You Make Good Money… So Where Is It Going? (Money Mindset Mistakes)

Women and money mindset. If you're a high-earning woman wondering "why can't I save money," you're not alone. The women and money conversation rarely addresses what happens when you're smart, educated, and still struggling financially. 

In this episode, financial coach Sandra Park and I share the money mindset shifts that finally helped us stop overspending and start building wealth.

We get brutally honest about our own money mistakes: my near-daily Amazon orders during my time at Amazon, Sandra's multiple real estate moves, and the "I deserve this" mentality that kept us both stuck.

Sandra shares why women in STEM and other high-pressure careers often struggle with money despite their intelligence and education. We talk about why we outsourced our financial decisions to the men in our lives, the mental load that keeps women from learning financial systems, and what actually works when you're ready to take control.

Topics covered:

• Why making more money often leads to more money problems
• The "keeping up with the Joneses" trap in corporate environments
• Retail therapy, stress spending, and the entitlement mindset
• How women outsource financial decisions (and why we need to stop)
• The mental load difference and why women want simpler finances
• Sandra's order of operations for getting your money right
• The spending category that destroys most budgets
• One 30-day exercise that changes everything
• When to get help instead of figuring it out alone

Connect with Sandra Park: Website | LinkedIn: Sandra Park | Engineer Her Path Podcast

Transcript

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Jule: I used to make pretty good money, but somehow never knew where it all went. I'm not talking about "oops, I bought a latte." I'm talking about me working at Amazon and ordering so much stuff that, when I looked at my order history, I for real got embarrassed because it averaged out to basically an order every other day.

Because it's the beginning of the year, I'm taking a closer look at all things health and wealth, which is why I'm sitting down with financial coach Sandra Park to talk about why we do these weird things with money, especially when life gets stressful. This isn't the typical money advice out there that tells you to optimize every single dollar, or cut out everything that makes life worth living. We’re two women in STEM sharing the stories about our own struggles, what's usually happening for people like us, and what to do instead.

So if you know you're smart and you have a decent income, but your money situation still doesn't make sense, this episode is for you. 

You're listening to This Is How You Think, the show that remodels your mindset. I'm your host Jule Kim. Let's dive in.

Sandra Park: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Jule, for that warm introduction and for having me on your podcast. We've had so many fun conversations. I'm a working engineer at this moment. I'm a single mom, and then I'm a financial coach in the evenings building a business. So I'm just like a normal person, but I came to learn personal finances myself a bit later in life and now want to help other women learn how to manage their money better.

Jule: Well, I know you and I have shared some similar history, shall we say. I think a lot of people don't actually know this about me, but I've spent about 10 years in corporate. I was a content manager. I was all in the world of marketing. And I eventually moved on to product management at Amazon.

The Amazon job was definitely my highest paying one ever. So it was pretty sweet, you know, and the base salary was decent. Amazon back then, and they probably still do, they make up for a lot of that total comp with RSUs, right? So stock.

What about you? What's your background in what companies?

Sandra Park: Oh yeah, like you, I've worked at a lot of—I think almost every company I've worked for has been in the Fortune 500. I worked at Lockheed Martin most of my career. I was there over 15 years. I've worked for Raytheon, I've worked for L3, now called L3 Harris, KBR, SAIC, and then now I work for MDA Space.

Yeah, they all just sound like alphabet soup, but they're pretty big, well-known companies, all in the aerospace defense, mostly government contracting type of sector. But yeah, we have a very similar background where we've both worked in a very stressful, fast-paced corporate environment where I'm sure even though you're getting compensated, work wasn't walking in the park all the time, right?

Jule: Oh my god, no. Have you seen that article that came out about people crying in the bathrooms at Amazon? You know, that's a real thing.

Sandra Park: Yeah, wow, wow, I can't imagine. So yeah, you being more in the commercial sector, I'm sure that's where the salaries and you got the RSUs and all the other perks and bonuses and all that. I don't quite always get all that, especially in the government type of sector. But yeah, similar environment of being around really successful, ambitious people climbing the corporate ladder, people that are really, really dedicated to their jobs and you're making a lot of salary, but you also have a lot of responsibility and stress at work.

Jule: That is for real. So the reason why I wanted you to come on the show and talk about finances, but especially finances for people like you and me—there's something about the stress of the job where it had me do completely cray cray things now that I think about it. Because I went and did something which... I forget exactly when. It was a couple of years after I quit Amazon. But something made me go back and look in my Amazon order history. I don't know if you know this, but you can go and look at your Amazon order history by year. So I looked at the number of orders I placed during the time I worked at Amazon and it was sick. The number was averaging out to something like every other day I was placing an order on Amazon. Yeah.

Sandra Park: Wow.

Jule: But that's really why I wanted to get into it because I know that the people who know us, right? They all look at us. We're smart, accomplished women. We've had these really well-paying jobs, very highly educated.

And yet, why on earth would we do things like that? Now, I can't speak for you, but for me, I know a lot of it was stress, a lot of it was... I wasn't happy. So it was just constant retail therapy. I also was never taught how to manage my money. I was never taught how to think about money.

And you might think, like, duh, what is there to think about? But given my ongoing struggles with managing my money in a healthy way where I can really create like a stockpile or do something that goes towards a more productive end, there's something not quite there for me.

So that's why I really wanted you to come on and share some of your insights and hopefully other women like us, highly educated, highly accomplished, but yet not having the financial stability that they're looking for or the wealth. Maybe there's something here they can take away.

Sandra Park: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I remember even when I was making over six figures, probably the first entire decade of my career, I was like you, where I was just spending everything I made. And I was getting really good raises, and I was getting promoted. You know, it's the first part, the early part of your career where career growth is exponential, right?

Companies want to keep you so you're getting all these promotions and raises and increases. And I remember really falling into that trap of thinking if I just kept making more money, then that would solve all my money problems. But then I would kind of look around and I don't know how much you felt victim to this, but a lot of it was keeping up with the Joneses. I would watch other people and kind of see what they were buying and doing. And I think the other curse was I lived in a place where the cost of living wasn't that bad. So even as an entry level engineer, you were like above the median of what a family of four would make in that area. So you had all this like disposable income, right? And I would watch my coworkers buying these really big houses, you know, buying these big lots for their houses, boats, jet skis, like all the toys. I remember the shopping trips with my coworkers and friends and all that. So it was a lot of like, everyone was watching each other and seeing what they're buying and doing with their money. Because yeah, when you go from—I was looking at what I used to make when I was a college student, I made like $10,000.

Jule: Wait wait, $10,000 a year?

Sandra Park: Yeah, $10,000 a year. But you know what? I managed that $10,000 very well. I paid for school. I had a place to live. I didn't charge anything. I didn't put anything on credit cards. So when I actually looked back at that, I was really happy. It's kind of that poor college student mentality. Anything you needed, your friends chipped in. You were very resourceful. You found a way to make your money work for you. And then when I graduated from college, I think my first starting salary was $46,000, something like that. I got a little bit low-balled, but to me that was super exciting, because I didn't get a job right out of college.

And then if you think about that, that was four times as much as what I was making as a college student. And then that's when I started having more money problems, which is the irony. When I was actually making more money, then I would just spend all of it. Whereas in college, yeah, like I said, I was really scrappy. I had to figure out how to do things very cheap, how to borrow things from friends. I worked like three jobs when I was in college. So that's kind of the irony that when I actually got some money, I just kind of went crazy spending it.

Jule: There's so much we have in common here. I also had multiple jobs in college. Also feel like I was way better at managing my money back then.

Let's compare jobs we had in college. You want to go first?

Sandra Park: I had so many, so many jobs. I did telephone surveys. I did food service, a lot of food service type of jobs. I was actually a terrible waitress. What was funny was now that I look back on it, I didn't realize that it's not just about being very efficient about taking the orders and getting people their food. It was always the people that were a bit more charming, right? And they had more personality and these were the people making bigger tips. And it didn't make sense to me because I'm thinking, well, if I'm doing better than them—but that's not how you measure better as a food server. So now I can kind of look back at it and understand why I didn't do well as a food server. I was a better hostess. I worked at a bar. I worked in hotels.

Jule: So my jobs, I also had many jobs like you did. I think I spent most of my time rotating between being a dorm monitor. I also worked at Blockbuster for an entire summer. I quit because the customers were assholes. And then the last job, I was actually self-employed, which maybe looking at where I am now was kind of foreshadowing. I went and got myself hired as a freelance tutor with multiple Korean families. I took an ad out in the Korean newspaper periodically and I would just advertise myself as a tutor, SAT tutor or math tutor, English tutor, and I would always have people contacting me to tutor their kids. That one, I made pretty good money. It was fewer hours, but I was charging $50 an hour. And this is back in 2002. So that's a lot of money back then.

Sandra Park: You're a very entrepreneurial college student. Because I always was looking for better jobs. And anytime I had a friend that was making, you know, even back then, like someone making $15, $20 bucks an hour was a big deal. And then I'd go talk with them and I could never land the same thing. And when I was doing the food service, being a waitress, I thought that was the key—I was going to make a lot of money. But I did it. And some of them you actually end up losing money because you have to spend so much money on the uniform. Yeah, I worked at a restaurant where you had to have like a different set of clothing for every shift you had and you had to get your clothes dry cleaned. And it was very particular, the clothing. Like you needed Dickie pants. You needed a certain pair of shoes. You needed these shirts where you can do the bow tie with the button. And then you don't get paid for like the first two weeks because you're shadowing someone. And yeah, you can actually lose money. And then even when you do get hired you make like maybe two or three bucks an hour and then the rest is tips and if you don't get enough tips or you don't get seated in your section, so yeah.

Jule: I never thought about that. That seems like a scam to me. The fact that you would have to go and spend so much money on not just random clothes but they had to be a particular brand, they had to be dry cleaned. I'm already thinking that sounds really sus but I guess that's just how it is.

So when I'm thinking back, I graduated college, I didn't have a job right away. How long did it take you to land your first job? Nine months, okay.

Sandra Park: Nine months.

Jule: It took me, I want to say like four months, five months. And I was in a weird transition period though because I knew I was going to law school, but I had a gap year in between because I didn't get into the law schools I wanted to get in like right after. So I had to go through like another round of applications, had the LSATs already done, but then didn't get into the schools. So that one year in between I was like, what am I going to do? I went and applied for the county counsel in California in Contra Costa County. Eventually got a job there and that was my first job. I think it paid $30,000 less than what you made at your first job, but it did feel like a lot of money to me back then.

Sandra Park: Yeah. Yeah, that was a lot. And also remember you're a single person, right? You don't have anyone depending upon you. It feels like this big step up in life. That first big girl job, right?

Jule: For sure. Okay, what do you think it was that made us just go hog wild and just go crazy?

Sandra Park: I definitely think some of it was, to be honest, the people I hung around. I was more impressionable back then. I was very influenced by others. So when I saw other people doing things, I would kind of copy them. Like I wanted to be like them, shop at the same places. They would talk about some new thing they bought. Then I would want to buy it myself.

Jule: Do you think that's more women or do men do this too?

Sandra Park: No, because what I hear is they're just as bad as us two, but maybe about different things. Like they're not going to go do a makeover at a makeup counter. I remember doing that with a friend and I had a friend that would just buy anything and everything like garment steamers, go to the MAC counter and get a makeover, jewelry, houses. Just, yeah, it just seemed like everyone was running out and buying all these things. And what's interesting was I wasn't even that into social media—I mean, it wasn't as big of a deal back then. So you actually had to hang around these people and hear about what they were talking about and where they were going and what they were doing.

Jule: It feels like a million years ago. I'm trying to think back through the same period. It sounds like you had more friends than I did. I had maybe two friends back then that I hung out with the most. I do remember being influenced by the one, her name is Lynn, and we still talk today. She was the makeup person. So whatever makeup she got— Remember when we first met and she was like, oh my god, come here woman, let me do your makeup because I didn't wear any makeup back then. So whatever she was using I would just go buy the same thing. She had the Lancôme moisturizer so I went and bought the same moisturizer. She had the caboodle thing, the organizer. Yeah. So then I got one, not that I had all that much makeup to put in there, but it was a little bit of the same thing. I don't think we bought the same kind of clothes but yeah, I don't even know how much I was influenced by the people I knew. That's a really interesting idea. Yeah.

Sandra Park: Okay, I think maybe the difference was the company I started at and because I kind of stayed in the same area that I went to college in, then kind of everyone who graduated, we were all good friends for probably at least the first six to eight years out of college. And then people kind of started fading out and people were going through different life phases. But I remember that being my big circle and network of people that I hung around.

Jule: I went to undergrad in the Bay Area. I had that job for about a year, right? Like at the County Counsel, but then I moved away to Iowa for law school. So I left my entire network back then. It was like starting over. Whereas everybody else stayed in the Bay Area and I didn't.

Sandra Park: Iowa, that's interesting.

Jule: Yeah, that's an interesting place. It's got some issues there for sure. Yeah, and my first job too, I was the youngest person in the office. It was all much older people. Like the youngest person looked like they were 45 or 50 and I just graduated college, right? And then there were people who were all the way up to 60. So it was just a completely different lifestyle of people, different life stages.

Sandra Park: Okay, okay, I can see that. Yeah, well how would you be comparing yourself to these people or being very influenced by them?

Jule: Yeah. Okay, so you had your first job. You said around $46K a year, right? What were the step-ups you were making in your salary and then what was happening to that money?

Sandra Park: Oh, well to go back, I don't remember the exact step ups, but like I said, it ramped up very quickly because I remember I came in and then they're like, oh, here's an automatic raise just for being here. And then I was performing really well because, you know, that job was like my life. I remember my first team, they would offer, if you wanted to work overtime, work the weekends. And I would be the only person—like looking back, I'm like, why did I do that? Nobody else was coming in on their weekends or working these extra hours. I was the lowest paid person probably on the team doing that, but I was really dedicated and gung-ho about work. So that was rewarded pretty well and noticed. And I was also—I also got really good at maneuvering and interviewing for other jobs. Kind of like how we talked about in the interview on my podcast. That's where I have a lot of experience because I realized very quickly I can make more money if I go interview for another job, whether it's just negotiating for more money or getting a raise or a promotion. After a while, they did kind of squash the hopping around internally and being able to make more money. But for a while I did really take advantage of that.

So I was able to maneuver quite a bit and negotiate more money in a lot of these jobs, even though I technically wasn't leaving my company and I was staying internal, I was still able to negotiate better offers or salary or things like that.

Jule: Can you give me some examples? Like how much of a gap are we talking about when you say you negotiated more salary?

Sandra Park: Okay. Well, there's one time—I think it was the very first time I interviewed. I had been at the company for a little less than two years and I interviewed for a job with this other—it was a different business unit and group—and he was actually telling me that the new college hires make more than me, even though I'd been at the company close to two years. And like I said, when I first started, they gave me like an automatic raise. I got a very generous first raise. But the thing is, you can't really make up for when you're low-balled that bad.

Because I remember my first raise, I got the highest rating you could get. I wasn't competing against everyone on my team, more like the same pay grade, but I got the highest rating and they let me know I got the highest rating. Thus I got the biggest raise, but it's also a percentage of your salary. So there were probably people still making more than me, even though I was performing better and I got a bigger raise. So that's why I was saying some of the jumps really helped because then I was able to kind of level set and get a better salary and kind of overcome the places where I got low-balled. When they were saying I made less than a brand new person right out of school, I think I had already gotten like a 6% raise and a 5% raise and then like an extra $2,000 here. So you know, when you're young and you're starting out, that feels like a lot. You're so appreciative of it. You're like, my gosh, you just gave me an extra $2,000. And you think you're doing so well, you're being rewarded so much. And it's not that I wasn't, but I was trying to overcome that I got paid so poorly in the first place as starting salary.

Jule: You are bringing some flashbacks, man. Like I've been on both sides of that.

I was probably the kind of employee that companies do not like, okay? Because I am breaking all the rules or the unspoken rules that they really don't want you to do, such as—you know how companies don't want you to talk about your pay rates with each other?

Sandra Park: Right, yes.

Jule: I was like, I don't care. I asked one of the people on the team that I was on, so I was on editorial for seller support at Amazon. There was a guy who had been working at Amazon for something like five or seven years. His name was Bob. And I was like, just so we know we can have each other's backs, like how much are you making—do you feel okay with disclosing that? He was like, yeah, I don't care. He tells me and I was shocked. He made $20,000 less than I did just on base. So what you're sharing about when you're low-balled to begin with, you kind of do have to leave to level set because otherwise you're just never going to get out of that hole.

Sandra Park: Yes, yes, and I was pretty good about navigating that and learning how to look for jobs and advocate for myself and learning how to interview. Whereas other people, sometimes I regretted it because there were people who stayed on teams really long and they have very deep roots and knowledge and expertise. But I think one of the best pieces of advice one of my early coworkers gave me was to stay on teams about two years long, to learn what you can. He said, you know, first priority is learn your job and then kind of learn what the others are doing. Not that you're trying to take their job, but it gives you more wisdom about what you would like to do, whether you want to do it or not. So you try out other things like cyber security or project management or program management, and you kind of can do these informational interviews and learn from them. But he was really saying once you're not learning anything anymore in the job, it's best to move on.

Jule: Yeah, that's a really good point. I think I used similar reasoning with my dad because my dad had been nudging me for years to leave the corporate space and just start my own business. But I always told him the same thing. I was like, Dad, I'm 27. Like what the fuck do I know about starting a business? We are living in a different day and age today where I think that's a lot more possible, but we're talking—this is like 2007. I don't know that I had the resources in place to actually make that a smart decision by any means. And my dad, he wanted me to start like a brick and mortar type of business and I didn't want to do that. Okay. So I was just like, yeah. I don't know if you've seen Kim's Convenience on Netflix. That's us. It's both me and my husband, our families were the convenience store owners.

Sandra Park: So he wanted you to—did he want to pass on his store to you or like you just buy your own store?

Jule: He wanted me to set up some sort of brick and mortar but they didn't want to pass on that business to me. For some reason, it was always like their business was supposed to go to one of my older siblings and I was supposed to strike out on my own and do something different. I don't know why. Maybe because they felt like I would never want to live in Alabama, which is probably true. Yeah.

Sandra Park: Interesting. I don't think my parents have ever encouraged me. They are business owners, but they never encouraged me to be a business owner.

Jule: Wait, how come?

Sandra Park: I don't know, I think they just think, well if they came here and we have the opportunity to go to college, we should make the most of that. Like go to college and then do some type of career.

Jule: That's an interesting thing. Our parents sound very different because my dad was constantly in my ear and he was like, you're never going to make that much money working for the man. Like you gotta have your own business.

Sandra Park: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, my parents are definitely business owners, but they always say sometimes Korean Americans or Korean immigrants are more like the reluctant business owners. They may not want to be business owners, but they kind of have to sometimes because there's not this other path or they didn't come here for college necessarily. So what else would they do?

Jule: I don't think I ever really thought about that. Like I remember my dad telling stories, and I was like, dad, how did you do this? Because if you look at what my parents have accomplished, it's crazy. When they got married and had me, they had like $600 total between the two of them. They went on to have their house, two stores, a gas station and also another house. So two things were rental properties. And I was just like, dude, you guys are living the dream, you know, like you've come here, you've become pretty successful immigrants. You're making all this money. I don't really see them spending that money or learning to live and upgrade the lifestyle. Not so much. They're very much like—what is that movie? The Big Fat Greek Wedding movie, that one.

Sandra Park: Oh yeah, I watched that the other day. That movie has aged so well, it's still so funny.

Jule: Yeah, my parents were just like those parents. It's like you could replace the Windex in the movie with my dad and a staple gun or something. Yeah.

It's a weird thing when I think about it because I'm guessing your parents made pretty decent money. My parents made pretty good money as business owners, but they didn't teach me anything about how to manage money other than don't spend money. And I think that's really short-sighted advice to give your children, but that doesn't really teach anything.

Sandra Park: Yeah, yeah, yeah, to this day, my parents are still very, very frugal. And I think that's all they know. They didn't even invest any money. They were really good about saving it. My dad would do some CDs, you know, certificates of deposits at the bank, where you're guaranteed a certain rate of return. But no, no, they're kind of wary of doing a lot of the other things with their money.

Jule: Yeah, same here. I don't think my parents started even doing the CDs until after I was in college. So like everything before then, you know, it was more like cash in the mattress, you know, or something like that, or cash in the bank.

Sandra Park: They would be good at stockpiling and saving a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, my parents do.

Jule: Yeah, yep. And I think my husband's parents are the same.

Sandra Park: I think it's also—I know some of it definitely for my dad is the language barrier, right? It's a language barrier. It's trusting people. It's, you know, maybe they don't feel savvy enough about the stock market, but yeah, it just feels better and safer to them to do it their way.

Jule: Well, given some of the fluctuations and the crashes we've seen over the last 20 years, you can't really argue with that. It's like maybe there were times when just having your money sitting in a hole under the floor was safer than losing all your investments. Okay, so you and I went through quite a significant period of working. We start to level up in our career. We start to make some serious money.

Sandra Park: Yes.

Jule: What happened to the money? I know you said there was some of it just keeping up with the Joneses. For me, I don't even have that excuse. Like I'm trying to remember—it was mostly retail therapy and just feeling like everything was out of whack in my life. And any little thing that was an inconvenience, I would immediately go to solve it by buying something. Like I never thought about do I really need this? And if I buy this, how much will I actually use it? How many uses will I get out of it? And I remember reading this book once where the idea was that every single item you bring into your home or your space, it's like it has to pay rent somehow, you know, like either in usage—

Sandra Park: Ooh, I like that.

Jule: —or something. Yeah, it has to give you something and that's the rent it's paying. And if it's not doing that, then it's not paying you the rent that it should. And I was like, well, shit, none of the stuff I have is paying me rent. It's just become clutter that takes up space. It makes me feel like I can't breathe.

Sandra Park: Yeah, did you love fast fashion? Like those stores like Forever 21 and how you could go walk through the mall. And it was very cheap, but it wasn't very well-made clothing. And it would only last for a little while, be in season for a little bit and trendy. And then you'd kind of chunk it.

Jule: Yeah, I had my version of that. The thing about me is being super introverted. I didn't actually go shopping in person. So I would buy everything online. And of course, you know what the problem there is. You have a high degree or a high probability of the thing not fitting because you didn't try it on. But the thing for me was when I said I was racking up orders like almost every other day on Amazon, my fast fashion was just buying from those Chinese suppliers on Amazon. Some of it was okay, but a lot of it was just like the Forever 21, the stuff that falls apart after two washes.

Sandra Park: Okay. Yeah, so I had some retail therapy. I definitely had my share of shopping. I think one of the biggest things that doomed me, which when I looked back, it was kind of crazy, was I was really enthusiastic about buying houses. I thought that was going to be my way to wealth. And I mean, I will say this. I did pretty well with my houses.

But I won't say it's because I was a real estate investing genius. I always tell people it was because I was just super, super lucky. Like I was really ignorant. I would go into it highly leveraged. I remember even one of the down payments on my houses—I borrowed from one of my credit cards. I did a cash advance to come up with the rest of the down payment. And I remember one of my coworkers, when I was talking to him about this, he goes, I don't think you're ready to buy a house if you have to borrow from your credit card to do it.

And I was so mad at him for saying that, but he was right. Because he was saying, you don't have the down payment. You don't have the money to close the loan. You're borrowing at high interest. And I'm like, well, no, no, no, but I'm going to pay it back before the 0% interest term expires and don't worry. So it was a lot of finagling and juggling a lot of things and balance transfers. And I think I was up to like three houses at one point.

Jule: Okay, how old were you when you bought your first house then?

Sandra Park: Oh yeah. Yeah. So I was 28. So that's one thing. Yeah. So I don't regret that. I wasn't doing terribly because I would upgrade every time—I was smart about it. I would roll over the proceeds from one house into the next house. So I wasn't doing terribly, but it's when you start thinking, well, I can speed this up if I get a second property or a third one. And yeah.

Jule: Okay, so speeding up may not be a good idea if it stretches you too thin. If you compare how you were doing it versus some of the gurus out there who say that this house and rental type of thing is a path to wealth, what are they doing differently?

Sandra Park: Well, actually, I think they're doing it far more risky than I was. They're probably doing HELOCs on all their properties and taking loans against the equity. I think they're doing it even worse ways. At least I was good about calculating out, hey, I can rent this out and this is my cost. I don't think there are a lot of people that even do that in a smart way.

Jule: Are you serious? I can't help but think that this is just really stressful. Like everything you're describing.

Sandra Park: It was, yeah, yeah. And that's what people don't get, right? Because people are like, well, you're making all this money and it's tax free. It's like, kinda. It was a house of cards. As long as nothing bad happened, it was kind of all okay. But it's stressful if you don't have someone who pays, if something breaks on one of the properties. And it's just this extra mental stress. And like we're talking about, it's also a time when you're really gung-ho and very involved in your career and work and building professionally. That's why I always tell people, you know, there's a time and place for real estate, but it's not for everybody and all the time. You have to take that into consideration.

Jule: I agree. I remember the first house I bought was with my ex. Yeah, I think it was in 2010. So it was coming right on the tail end of the housing crisis, you know, the stuff.

Sandra Park: Yeah, 2008, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jule: And we just squeaked in to get the last of the incentives that they used to offer back then to recover from the housing crash. So we bought our first house and I remember being insanely stressed out about it. So I didn't do a cash advance but I did something that was also a huge no-no. I took out a loan against my 401k.

Sandra Park: But you know, so many people do that. So many people do that, yeah.

Jule: Yeah. Yeah, that was so poorly thought out. Like I was just desperate to make the down payment. And that was also an FHA loan. So between the two of us, I think we paid more than the three and a half percent, but not by a whole lot. We were trying to get more of the down payment. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Sandra Park: Yeah, you were trying to squeak in just to get the house.

Jule: My ex put up some money for the down payment. I think maybe I had to put up more because he didn't have as much cash or something. I can't remember. But it was something about the down payment that forced me to take out against my 401k. And unlike a lot of other people, I didn't actually recover the payment. Like I wasn't able to pay that back in time. So then I just lost that, right? Like I was penalized and that really sucked. That's why I'm saying that was dumb.

Sandra Park: Yeah, yeah, I've seen so many people do it. I had a friend that did it for her wedding. She pulled out money and the marriage only lasted a couple of years also. Yeah, yeah, she paid for that whole wedding herself. It was a pretty big wedding.

Jule: Ooo that hurts.

Sandra Park: Yeah, the most common one I hear is people doing it for properties. So I could see that happening. Yeah. And when you get that housing fever, and sometimes don't you think it's just people wanting to prove like, I'm an adult, I've made it in life, I'm successful, I have to get this house now.

Jule: 100%. It was weird because I saw my ex do something like that. Like me, I didn't really want a house. All I had said was to him, I just pointed out, it's like, well, if we're paying rent anyway, right? It's like we could pay a little more and then be paying into equity for a property that's actually ours instead of having the rental money just disappear forever. And he really latched on to that.

Now, maybe that reasoning is okay or can be okay, but we both know that in today's market, there's actually quite a case to just rent forever and that perhaps having property isn't the best use of that same allocation of money.

Sandra Park: Yeah, yeah. Because I, you know, I had that same excuse too, where I'm like, why would I throw my money into rent? But it's just—sometimes you're buying yourself flexibility or it's just, you never know where life will take you or where jobs will take you. I mean, now you can work remote, but back then that was unheard of. You really had to live really close to where your job was.

I just think I was very fortunate I was somewhat pragmatic and that helped me with some of the risk. It's just some of that restlessness, moving for jobs. I didn't buy one with anyone in a relationship.

I used to have all the closing paper packets from all the houses. I started letting go of it. You know, now you close on a house, you don't get that many papers anymore. It used to be like a phone book. It used to be so many papers you had to sign at the closing.

Jule: Oh my gosh, now it must be just all electronic documents, right? You're signing everything online. Yeah.

Sandra Park: Yeah, yeah. It is way shorter. And I remember even when you're signing, if you start getting tired and you start getting sloppy with your signature, they'd remind you that you need to sign like how you signed on the very first page. You need to stick to your standard signature.

Jule: Oh my god, okay. Okay, so I don't know, I do feel that an argument could be made that even if you were just sort of squeaking by, everything turned out okay for you. At least you were trying to go in the right direction versus somebody like me just totally squandering my salary. What do you think it is with people who are supposedly smart, well-educated, and yet we don't manage our money, especially women? Like, I still don't understand it. Some of it is what you're describing, keeping up with the Joneses. Some of it is retail therapy. Some of it was like my ex, where he was definitely in comparison mode, like, I'm 30 now. Everybody I know is getting married and settling down and buying houses, therefore I should do that. And I was just like, I don't understand, but okay, if you think so.

Sandra Park: I think some of it for me—I'll have to see if you agree with this too—is just me thinking I couldn't do it myself. So I would always outsource that type of information or decisions to other people.

For example, I would ask my male coworkers at work what to invest in, what options to do. I had a brother. Well, of course I still have him, but he's very into business and finance. We have a big age difference. So he would talk a lot about those things. I have a dad, right? So all these people, all these male figures in my life kind of telling me what to do, giving me advice. I'm trying to remember specifically if some of them did, but I remember being influenced even by boyfriends and people that I was dating, getting free money advice from them. So just kind of this helplessness and outsourcing of all of this responsibility to somebody else.

Jule: But the interesting thing that I'm hearing is that you at least tried, right? Like you tried to do the right thing, whereas I didn't even try. Like if my dad tried to tell me what to do with my money, I was basically like, I don't want to hear it, leave me alone.

Sandra Park: Interesting. So you just had zero interest. I knew it was kind of important. I just didn't think I could figure it out myself. And it's so weird because I am—well, especially now I'm even far, far more independent, but I'm not the type of person who crowdsources all my information and decisions. I feel there are some people where that's their natural tendency. So I don't do that with everything in life. Like I'm not the type of person that does that for like, should I go on vacation or where should I eat or what movie should I see? But for something so big and heavy, yeah, I definitely did that, which is such a shame. Because I feel when I finally really took ownership of needing to learn more on my own, that's when things started to change for the better.

Jule: I hear that. It's a weird thing for me because if I could go back in time and do this over again, I'm like, screw the degree in math. Like, what has that given me? I would totally do a degree in finance or something, which I think is way more useful. Like, you need to learn how money moves in this world, like how money works. I don't have that. I think you have a much firmer grasp on that, hence you being a financial coach.

Sandra Park: Oh yeah, I've never thought about it that way because yeah, I didn't really care so much about money and finances when I was younger. I definitely—well, I got my first job when I was 15. I always wanted to make money. I just think I thought the key to being wealthy and doing well with money was if I just made more. And then kind of like you, the false narrative was the harder I work at work, the more corporate American companies will reward me, and that worked up to a certain point, right? And then there's a certain point in your career where you're like, no, now these other people that do less or are less competent are making more, or there's politics in play for some of these promotions and raises. And I think it was when I started really wising up to the fact that a company won't take care of me the rest of my life. Because I think the other unique thing is I worked at one company for 15 years. That's a really, really long time. And not that it wasn't intentional, but it really, yeah, it kind of wasn't intentional. You just get there and then you're working your way through and working all these jobs. I'll have these other colleagues or friends that have gotten laid off a lot. But I never really had that. I had a lot of job security for a very long time and I kind of felt like I had a company that took care of me. So I think that's also the other reason why maybe I felt if I poured more into my company and my job, then they'll pay me more money, which will take care of me.

Jule: And that was true up to a point, like that model does work out to some degree. It's just a question of to how much. And that was the thing my dad was always trying to tell me. Every time he said, you're never going to make that much working for the man, he was directly referencing the ceiling. You're going to hit a ceiling. You're never going to make more than the CEO, for example. And you're not even going to come close in most instances, depending on your job title and your job level, right? So then if you have certain goals, then how do you get there when you're on a very steady rate—the slope of your financial trajectory is very low instead of a straight up shooting star. And that was the part that I just didn't understand for a long time. Now, I know you coach quite a few women who, I'm assuming most of them have some sort of STEM background like you and I do.

Sandra Park: Yes.

Jule: What are the most common reasons you're seeing where they end up in a similar position? Their money isn't where they want it to be.

Sandra Park: I think it's way more common than you think. You know, there's that fixation of focusing on your career a lot. And it absorbs every part of your life. That's what people don't get, right? It's a high paying job, but you think about work even when you're not working, you're working on trainings, you're trying to get educated in other degrees, you're working on your career a lot.

Money's just one of the things that people neglect. I also think women in STEM can also overthink things. So I was a huge victim of this too, where I digested a lot of information and free information, bad free information from people. I would read a lot of things on the internet, but I wouldn't act on it. And then I would also get overwhelmed by—well, should I do it this way or should I do that, or should I open a brokerage at Vanguard or should I open at Fidelity? That paralysis analysis where you're so overwhelmed by so much information and you want to do it perfectly. And it's better to almost just do something than to just worry about, did I do this the exact perfect right way?

Right. And also just sometimes that do-it-yourself pride and mentality. When you work in a profession where you have to figure very complicated things out, you're thinking, well, why would I not be able to figure out something easy like money or even just planning my food for the week. Like some of these very simple things, they should be way simpler, but then why do we not do them, right? Why do we not exercise enough, have all our meals planned, have a clean house, all these things. So I also think, yeah, women in STEM are just very independent, do-it-yourself types. Like we will figure it out and we don't need anyone else's assistance.

The other thing that overwhelmed me was, like I said, I knew a lot of information, but then I would want to do all of it at once. So I had no focus. I had no steps of priority. I had no plan. You just hear all this information on the internet, like invest in Roth IRA and pay down your credit cards and do this and do that. And it's just when you have so many different goals, you're not really achieving any of them.

Jule: It's a hard thing. I know from working with clients in general and even in one of my past episodes recently, my general advice to people is that if you're trying to make a change, you should really focus on just one change at a time. But I still haven't quite figured out why somebody couldn't do all of these financial things all at once. It probably would feel overwhelming to someone like me, but at the same time, a lot of these tips with money seem to be about automating things. You know, like have things auto-draft to a savings—the choices aren't huge choices. For example, the thing that you said with the analysis paralysis and wanting to make the perfect decision, make sure you're going to the right fund or something, I totally get that. But many of these other choices or these changes in your financial habits, they're really tiny, they're not that big.

Sandra Park: Yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And a lot of things are, like you said, once you automate things and you build up the system, you don't have to worry about it all the time. And the actual trying to make a decision all the time is more stressful and is taking all this mental energy. And I guess for me, the problem is, yeah, you can do all these financial goals at the same time. The thing is you won't see progress, right? It's the same as a health journey where you want to be very ambitious and do all these things, but if you have less to focus on, you can actually make some progress. And then that's what motivates you, right? Because when you don't see any progress, like let's say you're trying to save money and you only saved $5 a week. I mean, it'd take like 20 weeks to save $100. It's just like, would you feel very motivated? You're like, oh my gosh, 20 weeks later I'll finally have $100, you know?

Jule: It's all relative. If you talked to 12-year-old me, I'm like, well, fuck, that's a lot of money.

Sandra Park: Yeah, that's true.

But yeah, to me, the biggest thing was just having an order of operations and a plan that really helped so much because yeah, all this head knowledge is really good. And it's all very good in theory. We all know a lot of good things we should be doing. You can go research all the videos. You can go Google all this. It's not a lack of information. It's actually acting on the information.

And then figuring out what's right for you. Because I feel like also all the free advice, as great as free advice is, is meant for the masses. It's meant for people in the most common scenario out there, that's who it's meant for. And there's nothing wrong with that. But yeah, when people are making information for the internet for mass consumption, they have to think about the most common avatar, the most common person that would digest the information.

Jule: Okay, that's actually pretty good. So what would you say is different for women in tech or women in STEM? Like what's one common piece of mass advice out there that actually doesn't really apply to them?

Sandra Park: I mean, I guess to me, I think the biggest thing is just don't do everything at once. Like you're talking about, if you focus on making one big change at a time and actually adopting it as a habit, that's far more powerful than having this 37-step financial plan and all these bank accounts and trying to get the cash bonuses every time you open a bank account.

It's that optimizing that's kind of ruining actually building anything. You know how it's like, some people are like, should you work out in the morning or the evening? And if you don't actually regularly work out, it really doesn't matter. You're talking about a non-existent problem. So when people are like, should I do a pre-workout drink or should I do a snack after? And if you haven't even built a regular habit of working out, who cares?

Jule: No.

Sandra Park: So a lot of advice out there is from these money nerds and people that are super, super deep into finances and they're optimizing for every single possible thing for more returns, less fees. You can get a cash back bonus if you open a bank account here for three months and then open another bank. See, it's too complicated. People are busy. I think a lot of women in STEM or the kind of clientele I prefer to work with want simplified, streamlined finances. They want it systemic. They don't want all this muss and fuss. They don't want to have to open a new bank account every six months to get this $100, $200 opening bonus. Like, we're not trying to optimize all the time, because that's painful to have to close a bank account. You have to keep track of how long you've had it open, and then go open a new one at another place.

Jule: Okay, I get what you're saying. With a lot of the advice out there that's optimizing, it's almost like gaming the system in a lot of ways. It's like you do all these things to just get these bonuses. And we both know that these bonuses are offered in the hopes that you will form a longer lasting relationship with that bank. Not for you to just come in, take the bonus and then bounce with all your funds, right?

Sandra Park: Yeah, they're too smart. They're way too smart. Yeah, you've worked in marketing, right? And it's just, that's what hooks people. Same with the credit card rewards and the points and the cash back and all that. And people get addicted to that and maximizing them and which one is giving the most points and opening it up and spending on it. It's just, yeah, life is too complicated to be managing all this.

Jule: I think it depends on the personality. I do think that you've really hit on something real here because when I worked at Amazon, I did not want any part of my brain space allocated to anything like this. Like if you were to talk to me about this, I would be heading out of the room. It's like, I don't even want to hear it.

Sandra Park: Yeah. And I hate to stereotype, but guys love the optimizing and the credit card points and the rewards and the bonuses and they do. I don't know. I think it's like you said, I think it's a gamification a little bit. Like I'm cheating the system. I'm getting more out of this than—I will be the one person who will benefit from this—it's like, sure. While you're on Reddit all night researching all this.

Jule: What is it? How come?

Sandra Park: And now you've got to start a new spreadsheet to keep track of all this stuff. I just think people that are—oftentimes the women in STEM can be the breadwinners. I find a lot of them are the breadwinners. They're making more money than their spouse, which I don't think is becoming uncommon, right? So you think about it, we're in these high pressure careers and these male dominated environments. It's already hard enough to keep up at work. We don't have time in the evenings. In addition to probably being married and raising kids—I forgot about that—because not everyone's single. How do they have time to do all this? Be researching and on all these Reddit threads and watching YouTube videos about credit card points and tracking all of them.

Jule: Not me literally thinking of my friend Kevin and also my husband right now as you're describing this. It describes them so to a T. I think the gamification is a real thing, but I also think on a deeper level, culturally, socially, men often carry a lighter mental load than women do. They're just not thinking of as many things all the time.

Sandra Park: You think so? I would have never thought or said that. So you're just saying they're simpler, there's less going on. Like you have the mental bandwidth to figure this out.

Jule: Oh my god. It's kind of a thing, like I've seen this demonstrated between me and my husband all the time and he's extremely smart, like I'm sure his IQ is really high, but he also just doesn't care about as many things. He's not constantly thinking of logistics, whereas I am. And I've seen this play out a million times. Like literally even we're flying in, we have a layover, I think it's in Dallas actually, we see a Dunkin Donuts. I have an electronic Dunkin Donuts gift card. He's like, let's use the gift card. And the first thing I think is, but this is a Dunkin Donuts at the airport and many of these are operated outside of the normal franchise system.

Sandra Park: Yeah, they won't take it.

Jule: Yeah, so I go up to the counter and I ask them, do you guys take this? And I show them the app and they say no. And my husband goes, wow, I never even thought of that. I'm like, that's classic right there.

Sandra Park: But you know, you're so right. One thing I think is, do you think it's because they can compartmentalize more and they don't have all these—like we have all these tabs and threads open in our head and then we're nurturing and we're thinking of even little things like that.

Jule: That is a really good metaphor for this and with me and Jason actually it plays out as a perfect metaphor because if you go and look at my desktop right now in the den, our desks are almost side by side. If you turn on my monitor you'll see that my Chrome browser has like 80 tabs open. His Chrome browser has like four.

Sandra Park: Yeah, I think that they have that singular focus and they can compartmentalize and shut off other things. And I think us, we have so many different things running in our heads and we're thinking about all of them at the same time. I never thought of that, but that's probably part of why men like that. Yeah, you're right. And women don't like fussy finances. They're called fussy, like complicated finances. They don't want 37 bank accounts open. They don't want to have to track all these credit cards. They're not trying to optimize every cash opening bonus on these bank accounts.

Jule: Ha ha ha! Yeah, or even the cash back percentages, right? It's like, come on.

Sandra Park: Yeah.

Jule: That's super funny. Earlier you mentioned order of operations. Is that a framework you want to share?

Sandra Park: Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I love working with people. Because to me, that was one of the biggest aha moments with my finances too, was that I was doing too much of everything and not making progress. And as much as I don't want to make it all about the numbers, I do think it's super motivating when you actually see the numbers working in your favor. It's the same as when you're on a weight loss program and you actually see that you lost some weight, even if it's not your goal weight.

That motivates you a lot and it's helping people to see some big wins earlier rather than later. And because I do tend to work with higher earners, I really like for them to focus on if they need to actually save some money, making some big changes, right? Prioritizing their spending. So I'll give you an example.

So it's not like telling people, just cut your Netflix. That's $8.99. Unless they have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars of subscriptions, it's like, no, go enjoy your Spotify or your Netflix and things like that. But you might have to rethink this Montessori daycare that's $2,000 a month, right? That's kind of really killing your budget. So kind of getting these bigger wins earlier on and seeing that the numbers are working better for them. So definitely budgeting, even though people have a complicated relationship with it—it's really just money management, right? It's having a plan for your money, knowing exactly how much you bring in and how much you spend.

So I tell people even if they don't like budgeting, it's kind of like we're talking about the weight loss thing, how in the beginning—and I'm doing it right now too, where I'm just measuring all my food, but one day I probably won't need to, right? I won't have to be so strict. I'll kind of understand what is a good size food portion, but in the beginning, people do need that awareness around their spending because they're probably overspending. And then looking at all the debts they have and what debts do they want to pay off, right? So I don't want to tell people they have to pay off everything. It's what works within their budget and if they want to reduce some debt and then building up savings. That's the last piece because people need savings for emergencies.

And then hopefully after all that's set in place—the budgeting, saving, reducing their debt—kind of in the rhythm of being able to manage their money pretty well on their own, then they would be in a much better financial place to start investing. And I'm a big proponent of people doing some do-it-yourself investing. I think you'll learn so much more by investing your own money. I had my own journey of learning to invest on my own. And I don't think I would have learned it as well if I just farmed it out immediately. So that's my philosophy. And even if people do want to get a financial advisor ASAP, there's nothing wrong with that. But I still feel you have to have that education piece where you know enough about investing that you can ask intelligent questions. You can go look at your statements, you can go log into your accounts, you understand what you're investing in.

Jule: With the clients you've worked with, is there a common pattern you see across the board on spending that's pretty high, something that can be easily cut?

Sandra Park: I think this is a bad one for a lot of people. It's how much they spend on food. And I think a lot of people are very busy. So it's the eating out, it's the DoorDashing. I had one lady I did a consultation with and she was spending over $2,000 a month on DoorDash. So she didn't have a car and she was having the food delivered. It was just her and her husband.

But this is how they ate every single meal. DoorDash. Yeah, and then she didn't have a car, so she had to Uber to work.

Jule: How much was she spending on the Uber then?

Sandra Park: I can't remember how much the Uber was, but the DoorDash by itself was thousands. And this is just normal food for two grown adults. So it was just—I think sometimes when people have these very stressful careers, you pay for convenience, right? But sometimes you don't realize how much that convenience will cost you.

Jule: For us, doing something like DoorDash or Uber Eats, it's usually Uber Eats, it's a once in a while thing because there's such a high upcharge on the prices of everything. And if I want to go eat out, then I'm going to go get it myself. Now, I do hear what you just said with this woman not having a car. That's a real thing. If she didn't have a car and then she also wanted the convenience of not having to think about what she was eating or cooking. I definitely remember that when I was working at Amazon and my husband worked at the startup that we met at. I think we were definitely eating out probably 75% of our meals every week during that period.

Sandra Park: Yeah, because it's just, if both people are really busy in their careers, that's one of the first things that will go. Right. And I've been guilty of this too, where you've had a long, hard day at work and you kind of feel like the reward is I want a nice meal. I want to get whatever I want to eat. And sometimes I would stop by places on my way home from work. So it's kind of one of the only ways I feel like people still treat themselves because sometimes people—one of the first things people will say when I'm looking at their finances is that I don't do anything. I don't shop, I don't buy anything, but then you'll look at their exorbitant food bills and that's their guilty spending.

Jule: Man, yeah that was me. That was definitely me. And I know that in every category of spending that's been off the charts that's not related to business has always traced back to some version of I deserve this because I'm doing so much work, I'm working so hard, my job is so hard, or I've been doing a lot lately. "I deserve this" is always my downfall.

Sandra Park: Yeah, yeah, me too. From the vacations, the eating out, the clothing. And it's almost this entitlement. And you're like, I worked really hard today. I deserve something nice. And you know, when it's really late or you're tired from work, one of the easiest things to overspend on is food, right? Go out to a nice restaurant or that lady was doing DoorDash. But it also makes me think she could have had groceries delivered, but I don't think she knew how to cook either, so.

Jule: So what ended up being her solution then if she couldn't cook?

Sandra Park: Okay, so I didn't end up working with her. We had a good consultation, but yeah, I think if I did get to work with her, that would have been the very first area I would have attacked because we could have easily slashed that food bill. But I also had to tell people it has to work with their lifestyle. So if people can't cook from scratch, then maybe she can do HelloFresh. That's like a good compromise, right? Get those meals delivered. HelloFresh is really not that bad for a family of two, for a couple. It's when people have kids that it's not really affordable anymore. But that might've been a good compromise, because I think what people will do is go to the extreme and it's like, well, if someone's not used to cooking any meals, you can have all the groceries delivered to them, they're still not going to cook them. They're going to go uneaten.

Jule: Yeah, and then the food goes to waste, so...

Sandra Park: Yeah. Yeah. So I have nothing against if it works with someone's budget, they could get food boxes delivered. I think Factor is another service where the food is already cooked. You don't even have to cook it and they'll deliver it to you. So it just has to work for that person. It's not about this one size fits all like, yeah, you're going to start churning your own butter, baking your own bread. That's really unrealistic for someone that doesn't cook at all. I was kind of late cooking myself too. I kind of really had to figure out how to cook and it's not easy. That's another thing no one's really taught in life.

Jule: I'm sure a lot of people can relate.

I kind of knew how to cook but I definitely didn't pick up cooking in full force until maybe the last 10 or 15 years. So I spent the first however many years of life mostly on takeout or the pre-packaged meals like at the grocery store.

Sandra Park: Yeah.

Jule: You definitely have a certain approach to working with your clients. Out of most of the clients, if not all of the clients, what's your general favorite tip to start with?

Sandra Park: I always tell people if you can just track your spending for 30 days, there's nothing more eye opening than doing that. Whether it's printing out all your bank statements and credit card statements and then going through with highlighters and looking at how you spend. And what's really fascinating is you learn so much more about yourself because you can say you're this person that, let's say you really value your health. Right? But then go look at your spending and see, do you actually really spend money on your health or are you spending a lot on other things? Like you can say that and same like, I think so many people will say, my family is the most important part of my life. But do you really see that reflected in people's spending?

Right? How much money are they spending on time with their family, experiences with their family, things for their family? Is it a lot of spending for themselves? So that's why I say it's not just about this exercise about learning about your spending. You learn about yourself in the process. Like what do you truly value? What do you really spend on? And just like tracking calories, we can all say that we think we spend this amount of money, but to actually see those numbers is very sobering. I remember when I was single, even before I had my son, there was one month I spent over $900 on takeout, which is insane. So crazy for one person. But that was part of my young lifestyle. I really liked to go out to eat. And when I lived in California, I remember that was my go-to thing. And it was getting so expensive. And that was when I actually started learning how to cook, because I just couldn't really afford to go out to eat all the time.

Jule: So for the people who think of eating out or the vacations or buying the clothes as this thing that they're entitled to, what would you recommend as the mindset shift that they really need to have?

Sandra Park: Yeah, yeah, you do need a huge mindset shift because this is what I'll say. You're only giving up certain things for a season. And if you have this big why and this big reason, that will outweigh any little pain or discomfort. But the whole point is you do this so you'll never have to not eat out again. So you'll never have to only shop at Walmart. So if you can kind of see it as it's just a season of your life, the rest of your life can be an entirely different life. And I think what people do is they start catastrophizing and they're thinking, the rest of my life, I'm going to only be able to buy things on clearance at Walmart. And the rest of my life, I can never eat at a restaurant. And it's so fatalistic because if you can sacrifice for a time for maybe a year or two, then the rest of your life can be an entirely different life.

Jule: I agree.

Tracking your spending makes a ton of sense to me and I especially like the comparison that you made with having to weigh all your food because I went through that. It was such a pain in the neck though, and I already foresee people who are going to be like, Sandra, I don't want to do that. That's so boring. It's no fun and it's too much work. So maybe what's an easier way to start tracking your spending?

Sandra Park: Okay, you know what, maybe an even easier way—because some of it's going to be kind of boring, like tracking your water bill, electricity, things that you can't really change or affect that much. Maybe track the category that you think you overspend the most in and just see. So if it's groceries, if you know groceries is your weakness, then do groceries or do takeout. But maybe just that could be the biggest needle changer, game changer, eye opening thing—if you just kind of looked back at the last 30 days, what did you spend on takeout? And you could even maybe guess what you think it is and then actually go, you know, go through your statements or electronic bank account and see actually how much you spent and just see how it matches up.

Jule: Ooh, I like that. And I can already see myself trying it for the first month. And then the next month, I'm going to switch my category to see how much spending is there and then compare those two categories and see which one actually outspends.

Sandra Park: Yeah. Yeah. It's the same, like you know, I'm tracking the calories now and same like you, just the portions—some of the portion sizes I was eating before were crazy. Like I can't eat three servings of rice in a meal, you know? Like, there are a lot of times where I'm looking at the recipes. I'm like, I eat things like this all the time that are healthy, but it's the portion sizes, right? That's what's getting me. It's just that awareness around how much is like, this is a regular size meal. This is all I really need to eat.

Jule: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I bet there are going to be so many people who don't like what you just said. Like I already know it. Myself included. I know that what you said about tracking, whether it's portions or your money, I used to do all of that. With the food, I now know in general, I can eyeball and I can tell what a general portion is. And also I think with food, you need to know certain categories of food and know what to stay away from or have very little versus you can have a lot more of vegetables, for example, so no brainer. But with spending, I used to do a monthly spreadsheet or really it was just a running spreadsheet and I would try to keep the expenses categorized just so I would know what categories I was spending the most in. And for me with my business it was definitely freaking courses, so I stopped buying courses as much as possible but then it just kind of shifted over into coaching and I was like okay I gotta stop that too. Do I really need this coaching? Am I implementing what I'm learning in coaching? So all of that to say, it has been really valuable, but I have fallen off the wagon there. I do think this is a good reminder to get back to it and just see where my spending is these days now that we're in this year. Yeah.

Sandra Park: Yeah, yeah, I used to do like you where I would create the budget. And then I remember when I took a financial class, I did the budget and I was thinking, like nothing changed in my life. Because it's just creating it on paper, it's a plan, right? But it's the tracking of what you spend that is far more eye opening, right? Because you could even not have an existing monthly budget. But it's more about understanding your behavior around money. And then, like you're talking about, the better you get at it, the less you worry about it or think about it. Like, I barely think about it anymore at all. Just in the beginning, the growing pains and learning all that is probably the worst part.

Jule: I agree, for sure.

Well, I could talk to you forever. We have a lot of fun together. So I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. Now, as we're about to wrap up everything, I know we've covered a lot in this episode. What's the one thing you really want listeners to take away from everything you've shared?

Sandra Park: I'll say this, and I'm sure you'll also agree, same like with anyone who's considering coaching. If you are the type of person that you feel like you've learned and consumed and you've digested so many internet articles and watched all these YouTube videos, if you need help, then there's nothing wrong with reaching out for help.

Because I think a lot of people that are very independent and they think they're really smart and can figure anything out refuse to reach out for help. I would have never invested any money in myself ever or ever paid for any coaching years ago. That was a huge, huge shift. So I think there's nothing wrong with seeing that someone else is farther ahead than you and has learned more of what you need to know.

Like you don't have to do money alone. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I wish I knew much earlier that there are people out there. You can hire people to help you with things. You can have a sounding board. And I think you talked about it really well in one of your podcast episodes—just pick a plan. They're probably all good. But just stick with one. Just pick one. Instead of doing this paralysis analysis of what is the best plan, take action on something because that's what's going to change your finances far more. It's not just digesting more information, reading about more plans, watching more videos, or reading more books.

Jule: Amen. I'm 100% with you there. And that's just because you kind of quoted me at me, okay? Alright, well thank you again for coming on the show. Where can people find you?

Sandra Park: I'm very active on LinkedIn. I have my own website, engineerherpath.com. I have a podcast too, and those are the main places.

Jule: Who's the type of person who should reach out to you and what's your favorite channel for that?

Sandra Park: Well of course I'm biased towards working with women. I like very smart people. I love go-getters. I love people who will take action on something, that are coachable people, that are willing to take feedback and are humble enough to realize what I'm doing in my life is not working out so well for me, so why don't I try what you're saying? So just those types of people are the best people to work with. And I think the easiest place to find me is on LinkedIn. I always respond to my messages.

Jule: Okay, cool. Well, thank you so much, Sandra.

Thank you so much for listening. Hey, by the way, if you liked this conversation, feel free to text the link in the show notes and let me know what you found useful. 

As always, I believe in you. See you next time.