular touch points with your money, it will allow you to grow your confidence, strengthen that behavioral muscle of what good money behavior looks like in your life.
And also something that you say all the time with the Bright method is take off the mental load. You have it on your calendar. It is a part of your routine. So now you don’t have to obsess about it [00:14:00] day in or day out, or freak out when there’s an emergency financially or a big surprise. You know that you have it calendar to have a regular check, a part of your routine, and you’ll address it when you need to address.
Kelly Nolan: Right. And so what does that look like on a regular basis? What do you think that, like a good baseline approach that people can adapt to themselves? A good thing that we should be aiming for initially to experiment with?
Emilie Dayan Hill: Yeah. So three things that I believe must be on your calendar are, I believe once or twice a year.
Every person should have a financial deep dive, either by themself. Or with their partner or with a very trusted friend. I have a goal friend. We keep each other accountable and we talk about finances. Whoever that person is, for you to have one or two financial deep dives a year where you are really identifying, [00:15:00] you know, putting on paper what is the life you want to live, what are the values most?
Core and central to who you are, and then how do you align your financial goals in life to support those long-term goals? And so calendar a deep dive once or twice a year, and then to track how you’re progressing. Second, which this is the one that I wanna go more into detail with you about is the money checkin to me.
This is a twice a month activity on 15. I line it up with my pay periods. Women have different money check-in dates, but I get so many messages from women saying, I just did my money check-in. Like I’m feeling really good and nothing makes me happier than getting those messages. And then the third thing to put on the calendar is important financial dates, whether it is when taxes are due, [00:16:00] April 15 or quarterly estimated.
Insurance payments, property taxes, get all of those on the calendar and really use the bright method of from there backtracking the prep that goes into those various important financial dates.
Kelly Nolan: I love that you’re speaking my love language. ’cause you’re right that. That April 15th date is so important, but you need to start up fast, but you also wanna be calendaring, even if you’re not totally sure what it is.
Let’s say it’s your first year doing this, an hour and a week or something to gather all the documents you need. Maybe start working on any, you know, forms that you fill out, or even working with your account, like reaching out, making sure they have everything, just those reminders to check in. So let’s dig into that money check-in a little bit more when it’s the first or the 15th.
What are the types of [00:17:00] things that you’re doing during those sessions?
Emilie Dayan Hill: Yes, so what I do during a money check-in, and again, I want to say there is no single right way to do money. This is what works for me. Hopefully it can provide inspiration. Person is.
With the nuances of their own financial life. So first, make it regular, get it on the calendar once or twice a month. Step two is putting your eyes on every single account that you have Kind of a mantra in my work is No surprises. And that’s really what this part is about. Putting your eyes on all of your accounts.
You’ll find surprises or not. I can go into a couple personal examples. Yeah, please do. But you know, I’m talking about looking at your checking [00:18:00] and savings accounts, your credit cards, your investment accounts, retirement accounts. If your kids have 5, 2, 9 accounts, every single account that you have, just log in and put your eyes on it.
How has it changed from the last check in? Are there any surprises and errors can happen all the time. Like it doesn’t even have to be big, bad fraud. It can just be simple errors. And I will note that last week news broke that Citibank accidentally deposited $81 trillion into someone’s checking
Kelly Nolan: account.
Oh my gosh.
Emilie Dayan Hill: They were only supposed to deposit $240. There was an error that went through multiple levels of approval and the bank accidentally credited an account with 81 trillion. They even have that much money. That doesn’t, that’s not even real. It’s like crazy. Another example [00:19:00] is several years ago, my husband changed jobs and his former employer, who was a massive bank, they kept paying him for months on accident.
We alerted them and it just kept hitting the account. So because I was aware of that from pretty immediately when that was happening, we were able to alert the bank eventually. Well, we were setting aside the money ’cause we knew they were gonna want it back. Right. Of course. And months later, they finally got it figured out in their system and we were able to write a check and refund them.
But it was such a massive organization, it, it took them a while to figure out how to fix it. I recently did have a fraud example, and what’s so weird about this is it’s a checking account that I do not have a debit card on, and someone made a couple charges at gas stations in Florida. That were very, very small.
Yeah. But they absolutely were not [00:20:00] mine. I have no idea how they did it, because I don’t have a debit card. It’s really just kind of a holding account for me. And the reason I caught that is because every two weeks I’m just putting my eyes on it and I was like, whoa. $80 at Amaco in Florida.
Kelly Nolan: What? Yeah. Well, and that’s how they start, right?
They do these little charges and then they start going bigger. So it’s.
Emilie Dayan Hill: That’s why you need to put your eyes on your accounts very regularly. And I’ll just plug this, now that I’ve got my system, it only takes 15 minutes. This is not a big ordeal. It’s twice a month, 15 minutes. But I am, I mean, the impact that is having on my financial life is huge.
So once you’ve looked at all of your accounts, the next step is, are there any actions that. From looking at accounts, do you need to move money between accounts towards a financial goal that you have? A [00:21:00] really good example is if you’re contributing to an IRA account, are those deposits being invested? A lot of people don’t realize that if they have a self-managed IRA.
It’s not automatically invested. You have to like set all that up on the front end. And I have a friend who didn’t know that and for years, her IRA sat in cash.
Kelly Nolan: Oh man.
Emilie Dayan Hill: You know, so every two weeks just putting your eyes on it, doing what you need to do, paying your credit card bill. Another one I wanna point out is rolling over old 4 0 1 Ks.
When you’re looking at your accounts, you just have a better sense of what your entire financial picture is. And just a little fact, I knew it was a big number. I did not realize it was this big. According to Kipler, there is approximately $1.5 trillion of lost 401k assets. Wow. That’s about 25% of the 401k universe, and basically it’s people who change [00:22:00] jobs and then years go by and then that company gets acquired.
It’s acquired multiple times. Maybe the company goes out of business and then 20 years later they have no idea how to access the 401k. It’s a major issue, so if you’re being proactive of checking all of your accounts, it will prompt you to be staying on top of little things like that. Like, oh, I changed jobs.
I need to roll over my 401k. Yeah. So that I don’t lose track of it. Of course with the action part, as much as you can automate the better, but you still need to keep tabs. We mentioned those errors. Errors will happen just. And then the last step of a money check-in is review the important financial dates that you already have on your calendar.
Yeah. To just be like, yeah, do you have a big bill coming up? Do you need to move money from your savings to your checking to pay that bill? You [00:23:00] know, what are the steps you need to take for the big financial date that is in the next two weeks?
Kelly Nolan: I like that. And I’m envisioning, I know that, um, you had mentioned you’ll be providing a guide with the steps in it, and so we’ll put a link in the show notes about that, and then just envisioning, like tying it to the bright method.
What I think about is calendaring this. So on the first, we repeated each month on the 15th, we repeated each month. And then within that I would have that calendar kind of description, layout in detail, what you wanna do during this so that there’s no mental load around. What do I do? You have your agenda laid out there.
If you want, you could even link to the bank login pages or you know, credit card easier on you.
Dates you shared. You know, look at upcoming dates, do I need to move money to different accounts? Things like that. And then you could [00:24:00] almost have like a totally miscellaneous section that you rarely look at that’s like, did I change jobs recently being invested that like. These things you might not ever even need to do, but it again, it’s like that catchall of when it’s relevant, that information, that prompt is there for you in a really great way.
Is that kind of what you do, or do you like add anything more to that? Absolutely.
Emilie Dayan Hill: So I have a couple different tools that I use to help me stay on top of this in addition to putting it on my calendar. Awesome. Maybe I’m old school, but I love a spreadsheet. I have tried so many financial tools and nothing beats my spreadsheet.
So literally in my spreadsheet at the top, I have the steps for my money check. Nice. So that it’s like right there in front of me. I also track cash flow because I’m a little neurotic like that, but. Having the steps in my spreadsheet. And then also a new addition for me is Copilot app, which [00:25:00] is a budgeting app.
And I don’t use it for budgeting per se, but really just to track and categorize my expenses. And that’s another area where irregularities have shown up like, oh, that wasn’t my transaction on my credit card. I need to reach out to American Express. Yeah, absolutely. Like getting it on your calendar with as much detail.
Or having it on a checklist right in front of you so that you don’t have to remember every time.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah, I think that’s awesome. And I’ll say that I started using copilot ’cause you had told me about it at your recommendation, and it really is awesome because for example. My husband and I have kind of two family credit cards that we use, but one is in my name and one is in his name as like the primary people on them.
And the one in his name was what we used for a long time. And then we kind of switched to relying on mine ’cause we moved to Minnesota and the Delta parks are good, so [00:26:00] we lean on that. But what’s funny is I couldn’t get easy eyes on his credit card. Not because I mean it. He’s happy to share it, but every time we logged in, we have two factor.
The two factor goes to him. So I couldn’t get in, and then I forget about it later. And by bringing everything into copilot, even though I’m not easily getting access still to his, the credit card that he has, I can see all the transactions because there are things on there that I was like, I didn’t even know.
And I’m like, we are paying care.com, those every three month fees for like a while. And I was like, oh my gosh, I would’ve canceled that so long ago had I known. And now that everything is streamlined together, it’s so much easier for me to have just transparency on what all is being charged to us as a family and yeah, but set budgets and keep an eye on things.
But also, as you said, just look for.[00:27:00]
Emilie Dayan Hill: Yep. It’s not even about like creating a budget, sticking to a budget, but just as simple as, yes, putting your eyes on it.
Kelly Nolan: Because I knew, right, like I knew there were probably like payments going on that would, we didn’t need anymore, but just because I couldn’t get to it, and honestly it’s like not my favorite thing to think about.
It’s not like I was like prioritizing that all the time. And now it’s so much easier and I can just be like, oh, we need to cancel that. We need to cancel that. And it’s, you know, it’s one of those things that I think we, we never, always, it’s like we know it, but we hide from the things we don’t want. That actually stresses us out so much.
’cause we know we’re doing it. It gets bigger and bigger. Yeah. And that we think that’s easier, but we know it’s like not, and are, we’re stressed out about it. And if we just confront it and build in these habits to have those eyes on it, I totally agree with you that it, it just reduces all the stress. I’m like, why was I avoiding this for so long?
We all do it. Yeah. Well, shifting out the day-to-day management of money and just, oh, [00:28:00] before we keep going, I just wanna remind people that you have a guide, the links, the show notes, you can grab it. There’s free, just grab and. As Emily and I both said, personalize it to you, like use it as a jumping off point to inspire, but personalize it to you.
And then so shifting out of that though, you’ve also discussed sharing the need to have like a in case of an emergency file, what is that and like what goes into that?
Emilie Dayan Hill: So if people don’t like talking about money, people really don’t like talking about in case emergency file. As the name says, it’s a file that has important information or where to access important information or your designated person, whether it’s your partner or your parents, or a sibling, whoever is your most trusted designated person, it’s a document for them to be able to access your information [00:29:00] Should.
The worst case scenario happen, and it’s not even death, but if you’re in a car accident mm-hmm. You’re just knocked like you’re injured and you’re on meds and bills have to be paid, that kind of thing. Or I mean, recently we had a really bad family medical diagnosis and my sister was like, here’s my file just in case.
Yeah.
It can be paper. If it’s in paper, I would keep it in a fireproof safe. It can be an online digital document like Google Drive, but I would make sure that it’s extremely secure. What I am shifting to is encrypted, like password vaults. Yep. Where you can keep account information. Yep. And then there’s notes section, and you can say who’s the contact person?
This is who has a copy of [00:30:00] my will and my power of attorney. Here is their phone number. Mm-hmm. Call them in case of emergency, like the attorney that drafted it, for example, and then make sure that your designated person has the master password just in case. Yep. Or keep the master password in.
Technology and fraud has gotten so advanced, we now need a combination of analog and digital. Yep. You know? Yeah. Things that you would wanna include are, again, like for me, it’s a spreadsheet for other people. It might be a physical file, but a spreadsheet for me of where to find my birth certificate, social security numbers for my family unit.
Essential documents like will power of attorney. House deed, that kind of thing. Who are the important contacts like your attorney, insurance agent? Financial advisor, mortgage [00:31:00] info? What bills are auto pay? What bills need to be paid manually in case someone has to jump in for you? I mean, this happens. It happens.
Yep. It’s the worst, but it happens if you have retirement accounts or trust or. Life insurance. First of all, making sure that you have beneficiaries. So many people forget to list beneficiaries and then it’s a total mess if away and don’t beneficiaries and. Make sure your designated person is aware of how to get that information.
And I also think, I don’t know if you have opinions on this, but I think your designated person should also have info to get into your email as well as social media accounts.
Kelly Nolan: Yep, I do too. As long as they’re really trusted. I completely agree. And I appreciate you sharing because I, I have one of these, so I use password manager, I have it as a.[00:32:00]
My husband and my mom have the password for mine because I also think, like I’m with my husband a lot. If something happened to both of us, I want someone else to also be able to access. Yes, and your, but I, I didn’t have like what bills we’re paying on a regular basis and things like that, which candidly, another plug for copilot now makes that pretty easy to set up because they’re all listed in one.
I I believe in this too. Difficult but less morbid is when I was living in San Diego and worried more about fires. But I mean, we can all still have a house fire. Even just having this document for yourself in that kind of situation is really, really valuable. Like I had like phone numbers of local friends in there and.
Hope Insurance and all that kind of stuff because I was like, if I lost my phone in a fire, I dunno. Everybody’s phone numbers need to be able to like, reach out to local people who could help, things like that. So I, I just think it’s really, really smart to do [00:33:00] it. I think that, as you said, it’s not one of those things we enjoy doing, but it does provide a lot of peace of mind
Emilie Dayan Hill: and I update as life changes. You have kids. Yep. Your assets grow. You have new accounts, so add that to your calendar.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah, no, it’s a great, great point. Alright, well thank you so much Emily. Just to reiterate, I know we threw a lot at you. A lot of this will be in that guide that Emily will be sharing, so check that out.
And hopefully that you can find your own cadence with this and own personalized approach to it, but one that helps you not have that kind of looming scaries feeling about your finances, but gets closer and closer to it. Because I think there are other studies that I have no idea what they are, but about how women really.[00:34:00]
Financial management of their house and knowledge base and.
Where money needs to be going and why certain money is being spent and things like that. And if we can get more involved in just keeping tabs on things, I think that is very important that we as women do. And we shouldn’t relinquish that just because of unfortunately like societal history on that front.
Um, so thank you so much, Emily. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you wanted to talk about or you feel like we covered all the main things we were hoping to cover?
Emilie Dayan Hill: We covered all the things we were hoping to cover. I will just reiterate, getting this on your calendar and committing to financial habits, money habits, very small habits that are regular and consistent will help reduce that mental load that money creates so that you can actually [00:35:00] go out and live your life and live with that peace of mind.
So this is really important and I hope everybody found it helpful.
Kelly Nolan: Well, thank you so much. Really just appreciate all the practical wisdom that you shared today. If people wanna learn more about what you are doing, where should they go?
Emilie Dayan Hill: So Instagram is where I am most present. It’s Emily Dayan Hill, E-M-I-L-I-E-D-A-Y-A-N-H-I-L-L.
And then of course I have, which is finance in.
These guides. Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here and for you listening at home, thank you for being here as well, and in the next episode.
