Interview with Carrie Huggins
In this episode, we will uncover 3 keys:
- Paying Yourself First as an Entrepreneur
- The Power of Long-Term Investing
- Women as Smart Investors
Podcast Transcription
Episode 53: Beyond Budgeting: Exploring Financial Liberation and Emotional Wealth ~ with Carrie Huggins
Intro
Odiva Vasell (00:32):
Welcome, welcome, my fabulous fempreneurs! I have exciting news—Carrie Huggins is in the house! She works with stay-at-home moms to help them achieve financial liberation and really transform their money mindset. That is something that all of us need today and every day to continue working on. So, welcome, welcome, Carrie!
Carrie Huggins (01:02):
Thank you so much for the opportunity. This is one of my favorite things to talk about.
Odiva Vasell (01:07):
Yes! So, let’s just jump right in. I wanna talk about—you know, there are some catchphrases that are going around. One is “financial freedom,” and the other is “financial liberation.” Do you see the difference between those two catchphrases?
Carrie Huggins (01:29):
I think they’re probably different expressions for the same thing—a feeling that money is my friend and money supports me. I think those two phrases capture that.
And it’s interesting to me—last year, I attended a conference for content creators in the personal finance space, and I was introduced to a term I’d never heard before for mental health professionals. It’s called financial therapy. There are psychiatrists and psychologists who specialize in finances, and some of them specifically speak with couples to help them communicate better about money. Some of them just speak to individuals to help them overcome anxiety around their finances and examine their mindset around money. That’s fascinating to me.
Odiva Vasell (02:25):
Yeah, that’s fascinating and fantastic! Because when you look at statistics, money is one of the things that breaks up relationships—families, couples. That is one of the things people go into a marriage or relationship saying, “We’ll work it out because we love each other,” and then they start butting heads.
You typically work with stay-at-home moms. What are the kinds of difficulties that they encounter in their financial growth?
Carrie Huggins (03:01):
Well, what you said about couples—that’s interesting. The reason there are money arguments in a lot of relationships is because money isn’t just about money. It’s not just about dollars and cents. It’s about power. It’s about goals and dreams. It’s about our future. It’s about our choices.
So, that really speaks to the challenges that stay-at-home moms have. A lot of them, if they aren’t earning money, feel powerless in their relationship and in their lives. And even beyond the finances—the dollars and cents—a lot of stay-at-home moms, as we talked about a little bit in our last conversation, feel depression when they are not earning money, when they don’t have a vocation, a career, a passion outside their children.
Because really, ideally, motherhood is a temp gig. If we do our job correctly, we’ve raised these wonderful, independent adults. And a lot of women will experience an emptiness—you know, a crippling depression—if they don’t have something else.
Odiva Vasell (04:16):
I can understand that perfectly, and I’m glad you shine light on that because that’s something that is typically attributed to men. You know, he’s unemployed, or he doesn’t feel fulfillment. But to hear that women, as well, go through this and probably don’t even realize that they’re going through it—their children are moving on, they’re at home, and the finances are not there. They are still kind of in a struggle mode, and probably they live most of their lives giving to others, so they don’t even know how to give to themselves or save for themselves.
What is one of the things that you think could help them to at least become aware that they need to build this financial backing for themselves? What is one of the first things they could do?
Carrie Huggins (05:23):
One of the things they need to do is continue to keep their skills sharp. One of the beautiful things about the internet is the ability that we have to continue learning and to continue sharpening the saw. Because of the internet, we have these free and paid courses and tutorials. People can go to college online—that’s a beautiful provision.
We can keep learning, keep that résumé fresh, keep our skills fresh. A lot of women start businesses from home—they start writing, they start doing freelance work, maybe virtual assisting, offering their services.
Whatever the skill set was before that decision was made to become a stay-at-home mom, most of the time, that can continue pretty seamlessly, either in a consulting passion or, again, offering your services. There are just so many choices now, and I think a lot of people get overwhelmed in the how. But if they can find some good mentors and people with good information—there are many, many people online who are teaching people how to do that—it can be a beautiful opportunity. They can have the best of both worlds, really.
Odiva Vasell (06:43):
Okay, and another thing that couples, single moms, or stay-at-home moms might encounter is debt. What is the role that debt plays in this whole emotional—you know, you talked about depression, you talked about them not feeling worthy at that time. How is that put into that?
Carrie Huggins (07:17):
Debt is huge. I think, especially in our culture, we’ve been influenced by religion and even puritanical thinking. We assign a moral judgment to debt, and there are different ways of looking at that. Some people like to look at debt as strategic, as a choice that they’re making to level up some area of their lives.
We think of good debt and bad debt. It really depends on how that affects you emotionally. If you can’t shift your mindset around it, if it really is bringing you a lot of anxiety—financial anxiety is very real. When we’re in that sort of survival mode, when we have fear around money, it can give us tunnel vision. It can close off our creativity, it can close down our critical thinking. We’re kind of in our lizard brain—we’re stressed and worried about it all the time.
If that’s the case, then there are some beautiful classes, mentors, and books that we can learn from about how to get out of debt quickly. But yeah, that is a huge part of the conversation because debt has a lot of emotion wrapped up with it, for sure.
I remember learning from one of my favorite online mentors. She’s a woman and a life coach, but she specializes in teaching women about money, finances, and how to start online businesses. She’s talked a lot about debt—how shifting your mindset and your energy around your debt actually frees up more creativity to get it paid off.
From scientific studies and mental health professionals, we know that when we have a scarcity mindset, a scarcity mentality, it really shuts down our critical thinking skills and our creativity. And that’s something we need to access if we’re going to make the best choices with our money.
So again, a lot of it goes back to those money stories that we have. What are the thoughts that I have around money? What have I been taught from my culture, my family, maybe the church? And what is it that I’m choosing to believe? We need to pay a lot of attention to that.
Odiva Vasell (09:50):
Okay, and when someone is coming to the realization—and I’ve seen this, I’ve done some money mindset workshops myself—I’ve seen a lot of denial. Many people don’t want to admit that they have some money blocks, per se.
And what I’ve understood is that the experts say this is something that you have to work on daily because you have 20 or 30 years of programming. You have to continue to work on your money blocks.
What are some of the common money blocks that you might see with stay-at-home moms?
Carrie Huggins (10:36):
I would say a lot of the blocks are the same things that would impact all of us. Ideas like, That’s not for me. You know, kind of this little man can’t get ahead idea. Or, People who come from where I come from—that’s not for us. That might work for those people, but that doesn’t work for me.
These are self-limiting beliefs, and they can show up a lot in our minds. I think sometimes we’re afraid of change or afraid to be different from the tribe because that, at one time, meant death. To be shunned by the tribe, to be kicked out of the tribe, meant you were out in the cold. That’s still kind of locked in our nervous system.
We don’t want to be different from the people around us. We don’t want to be different from the family that raised us, maybe. There’s a specific dollar amount—this is something that can come up. If our parents made a certain amount of money and never made any more, we’re afraid to make more. We want to do just about the same as the tribe we were raised in, but not a whole lot better because of the fear that we have.
That’s called an upper limit problem. There’s an excellent book called The Big Leap that addresses that—shows how people are…
You love that book? It’s so great. Yes, that is so real.
When we’re bumping up against this self-imposed block that we have, it can be with money, it could be with joy or even pleasure. We will stop ourselves—our mind will say, No, that’s enough. No more. Because we’re afraid of the unknown.
The thing that we’re accustomed to, even if it’s not great and it’s not serving us, is what we’re used to. To go beyond that, into something better, is new territory, and that’s frightening for the human brain. So we need to constantly be working on that. Like you said, it’s a daily thing.
I have found that journaling has been extremely helpful. The more we become aware of our thoughts, the more we can kind of catch them. Oh, there’s that. Interesting. Okay, let me take a look at that for a second—that just inserted itself into my mind. Where does that come from?
And is that a belief that I want to have, right? Maybe not.
Odiva Vasell (13:08):
Something that was, you know, programmed into me from my environment? Or…
Carrie Huggins (13:14):
Yes.
Odiva Vasell (13:15):
Okay, so that’s brilliant! The tip of writing these thoughts in relationship to money down—I’m guessing, for example, you see something that you want to buy, and maybe it’s a beautiful dress. And maybe you’re not in need of a beautiful dress at the moment, but you want to. How does the person kind of analyze their money mindset around spending? How would they bring that out and put it into the journal? Do you have some ideas?
Carrie Huggins (13:51):
I have a friend who taught me this years ago. She always had an excellent mindset when it came to money. She had this idea that everything she truly needed was provided to her, and she was one of my very first mentors. She didn’t realize it at the time because we were friends, but she influenced me.
She told me once that when it came to her children, anytime they asked her to buy something and it just wasn’t in the budget, she would never say to them, “I can’t afford that” or “We can’t afford that.” She would say, “That’s not in the budget this week.” In other words, she was reinforcing the idea that she was making a choice not to purchase that thing.
Because when we think about it, most of the time we probably could afford that particular thing, but we’re prioritizing something else. We’re prioritizing the utility bill and the rent and this and that. But she did not want her children to grow up with this idea that we can’t afford it because there’s always the opportunity to earn more money.
If we really wanted something, we would go out and earn the money to buy that particular thing.
Another story that came to my mind recently was when I read about the life story of a woman who was a washerwoman. She took in people’s laundry, washed, and, you know, ironed shirts—never made much money. But this woman, when she passed, left a lot of money to a historically Black church. She was an African American woman, and people were absolutely shocked that she had this kind of money when she earned so little.
She was very frugal and very careful with how she spent her money. But I remember reading her story, and she said that every week, she would buy fresh flowers from the grocery store and put them on her table. She lived very simply, but she allowed herself that indulgence because she said that those flowers made her feel rich.
And that never left my mind. I just thought that was a beautiful story to illustrate. She could have very easily reasoned, Oh, I don’t make much money. You know, if anyone looked at her balance sheet, they would say she’s low-income. But she allowed herself that little bit of elegance, that frivolous (quote-unquote) expense because it made her feel great.
And here she was, able to leave this huge inheritance to a college. I thought that was just an incredible example of how our money mindset is so important.
Odiva Vasell (16:31):
Wow, interesting! And it reminded me of a story that I heard once of a little girl who had—she had been accidentally kind of traumatized because she went to a diner with her mom. And her mom said, “Well, this is all the money we have to spend.”
And as a child, not knowing that, Mom, at that moment—she grew up having trouble spending money.
Carrie Huggins (17:04):
Wow.
Odiva Vasell (17:05):
Yeah. So she had to work with a therapist and get through that block. But it was just that moment when a parent said something, and it just stayed with her. She thought, scarcity—okay, something that I have to be very frugal with.
Can you imagine? With food, it can affect every aspect of your life. Yeah. So, yeah, these are things that we have to work through. But I love what you said—it made her feel rich.
So, taking that time for self-care or that thing that makes you feel good, and this thing—
Carrie Huggins (17:49):
Yeah.
Odiva Vasell: (17:50)
Do you have some practical tips for managing money on a daily basis?
Paying Yourself First as an Entrepreneur
Carrie Huggins: (17:57)
Yes. I love this idea that money loves when we pay attention to it. There are a lot of people that have this idea that, “Oh, I’m just not comfortable with money. I just—I wish money wasn’t a thing. I just don’t like paying attention to it.” And I noticed that those are the people that money runs away from. Even if they’re good at earning it, it runs away from them.
That’s my mother. My mother was very successful. Anytime she would start a business, she would have immediate success. She had a very magnetic personality. She was very hardworking and very creative. But anytime she had any money, it would just run—it would just fly out of her hands.
Money really likes when we pay attention to it. And that doesn’t mean we’re obsessed with it—it just needs to be handled with care. It’s like a relationship; it needs tending. So, I think that paying attention to our money and writing our budget down—even the way that we treat our dollar bills in our wallet—is important. You know, a lot of money coaches will tell you: put your bills neatly organized. Don’t crumple them up and leave them in your pockets or scatter them here and there.
If we treat money with respect, it—it’s an energy. I mean, when we think about it, money is really the exchange of life energy. I give you this money that I’ve worked to earn, and you give me back something that I perceive as more valuable than the money. Otherwise, I wouldn’t hand over the money in the first place, right? So, it’s really an exchange of energy. Money likes to be respected.
I like to personally handwrite my budget at the beginning of every month. I have this little ritual that I do, and I make it enjoyable and pleasurable. I pour myself a nice, delicious hot beverage, and I sit, maybe outside in the sun. I’ve got my favorite journal, and I write down what my income was for the previous month. I write down what my normal bills will be, and it only takes a few minutes—I’ve done it so many times. But money seems to like that ritual. It seems to like that energy, and it makes me feel good.
When I was married, my ex-husband was not the type of person that enjoyed TDM like that. He was a very creative, artistic kind of soul, and he did not enjoy paying bills or, you know, doing his taxes or bookkeeping or things like that—it just wasn’t his personality. But when we got married, we started doing a budget meeting, and he told me after a while, he said, “You know, the budget meetings make me feel this sense of peace, and that motivates me to do it.”
And so, it was really, you know, a wonderful thing. Even though that might not have been his natural bent, you know—his personality—that feeling of peace was something he wanted. It was an emotion that helped him thrive and feel safe about his money because money does represent that safety feeling that we need. And in our nervous system, you know, if we don’t feel safe, we cause chaos. If we don’t feel safe in a relationship, it’s not gonna work. If we don’t feel safe in an environment, we can’t show up as our best. If—if we don’t feel safe around money, we’re not gonna operate best with it. We’re not gonna make the best choices.
So that’s an important feeling to try to create—that feeling of safety in our nervous system. A regulated nervous system.
Odiva Vasell: (21:35)
Wow, beautiful. That’s a—that’s a lot to unpack. So, I’m—I’m getting from you that money is this energy. I’ve heard before some people talk about thinking about who you’re giving it to. You know, when you’re tipping or going to the grocery store, that it helps someone else.
There’s another thing—to kind of think about how you are creating a flow of money. And I thought this part of—you talked about awareness, just keeping your eyes open instead of shutting your eyes and saying, “Oh, I don’t have enough, and I don’t want to look at it because I might lose it.” That fear stops you from interacting and enjoying people, life, and other things around you.
Carrie Huggins: (22:25)
Yes.
Odiva Vasell: (22:26)
You brought this concept of not only journaling in a beautiful way every month but the budget meeting with your husband. I like how it sounds so professional, but it also sounds peaceful. Let’s talk about it.
Carrie Huggins: (22:46)
Exactly, yeah. So with your partner, there’s a financial—I’ll call him a guru. I won’t say his name because I’m not a huge fan of his philosophy, but he talks about the fact that in a marriage or partnership, there’s typically one nerdy person who loves the number crunching and the facts and figures, and then you have your kind of easygoing, artist, hippy-dippy, you know, kind of soul. And they often get together, and that is—that’s—I think that’s true.
But both of you can bring that energy to the table and balance each other out, and you can do the things that are in your strength. So for me, I enjoyed the process of the number crunching, and I was always looking for ways to lower our monthly expenses. But my ex-husband, on the other hand, he was more of a, “Oh, well, let’s have a little fun,” and, you know, he would stretch me a little bit.
So I think, you know, if you focus on what your strengths are, then it can be a beautiful thing. And you mentioned something about gratitude, and I thought we can even turn our bill paying or even paying our taxes into a gratitude exercise. Like, every time we sit down to pay our bills, instead of having this, “The bills, they just never stop coming,” you know, I’ve heard people say that—what if we took a moment and paused and thought:
“I am so grateful for this water that I drink that nourishes, you know, my body and that I use to clean my children, clean our home.”
You know, what if—what if we kind of flip the switch a little bit?
“I’m so grateful for this mortgage payment, this home that I have that keeps my children safe in a storm, keeps us cool in the summer, gives us a place to have memories and shared experiences and rituals.”
Like, if we just turn that into a little bit of gratitude—like you said, when we spend, we can have an energy of abundance when we spend. Because I know that with some personalities, they have fear when they spend. Spending money feels painful sometimes, yes?
Odiva Vasell: (24:53)
Yes! And that’s—that’s contracting, and then that locks flow. But the attitude of gratitude—yes, that is! But that’s also something that takes time to build.
But I do love what you say about journaling and writing things down to kind of get what your mindset of money is on paper. Are there any other things that you do besides journaling to kind of create an awareness around your money mindset?
Carrie Huggins: (25:29)
Well, I think I mentioned this in our last conversation, but when I was really starting to educate myself about finances, I tried to surround myself with voices in the finance—in the personal finance space—constantly. I checked out all the books at the library. I followed, you know, all the creators on social media that had a positive, you know, message or something to teach me around finances. I listened to the podcasts, the YouTube channels, etc.
We will find ourselves slowly adopting the attitudes and beliefs of the people that we surround ourselves with. So it might be difficult for us to meet people in real life—at least right away—that have these attitudes. And we don’t just want to, you know, stop associating with our friends and family if they have, you know, bad money mindset or what have you. We don’t—we don’t wanna harm our relationships. But we can slowly start to take on those new attitudes and beliefs when we expose our minds to new ways of thinking.
I like that expression that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. Get into a new room where you have something to learn from the people around you because it really will expand your mind.
So we have so many resources, you know, like—like your show, your podcasts, social media accounts, newsletters that, you know, different creators put out. There are some that I read word for word because they’re so valuable to me. So there are so many things that we can avail ourselves of.
The Power of Long-Term Investing
Odiva Vasell: (27:07)
And one of the things—investing—how should one approach investing in terms of getting financial liberation?
Carrie Huggins: (27:20)
I think the most important thing when it comes to investing is two things, really.
No. 1 is to be boring. One of my favorite books that I’ve ever read about investing is called The Simple Path to Wealth—one of the best. And he just hammers home the point that it is about playing the long game. There is no timing the market. Buy and hold for the long term, and don’t pay attention to the daily ups and downs.
The second thing is to try to automate your investing. So, I talked about how money likes attention, and that’s true, but it can be very helpful to automate your savings and investing so that you get accustomed to spending what’s left.
There’s another excellent book called The Richest Man in Babylon, and one of the principles—this is an old book, but a lot of people have said that it was, you know, mind-blowing for them—one of the principles that the author talks about is how, when you earn a dollar, that’s not your dollar to spend. That’s your dollar to manage. And a portion of every dollar you earn is yours to keep.
So that’s a different way of thinking: I get to keep some of this. And so, I have been automating my retirement savings for a long time. It just comes out automatically on the first of the month and goes directly into my investment account. I don’t have to think about it. It grows every time I check it.
You know, I don’t check it often because the market fluctuates—the stock market is like that. But over a decade or longer period, the stock market is incredibly safe and reliable for your retirement investment. But the fact that it’s automatic means that I live on what’s left. And that portion is mine to keep.
It brings me such an incredible sense of safety, knowing that it is automated and taken care of.
Odiva Vasell: (29:26)
I love that! And I would add to that—that fempreneurs and entrepreneurs—having something put away that accumulates, and that’s your part to keep.
Because a lot of times, we forget to pay ourselves in our businesses. Everything is going back into the business, back into the family, and to others. But taking a portion just for yourself, that is put aside and can grow—it’s brilliant!
Paying yourself as part of your business regime is also key.
Women as Smart Investors
One other thing that you spoke about—and I know a financial guru taught this—is that she had looked at the statistics and said that many women make the best investors because they know how to play the long term.
Buy, sell, buy, sell.
Carrie Huggins: (30:30)
Yes.
Odiva Vasell: (30:32)
Like, “Okay, it’s not doing well this term, but it does come back around.”
Carrie Huggins: (30:39)
And I love that! The reality and the statistics really bust open the myth that women aren’t great with money. That is absolutely a myth that has been fed to women. It is false.
The facts are—women are great savers and investors. Because, just like you said, we love security. It’s built into our biology. We want to create a safe nest for ourselves and our babies.
And so, yes, we’re the ones that buy and hold for the long term. We don’t make those quick, snap buy-sell-buy-sell decisions. We don’t like the chaos of that. Our nervous system does not respond well to that.
But that’s the way to invest—the long, boring route. Just plodding along, slow and steady like the tortoise. So, I love that!
Odiva Vasell: (31:28)
Yes, yes! Well, I loved having you here.
And just to give us a little bit more—we have talked before—but to give us a little bit more on how we can really nail down some of this money mindset and the beliefs that are out there… the beliefs that we can transform by working with you, Carrie.
So, thank you so much for joining me today!
Carrie Huggins: (31:56)
Thank you for sharing your platform.
[music]
Conclusion
Building wealth isn’t about taking big risks or chasing quick profits—it’s about consistency, smart planning, and making sure you pay yourself first. Whether you’re investing for the long term, automating your savings, or setting aside a portion of your income, every step you take brings you closer to financial security. Women, in particular, have a natural ability to manage money wisely, and by embracing a steady, strategic approach, we can create lasting wealth for ourselves and future generations. So start now, stay committed, and watch your financial future grow!