You don’t get a fabulous future life if you don’t get started. You can begin today at Ellevest. But, first, here’s the one resolution you really need to make. 

Ellevest create personalized investment portfolios based on your finances and a gender-specific salary curve. Get started here. 

Disclosure: We’re excited to be working with Ellevest to start this conversation about women and money. We will receive compensation if you become an Ellevest client.

It is common knowledge that adults are recommended to get eight hours of sleep each night, but that time is more of a goal than a reality for most working adults. However, when you don’t get enough sleep, your body and mind both become exhausted and your work is likely to suffer. From grouchiness, to decreased productivity, to slower reaction time, there are many negative effects that stem from a poor night’s rest. Below are some of the most common sleep ailments

Anxiety

Affecting one in every four Americans, anxiety is the most commonly diagnosed mental illness, so it is no surprise that anxiety can cause sleep ailments for many people. To combat night time anxiety, which can come from worrying about how tired you will be the next day or thinking about tomorrow’s responsibilities, try meditating before bed to lower your heart rate and put you to sleep faster.

Busy Mind

Similar to anxiety, a racing mind can keep you up for hours when you are trying to go to sleep. Many night owls are especially guilty of this, with their energy and creativity coming at night. If you are having trouble turning off your thoughts when it is time for bed, try to develop a bedtime ritual or routine to signal to your mind and body that it is time to slow down.

Discomfort

Coming from a multitude of sources, such as a lumpy mattress, uncomfortable pajamas, a stiff pillow, or even just humidity, discomfort is detrimental to the quality of your sleep. To find comfort every night, upgrade your mattress to one that has no coils or springs and will wear out evenly over time.

Hunger

Diet myths often suggest that going to sleep hungry is the key to a fast metabolism and weight loss, but hunger has been proven to lead to worse sleep, which in turn, increases our sugar cravings and actually makes us eat more. To get that “turkey coma” feel without gorging on a Thanksgiving bird, try a light bedtime snack of almonds or cherries, which are both absorbed slowly by the body and keep you asleep all night long.

Noise

While some people like to fall asleep to Netflix or a news program, distinct noise can be detrimental to your sleep. Whether you wake up to the drop of a pin or need noise to fall asleep without feeling uneasy, all sleepers can benefit from the neutralizing sounds of a white noise generator, which will create a steady background noise without providing any distractions.

Not Tired

Night owls again fall victim to this sleep ailment. Many people have difficulty sleeping because they simply do not feel tired when they head to bed. If you are one of these people, switch out your nightly phone scroll or movie time for a book or magazine. This will eliminate the blue light emitted by our screens, which has been proven to mimic the sun’s rays and actually wakes us up.

Sunday Night Insomnia

Weekends are great because they give us a much-needed break from our unwanted alarm tones, but sleeping in can actually cause worse sleep for us on Sunday nights. When your body recuperates for sleep lost earlier in the week, you lose the internal schedule that your mind has gotten used to during the past week. To get your best Sunday night sleep, try waking up around the same time every day.

Temperature

Last but not least, the temperature in your room plays a huge role in the quality of your sleep. If your room is too hot, you will lie awake tossing and turning all night, but if it is too cold, you will spend the night shivering instead of sleeping. To fall asleep quickly every night, try to keep your room between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit year round.

This post is sponsored by Charles Schwab & Co., Inc (Schwab), Member SIPC.

I recently got a chance to visit a Charles Schwab office, gain some additional financial knowledge, from one of their VP’s & Branch Managers, Dan Stein and learn all about the Modern Wealth Index! Check out the interview:

Dominique: How long have you been in the financial services industry and what inspired you to pursue this career?

Dan: I started working for Charles Schwab 12 years ago, after working in the real estate space for a few years in Arizona. All my friends were at Schwab, so I joined as a registered representative trainee and have been with the company ever since, working for a few different business units. I’ve always been passionate about doing what I can to help clients, so Schwab’s mantra of “seeing through clients’ eyes” has really resonated with me.

Looking back at these past 12 years, I’m very proud to be part of the Schwab family – Schwab has been flexible as both my wife and I have moved around the firm and truly embodies a family-first culture.

Dominique: $2.7 million is the amount you need to “be wealthy” in the Washington DC area, based on what you see on a daily basis – do you agree?

Dan: I sometimes have clients come in, and I talk to them about what they’re doing to manage their wealth. That term often throws people off because we so often associate the word wealth with a large, unachievable amount of money. They think, well I don’t have wealth to manage. But in today’s world, the truth is we all have wealth. It’s whatever we have now and even goes beyond a monetary value.

For me, being wealthy means having a career I enjoy and spending time with my family. But no matter how we define wealth, it’s important that we pay attention to our money—we need to save and invest the money we have to grow it and achieve our goals and personal definitions of wealth.

Dominique: So many people feel as if they do not “have enough money” to even think about a financial plan. When do you think is a good time to begin planning and start thinking about one?

Dan: The sooner you can begin thinking about your financial plan and goals, the better. Planning is critical to achieving any goal. It’s like establishing an exercise regimen to get in shape − we need to take the same approach to keep our finances in good health and on track.

Furthermore, the idea that financial planning and wealth management are just for millionaires is one of the biggest misconceptions. For people just starting out, planning may be about sticking to a budget so that you can start saving and pay down any debts, but your plan will evolve as your finances and goals change.

Finally, we know that planning can lead to better daily money behaviors. According to the Modern Wealth Index, “Planners” in the DC area are more likely to have a higher overall Modern Wealth Index score, be regular savers, and effectively manage their debt. For instance:

68 percent of planners said that they pay their bills and still save each month, compared to just 44 percent of non-planners.

57 percent of planners said that they have an emergency fund in place, while only 44 percent of non-planners identified having a backup fund.

Dominique: 88% of people with a plan feel confident about reaching their goals, what’s a good first step for people who are thinking about getting started & how can Charles Schwab support them in their journey?

Dan: If you’re starting out, think about your financial goals—both what you want to achieve in the short-term and the long-term. Once you identify your goals, you can start planning on how to achieve them. Your financial plan is like a roadmap—it forces you to develop a realistic and informed perspective on where you are, where you want to go, and how to make the best use of your resources to get there.

Also, think about talking to a financial professional. It’s not going to be a conversation all about numbers and tedious charts. It’s about your goals and your passions—and how to achieve them.  

A fun way to get a pulse check of how you’re doing with your finances is to take our Modern Wealth Index quiz. It’s 16 multiple choice questions and takes a few minutes, but you can get some helpful insights on what to think about and what to do next. You can take the quiz at www.schwab.com/mymodernwealth.

Dominique: What’s the best advice you can give to a millennial on their financial journey?

Dan: I think the best advice I can share would be to think about your finances—don’t ignore them. And the best way to do that is to get that financial plan. When just starting out, your plan might be more basic and focus on budgeting and saving, but establishing a plan based on your current situation will keep you on track, help you prioritize your goals, optimize your savings and help you figure out how and where to invest.

I’d also add that millennials should start saving and investing today. It pays to start now – literally, as you can capitalize on compound interest. Time in the market is key to growing savings over time.

Finally, something we talk about a lot here at Schwab is “ignoring the noise”. Stay focused on your plan and don’t pay too much attention to short-term portfolio performance, market ups and downs or the press. Millennials have 30+ years to save and invest, so progress toward your goal is more important than short-term performance.

Dan Stein, CFA®, CFP®, is Branch Manager at the Charles Schwab location in Bethesda.

Dominique Broadway is unaffiliated with Schwab.

The Modern Wealth Index, developed in partnership with Koski Research and the Schwab Center for Financial Research (a division of Schwab), is based on Schwab’s Investing Principles and composed of 60 financial behaviors and attitudes – each assigned a varying amount of points depending on their importance. The Index broadly assesses Americans across four factors: 1) goal setting and financial planning, 2) saving and investing, 3) staying on track, and 4) confidence in reaching financial goals. Based on the total number of points received, respondents were indexed on a 1-100 scale for each of the four factors and an overall score.

The online survey was conducted by Koski Research from April 12 to April 20, 2017, among 1,000 Americans nationwide and from July 24 to August 10, 2017 among 755 Washington, D.C. area residents, aged 21 to 75. The geographical area of the sample included all the Maryland, Virginia and D.C. counties in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Statistical Area. Quotas were set so that the sample is as demographically representative as possible. The margin of error for the total survey sample is three percentage points.

This is a sponsored post curated by me on behalf of MassMutual. All opinions are 100% mine!

If I yell, “Let’s talk about sex”, people would turn their heads to see who said it, if I yelled, “Let’s talk about money”, people would almost hide and get out of the way to avoid the conversation altogether!

Many of us have been raised that money is that thing we don’t talk about.   We don’t share how much we make and definitely don’t share if we are in any financial trouble. This “taboo” topic has put so many people into deeper holes than necessary, all because they were scared or ashamed to talk about their financial situation.

The funny thing is that I was fortunate to be raised in a family that talked about money. My mom would sit down with me and allow me to watch her pay the monthly bills; show me her checkbook and bank statement; and made sure I understood what it really took to run a household financially. My grandparents would also often have financial conversations with me about the, “spenders and savers” in life. They also emphasized how,as a family, we were to support each other in our time of need. So, after reading MassMutual’s recent study that stated, “90% of African Americans believe that it is important to look out for one another”, I was not surprised, as that was exactly how I was raised.

About a year after starting my business, I hit a REALLY rough patch in my finances. It was hard for me because I have always been the person that was on top of her finances and had a financial plan, I had exhausted everything to pursue my dreams! All the while, I was still helping everyone else excel financially. But silently, I was drowning! Despite all of the financial conversations that I had growing up and all of the reassurance that I received that money was a open topic, I was scared to share with anyone the details of what I was dealing with.

When I finally put my pride to the side and admitted to the fact that I messed up financially, my family immediately jumped in to help in any way that they could. I was super shocked! I expected them to belittle me or give me a hard time for having such a big financial set back (silly me!). This was major as I realized that so many of us are struggling with our finances or various other areas of our lives. Instead of asking for help, we are too ashamed or embarrassed. The sooner we ask for guidance or advice, the sooner we can turn things around and start working on the problem before it worsens.

I challenge you to have the money conversation with your loved ones or your family. If you are dealing with anything financially or otherwise, ask for help or support from your family or friends. We are all in this together and want to uplift each other to live our best lives and bring all of our Dreams2Reality!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Mass Mutual. The opinions and text are all mine.

Being an adult is overrated we have to worry about being physically healthy, mentally healthy, spiritually healthy and the one that everyone seems to forget about financially healthy. #adulting

So what does it really mean to be financially healthy? To everyone, the definition may be totally different but for me when I think about being financially healthy I think about being financially sound, being aware of my finances, knowing
where my money is going every month, having a clear understanding of my debt, my income, my investments and overall being extremely aware of my complete financial situation and what I want my financial future to look like.

According to the Center for Financial Services Innovation’s Consumer Financial Health Study, 138 million adults are struggling financially, this once included me! Even as a financial expert my finances have not always been financially healthy. When I first started my business, I exhausted my personal finances and even began to ignore them. I was so fixated on growing my business and helping everyone else with their finances, my own finances fell ill. My credit card debt shot up, I got behind on payments, I even almost lost my home. Just like if you ignore a health issue, it will not go away; if you ignore your financial health, it will only get sicker. In order to turn this around, I needed to have a financial check-up. I sat down with my family and explained to them what was going on, and just like I helped my clients, they helped me. Here is what I did: [Tweet “If you ignore a health issue, it will not go away; ignore your financial health, it will only get sicker. @CFSInnovation #FinHealthMatters”]

Accept that you messed up your financial health

This was huge for me. After always being financially on my game, buying my first house at 22, having a perfect credit score and being an extreme saver, I had to accept the fact that I allowed my finances to become ill. Once I accepted that fact that I messed up and forgave myself I identified where I went wrong and begin strategizing on how to fix it.

Get real about your current financial health and situation

Most people become financially ill because they completely ignore their finances and have no idea what financial shape they are truly in. During this financial check-up, you need to pull together everything with your name and a dollar sign and begin reviewing how much money you are making, all of your expenses and all of your debts. This will finally give you a complete view of where your finances are. [Tweet “Pull together everything with your name and a dollar sign and get real about your financial situation. @CFSInnovation #FinHealthMatters”]

Create a plan to improve your financial health

Now that you know exactly where you went wrong, how much income you are making, what your monthly expenses are, and how much debt you are truly in, you can begin creating a plan to turn things around. This could be looking for ways to increase your income, reducing expenses, negotiating with lenders to repay your debt or reduce your interest rates.

It can be very daunting to notice that you have allowed your finances to become ill. However, remaining aware of your financial situation will ensure that you remain financially healthy. True financial health means you are aware of your financial situation, you have a vision of where you want to be financially and that you are using your finances to live the lifestyle that makes you, the happiest you!

Check out the Center for Financial Services Innovation for more on #FinHealthMatters Day!

Ready to take the first step in improving your financial health? Let’s hop on a free Discovery Call!