My guest and I are discussing financial destructive behavior due to assault. One of the focus will be on overcoming destructive money habits that are a result of the unacknowledged trauma of s*xual assault. #trauma
Kirby Williams is a passionate advocate for financial wellness and access for all to counseling and educational resources. In 2019 Kirby purchased Advantage Publications. With Advantage, Kirby has developed financial education slide calculators for the Social Security Administration, the FDIC, VOYA and all branches of the US Armed Forces.
Financial trauma is a tough topic but one that Kirby wants to raise awareness of and about, because the reasons why one makes financial decisions come not just from the logical part of the brain, but sometimes from the injury itself.
In counseling and coaching those who have PTSD or who have experienced trauma, we must educate ourselves and others about different ways that this can effect one’s spending and savings habits; how the survivor views money and why.
The purpose of the Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast is to educate and empower people so they maximize their money superpower and increase their money IQ.
The goal is hope through sharing of Lessons Learned, Practical Tips, Realistic Strategies and Workable Solutions that lead to financial freedom.
Dr. Sev encourages people to take control of their finances with a practical plan that’s tailored to their specific needs so they can reach their own financial goals.
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Podcast Transcript
Dr. Sev
I’m excited today to bring a guest we’re going to be talking about some financial destructive behaviors and other behaviors that can come from assault or other traumas. Before I bring my guest on, I just want to remind everyone if you are interested in financial counseling, I’m available for one on one and group counseling. I’m available to serve as a speaker, I conduct workshops. And I’m also available to serve on your discussion panels on the subjects of credit debt, student loans, saving, budgeting, etc. And if you are interested, you can go to my website at sevtalksmoney.com Make an appointment or fill in the contact form and we can take it from there.
All right, so today again, we’re gonna be talking about a subject that has some trigger with it. So I just want to give a trigger warning that if you have been in a situation where you’ve been assaulted, then this may be a trigger for you. So just be aware that we’re going to be talking about something that may trigger your experience. My guest today is Kirby Williams. She is a passionate advocate for financial wellness, and she believes in access to all financial counseling and educational resources. She started her career in 2008 as a Marketing Associate at educational publishing company advantage publications in Boston, Massachusetts, and she seems to become the owner of that company when she started she was also buried in credit card debt over 20,000. And we’re gonna be talking about that credit card debt and some of the reasons why she may have racked up that credit card debt. Without further ado, I would like to bring in my special guests Herbie Williams, to the discussion, Kirby, welcome.
Kirby Williams
Thank you so much. Our show thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Sev
You are welcome. Before we start talking to Kirby about this discussion, I want to remind everyone that our discussion should not be constituted as financial advice but more as educational and entertainment only I invite you to contact a financial professional for advice that is specific to your situation. We could start anyplace but I want to start with when did you come to the realization that something is wrong with the choices I’m making with my finances?
Kirby Williams
Well, there are several different sort of inflection points for me, I would say part of me knew exactly what I was doing. As I was doing it, I’m sure that a lot of us have been told here’s exactly how to do a certain thing. In some cases, I had a very nice amount of financial education. Some cases, people have none. But I even knew that a store credit card has a very, very high rate of interest, if you’re going to get a credit card that would not be one to get after being raped. Actually, on Halloween of 2002. My freshman year in college, I went through a period of rage and sadness and had a lot of support from my family, but not a lot of support from the school. I opted not to have anything happen to this person. I have talked about this in public, but I’ve never named his name and I’m not going to but couple of months, I guess everyone thought sort of, oh, she’s getting over it, it’s going to be okay.
Again, I had lost a really, really good amount of weight and was very, very, very different size than I was when I experienced this trauma. And I guess it occurred to me one afternoon that I should go and get some new clothes because I was really just the clothes I was wearing were falling off of me. And I remember that somebody in my life who I cared about a lot had told me that afternoon that I looked really great. If you see photos of me from then I did not look really great. I was way way underweight and things were not great. But someone who mattered a lot to me told me that I looked really great. And I took that basically as fire went off inside me. I’m not okay, things are not okay. Of course, I didn’t say that out loud. I didn’t realize that. And I remember standing in my dorm room saying out loud. So of course, I think maybe that I would have realized all of this a little bit more clearly, as the years went by, but saying out loud to myself, I’m going to burn it all down which even then I didn’t know what that really meant.
What I did was I went to the mall that afternoon, I went to every single store that I had an interest in Abercrombie and Fitch and Banana Republic and Macy’s and I took out their store card. And then I did put the maximum on it. By the end of that one afternoon, it was basically as much as I could possibly do. So that was the first inflection point but I didn’t actually realize that money. Other than that one day, I didn’t put together that money and assault and respond to what had happened to me was an actually a trauma response until years later this last fall.
If you all are out there and you’re thinking you have come to the realization that something that has happened to you that’s awful, has triggered bad or negative decisions or things that you feel ashamed about in your life and you didn’t connect it until now. It took me 20 years, and I work in this field every single day, basically that the realization 20 years later had to do with just sort of the wording of something and it sort of popped into my head that was the real point of realizing it but 20 years
Dr. Sev
Yeah, and the thing is, you know, we make decisions sometimes and we make them a position of consciousness and sometimes from a position of unconsciousness. You know, your parents say to you or a friend say to you or teacher says something to you or does something to you, and you say, I’m going to show them and you may say that out loud, or sometimes you don’t realize that you’re going to show them is the decision you’re making is an I’m going to show them decision because it’s from that trauma, whatever it happened to you, whatever your parents did, or said, or your teacher did or whatever. And the credit card you going shopping. It was from that place. Okay, I lost control somewhere. So now I’m taking control by spending these cards racking up money on these cards.
Kirby Williams
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about it today. And for a long time in my family, I had this debt and it accrued sometime a couple of years later, it was $20,000. Plus, just shopping, my parents paid for my college and my car and my housing and everything else. I was very gifted and privileged in that way. But I think that it really did come from this feeling. I’ve been told that everything’s okay. I’ve been told, you know, you’re handling this great, the little person inside me who was really hurt and really injured and really, really, really not okay, said, Guess what, I’m going to make the biggest mistake that may be in a way that it will be noticeable because I came from a world where if you all of a sudden racked up that kind of debt was almost worse than having been assaulted in a weird way, just because that got attention. I guess I felt bad as we may know, please listen, credit cards, especially those ones that they give at the store, the interest just rolls and it becomes just like a snowball that goes down a mountain and becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So the debt that I got in 2002 was still with me in 2004 and 2005. I kept shopping which I did it it got bigger and bigger and bigger. And it just grew and grew and grew. So there was this shame at home about Kirby if she can’t manage money, you know, she’s terrible at this. So imagine, of course, they’re surprised when I came home and told them that I had just taken a job with a financial education publishing company. There was a lot of laughter I remember sort of feeling like, Yeah, I agree with them. But at the same time, I still hadn’t had this realization that I was making these decisions based on the bad thing that had happened. But there was deep, deep, deep shame that I can’t.
Dr. Sev
And I guess a financial counselor would probably say or therapist, that was your way of saying, I still need help, even though they were telling you I’m okay. You’re okay. You’re doing well, you’re dealing with it’s really great. That was the way to probably show them that I’m not okay, you think I am, but I’m not. Since the money me being in debt will probably bring more of an attention to me than you think. And I’m okay from this assault that happened. Here’s another way for me to show you I still need that help. Maybe that’s where financial therapists will come in. We’re not financial therapists. So we’re just talking from experience here. For those who are listening. Talk to us about after recognizing that these decisions I’m making are not serving me, it may be coming from a place that is still unhealed. What were some of the processes or what was the process that you went through to start getting that healing,
Kirby Williams
the actual assault itself, I underwent just a couple of years after it happened. EMDR therapy, which is a really specialized kind of trauma therapy, it was immensely helpful for me. However, we never got into the money stuff. It was completely separate from the assault. And that’s actually as I realized this past fall, that’s not true. The amount of shame that I felt from being someone who had been raped even though of course, everyone will say you’re the victim. You shouldn’t feel ashamed. I felt ashamed. I thought about every single decision that I had me what was I wearing that night, I was asked, What was I wearing that night? What did I say? How did I try to get out of it? How did I miss how did I bet and I dealt with a lot of that stuff in EMDR
Dr. Sev
society. That scenario creates that conversation in our heads because society makes us immediately feel when you say I’ve been raped. Did you ask for it? Did you dress provocatively, it doesn’t matter if I’m naked, I still doesn’t give you permission to rape me, you know, and I can understand where you’re coming from with that conversation because society puts those messages in our head.
Kirby Williams
Yeah, no, I mean, I was asked at one point by somebody I really, really trust. So this is still something that stays with me till today. What did you expect to happen by going into so and so’s room? What did you expect? And they kind of took it back as soon as they said it. But you know, I think that there’s a very, very big reason in my life that I transferred all these feelings over into money, because I guess I think I knew somewhere inside that shame over money, money problems, overspending massive amounts of credit card debt, that was something that my support system was ready to take on, even though it really stayed with me for 20 years. So this massive shame of having done this, that it’s almost like I transferred the shame over and I think partly it was a transference of, I can’t handle this injury over here. This one is too big. I’m going to make a new injury that hurts me less, that feels less personal. And money is personal as you grow older and it becomes part of you know, whether you can get a certain house or you become a business owner and you have a credit history, all of a sudden these things stay with you.
But for me this fall standing in my backyard when all of a sudden I had this massive fan moment of guess what the fact that you did this and the fact that you still have spent some spending power problems and you still have these impulses, to shop, to, to overspend, to sort of feel sort of this feeling of sort of a rewarding yourself, that all goes back to this one moment, this trauma, this wound, and I was able to almost probably within a minute of rehabbing that damn realization feel the weight of the guilt that I felt for doing that, and for sometimes continuing to make some really pretty bad decisions go to a shop and you see something you just can’t say no, but you clearly can’t afford it, I felt like I could put my shoulders down the weight transferred because I still have to deal with it before but now I can deal with it from a new lens, you’ve identified that fan.
Yeah, all these are these things that you feel so terrible about that you’ve done in terms of your spending that you were made to feel shame about in your family and other places. And you should feel ashamed if you go and spend $20,000 without thinking about how you’re going to pay it back. But and this is big, it was caused by this gigantic, horrible thing that happened, opening up this wound, and it made my brain kind of get rewired all kind of messy, or decision
Dr. Sev
Pathways know, muddied by this thing that happened
Kirby Williams
Completely, the reason I would make a certain decision was because it sort of set off a different response in my head, instead of like, oh, this is a smart decision to be making, it was sort of a, Hey, I’m gonna show them decision. Or maybe after some time, it was I’ve been hurt, I deserve it. Or I don’t even know I haven’t even processed that yet. But I think if you’re able to link some behaviours that you have about yourself, that you may feel really bad about, I will just say completely deep shame, not even to the point where I felt like I could ask for help, because I felt like I would look so bad to myself and to others that I couldn’t handle it. If you are able to connect those behaviours to something really negative, or even maybe something that you may feel like that wasn’t that bad. But for some reason, you’re thinking of it, go seek some help, I’m not qualified to offer help at all. But if that rings a bell for you, that might be a place to look some exploring just because for me, it has meant that for the first time in 20 years, I can look at the new J Crew email pops into my inbox. And instead of thinking this sort of, I gotta get all that stuff, which I would still think 20 years later, and I’ll figure out a way to pay for it later, I’ll earn that money, those thoughts feel so much farther away, I was able to write down all my expenses.
I mean, I did get out of that original debt, but there has been more debt that is, you know, sort of accrued since then, you know, I’m not saying that it takes 20 years to find hope you can definitely find your way before having a massive realisation. But the realisation for me meant that I could stop carrying the guilt and the shame, and in stopping carrying the guilt and the shame. That meant I could pick up some really good information and good advice.
Dr. Sev
I think society makes us feel that guilt. So instead of saying, I did this thing, what is the thing that I need to do now to fix it, we go into this place of shame, and this place of guilt, and it takes a while to get out of there to get the solution. I was reading an article recently where some pass FDIC and for those who don’t know Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, this is the organisation they do a lot of things, but one of the things they do is they provide insurance or they cover your bank accounts up to $250,000. Every bank account, you have the type of account, they cover up to 250,000, I’ll just say that without going into more details, but this man, what he said from a place of privilege is everybody knows that your accounts are covered up to $250,000. Even the little kids know it as they walk into the bank, there is a sticker, it’s two things. There’s hardly anyone who go into bank these days. And if you go into the bank, who says you’re looking at sticker, and you’re assuming that everybody knows that all the towns are covered up to $250,000, you have that knowledge because you’re being in that field, not necessarily everybody else will have it.
And so that kind of stuff really ticks me off. Because this our business of personal finance, there are people in there who makes you feel guilty, or they come from this place of privilege, forgetting that and then everybody starts on the bottom rung, not everybody has the same knowledge. And that’s what creates the sense of guilt, where people now will not go for the help they need, they will not seek the help they need until they’re drowning people are taking their lives, because they’ve been in situations where they can’t manage their money. And they think the only way out instead of coming out to tell their family or society because they know they’re going to be torn apart by society now that their lives 16% of suicides are attributed to some kind of personal finance issue, people who are in a place where their personal finance is in a mess, and they take their life because of it. And I can’t think of any other reason why someone would do that if they didn’t feel like society was going to judge them, especially if you’re in a high place of position you should know at 50 You should have this amount at 40 You should have this set. And who says because of that we have this place of shame and guilt that we are made to feel as a society and I said it’s time for us to stop that if something happens to somebody they should be able to go look for the help they need without feeling like they’re going to be judged without feeling In a sense of guilt, to diagnose you with high blood pressure, even if he has high blood pressure that doesn’t disqualify the doctor. So let me get off my soapbox.
Kirby Williams
No, you should. I mean, I was thinking about this prior to today. But it was relatively easy for me as a rape survivor to go into several different therapy offices to talk to my parents to say I have in writing, it was not a great thing to happen. But it was an easy thing to say. And I think that we’ve actually come a pretty long way for women, not in all places, not with all families. But we’ve come a pretty long way in terms of saying to women and men, this is not your fault. Ask for help. Yeah, I’m for help. But on the money side, which you think okay, well, that should be so much easier, because it’s just money. It’s just, it’s not your body. But guess what, I myself have much harder to the point where it just felt absolutely like it would never happen asking for financial advice and stage where I was in my finances. When I was surrounded by resources. I went I mean, resources for a living.
Dr. Sev
You said something important there you saying you’re surrounded by resources, but you still were some kind of fear of asking for help. And you’re somebody who’s never…
Kirby Williams
Never going to ask for help right now, it was never gonna ask for help. Yeah, you know,
Dr.Sev
Right now, you know, who are probably in that same position. And I want to encourage you to seek the help you need. Because those people who you think you’re afraid of, they’re not going to help you pay your bill, they’re not going to help with your finances, they’re not going to help your children in college. If you need help get the help that you need. Forget about that. Forget about somebody judging you, okay?
Kirby Williams
Could also be that you are making some decisions, like you could be putting things on credit cards, you could be gambling, you could be making decisions for me, I have actual diagnosed PTSD. And that means that my brain rewired itself to protect itself, you could have a wound that no matter how long ago, the thing was, no matter how serious you think, or maybe your family thinks, or your friends think whatever this thing that happened to you, you could have a wound that has been shorter separating like rotting for however long, it doesn’t have to have happened yesterday doesn’t have happened that well, we could go it could have happened 40 years ago, and that could have been influencing us decisions.
And so imagine if you’re able to put that together, those decisions that you… I’m gonna say the word we don’t usually say hate in my house, it’s a big thing. Those decisions that you hate about yourself those things you feel shame, those money decisions, or money actions, what if they’re caused by this bad thing that happened to you? What if they’re caused by some sort of trauma? That’s way back in your past? Or maybe it was last week? But what if those two things are connected? And it turns out that you’re not to blame in any way for your actions? Does that change things for you? And if it does change things for you, ask for help go to somebody. But if it doesn’t change things for you still ask for help?
Dr. Sev
Yes. You don’t want to destroy your future because of some idiot from the past.
Kirby Williams
You don’t want to destroy your future, because you’re imagining in the future telling you that you have made a mistake. Guess what? You already know, you made a mistake. Yes, you already feel that I promise you, it’s actually not going to feel worse, it already feels worse. So if you’re imagining is there’s going to be somebody in a suit saying, guess what, you’ve made a real mess of your life. That’s what I imagined. I work in this world. And I know that these people are not going to say that. But I imagine that person saying to me, Well, you know, you should be held to a higher standard. You’ve made a real mess of your life. Yeah, I thought that was gonna make me feel so terrible. But I already felt so terrible. I promise you the feelings that you can create inside yourself, especially as knowingness as a trauma response to PTSD can’t really get worse, go and look for it to get better. Ask for help
Dr. Sev
We build up situations, in our minds, that turns out to be you know, a little kid, but we’ll get him on his under the bed. And we build up the situation in our minds, so much bigger than it is. And as Kirby said, please get the help that you need. Because you don’t want that person into a sexual assault. You don’t want that person that’s in your past to keep having control over you. Because they’re not even thinking about you. If it’s something that whether it’s sexual assault, or some kind of assault, or something that was said to you or done to you in the past, that may be the triggering thing that’s causing you to behave a certain way.
I mean, I’ve read stories of girls and boys who have sold their bodies, because it’s something that happened to them in the past. If you’re listening to us right now, and you know that there are things that you’re doing, or you’re thinking based on this discussion of things that you’re doing or have done, that may not be something you really want to do, then maybe it’s time to seek professional help to explore what is the trigger that’s causing me to behave and do things or make decisions or maybe you’re in a relationship and you’re always choosing that person who’s battering who is always physically or emotionally tearing you down. It couldn’t be a reason for that. And so seek the help that you need so that you can get free and you can start rebuilding yourself. You can start building your life into becoming more mentally free from the core that’s holding you back because this is a very real situation and there millions of people who are going through We live making decisions that is not decisions that if they thought about it, they would really make but those decisions are as a result of something that happened in your past. And we’re not here to tell you that because of what you did you shouldn’t be held accountable. Yes, you should be held accountable, but at the same time, understand that some of those decisions may be because of something that’s in the past, how can we corral that? How can we put a handle on that get control of it so that it doesn’t continue to impact or today and tomorrow?
Kirby Williams
Yeah, to add to that, I’m a successful business owner, and everything looks in place. And you know, mostly it is. But on the other hand, you’re way over a year, I’m the person who walks in and sees a $2,000 handbag, and something in me just thinks, of course, I can have that. And so up until this fall, can never really hit me the reason why I think I can have that. And the reason why I then sort of make all these little reasons and little band-aids, together the little sort of scotch tape and glue reasoning, that’s not so great for why you can have a certain thing that you can’t afford, you didn’t save up for etcetera, all part of our money story, right? Yeah, we are marginalized.
And again, I may be the person who has high blood pressure, or the doctor who has high blood pressure, who’s giving advice to the person who had but also I think maybe the doctor who has high blood pressure knows what it feels like to really not want to go on a run in the morning, maybe the doctor who has high blood pressure knows that, you know, it sucks to have to deal with having high blood pressure, maybe that person who has high blood pressure is actually a really good person to give advice to a person with an injury with high blood pressure struggles, right? Because yeah, because they don’t, because they know that it’s not as easy as you know, okay, great. Here I go. I’m gonna stop doing this right now. The wound is there. The wound in some cases has been open for however long the wound affects your entire being.
How are you going to just change that in one, two, that you’re not, but what somebody who is a financial therapist, a mental health professional, a financial coach can help you do maybe all together, you may need a team never bad to have a team, what they can do for you is help you to understand that you’re not making these decisions, because you’re a bad person. Now, you’re not in a vacuum. You’re not me, oh, no, no, it’s all connected. And when you connect it, you can start in my case, at least you can start forgiving yourself, you can start healing, you can start saying I can see a point in which my life going forward in which this will not be a big problem. For me, I can see a point going forward in which this will not be part of my story, it will be back there and it will be in the morass. But it will not be something that I carry with me every single day every time I make a purchase. And that’s what I’m working on now.
Dr. Sev
With that, I want to talk a little bit about your products, Kirby from your company, advantages publications, and how it can help people as they’re putting their finances back together. Tell us about your products and how we can help them with that goal.
Kirby Williams
Okay, awesome. I’m going to show you the calculator. We’re gonna go really close. Oh my god. Yeah, we’re gonna go close. Okay, this is the paycheck power booster. It is a financial tool that you actually you hold it in your hand like this. And you slide it I first used this a couple of months into my work and advantage. You know, I was kind of scared to even look at this because I felt like it was going to kind of show me kind of a You’re hopeless, you ruined it turned out. What this wants you to do is look at this little list on the bottom, we’ve got manicure and pedicure, we’ve got vending machines, we’ve got Starbuck all sorts of things that discretionary spending that you may do every day, you might go and get your coffee in the morning, what I used to do is get gossip magazines like Britney Spears on the cover, and I’m dating myself here, bottled water, things to sort of help my commute along, I realised that when I put this in, I was spending so you pull it, how much money are you spending, I was spending, let’s see, we’re gonna pull it up, we’re gonna keep going, we’re gonna keep going. I was spending $14 a day it shows you that you’re going to have $5,000 more a year. And then when you turn it over, you can see that in 20 years, you will have $102,000 I was looking at this $20,000 debt when I was looking at this for the first time and I was thinking I’m gonna have to win the lottery, there’s no way I can work on making a dent in this. How is this product going to help me how is any advice going to help me turns out $5,000 a year in four years you did it you paid $1,000.
So this was very helpful for me personally, people can put you if you have a logo or contact information, say let’s say you’re a financial coach, or you’re a nonprofit, and you want to get people to your website, which is kind of ironic, because you have a paper tool and you’re getting people to your website, but the two can go together. You may put a QR code on there, people click on it, they go to your website, they attend your event, they attend your programme, but the cool thing also about these and we have them on credit card debt and student loans and retirement is that they give people sort of a small actionable step that is also sort of motivating in that we don’t ever assume you know anything because I look at somebody and I picture them as me who was not only kind of against getting the education, but who was also never going to ask for help. If there’s math to do we do it for you. If there’s a term we don’t put a big terms in there that you may not know we want people to really be able to Yes, use this with a coach or counselor but also get the information that’s going to help them by themself. Because sometimes we’re over here with their little, okay, I don’t want anyone to know how much I’m spending every day. And that was me, I was in the little sample room in our office putting sample packs together for other people. And one day I decided I’m just going to try this for myself. And that was a big moment for me, obviously, a really big job and realizing something so powerful that then I became very passionate about it, and now own the company. And we even make two foot tall ones, because I think it works so well
Dr. Sev
Numbers to you, it brings it makes it real, make the numbers.
Kirby Williams
And it also makes it real in a way that’s not scary and not bad. It’s just a little action steps that you can do, but also an action step that has a huge I mean, what if you put a little in in terms of a little bit of savings, a little bit of effort, and you get a huge return out of it, that’s just a gigantic win. So we try to offer gigantic wins, where you don’t have to do something that’s really hard, maybe add 1% more to your payment for your credit card every month. And we tell you what that is because I’m not expecting anyone to calculate that because I wouldn’t expect myself to calculate that we try to just give tools to people that motivate them to feel sort of empowered, you become a little bit less that person who’s afraid to ask for help or afraid to ask question, because you just got this power over here. And you’re going to take this step and you feel good about it. And you should feel good about it. And then guess what you ask the first question, you ask the next question, or you know, you’re having an entire discussion about your finances. It’s amazing.
Dr. Sev
Yeah, it really is, as you said, it empowers you. And that’s the key right there. Because no matter what kind of information we share with you, you have to meet and step you can’t do it for you. And once you see the information, I think it will empower you because then you see the possibilities. And it’s not that I have to say $5,000 I have to say 10,000 I just need to maybe cut expenses for this thing that’s costing me $2. Or maybe I just need to save $5 per paycheck, or whatever it is. It’s small, it mushrooms, it balloons. And then you can see where you know, a year from now, where you can be two years from now where you can be just starting small.
Kirby Williams
Just start small, just start and for me it turned out. I mean, everyone, everyone goes out as real for oh, you’re taking my Starbucks away, you’re taking in Boston, you’re taking my Dunkin Donuts away, you can still have that you can totally still have that. Let’s say you’re having it seven days a week. But if you had it five days a week What if you tried making coffee at home? It turns out that we found out during COVID lockdown my husband who is a fourth grade teacher, those of you who are teachers. He needs his Dunkin Donuts coffee every day. It is a non negotiable. And we’ve been together for 15 years. He’s been teaching for 20 years and I have never touched that. Okay, you get your cut. So here we are in lockdown, and we can’t go out and I said you can’t go to Dunkin Donuts. And he said he was shocked. He was horrified. And he went he dragged my coffee, which is just Starbucks didn’t drink a lot of it because it’s very strong. I just get the cafe Verona roast beans, and I put it in there. I also kind of just drink it cold and it’s gross, guys. It’s gross. But he tried drinking that he put a lot of sugar in it. He got the worst headache of his life. So he felt so gross. He was so tough to be around. We were all like, Oh my God, what’s happening? I said to him, I think it’s the sugar. I think you’re not putting enough sugar in it. He said, Oh yeah, I put so much sugar in it. Kirby the next day, same thing, terrible headache. He’s in a terrible mood. Oh my gosh. I said, Honey, I really think this is some type of withdrawal. And he said, Well, I’m drinking a caffeine and sugar. And long story short, we found out that if you get Smuckers, Sunday syrup, and caramel from Stop and Shop and we got it on an Instacart because we needed to stay very, very, very locked down. And he put this much into the cup with some of my Starbucks, first of all, the headache went away. It turns out it does sugar, but he found through trial and error that he could make his coffee at home. And he did that for you know two years until sort of we decided okay, you know, you go back and do your Dunkin Donuts again.
But it’s interesting how that situation finally forced us to figure out this coffee thing. It can be figured out it was pretty shocking how much caramel Sunday syrup we went through. But I think we probably saved a lot of money. But that doesn’t mean that you know, I’m not going to say to him, we’re back. Go. And he’s teaching every day if that’s his thing, that’s the thing that brings him joy. Right? Trust me it is it really is he loves. No, we’re not going to take that away
Dr. Sev
Yeah. And that’s the thing we all have wants. And we all have needs. And there’s nothing wrong with once and if your want is coffee, if your want is Starbucks or whatever it is, that’s perfectly fine. If you can fit it into your budget, just make it fit into your budget. And if it fits in your budget, go ahead and enjoy it. Nobody wants to take away from anybody, the thing they enjoy, you just want to make sure that you’re not doing it to the detriment of your other parts of your budget.
Kirby It’s been great having you we could go on because there’s you know, we could talk about and I want to thank all of those who have joined us today. And for those of you who are going to be listening to the replay, we’re going to repurpose this into a podcast. It will be available for you on LinkedIn. Facebook and YouTube for you to listen to at your leisure, you can speed it up so you can listen to it. You can listen as you drive, we want to leave you with a message that don’t be ashamed of any things or any financial decisions you’re making. Understand that you’ve made a decision that may have derailed your finances. But there are ways to be able to get back on track, identify what that trigger is that’s causing you to make those financial decisions. It may require you to speak with a professional to help identify those triggers. And once you understand that, then you put in the work to get the fix that you need. And again, if you have warrants, it’s perfectly okay to have the warrants. Go buy the dress, go buy the shoes, just make sure it is not derailing your overall budget. Any final words, Kirby?
Kirby Williams
Thank you so much for having me. I would just say Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help with your money with something horrible that may have happened that even if you feel like you’re to blame for that thing, even if you feel like you’re to blame for your finances being a mess, I really, really think that you may feel like you’re going to feel worse asking for help. Probably the feelings that are coming from inside of you are the worst. It’s going to get asked for help please because it can save your life.
Dr. Sev
Yeah, I love that. And on that note, we’ll end ask for help it could save your life.
