Grayson Stalvey Financial Coaching

Cutting Through the Noise

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 17:07:55 GMT

Have you ever Googled “How to budget?”

I just did. There were 1.7 BILLION search results. Think about that number. Now imagine you’ve made a commitment to yourself that you’re ready to start doing better with your money, but you’re not sure where to start.

So you jump on the old Google box and search and find 1.7 billion website.

Woah.

That’s what happened to me in 2008 when I made the decision to stop creating debt and to start building wealth instead. But there was SO MUCH INFORMATION out there. I was overwhelmed. I had a mini-panic attack. I read article after article after article, system after system after system. Most of them had the same skeleton, the basics were the same with little tweaks here and there.

But they were just different enough that when I read a new one, I’d be ready to throw away the work I had already done to try this new shiny system I’d just read about.

I must have created my first budget more than 10 times.

And then I got so frustrated that I just gave up.

I came back to it eventually, because my WHY was strong enough, but I look back at it now and think about how I could’ve made it so much easier.

How I could have cut through the noise.

The fact of the matter is, 99% of the 1.7 billion articles on budgeting will do the trick. They’ll be perfectly fine for you. Some may be better than others, but the reality is that the only wrong way to budget is to not budget.

If you’re struggling to get started, just pick an article and implement it. Then give it a chance. Don’t run to the next shiny system you read about. Give it a couple of months and see the impact it has on your money.

Once you get in the swing of things, once you’ve created a budget and stuck with it for a few months, THEN you can start trying to tweak it and get fancy.

If you’re reading this and you’re ready to get started, click here to grab my Quick Start Budget Guide , cut through the noise, and just get started.

Debt Repayment Strategies

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 17:56:17 GMT

What’s your debt repayment strategy? If someone had asked me that 13 years ago, I’d probably just have stared at them until I mumbled something about just paying it and then walking away.

I didn’t have any type of strategy at all when I first got serious about paying off my debt. I figured I’d just make the minimum payments for the rest of my life, because why would you spend any more money than that on debt?

Once I got serious and realized that I didn’t actually want to be in debt the rest of my life, the topic of a debt repayment strategy got a lot more interesting.

There are a number of different strategies for paying off debt. Two of the most common are the debt snowball and the debt avalanche. Let’s discuss.

The Debt Snowball was made famous by Dave Ramsey. The basic gist is that you list out all of your debts from smallest balance to largest. When you make your budget, you plan on making the minimum payment on all of your debts. Any extra money you have each month gets thrown at the debt at the top of your list, the one with the smallest balance. Once that debt is paid off, you roll that minimum payment into the next debt on your list. As you pay off debts, your payments “snowball” into bigger and bigger payments until next thing you know your debt is gone.

Next is the Debt Avalanche. It’s pretty similar to the Debt Snowball, except instead of listing your debts in order from smallest balance to largest, you list them from highest interest rate to lowest. Mathematically, this is the most efficient way to pay off your debt. You’ll spend less money on interest and will spend less time in debt paying it off this way.

When it comes down to it, you need to know your personality. Do you need quick and easy wins at the beginning to keep you motivated? If your highest interest rate debt is tens of thousands of dollars, will you be able to stick with the plan if it takes you a year or two to pay off your first debt?

Figure out your motivation, then choose the debt repayment option that works best for you.

Tracking Your Expenses

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 18:00:37 GMT

I failed an awful lot when I first started on my financial journey. Back in 2008 when I first started trying to be better with money, I didn’t know how to budget. I didn’t have anything fancy, no programs or spreadsheets or anything. In fact, my very first budget from July 2008 is literally just a .txt notepad file. It was ugly and clunky.

It wasn’t pretty, but I eventually did have an actual budget. And I still failed. I was terrible at staying within the budget I set for myself. I’d get to the end of the month and tally everything up and find that I spent way too much money on eating out and entertainment and the like.

Eventually I realized that the problem was that I was waiting until the end of the month to see what I spent. I wasn’t tracking my expenses as I went along.

Once I figured that out, it got a lot easier. I updated my spending periodically throughout the month, and that way I was able to see how I was doing. Did I spend three quarters of my eating out budget the first week of the month? Time to cut back a bit. Was it almost the end of the month and I still had a pretty hefty entertainment budget left? Maybe it’s ok to splurge on a night out. When you take note of where you are DURING the month, you’re able to make changes to your spending patterns to compensate.

When it comes to actually tracking your expenses, there are a number of ways to do it. There are plenty of apps out there (Mint, Every Dollar, You Need A Budget) that can help you. You can use a spreadsheet (or use a .txt file!) to keep track of everything. If you’re using plastic to pay for everything you can log onto your bank account and download a list of your expenses. Or you can go old school and just carry around a note pad and a pencil and just write down every time you spend money!

Regardless of HOW you choose to do it, the goal is to be able to account for every single dollar that leaves your checking account.

If making a budget is the planning part of things, tracking your expenses is the execution!

How to Create a Budget

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 18:11:50 GMT

When I first started trying to take control over my money it was a bit of a mess. I had no clue where to start. I knew I needed to make a budget, but I had no idea how to actually do that.

When I googled it, it was information overload. There was so much information out there that it was hard not to be overcome with analysis by paralysis.

It was a lot for me to personally overcome just to get started. So now I want to share with you what I did learn. Cut out all of the noise and get down to the basics: how do you budget?

You start out with your income. How much money will you make during the month you’re budgeting for? For a lot of people this is pretty straightforward. For those with variable income, it’s a little more difficult. If you’ve got a variable income, you want to go with your worst-case scenario income. A good way to figure that out is look at your last 12 months. What was the worst income month? Use that as your baseline income going forward. That way, if you can make your budget work with your worst-case income, you’re golden. In your worst month you know you’ll be covered, and if your income is more than that, you’ve got extra to figure out what to do with (and that’s a lot more fun to do than to overestimate your income and then try to figure out where you’re going to cut your budget to make it work!).

Next you want to list your expenses. There are 9 main broad categories that I recommend you budget for: Giving, Saving OR Debt, Household, Shelter, Utilities, Transportation, Insurance, Children and Discretionary.

When you’re done allocating your money, your income minus your expenses should equal 0. If your expenses are more than your income you’ve got work to do. You need to either cut some expenses of increase your income, otherwise you’re going backwards! If your income is more than your expenses, even better! Give the rest of that money a job. I recommend paying off more debt or saving more.

That’s the basics of creating your budget. If you’re having trouble with that, I’ve got a tool coming soon that will help. My Quick Start Budgeting Tool simplifies this even more. You just enter your income and it tells you how much to allocate for each of those categories. It doesn’t get much simpler than that! Keep an eye out, it’ll be dropping in early October, and best of all, it’s FREE!

Coming Soon!

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 19:19:48 GMT

During the summer of 2008 I decided that I needed to flip my money script. Up until then I had been terrible with money, living well outside of my means and racking up nearly $40,000 in debt.

I knew the basics. I needed to create a budget, I needed to track my expenses and I needed a plan to get out of debt, but that was about it. I didn’t actually know how to create a budget. I didn’t actually know the best way to track my expenses. I didn’t have any type of strategy to pay off my debt.

When I first googled “how to budget” it was information overload (I just searched again…1.7 BILLION results). How do you dig through all of that to find real information? How do you cut through the noise? It was enough to almost make me want to give up before I even got started!

I don’t remember how many articles I read, but it was a lot. I must have started making that first budget 10 different times. Looking back, I realize I should have just picked something and gone with it instead of obsessing about making it perfect the first time out, but that’s not the way I was thinking about it.

I remember that struggle vividly. Now, as financial coach, my first meeting with my clients is a deep dive into their budget. We go into it line item by line item so they leave that first session with a workable plan from the get go.

But what about everyone else I interact with but don’t end up becoming clients? I want to be able to help them, too. That’s why I’m excited to roll out my new Quick Start Budgeting Tool next month! This easy to use tool is perfect for getting a jump start on your budget. You’ll simply enter your income and it will spit out recommended dollar amounts for common budgeting categories, based on the experts’ recommended budgeting percentages.

And best of all? This tool is going to be 100%, absolutely free.

I can’t wait to share it with everyone!

The Big Decision

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 22:38:51 GMT

In April 2020 I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I walked away from a secure, well-paying job in order to follow my passion and run my own busines full-time.

In some ways it was an incredibly hard decision to make. In other ways, there’s never been an easier decision in my life.

When I got out of the Coast Guard in 2017 and joined corporate America, it became clear to me pretty early that it wasn’t for me long term. Initially I thought that we could save up a ton of money and retire early. We sat down and crunched the numbers and figured that in 10 years we could save up enough money where we didn’t NEED to work anymore.

That single-minded focus on making money put a strain on our lives and on our relationship. I lost focus for a while on what was important, like my relationship with my wife and my children.

Then I found out about financial coaching and everything changed. This is what I wanted to do with my life. I was certain that I could make coaching a full-time job, but Tamar wasn’t convinced. We started looking at what needed to be true in order for us to feel comfortable with my leaving my well-paying corporate job to coach full-time. We laid out some metrics: how much income I needed to be brining in, how many clients I needed to have, etc. We looked at how much money I’d need to make in order for us to continue saving towards our goals.

I kept working hard, burning the candles at both ends. Working at my day job until 5 or 6, then going home and working on my side hustle until late into the night. It was rough, but in my mind it was all going to be worth it.

In February this year I was selected to attend the Veteran’s Entrepreneurship Program at Oklahoma State University. A few months of distance learning culminated with 8 days of intense, entrepreneurial bootcamp in Stillwater. It was an incredible experience. I came back home full of renewed energy and excitement about being a coach, and I had so much confidence in my ability to continue to grow and build this business.

We hadn’t quite hit the goals we had set in order for me to do start coaching full time, but I knew the time was right. To strike while the iron was hot. After some deep conversation and soul searching, my wife and I agreed that it was time. I put in my notice and left my cushy corporate job to be a full time Financial Coach on April 3, 2020.

Since then we’ve zipped past the goals we had initially set, and it continues to grow. I’m so incredibly blessed to be able to do what I do, and I’m so grateful that you’re here with me!

What Could Have Been

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 20:31:33 GMT

I used to be pretty bad with money. When I first started out on my own, I racked up nearly $40,000 in debt in just a few years. It was pretty impressive how quickly I was able to spend money that I didn’t have.

My thought pattern changed when I met the woman that I was going to marry. I knew I had to do better if I was going to be able to support the family that I wanted to have with her. I couldn’t carry on spending above my means. So I set out to flip my money script.

It was hard work. It didn’t come easy at all. First there was information overload. Then there was the frustration when things didn’t go to plan. There were many times on my debt free journey when I felt like I just wanted to quit.

I didn’t know what financial coaching was back then. I didn’t know that there were people who would work with me to help me figure out what was important to me, then teach me how to use my money on those things. I didn’t know there were people who could help me come up with a plan to reduce both the amount of time it would take me to get out of debt as well as the amount of interest I’d be paying.

If I had been able to work with a financial coach, that frustration I felt trying to figure things out, the frustration of not making as much progress as I thought I should be would’ve been speed bumps instead of mountains.

I got to where I wanted to be eventually, but it wasn’t easy. It could’ve been so much easier!

Invest in Yourself

grayson.stalvey@gmail.com (Grayson Stalvey) — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 19:23:21 GMT

When I started coaching people on how to win with their money in January 2019, I was full of energy and excitement. I had finally found what I wanted to be when I grew up and this was the culmination of all the hard work I put into it over the previous year.

My first clients weren’t even paying clients…they were friends and friends of friends who agreed to work with me so I could gain experience. Good thing, too. I would have felt pretty bad about taking their money based on the product I was providing them!

Those first sessions, I look back at them now and cringe a bit. I had a general outline of what we were going to do, but it was very much fly by the seat of my pants with each meeting. I didn’t have a process and I certainly didn’t have flow.

Now, that’s not to say that my clients didn’t end up doing great things. Those three clients paid off nearly $40,000 during our time working together, which is incredible! I really struggled with imposter syndrome early on, though. I didn’t feel polished. I didn’t feel professional.

I wasn’t content to rest on my laurels. When I’m interviewing potential new clients, once of my qualifying criteria is that I want clients to bring me challenges, so that I continue to grow as a coach.

So when I wasn’t happy with my process at the beginning, I sought out advice and instruction on how to fine-tune it. There were two big decisions I made that went a long way towards erasing the doubts I had about myself.

The first one was joining a community of financial coaches online. A group where I could bring my questions and concerns and seek advice and input from people who have been in my shoes. This helped me realize that I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel with every new client I had!

Second, a few months after that, I invested in more training for myself to make myself a better coach. You see, my initial training focused heavily on how to coach. It was very situational and transactional. What I was missing was the systems and processes. I was missing how to be more efficient and consistent with the background stuff, when I’m not face to face with clients. Getting more training there wasn’t cheap, but it was worth it. My confidence and my professionalism soared.

If there are areas in your life where you know you’re lacking, consider an investment in yourself. It can make all the difference in the world!

How Did I Know?

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 19:51:07 GMT

In my last post I talked about the article that changed my life. After I left the Coast Guard I ended up in corporate America, making pretty decent money but generally unhappy with the work I was doing. There was something missing, a purpose in my life.

I found that article about financial coaching and it started me down the path to where I am now: a full-time financial coach and a small business owner.

I’ve mentioned my propensity for starting projects and never finishing them. How I get REALLY excited about something and dive head first into it, only to lose steam after a little while and moving on to whatever catches my eye next. That explains my wife’s reaction when I excitedly told her that I wanted to be a financial coach.

There was something about this, though. I knew it wasn’t going to be just another project, that this was going to be something big. The deeper that I’d dig, the more I learned about what coaching was and how to do it, the more convinced I became that this was what I was supposed to be doing.

I’ve taken some time recently to reflect on exactly HOW I knew this was different.

I felt like I’d been missing purpose for the work that I was doing since I left the Coast Guard. As I read about what financial coaching was and how it impacted lives, it just made sense to me. If you’re not familiar, the essence of what I do as a coach is this: I help you figure out what’s really important to you in life, then I teach you how to put your money toward those things. I help you come up with a plan to get from where you are now to where you want to be, and then I walk that path with you as an accountability partner and guide.

Those words, they resonate with me. I get a tingle in my spine when I hear them. There’s power behind them, because of the promise they offer. The ability to change people’s lives for the better. To do things with their money that they never thought possible. I felt a tugging in my gut, in my heart. I felt like I was being called to guide people through this journey for themselves.

I’ve felt validated every step of the way. From one of my very first clients who paid off her student loans in under a year. From the couple that was convinced that they’d never be able to simply live within their means who are now set to be completely debt free in the next 4 years, which will enable them to follow THEIR calling. To the couple who were able to erase years of money and marriage mistakes and are now walking down the path hand in hand, their relationship and their finances stronger than ever.

I love being a financial coach.

The Article that Changed My Life

grayson.stalvey@gmail.com (Grayson Stalvey) — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 19:42:55 GMT

When I got out of the Coast Guard in 2017 I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with my life. My initial instincts took me to the finance world where I looked at banking and becoming a financial advisor. I quickly found out that being a financial advisor wasn’t what I had in mind when I thought about helping people with their finances, and the banking world honestly just didn’t excite me very much. I ended up in corporate America buying raw and packaging materials for one of the largest consumer goods companies in the US.

It wasn’t a bad job. The people I worked with were incredible, but I found the work itself…lacking. It turns out, I wasn’t adequately prepared for lack of purpose in my life once I took off my uniform. When I was in the Coast Guard, even on the worst day, at the worst command, with the worst leadership, I always knew the good that was coming from what we were doing. From what I was doing. I struggled with that in corporate America. So I started searching for that fulfillment. That sense of purpose.

In early 2018 I found an article about financial coaching. Before this, I hadn’t heard the term before, I didn’t know what a financial coach was or that the term even existed. I read this article and everything clicked. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head.

The article was intense. And long. It broke down what a financial coach was, how the different business models work, and finally a really in depth look at how to become a financial coach. I ate it all up. I took in depth notes. I was on a mission.

I remember rushing into the living room to tell Tamar about the article and about financial coaching. I felt like a kid in a candy shop, I was so excited! As I gushed on and on about it, Tamar sat there patiently, just nodding. Honesty time: I have a tendency to get really excited about things, charge hard into it, and lose steam over time. That is to say, I start a lot of projects, but I don’t finish most of them. So Tamar played along and indulged my excitement, but it was obvious that she was skeptical about this ever becoming a real thing for me.

That article became my guide over the next few months as I shifted my free time into this. I started meeting other financial coaches and asking them about their journey, how they became coaches. I took Ramsey Solutions’ Financial Coach Master Training and got the basic building blocks set up for how to be a coach. I launched in January 2019 taking on my first three clients for free, just to build experience.

Those first couple of session were rough, not gonna lie. My process was clunky, I wasn’t very confident, but my clients got results. And that pumped me up! Over time momentum grew. I signed my first paying clients. My business became profitable from month to month. I reached my overall breakeven point, where my coaching practice made more money than I spent becoming a coach. And all along the way I was helping people do incredible things with their money and achieve things they barely dared to dream were possible.

Back in April I said goodbye to Corporate America and became a full-time financial coach. I finally found that purpose in my work that had been missing since I left the Coast Guard. There are a lot of different factors that enabled this to happen, but that article was what kicked it all off. It changed my life.

The Case of the Pilfered Cookies

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 17:32:25 GMT

When Tamar and I got married in 2011 we had nearly $100,000 in combined debt. Between student loans, car loans, credit card debt and personal loans, we were nearly 6 figures in debt.

I’ve written previously about my own personal desires for getting out of debt. As a new family, we looked at that number and thought about all of the risk and weakness associated with it.

We were spending more than $3,500 each month just for the minimum payments on our debt. $3,500 per month. Take that over the course of a year and we were spending more than $40,000 JUST on our minimum payments! That’s a crazy number!

We started thinking about what else we could do with that money if we didn’t have to pay back banks. Saving for a down payment on a house. Saving for our future. Enjoying life, traveling, preparing to have children. There were so many things that we’d rather be doing than sending our money to a bank.

I’ve told you about the struggles we faced on our debt free journey and I’ve told you about how we overcame them. We paid off that $100,000 in debt in 26 months. Just over 2 years. The feeling as we paid off Tamar’s last student loan was incredible!

Cheryl’s cookies are synonymous with celebration in our family. Major holidays, special occasions, we always get some cookies from Cheryl’s. Achieving debt free status was no exception, and let me tell you, those debt free cookies were DELICIOUS. There’s something about having a reward for a goal that you’ve worked incredibly hard for that makes that reward so much more fulfilling.

We had a lot of cookies. We planned on celebrating for a while! We coincidentally had a trip to visit some friends already scheduled, so we put the cookies in the freezer so they’d still be good when we got back. We had another friend of ours house/dog sit for us while we were gone…

You know what’s coming. We got back home, opened the freezer that first night to have a debt free cookie…and they were gone! Our nefarious house sitter had pilfered all of the cookies! I can’t say that I blame her, they were delicious, and it’s not like we had told her about them and what they were for beforehand, but still!

So there you go. We got some really good cookies to celebrate being debt free, but didn’t get to eat all of them! Amanda, if you ever read this, we forgive you, and we hope you enjoyed the cookies!

How to Stay Motivated

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 17:31:52 GMT

Fun fact, more than 80 percent of people who start budgeting end up quitting after the first month.

That figure really resonates with me. I struggled mightily when I first started trying to budget. I was trying to flip my money script and start being responsible with money because I knew I needed to be more financially responsible to provide for the family I wanted. My then girlfriend, now wife, was onboard with it. She was much better with money from a fundamental standpoint: she didn’t believe in debt and knew she had to live on less than she earned, but that was about it.

So we embarked on this journey together, eventually realizing that we were much more likely to succeed that way. That accountability piece was crucial.

But we still struggled along the way, particularly with motivation and with staying the course when things got rough.

When we started this together, we were still dating and enjoyed going out and doing things. Eating out, going out to bars, and then the special occasions. Hot air balloon rides for Valentine’s Day, Tour de Theme Parks in LA for birthdays, endurance races all over the country, international travel. We were actually pretty darn good at spending money.

The problem was when we did that, more often than not it busted our budget. Our planning for the month would just fly out the window. It was incredibly frustrating, and at times I wondered if it was even worth it. We were making progress towards being debt free, and I sometimes questioned whether or not we even needed to budget if we were still able to make progress.

What I didn’t see, and what Tamar HELPED me see, was that we were sabotaging ourselves. Yes, we were making progress, but by spending frivolously and not planning for these trips and everything we were doing, we were pushing out farther and farther how long it was going to take us to reach our goals.

When we sat down and looked at the numbers and looked at when we were going to pay off our last debts; when I saw that date get farther and farther away, it was like being hit with a sledge hammer.

Having that visualization, seeing the actual impact of what our spending was doing to our goals was a huge WOW moment.

We still slipped from time to time, but it was much easier to get back on track after that. We started planning in advance for these bigger trips we wanted to take. We made it a point to pay ourselves first by using all of Tamar’s paychecks to pay debt while we lived on my salary. We had to reign in the eating out a bit, we had to wait a little bit longer between the big trips and events, but once we got serious about it, we knocked that debt out in 26 months. Nearly $100,000 debt in just over two years.

So if you feel like quitting after that first month, focus on why you started in the first place. Keeping that in perspective could be just what you need to stay motivated.

The Power of Accountability

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 19:04:56 GMT

You might remember from my debt free story that when I first started trying to get a grip on my finances and turn things around, I was doing it on my own. I was 25, living in San Diego with $30,000 in debt, making good money, but really just had no clue where it was going. I was spending money frivolously, like the time I spent more than $100 buying wrestling action figures on ebay trying to relive my childhood. That’s another story.

I wanted to get better with money. I wanted to be debt free. I remember someone on my first ship telling me that they had more than $100,000 in retirement savings. At that point in time I had all this debt, and about $2,000 in my own retirement savings, and here was someone just a little bit older than me that was crushing it. I knew I had to turn things around.

To top it all off, I had met the woman I knew I wanted to marry. She was pretty darn good with money, I wasn’t. I was embarrassed by my debt and how bad I was with money. I was embarrassed about how little I had to show for the amount of debt that I had. Honestly, I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to provide for our future family if I couldn’t figure this money stuff out.

So there I was. I knew I had to change something, but I didn’t know where to start. I searched all over the internet about how to budget and how to pay off debt quickly and it was information overload. I tried to track my expenses, I tried making a spreadsheet to budget with (side note, I still have those. The oldest one goes back to July 2008!)

I wasn’t making any progress. I’d stay motivated for a month or two and then fall off the wagon. I’d get frustrated because it was so time consuming or my budget wasn’t perfect and I’d just let it fall to the side. I wasn’t getting any closer to being debt free.

I remember talking to Tamar about it one day and it was like a lightbulb went off in my head. I had the basic building blocks in place, but I was missing accountability. Someone to keep me on track when my motivation started lagging.

So Tamar and I made a plan. We’d continue budgeting together and we’d talk about it once a week. We’d hold each other accountable to the plans that we were making.

Even then it wasn’t easy. Life happens and if you’re not careful it’s easy to let those accountability meetings just fall by the wayside.

In the end, though, we stuck with it. June 2013 we paid off Tamar’s last student loan and we were officially debt free. And those accountability meetings actually ended up strengthening our relationship because we were talking about money regularly.

Without that accountability along the way, we’d probably still be working our way out of debt today.

My Debt Free Journey and How I Became a Financial Coach

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 19:03:57 GMT

A deep dive into my origin story

I’m Grayson Stalvey, and I want to tell you about how I became first debt free, and then a financial coach.

I wasn’t always great with money. When I graduated from the Coast Guard Academy, I was stationed in Kodiak, Alaska, an island where we were always told bears outnumbered people 4 to 1. I was making real, adult money for the first time in my life, and I basked in it. I still joke with my wife that I think I bought every DVD that came out between 2005 and 2007. I spent money without a thought for the future. I was putting something like 2% of my paycheck into retirement savings at the time, but I was much more interested in how I could use money to entertain myself on the island than setting myself up for success long term. I would go out on the weekend and buy drinks for the bar. One time I paid more than $300 to frame a $10 poster. It seemed like every other day or so I had a new package that I had ordered arriving. The money I actually needed to live on was less than half of my income, yet I was racking up credit card debt alarmingly fast. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that I split my time 50/50 between living on the island and living on a boat! Essentially, I didn’t know any better what I should be doing with my money. After spending 4 years in a military school where I didn’t really NEED money and now all of a sudden making this big paycheck every month, I definitely wasn’t setting myself up for success.

I met Tamar in San Diego in 2008. The Coast Guard moved me there and she was doing her Pharmacy residency at the Naval Hospital. We met two weeks before I deployed to Iraq. The connection was strong and immediate. I knew she was special and I knew I wanted to be with her. That bond strengthened as we communicated pretty much daily during my time in Iraq, and when I got back, I knew she was the one.

I knew I wanted to marry her one day. I wanted to provide for her and protect her. I had this overwhelming desire to make her happy. I knew that my debt, my money habits were holding me back from that. I knew I had to do something, to get rid of debt so that we could secure our futures together.

To be honest, I was ashamed of my debt. At this point I had about $30,000 in debt between credit cards, a car loan and personal loans. She actually had more debt than me, but hers were student loans and a car loan. I could look at her debt and see exactly what she exchanged it for. She was a pharmacist and had a reliable car. Me, on other hand, while I didn’t have quite as much debt as her, I had hardly anything at all to show for it. I couldn’t explain where all of my debt came from or how I benefited from spending that money that I didn’t have. It was embarrassing. I had met the woman that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and internally I was terrified that she’d learn the truth of my terrible money habits and never talk to me again.

I knew I had to get better, but I didn’t know where to start. I googled how to make a budget and how to pay off debt and was hit with information overload. I felt like giving up.

Then, one day, Tamar and I were talking about money and how overwhelmed I felt, and something amazing happened. We decided that we needed to hold each other accountable on this financial journey! That accountability piece was what had been missing.

Things got better after that, easier. But it still wasn’t smooth sailing. There were a lot of stops and starts, a lot of stumbles along the way. We’d have a bad month spending money and lose momentum, lose desire, but we eventually got to where we wanted to be. In June 2013 we made the last payment on Tamar’s student loans, making us officially debt free. I can’t describe that feeling. It was like a weight being lifted off of our shoulders. I honestly felt like a real adult for the first time, and by now I was 31 years old! It was so…freeing…knowing that we didn’t have to send our hard-earned money to a bank anymore. We got to take that money and pay ourselves, now.

We got debt-free cookies to celebrate. They were the best cookies I’ve ever tasted in my life. We actually didn’t get to eat all of them, they were pilfered by a houseguest, but that’s a funny story for another day.

So that’s our debt free journey. It wasn’t easy and there were a lot of hiccups along the way, but we got there.

Let’s fast forward a few more years. It’s early 2018, I’m out of the Coast Guard now and working in corporate America. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I honestly felt kinda lost after taking off the uniform, like I was missing a sense of purpose.

I remember finding an article that talked about what a financial coach was. I’d never heard the term financial coach before, and reading that article was eye-opening. Everything I read clicked. It just made sense to me. I got to the end of the article and ran to Tamar and told her, “I know what I want to be when I grow up!”

Tamar knows me pretty well. I do kinda have a tendency to get really excited about things and not quite see them through. So of course, she’s like uh huh, yeah, great dear. I knew this was different, though. The corporate job was fine, it provided for our family, but I KNEW that being a financial coach was what I was supposed to be doing.

I coached my first clients in January 2019. They were friends or friends of friends, and they were letting me coach them as a favor. It was clunky. My process was, frankly, terrible. But after each and every meeting, I felt energized. Excited. Ready to do more.

Tamar made the observation that I would come home from a full day of working in the office and be drained. Exhausted. Short of patience. Then that same day, I’d have a coaching session until 10pm, and afterwards I’d be bouncing off the walls. It was true, and it was yet another indicator that this is what I was supposed to be doing.

The joy I was feeling came from seeing the people I worked with transform their lives. Seeing them go from frustration and worry to confidence and swagger. Helping them see what was possible in their lives, and then helping them achieve it. It made me wish that I had known what financial coaching was a decade ago, because it would’ve eased so much of the money struggles and frustration we had early on.

Earlier this year I put in my notice and left my corporate job to be a coach full time. It was scary, it was exciting, and I’ve loved every minute of it since.

My Core Beliefs

grayson.stalvey@gmail.com (Grayson Stalvey) — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 20:38:09 GMT

These are what drive me as a coach...

I launched Grayson Stalvey Financial Coaching in January 2019 with the goal of helping people change their stories about money.

"Debt is just a fact of life, it'll always be there."

"I'm stuck in a job I hate because I can't afford to do anything else."

"I can't even get rid of my own student loans, how am I supposed to save for my children's college?"

Have you said any of those to yourself before? I became a financial coach to help YOU.

There are four core beliefs that guide my service as a financial coach:

1. I believe that no one is truly happy being in debt and feeling like they owe someone.

2. I believe that people want more freedom and choices, and not be stuck in situations because of income or financial obligations.

3. I believe that everyone wants to win with money and keep more of what they work hard to earn.

4. I believe that everyone reaches a point where they've "had enough" of feeling like they're not in control of their financial lives.

At Grayson Stalvey Financial Coaching, I guide young families through simple, actionable steps to get from financial frustration to financial freedom.

3 Positive Actions for Times of Uncertainty

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 15:50:39 GMT

"You can't always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside."

These are scary times. Uncertainty abounds. It's really easy to get caught up in the hype and hysteria and feel like things are spiraling out of your control.

When this happens, I find that the best thing to do is concentrate on what you can control.

With that in mind, here are three solid actions that you can control with your finances right now.

1. If you're paying off debt, consider pausing your snowball. By making only minimum payments in a time of uncertainty, you give yourself some breathing room with your cash flow. Having extra money set aside in savings gives yourself flexibility should you experience a drop in income. When everything gets back to normal, if you didn't need to use that money, you can always throw it right back into your snowball.

2. Reevaluate your spent plan and make changes where needed, but still stick to it. It's really tempting to blow your spend plan to bits during times of crisis. It's actually even more important now to continue being disciplined with your money. We don't know exactly how long this is all going to last, but we do know it won't last forever. Having a plan and sticking to it will help you to weather this with confidence.

3. Turn off your devices. Go outside and take a walk. Enjoy nature. Get some fresh air. If social media and the news are stressing you out, take a break.

If you need anything, I'm here. Drop me a line.

It's tax season!

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 21:55:53 GMT

What are your plans for your tax refund?

It’s tax season! You know, that time of year where every street corner is advertising some tax prep company or another.

Studies show that nearly three quarters of Americans received a tax refund last year. 73.2% to be exact. That’s nearly 96 million people who received a little bit back from Uncle Sam when the dust settled.

Having to figure out what to do with a tax refund is a fun problem to have. It’s also really easy to spend it without really thinking and find yourself wondering where that money went.

I’m a firm believer in being intentional with your money. If you want to use your tax return to take a big trip, awesome! If there’s a new shiny that you’ve had your eyes on for a while, that’s an option to! Be intentional with the money you spend, and spend it on what you know will deliver value to you.

If you look at your priority list, however, and you’ve got some bigger goals in mind, here are a few things you could use that tax refund for to put yourself in a better financial situation.

Use it to pay off debt

Most people view their tax refund as bonus money. A windfall that they may or may not have planned for. If you’re working on your debt plan, your debt free date likely doesn’t incorporate “extras” like a tax refund. This is a great opportunity to kick start your plan and get out ahead early. The bonus is that it will help you get out of debt quicker and pay less interest over the long run.

Use it to build up your savings

An Emergency Fund is one of the first things I work on with my clients. It’s an essential tool that lets you stay on track when life happens. An Emergency Fund will turn an event that could potentially derail your entire financial plan into merely a speedbump. Most experts recommend having 3-6 months of living expenses in your Emergency Fund

Is your Emergency Fund as robust as it should be? You might want to consider using your tax refund to beef it up a bit.

Invest in yourself

So you’ve got no debt and your Emergency Fund is right where it needs to be. So now what do you do with your tax refund? Consider investing in yourself.

When most people think about investing, their thoughts turn right to the stock market. It’s just as important to invest in yourself. Sometimes we have to invest in ourselves if we want to reach that next level. Do you want to lose weight? Invest in a gym membership or personal trainer to help you reach your goal. Do you want to earn more money at work? Invest in a book, training, or course to help you refine your skills. Do you want to learn more about a topic of interest? Buy a book or sign up for private music lessons or cooking classes.

Take a minute and figure out what you want to accomplish and how you can invest in it.

Adjust your withholdings

Ok, this one is cheating a little bit. But let’s think about what a tax refund really is. It’s Uncle Sam saying that you paid too much in taxes during the year, and he’s giving back what you overpaid. He’s saying thank you for that interest free loan, now I’m paying you back.

If you adjusted your tax withholdings, you could pay less in taxes each paycheck. This would decrease your tax refund each year, but it would mean you’d keep more of your money each paycheck. How would that increased cash flow each month affect your other financial goals?

One word of caution: I highly recommend speaking with a tax professional before changing anything with your taxes. The tax code is complex, so it’s best to work with an expert to make sure you’re adjusting your taxes the right way for long-term benefit.

Happy tax season everyone! If you get a refund, use it wisely. If you find that you owe a large amount, make some changes now for next year so you won’t be caught off guard.

And if you’re ready to invest in yourself and take control of your finances, I’m here to help!

Our low-cost Valentine's Day tradition

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 16:14:43 GMT

What are your low-cost Valentine's Day traditions?

A few years ago, my wife and I stopped with the extravagant gift-giving and restaurant-going for Valentine's Day. Now we do something a little bit different, and a LOT more cost effective.

Commercializing holidays is a pet peeve of mine, and Valentine's Day is one of the most commercial of all holidays...it was literally created by the greeting card industry!

I wasn't always all "Bah Humbug" about Valentine's Day. I used to do it up big. One particular Valentine's Day I bought my wife (then my girlfriend) what I thought was really nice watch. The lady I talked to in the store said it was a great gift, that it was fashionable and in style. It was one of those boyfriend watches, what I gather is essentially a men's watch in terms of size, but a women's watch in terms of design. I was really proud of that gift! I think my wife wore it once, out of pity for me.

How much money do you think is wasted on Valentine's Day gifts that either are infrequently or never used, or instantly consumed? I don't have the figures, but I'd wager it's a lot.

Three years ago I started a new tradition. Instead of buying things for my wife on Valentine's Day, I write her a letter. I look back over the past year and recap all the things I enjoyed doing with her, and all the ways she's made me love her even more. Writing this letter not only helps me reflect on our relationship and renew my love, but it's much more meaningful to her than a watch she'll never wear!

This has become something that I look forward to ever year, and it's a heckuva lot cheaper than gifts, flower and fancy dinners.

If you're working to get out of debt, holidays like this are a great place to cut back. Instead of buying each other flowers or chocolates, consider giving each other the gift of an extra credit card payment.

Be intentional,
Grayson

Money Behaviors and Mindset

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 20:18:01 GMT

Want to change your money habits? Start with your mindset.

Groundhogs Day is this Sunday. It's a great movie starring Bill Murray as Phil, a TV weatherman who gets stuck in a loop living the same day over and over again. I've found that a lot of people I work with feel the same way about their money. They have good intentions, they make New Years resolutions, and before long they settle back down into the same old habits without making any real progress.

In the movie, Phil eventually changes the way he thinks about things. He works on making himself a better person and helping those around him. In the end, this is enough to break out of the loop and start living life again. The takeaway there is that if we want to change our BEHAVIORS with money, we have to change the way we THINK about money.

The math makes sense. That's not usually where we get hung up. We all know that the secret to winning is to spend less money than you make. If you're consistently spending all of the money you make (or more!) you'll never get traction against your goals. We all know this. Math isn't the problem. It's our behaviors. And behaviors won't change unless you're intentional about changing them. The best way to get intentional about changing your behaviors is changing your mindset.

When I think of a healthy money mindset and the behaviors that go along with it, I focus on 4 key things: Knowing how much money you have coming in, knowing how much money you have going out, having a plan for your money, and having a clear set of priorities you want your money to accomplish.

This quote from Ayn Rand is a great starting point. How do you view money? Is it a goal in of itself, or is it a tool to help you reach your REAL goals? My challenge to you this week is think of money as a tool. What do you want to accomplish, and how are your tools going to help you accomplish it?

Be intentional,
Grayson