moneymotivationandmotherhood's podcast

What do you do if talk of stocks and bonds aren't your think, but you want to know more about money? Who can you ask when you are feeling down about life? How can you encourage the family when you feel pressure? Optimist and encourager, Marion Syversen, will cheer you up and fill your heart with hope in this introduction to her new podcast. Marion owns Norumbega Financial, is an independent financial advisor, the wife of one man, the mother of two sons, and the nana of nine grandchildren. What if relatives want to borrow money? How much stuff do kids really need? How can we meet the deep needs we have without spending all our money? I want you to see how beautiful you are, how capable is your brain and that improvement doesn't have to hurt. Look for the Money, Motivation & Motherhood Facebook group and join in the conversation. https://www.facebook.com/moneymotivationandmotherhood/ Connect with Marion: Twitter https://twitter.com/home Website http://www.norumbegafinancial.com/

Episode #4 - Gratitude & Peer Pressure 02/06/2020

Episode # 3 - Medals 02/06/2020

Episode 6 - A Man is Not a Financial Plan 02/05/2020

Episode 5 - Having a Plan 02/05/2020

Christmas Episode 12/23/2019

Christmas Episode Memories This Christmas will not be the same as any Christmas before. This year is different. It’s full of people. Or, it’s just you. It’s overflowing with craziness and crowds of noisy folks gathered. Or, it’s the peace of a quiet time with just your favorite person. But it’s somehow different than Christmases past. It may be missing someone dearly loved who waits for us in Heaven. Or, we are separated by distance, or even separated by hurt. Today, this Christmas, we bring these memories into our present. We’re going to put aside the pain to rejoice in the celebration of the day. We’re not forgetting it. But Christmas isn’t about any of that, really. It’s about an Amazing and wonderful gift given to us as a sacrifice of Love and devotion; a sacrifice GLADLY given, to take away OUR separation from our Eternal and Awesome God and Daddy. He couldn’t bear what sin had done to rip us apart and He gave all He had to make us together forever. He knows your pain, because he has lived the separation and death. He has joyously welcomed your loved ones to His heart and made a home for them with Him. He collects your every tear. But, darling girl, He also knows your JOYS! The peace you feel when everyone is together, the happiness when you see the faces of people you love grateful for the thoughtful love you’ve shown. Though our past is beyond us, in our present we can give the very best gift to our dear Father by giving him the gift of our joy and gladness, our happy face when we see his daily and beautiful gifts to us, and his constant and thoughtful mercies always given. As you remember all the good things graciously given you, Make your present and wholehearted gift of gratitude to the Daddy who loves you more than you have ever loved anyone. The Father who has spent years preparing the good gifts he pours out on you and those you love. On this Christmas, remember the God who saves. Connect with me: /episode/index/show/moneymotivationandmotherhood/id/12512420

#2- A Little Whine 12/11/2019

#2- A Little Whine Every day is a blessing that you get to live. A Great and amazing adventure, filled with thrills and chills. You are really so blessed to be where you are, with so many folks who love your face. You have ALL THE THINGS. You have transportation and don’t have to walk miles in ‘shoes’ made of plastic bottles. You have shelter, a place you can make cozy, and not a cardboard shack that floods and washes away your few belongings. Speaking of belongings, some of us have SO many things that we have a storage unit to hold our extra stuff. That’s prosperity. But….but… But these daily blessings don’t ever seem like enough. And we demonstrate that with our little whines. We would never make a giant production about how shortchanged we feel in life 15 year-old us had EXPECTATIONS. 35 year-old us had dreams, man, and look at things now! It isn’t going as planned and that brings out our little whine. I’m not discounting the realignment of our dreams and expectations with our real-life LIFE. I’m not suggesting that adjusting our thinking isn’t a thing. But adjusting our thinking should not involve whining over what we ‘should’ have had. So, life is a blessing. But it’s also filled with bad things, with HARD things. Disappointment and pain meanders through it like a stream through your town’s center. And like a stream, it sometimes overflows its banks, washing away bits of life, and forever changing direction. So yeah, life is a blessing, but. What are we going to DO about this dilemma, this dichotomy of the breath of life and the disappointment? In adjusting to a new reality, the transition can be sloppy. With kids it often results in a loud and long-lasting whine that curdles our blood. As adults, are we that different? We had expectations, had our hearts set on some event or thing. We saved for years for a goal, only to have things out of our control turn life upside down. We mourn, of course we mourn. But do we really all the rest? The self-pity? The drama? The whining? Because most of the time, the events that trigger our whining are little, unimportant things. The daily annoyances and disappointments and we are feeling sorry for ourselves, forgetting all the blessings that we have every day, all around us. Living a life of whining means nothing Is ever enough – for long. It’s a sour life, a miserly life- I mean how can you be generous when you are certain life is ripping you off? Is THAT part of the dream you had of your future? A dour face, a whining pout, arms crossed over yourself as you feel robbed? Imagine what this looks like to your Heavenly dad. How would YOU feel if you had a child like this…? This grouchy attitude doesn’t bring joy to your life, OR to the lives of those around you. Whining brings down every mood. If you are leader, in your home, in your workplace, in your community, you are sharing this germ with others. You aren’t SOLVING anything. You are bringing a sadness to those you touch. You don’t want to have a disappointing situation spiral down into crazy darkness. You can change this with a nap, with some music, with a walk, with a chat with a trusted friend – who may kick your can in love. Because life is a blessing. Your job, your street, your closet of clothes, your ‘fridge full of food, the sky full of stars. All of this, so beautiful, so good. And all yours. Let your heart be glad, little bird. Let your voice be light. Let your joy be contagious. Let the whining cease. Facebook Twitter /episode/index/show/moneymotivationandmotherhood/id/12367034

Episode 1 - Mistakes Made & Lessons Learned. The Story of Us 12/06/2019

Episode 1 - Mistakes Made & Lessons Learned. The Story of Us This episode is going to be a bit personal, to help you know the mistakes I’ve (we’ve) made and the lessons we’ve learned. Some of our story has a lot to do with messed up LIVES and NOT just messed up finances. We met and I decided he was the boy for me within a few weeks. Mort? Not so much. His heart was still with a woman whom he had dated and loved, who had rejected him. Months into the relationship, he let me know he still felt torn, caring for her and beginning to care for me. But I had known many guys and hadn’t met anyone as thoughtful and kind as this rascal. I was smitten. Financially we were very separate. He worked as an engineer, had money saved. But mostly he shared living expenses with four other guys, renting a large home and having very small fixed expenses. He used his money to buy things: imported stereo equipment and cars generally. I worked at minimum wage jobs, lived with a family who allowed me to pay very low rent, didn’t have much money for gas or tolls when I visited him, had a small Christmas Club savings account, and mostly spent money on food and clothes. When I got pregnant 9 months after we first met and we were married in three weeks. I am not alone falling in love, getting married or moving in together, NEVER having spoken about financial values or goals. But since money is one of the biggest things couples argue about, in hindsight, if you’re WISE, if you want to avoid more trouble than you need to have in your relationship, you’ll talk about money and your attitudes and goals concerning money. MISTAKE #1: DON’T BE like Mort and Marion and ignore important topics because they aren’t romantic. LESSON #1: DO discuss money with your partner early and often. Newly married and with very little monthly fixed expense, and with few cool items that sales folks couldn’t wait to sell us, we sat unaware of how much we needed a bound copy of the Encyclopedia, a water softening unit of a very heavy, but amazing vacuum cleaner. MISTAKE #2: Gradually, and without having a plan for our money, our ‘budget’ – which if by budget we mean ‘savings and spending plan’ -which we didn’t have became overtaken by fixed expenses for all these unnecessary items that we bought on credit. LESSON #2- Have a plan for your spending and saving. TALK FIRST before you add an ongoing expense to your family commitment. I came from a broken and violent home. He came from a loving and peaceful home. Neither one of really know HOW to go about the work of being married. I didn’t realize that you would be THAT angry with someone you actually LOVED. And that having disagreements is normal. That you could love someone with all your heart and still have diametrically opposed ideas. We didn’t communicate well. I kept talking, trying to get him to understand. He didn’t know how to say what the problem was and so he’d shut down and ignore me. When we’d argue, and he would walk away or leave the house, or say something that hurt me, I would salve my broken heart with shopping. I would buy stuff. And since I didn’t know what the financial situation was, I would charge it on a credit card. A woman once complimented me on a hand-knit sweater I wore. I said, ‘Thank you! My husband insisted I buy it.’ With growing credit card debt from us both, he would be more and more angry. Which would prompt arguments with hurtful words – and more shopping. Which leads me to MISTAKE #3: DON’T BE like Marion and use shopping to deal with hurt and frustration. LESSON #3 – Direct your money with a PLAN and not on emotional whims. Eventually, and gratefully, because this relationship was much more off the rails in many other ways than needs to be shared in this podcast, someone came to the door and told me that Jesus loved me- and Mort, and asked if I wanted to go in a new direction with my life. And I did. And Mort came, too. Changes came slowly, emotions were still the default response to frustration. Communication was not fixed with prayer. Now we erred in other ways with money. If giving back to God 10% was good, then surely giving back 20 or 30% was even better. After all, we’ll be in Heaven soon, and we won’t need to worry about credit card bills unpaid, or debts to local merchants piling up or any of those silly earthly concerns. MISTAKE #4 Always generous towards others, we had a heart to give it all away. Obviously, we thought, God will take care of us. LESSON # 4 – Tithing is the right thing to do. Don’t go into debt to do it. Eventually, we bought a house. I HAD to have everything I wanted. We maxed out what the bank would let us borrow. We had two small kids and we couldn’t easily buy new clothes for them or shoes because by now we have a lot of our fixed income going to debt repayment. BECAUSE we didn’t have much available cash, oh, and we had NO budget, or an idea of how the money should be controlled, we used credit cards to buy groceries, kids things, whatever was needed. We TRIED to be careful. We thought we were only spending money on credit because it was sort of an emergency. A new neighbor told me how they were making extra payments on their mortgage early on so that they could have it paid off many years less than the mortgage required. I couldn’t understand this. I didn’t understand how she learned that, how she afforded that and why we were getting further and further behind. I didn’t just hope the problem of the debt and worry would go away. I bought books on budgeting. But they were difficult for me to understand. One book want the reader to write out the pay, take out the taxes and write down each one, to see the net. Why? Tell me how to deal with the net income, I yelled into the living room. Then write down all your expenses and what’s left is for savings and food. There WASN’T ANYTHING LEFT. That’s why I need to learn to budget. There were no instructions for climbing out of this deep hole and getting back on solid ground. Then we tried schemes, ways to make ‘millions’ using ‘other people’s money.’ Spent money – on credit – to get the whole system. That system might have worked for someone, but it had little bearing on our capabilities. Mistake #5 Getting further and further away from financial safety. Lesson #5 – Gotta stop the madness. Don’t KEEP using credit. Get help now. My husband was working a great job. But the commute time had doubled and his was getting more and more sick. Headaches, frustration, early morning, late evenings. The kids and never saw him and he was spent. We decided to move. We couldn’t afford to be closer to work. So we chose to move 500 miles away. Start over. Pay off debt and be freer. But we quickly realized that we didn’t have enough down payment for the new house. So we borrowed more assuming that work would always be there and the payments, though making things very tight, would be fine. Until they weren’t because he was laid off in an economic slowdown. Mistake #6 – More debt and big assumptions Lesson- Stop assuming that things will be the way they are in the moment you borrow. We have these two adorable sons, who are curious and creative. And I have strong opinions on too much TV viewing and being active and having good quality toys. And my husband loves puzzles. So it’s no leap for us to spend money on high-quality toys for the kids. Playmobil, Lego, all the kinds of toys that will keep them really playing. In my world of a difficult childhood, making sure my kids had WHATEVER THEY NEEDED, by my crazed definition, was VITAL. It salved my broken heart. It fixed my childhood traumas by giving them pleasure. Mistake # 7 going into debt out of a crazy emotional needs Lesson- stop trying to fix your past by BUYING things, no matter how well you rationalize it in your mind or to your spouse. These are just a few of the bad decisions that I have made. In some cases, just in these examples, I made poor choices repeatedly. Your lesson is don’t be me. Be smarter than me. Be pragmatic. Stop doing the things you know you need to stop doing before your back is up against the wall and you are FORCED into stopping, because of bankruptcy or job loss or some other difficulty. Twitter - Facebook - /episode/index/show/moneymotivationandmotherhood/id/12282131

Trailer: You Can Feel Cozy about Money 11/26/2019

moneymotivationandmotherhood's podcast

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