How to Pay Off Debt as a Therapist with Jacent Wamala

Jacent Wamala (00:00):

When I'm talking to folks, because I always get asked, which options should I do? Which way should I pay off debt? What's the best way? And I say the best way is the way that's going to work for you. What's going to be the most rewarding? Because that's what you're going to be more consistent with. If you're discouraged, you're going to give up.

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Michael Fulwiler (00:20):

This is Heard Business School where we sit down with private practice owners and industry experts to learn about the business of therapy together. I'm your host, Michael Fulwiler. This week I'm joined by Jacent Wamala. I met Jacent through our mutual connection, Dr. Lawrence Jackson, who is a guest on season one. Jacent is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and the founder of Wamala Wellness. She's known for her candid conversations about mental health and money sharing her personal journey from debt to financial freedom. In our conversation, we talk about the intersection of mental health and finances, the importance of creating a money plan and building a money team to support your practice and personal wealth. I think you'll find just sense transparency and practical approach, inspiring some. I'm excited for you to hear our conversation. Enjoy. Jacent Wamala, welcome to the show.

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Jacent Wamala (01:20):

Thank you so much for having me. This is one of my favorite things to do, so I'm sure we're going to have a good chat.

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Michael Fulwiler (01:25):

That's one of my favorite things to do as well. We were introduced by Dr. Lawrence Jackson who was on the show in season one. So shout out to Dr. Jay. I remember he told me about you. I looked you up on Instagram and at the time there weren't a lot of therapists who were talking about money, and so when I saw your content, I just remember thinking, we need to connect with this person. We need to partner with them. And that was two or three years ago, probably

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Jacent Wamala (01:57):

A few years back. It's funny, the time flies.

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Michael Fulwiler (02:01):

It sure does. And I think the first thing we did together was you hosted a webinar for our community, so I wanted to plug that here at the top. We'll drop the link to that. Definitely go back and watch that. Do you feel like you were kind of early to the game as a therapist talking about money on social media?

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Jacent Wamala (02:18):

Definitely, yeah, and so I don't think I was new to the game with the concept, but to bring it to social, particularly Instagram honestly, yeah, social media in general, and I think it was probably the combination of it being the conversation around mental health and money, but also my personal story that made it stick in a different way than someone just talking about it from a tactical evidence-based perspective. So I think that gave it a little twist that made it pick up more than maybe someone's been talking about it, but did it pick up the same way? You know what I mean?

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Michael Fulwiler (02:51):

Definitely. I mean, it felt very in alignment with our content and I've started to see more talk about money and finances. Maybe they were influenced by you. Typically what I see though is they're financial therapists. So you're not a financial therapist, you're a marriage and family therapist.

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Jacent Wamala (03:10):

Not yet. Yeah. So I've been dabbling with the idea because I don't see clients anymore, but I think I might because I need the CEUs anyway. If you're a therapist, we got to keep these licenses up and I just love to learn. So I think because of that, I am more seriously looking into getting that certification just to have the knowledge and be able to apply it even if I don't end up seeing therapists or seeking clients again.

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Michael Fulwiler (03:36):

That makes sense. I want to take a step back. So you are originally from Uganda. When did you first move to the States?

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Jacent Wamala (03:46):

Yeah, my family had immigrated here when I was a baby, so I was born in Uganda, but not too long after I was born, they ended up making their way here and actually I think it was split. So I think my dad had left Uganda first and then my mom had followed after him because we had one family member or so who had already established roots in California and she was the one that was kind of bringing us all over systematically. So yeah, I've grown up here, but that's where I was born and that's where I love going back to and all that good stuff.

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Michael Fulwiler (04:23):

Awesome. So it sounds like, did you move to California first? I'm curious. I know that you ended up at UNLV, so I'm curious how you ended up in the Vegas area.

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Jacent Wamala (04:33):

Yeah, so the family that we ended up bringing us over lives in California still, but we landed in California and then quickly moved to Vegas. The cost of living, job opportunities, things like that for my parents was better here in Las Vegas. So I pretty much grew up here my entire life. My roots had been here, but I spent summers and things in California and stuff like that.

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Michael Fulwiler (05:00):

At what point did you start to think about going to graduate school and becoming a therapist?

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Jacent Wamala (05:07):

I actually didn't think about going to graduate school until I was getting my bachelor's degree. I don't think I knew what graduate school was until I was in college. So I knew I was interested in marriage and family therapy or psychology, that realm. I actually changed majors. Everybody changed majors. I started out, I know in performing arts, so I sing, I have to dance, things like that. I double.

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Michael Fulwiler (05:35):

I could see that

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Jacent Wamala (05:36):

Minor comes through. So I was in performing arts, but I'm African. Okay. So anyone that's first gen or anything like that knows your family's probably not going to go for you doing anything outside of the core four engineering law, something that's stable and predictable as far as career and income. So I minored in performing arts and then I majored in psychology at one of my professors is who I sat down to talk about, well, what does this path look like as far as profession goes? And that's when I was introduced to the idea of becoming a therapist and marriage and family therapy in particular. I literally only applied to one school, which was even lv, the school that I had already attended for my bachelor's degree.

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(06:27):

Listen, hey, it worked out. It worked out for me. And so I ended up going there and then teaching there when I graduated and fun stuff. So yeah, it wasn't until I was in school that I realized it was an option. I knew I needed a career that afforded me certain flexibility because at the time I was like, I still want to do the performing arts, so what if I need to go on auditions? What if I have things that I need to, dates that I need to take off for a show or something like that. If I'm in private practice, then I can have the flexibility to work my schedule a little bit more than a strict nine to five.

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Michael Fulwiler (07:04):

And you've been very open about your own debt journey, which I want to talk about which when you talk about it, you talk about it starting in undergrad. So how were you thinking about paying for undergrad and taking out student loans or not at that time? What was your context around your finances?

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Jacent Wamala (07:26):

Well, my uncle that I live with here in town told me that going into debt was not a great idea, so I knew it wasn't a good idea in general. So in undergrad it wasn't that much that I had taken out. Literally it was probably a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand dollars or something like that. But my mentality was, and because of the lack of exposure and financial literacy, I need to save the debt that I'm going to accumulate for grad school because I'm not going to be able to pay for it, which is psychological. There's scholarships, there's fellowships and different things like that. I mean, how could I have maybe worked through school to some extent, but that was my mentality. So that's what it was, and that's when things kind of trickled was as soon as I got into grad school, I'm just taking these large amounts of money out first school to fund that, but also for living if I'm not working, I did have a graduate assistantship, it's going to making sure that I can get by while I'm in grad school, but it's really contradictory to at least I can only speak to my experience, the frame of mind or some of the things that you kind of hear when you're in grad school to be a mental health professional, which is like you didn't go into this field to make money, you shouldn't expect to make a lot.

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(08:43):

So it was kind of opposite. If I'm not going to make money, then why am I paying money for the degree I should be able to get a return from? Those things didn't necessarily click at the time, but it really was In undergrad I only took so much out, but I was really like, okay, I'm going to have to go into debt to get my master's degree, and that's exactly what happened.

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Michael Fulwiler (09:06):

That makes sense. And that's probably most people's experience unless they come from money or have money and they're able to pay for school or their parents are paying for their grad school, they're probably going to take out student loans. We do a financial state and private practice survey every year. We surveyed 3000 therapists last year and a lot of therapists are really struggling with student loans, student loan debt. I was surprised. We asked therapists for 2025, what is your top financial priority? And I thought people would say building multiple income streams, maybe saving to go on a trip, maybe saving for retirement. But actually the top financial priority for therapists in 2025 is paying off debt, which I know that you've now dedicated your work to, which I'm excited to get into that. At this time you're in graduate school to become a marriage and family therapist and you're going through a divorce. What was that

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Jacent Wamala (10:07):

Like

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Michael Fulwiler (10:07):

For you? Oh

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Jacent Wamala (10:08):

My goodness. Tumultuous. Tumultuous emotionally, right. So it was ironic. Obviously I just felt like a walking oxymoron. I'm going to school to become a marriage and family therapist, but I'm in the process of getting divorced who's going to come and see me? But at the end of the day, I came to the realization that I'm the best person for people to see if they're struggling in their relationship. I know I how to navigate through this, but it was a really tough time because you are kind of grad school. To be a therapist is different than going to grad school to be a mathematician or something else. I'm not saying that other fields of industry aren't difficult, but when you're becoming a therapist, there's all of this personal work that you have to do at the same time and a lot of awareness that you come into by learning all of these different modalities and learning about what makes people tick and how problems come about, how to solve them.

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(11:16):

And so it's kind of like this parallel process that you're having when you're in school anyway. So then to have life be happening at the same time, which for pretty much everyone that I recall going to grad school with is happening to everybody in some way. It just created this unique time where I kind of had imposter syndrome. I'm like, am I a fraud? Did I make the right choices? And then my dad dies eyes a couple months after I get divorced. And so it was just the perfect storm of things that happened and he was across the world, so I didn't even make it to his funeral. I wouldn't have made it there in time with how they bury in Uganda. And so it was just a very difficult time where on the outside I probably looked okay, we learn how to stay in motion and keep putting one foot in front of the other, but sometimes when you're going, going, going, you're not really processing what's happening and it takes its toll when it does. But it was a time, and that was really the birth of everything that I do now, is this intersection of mental health and money where I didn't have any foundation of financial literacy from growing up. My uncle told me for anybody ever, never. That was the lesson that I really took home, but how to specifically manage your money, how to handle transitions, moving, divorce, none of those things were there. So that's when I ended up going into the majority of the debt that I accumulated.

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Michael Fulwiler (12:52):

So what happened after that?

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Jacent Wamala (12:56):

So I was living on my own for the first time in my life and having to navigate how to do that financially, which is not what my plan originally was. So the place that I was living in wasn't necessarily based on me by myself. Everything went from two income to one income very quickly, and then my dad passed away. So it was thinking about things like, okay, well do I try to travel? I ain't got no money to travel in the first place to go, let alone be able to continue to manage life at the same time. So it really was just kind of grinding, getting through school at the same time as I'm trying to piece together my financial situation on my own. And that was 2014, so that was the year before I graduated, and that's when I started seeing clients that summer.

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(13:54):

There's so much to cover. So I'm sure in grad school you can't cover every single presentation of a problem, but money was never once brought up, other than people paying their fees as a stressor, how do we help them? I didn't know what financial therapy was until 2020 when I started doing this work and started doing research. And so it was coming up in the therapy room a lot and it was also happening in my own life. So I'm like, what is going on here? People? So it was just this combination of things. I ended up graduating December, 2015, and at that same time my cousin gifted me a book that was kind of a narrative, but with these lessons around personal finance, he always gave me books for Christmas. I never read them except for this one, and at least I read this one, it helped a sister out.

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(14:52):

I ended up paying off a hundred thousand dollars, but reading that book, that's what I calculated my net worth for the first time. And I was like, Ooh, huh. Because all of your finances are separated typically, right? Your car notes over here, if you've got medical stuff, your student loans are separate. You never get this aerial view of what's actually going on. So you can kind of trick yourself into thinking things are better than they are until you do something like your net worth, and then it makes you understand where you're at on the map. So that

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Michael Fulwiler (15:22):

Opportunity, how do you calculate your net worth?

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Jacent Wamala (15:24):

Yes. So your net worth is your assets minus your liabilities, whatever you own, minus what you owe is going to tell you what your net worth is. And it can change whatever it is. It can evolve, it can grow. But yeah, that's what, that's what sparked making changes in my finances.

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Michael Fulwiler (15:46):

Absolutely. And so at this time you said you're seeing clients. Are you working for a group practice? Are you in an agency setting? In what capacity were you seeing clients at that time?

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Jacent Wamala (15:56):

Oh my goodness, I worked all over everywhere. So I bounced around, I'd worked at agencies. My internship was in a private practice setting, so I did consistently have that going on. And I also did, gosh, I did drug and alcohol counseling as well, group drug and alcohol counseling for mandated, mandated folks. So I bounced around quite a bit. I wanted to get the experience of what is it that I want to do? And then once I started working, I was also kind of like, where can I serve and create value and also earn an income? So I was all over the place. I probably had so many jobs, I can't even remember all of them. Now I'm being honest.

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Michael Fulwiler (16:40):

And were you working towards opening a private practice? Was that the goal? Or at that point, were you just like, I'm trying to make money where I can to try to start to pay this debt down?

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Jacent Wamala (16:53):

So working in private practice was the goal, but then there's also the layer of not learning about business when you're in school to become a therapist. And I'm like, it's interesting. They know we want to go into private practice. Some of us, the majority of us, but again, it's not business school, it's school to become a therapist. So not having that knowledge heard business school, this podcast wasn't

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Michael Fulwiler (17:17):

Around if only there was a business school for a therapist

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Jacent Wamala (17:21):

If only, right? Yeah. If this was around a decade ago, dang, who knows? Things might've looked different. But trying to navigate all of that was challenging. So my private practice didn't really do that great. You know what I mean? Financially in 2016 before I started my journey, I made $17,800 with a master's degree. So I remember thinking, what

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Michael Fulwiler (17:54):

Math ain't math in here?

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Jacent Wamala (17:55):

The math ain't math. Well, it makes sense why I'm in so much debt. I can't even cover my cost of living, let alone anything else. So when I did my net worth exercise, which that was actually at the end of 2016, it forced me to start asking questions. It forced me to take my head out of the sand, or I guess I chose, I guess you can't afford me. I could have kept my head. I could have been like, no, but that's what made me try to piece together what was happening and it made me more intentional. So then I was like, okay, well where I'm working, what are my rates and you know what I mean? How can I negotiate to get the best options? And so then 2017 is really where things took off.

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Michael Fulwiler (18:34):

What were the steps for you in 2017 then? When you say things took off, you're on this journey. Can you walk us through for folks who maybe are where you were then, right, they have 50,000, 75,000, a hundred thousand dollars or more of debt, and it just can feel so overwhelming that it leads to avoidance of, I don't even know, I'm just going to disassociate here. I'm not even going to think about money. I'm just going to not think about it. So for folks who are wanting to start, where did you get started? It sounds like first assessing your net worth and where you stand, that's just getting a baseline of like, okay, where am I in terms of this debt and then what comes next?

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Jacent Wamala (19:28):

Yeah, so looking back on it, and this is one of the things that I do with my students is awareness is the foundation. If you think a triangle and awareness is at the bottom, the book made me aware of my situation because it said to calculate my net worth, the next tier is either, like you mentioned, avoidance or acceptance. And so that's the fork in the road that you find yourself at when you become aware of your situation because the car breaks down and you ain't got it to be able to fix it or you know that the debt is weighing you down and you're not sure what to do. I accepted what my situation was and then the top of the triangle being attention. So giving my attention to my situation, my finances is in 2017, what happened? So I started with the net worth exercise, and then the question became, well, do I have a money making problem or do I have a money management problem?

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(20:27):

I had both. I wasn't making enough. It was a time I wasn't making enough and I wasn't managing it because I never learned how to really manage my money. So it was just like money came in, money went out. If there's money in the account, we spend it. If there's not any money, we don't spend any money. So that was the extent of my money management skills in process of looking for how to earn more money, I was learning how to manage my money. So March, 2017 is when I started budgeting and started actually tracking what I was paying down in my debt, but also what my finances looked like to the best of my ability at that time. And so from March, 2017, every month I did a money meeting with myself where I sat down and looked at what was coming in and what was going out, and this is why I know how much I paid off because from that point is when I started tracking how much I was paying down, I spent the rest of the time figuring out how to make more money because I knew that.

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(21:22):

I also decided when I did my net worth, I put a deadline on when I wanted to pay it off by. And so I was like, okay, well if I'm about in $70,000 or so in debt now, when do I want it to be gone? For me? I was like, hmm. I was 26 going on 27 at the time. So I was like, it'd be cool to be debt free by 30 and then be able to spend the rest of the time because I wasn't investing or anything like that, building wealth and living my best life. So that was my goal, and I reverse engineered the numbers from that. So it was $70,000 divided by three years, which was about 20 something or so dollars a year I think, which came down to about, was it 1,260 something like that? Somewhere between one and $2,000 a month that I would have to pay down in order to hit my goal in three years.

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(22:11):

Now, that was a basic calculation. I did not hit that monthly goal every single month. Some months I paid off more. In some months I paid zero, but I had the average. I knew what my target was. And I think that's what helped, because that helped me identify how much money I needed to make to be able to hit my goal. So that informed what jobs I was looking for. I was going on interviews, I was receiving offers, and I was actually turning jobs down because they didn't fit what I needed to be able to hit my goal. So it was kind of wild when I think about it now. I was just turning jobs down for a few months there left, right? But I had my sight set on what I knew I needed to be able to hit the goal, and then it ended up working out by the September or so I think I had locked in a job, but while I was applying for jobs, there was multiple things happening simultaneously.

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(23:03):

I sold a lot of the stuff that was in my apartment and my best friend allowed me to move in with her. So I'm selling things in my house that helped me to save my initial emergency fund of a thousand dollars. And I pretty much lived in an apartment with not much stuff in there for some time, but I really felt like doing something radical was going to help me get radical results. And I treated myself like I was in residency, I thought about doctors, they finished school, but in order to actually become a doctor, you have to go through residency, which is pretty much your life is at the hospital, you're working and you want to have a doctor that knows what they're doing. So for me, I thought, well, if I was a doctor, I would be in residency working a lot and becoming really good at what I do. That was my frame of mind at the time to be able to say for a period I'm going to be working quite a bit, but it won't have to be that way forever if I do it now. There were these layers of things that were happening simultaneously and changing very quickly, and I did personally take a radical approach, which I don't necessarily recommend or say that my students need to take. Thankfully for them they have so many options. And then by the end of 2017, around October or so was the first time I made some heavy hitter payments on my debt. When I made more money, I followed my plan. A lot of times when we make more money, we spend it lifestyle inflation, lifestyle creep kicks in that I, yeah,

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Michael Fulwiler (24:33):

I paid my credit cards down, so now I have some room there. I can book that flight.

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Jacent Wamala (24:38):

Yes,

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Michael Fulwiler (24:39):

Then, but you're back to where you were.

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Jacent Wamala (24:41):

Exactly.

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Michael Fulwiler (24:42):

You said a lot of great stuff there. So I encourage

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(24:47):

A lot you to just rewind and listen to everything that Jacia said. That was amazing. I was going to stop you, but I just let you go there. That was great. Something that you said that stood out to me was that this doesn't really need to be complicated. I think we think about finances and it feels like a lot of math and it can feel very overwhelming, but it's really about developing a money plan where you have a certain number that you need to reach and then you just back out of that, right? And so when I talk to therapists about how much they should be charging and how many clients they should be seeing, it's like, well, what's your money plan? How much money do you want to make in a year? Well, I don't know what would feel good. How much do you need to make to pay off expenses paid on debt, afford the lifestyle you want to live? Maybe that can't be possible in year one, but in year two or three, that's something we can work towards. Something you and I have also talked about is having a money team and would love to chat about that. What is a money team and who is on your money team?

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Jacent Wamala (25:58):

Your money team is who supports you in being able to not only maintain but actually build wealth? And if you think of anyone who has significant wealth, they're not doing it by themselves. So if you want to accomplish something, copy the people who've accomplished the thing. So having a money team is really crucial and critical because just like you went to school to become a therapist and it took you however many years and thousands of hours and CEUs, someone else did that to learn tax code and someone else did that to understand estate planning. And so to try to put all of that on yourself is a lot. And that's why the people that you have on your money team, you have let's say Heard in your back pocket to help you with your financial backend and take off of your plate the things that you are not an expert at and that sometimes rob you of time, energy, and money that could otherwise be going to reinvesting in your business or helping you pay off debt.

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(27:06):

Sometimes if you don't know what you know, you don't know what you don't know. Let me say you don't know if you're missing out on certain credits or you don't know if you're missing certain. Look, that's not, I don't even know what I don't know. I don't even know how to describe it. It's not my thing. That person can help take care of that side of things. So a financial person is on your money team that knows maybe accounting tax stuff. They may be one person or it may be multiple people. It depends. There's also legal. So having a lawyer that helps you to make sure that your business is running within the legal guidelines ethically and paperwork wise, all that good stuff. That also can help you with the estate planning piece of things because generational wealth is only built when you actually pass things down.

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(28:00):

So you're not building generational wealth if you don't have a will or estate plan. You're building wealth, but it does not become generational until it's locked in legally where that stuff is supposed to go and how it's supposed to be dispersed and things like that. So a lawyer being on your team, I also say having a liaison, so this could look however you like. For some people the liaison is like their dad or something like that. Who is your third party person outside of all of those things that has a completely separate non-biased interest in your journey? For my students, it's me. So we're sitting down and we're having conversations about their vision and we're talking about what they want to accomplish, their goals overall and their hangups. And because with money, a lot of it doesn't even have to do with the money. A lot of it has to do with psychology and our mindset, what we learned and didn't learn, and how are you doing that work to ensure that as you're growing your practice, as you're growing your business, you can handle it and you also allow it and don't keep yourself stuck and not allow yourself to thrive.

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(29:16):

So I noticed that that comes up quite a bit. There's a lot to learn in the process of growing a business, a lot of personal development and whatnot. So financial side heard can be a great option for that on the financial backend of your business, legal, a lawyer to help make sure that things are airtight. You've got an estate plan or something like that. I think it's also great to have a liaison, a third party that's outside of all those things. Maybe are you going to therapy and working through your own financial trauma if you have any, just another person that can help you get clear, stay focused and make progress.

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Michael Fulwiler (29:49):

I think that liaison role is so important. This is not a paid sponsorship.

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(29:55):

It's not that liaison role is so important, whether that's a money coach, a financial therapist, something that I learned is that when I was doing interviews and research with therapists, reading Reddit forums, Facebook groups, just trying to understand the questions that therapists have about their finances, I thought it was about taxes and bookkeeping and tactical stuff, but really a lot of the questions are more around money mindset and limiting beliefs about money and how do I raise my fees? And it's the mindset piece. It's not the actual tactics and we want to jump to how do I categorize my books or what are all of the tax deductions that I qualify for as a therapist, but there's all of the emotional piece as well that I think gets overlooked, which is where you operate and that's so important. And with debt specifically knowing that so many therapists are struggling with debt, so much of getting out of debt is not the math because the math is straightforward. It's just getting started and putting things in motion and kind of overcoming those obstacles

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Jacent Wamala (31:00):

100%. So if I can offer some encouragement, I thought I was a unicorn, so I was like, well, I did this stuff in my journey. I paid off nearly a hundred thousand dollars in three years and maybe it's because I taught personal growth and development. Maybe I just know these things and maybe I'm a unicorn. It's just I want to, so what's crazy is last year, was it last year? Yeah, it had to be. We did another Heard webinar, right? Y'all hosted me to come and do debt-free therapist, which the links should be available either in the description or you can search it on the Heard website. And so Alicia joined that presentation and she contacted me after, or we connected somehow and she ended up, we had a conversation because I'm always doing research like you were saying, to understand what people are actually challenged with.

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(31:52):

And so we had a conversation initially just for the research, but she wanted to learn more about getting support. Fast forward, Alicia in the last 11 months has paid off over $40,000, has saved over $10,000, has grown her practice from zero full fee private practice clients to over 14 or 15. That was in the first six months, so I don't know where she's at right now, but she was on the verge of just closing down her private practice altogether and going back to being a school counselor. And so I'm not a unicorn. The way that you allow yourself to be positioned to be influenced, let's say by Heard, because they held this webinar for therapists to learn about their finances and host different experts wasn't the only one. You've got a whole series of folks and the podcast, are you exposing yourself and are you becoming aware of where you want to grow and figuring out how to implement by getting support from her, by having these conversations around money and how to increase your fees, things like that.

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(32:56):

Those are things we talked about with Alicia. She wasn't charging her full fee. She also wasn't exactly clear on who her ideal client was. And so it was like dialing a couple of things has made it so that they were able to cashflow a family trip to Disney. Now, she just the other day was telling me they're getting ready to go with the Virgin Islands, that there's peace in her marriage and in her household because of the things that she has been able to attend to just in the last 11 months when it came to her finances. And so anyone who is listening to this has the same opportunity. It's just about taking action. So it's like, do you need to book a consultation with someone from the Heard team? Now we hesitate sometimes on things we know would help us, and when we close that gap between intention and execution, that's when we start to see things progress and move faster than ever before.

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Michael Fulwiler (33:54):

Being a therapist is about helping people, not crunching numbers, but when you're running your own practice, managing finances can feel like a full-time job one you never trained for. That's where Heard comes in. Heard is the financial management platform built just for therapists. No more cobbling together spreadsheets, DIY software or expensive accountants with Heard. You get bookkeeping, tax support and financial insights all in one easy to use platform. Heard was started by an accountant and a software engineer who understand the challenges you face as a business owner. Our mission to make it incredibly easy for therapists to manage their practice as a business, build wealth and stay focused on what matters most. Their clients join thousands of therapists who trust Heard with their finances. Schedule a free consultation today at join Heard.com/consult. Why do we hesitate is that we get to that awareness phase of I am in debt or this is not the financial situation that I thought I would be in. And then we have that choice between, you said, avoidance or acceptance, and so is it the people who avoid that don't then take that next step. And so that's where we need to make that shift of like, okay, I'm accepting and then I'm now putting attention to the situation.

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Jacent Wamala (35:23):

Yeah, I definitely think that has a huge part to play because it feels like you said the word overwhelming. So what happens when we get overwhelmed, we want to step away. We want to diminish that pressure, that feeling, which makes us turn outward when the best thing for us to likely do might be to turn inward. And so that hesitation as a habitual response is what becomes problematic. You hesitate and then you take action. That's not as bad as I do this consistently. Every time I look at my finances or every year I'm waiting to the end and I'm stressed and overwhelmed because I don't even know where my receipts are and I haven't had a conversation with somebody from her, whatever, that becomes habitual. And then that's really honestly stepping into self-sabotage to some extent, even though I know people have so much on their plates, but so get some of it off your plate, then get some of it off your plate. If you've got a lot going on, get support, get that money team in place. Oh my goodness, everyone who's successful has a team. Why would we think as therapist, we have to be everything for everybody. It's not necessary.

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Michael Fulwiler (36:37):

It reminds me of professional athletes. They have a trainer, they have a nutritionist. Now more and more athletes have a mental health coach or therapist, and so therapists should have the same. I imagine for folks who are listening and who are in the beginning of their journey as a therapist, they're probably feeling like, that sounds great, but I can't afford an accountant. I can't afford a bookkeeper. I can't afford a money coach. I can't afford a financial planner. What would you say to those folks?

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Jacent Wamala (37:10):

Yeah, I would say raise your rates.

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Michael Fulwiler (37:15):

Sounds like a moneymaking problem then,

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Jacent Wamala (37:17):

Right? So it might be a moneymaking, but it might be also money management because well, what's the financial structure of your business right now then? Because how long have you been working? And if you're not seeing profits or the ability to reinvest in the business, we need to revisit what's going on structurally. And so there are different ways to structure your finances in your business and personally, but let's say for example, profit first. Profit first says, you should be putting money away for operating expenses for your taxes, for your ability to pay yourself. And so that was something that I never learned how to do early on. So y'all are not talking to somebody who's not a therapist or hasn't done it. I know when I started my practice, there wasn't a financial structure, honey, I was commingling my funds. It was not a good situation.

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(38:08):

So I would argue that it's probably structural and that they might be able to do more than they think sooner than they think if they're being intentional about it. So if you're like, well, I can't do it this month. Okay, so can you start setting aside $10 a session or a paycheck or whatever? What can you do? So that's a mental shift that I like to throw out there is our brain skips to I can't, oh, I can't do this. I can't afford it. What can you do? When you answer that question and allow that to become your lens? Then you say, well, okay, well maybe in three months I can do it. Have the conversation with her anyway so you can understand what that support looks like, and then you can make a plan to be able to get it in place. You don't have to execute right away if it's not the time, but if you never start, you never move. The progress comes in motion. It doesn't come when you're standing still. So I would argue something along those lines. I would say you probably need to talk to somebody more than ever if that's what you're thinking

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Michael Fulwiler (39:13):

About. There's also so much that is free and accessible.

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Jacent Wamala (39:17):

Oh my gosh,

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Michael Fulwiler (39:18):

That's so important to us to share resources and the podcast like this and YouTube videos and bring in speakers to make this accessible because for so long, financial literacy hasn't been accessible. And so that's something that we're super passionate about is making it available. It also reminds me of people who say Therapy is too expensive, but then they're going to Starbucks every morning. They're paying $20 a month for Netflix. It's like, is it too expensive or is it just not something that you're prioritizing? And for some people, yes, it is too expensive. If I'm struggling to put food on the table, I'm in a situation where therapy is too expensive, but there may be other options where I could get free or discounted therapy or whatever. But I think for a lot of people it's just really about prioritization and

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Jacent Wamala (40:19):

You hit the nail on head

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Michael Fulwiler (40:19):

At your expenses. Are there expenses that you see with therapists that you work with when you sit down and you're like, Hey, how are you spending your money? They're like, oh, wow, I didn't realize I was spending this much on subscriptions or maybe I don't need this software. Are there common expenses that you see that may not be necessary or are holding therapists back?

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Jacent Wamala (40:44):

I can't say common expenses per se, anything in particular? It's just the lack of knowing. It's just them not knowing where the money's going. So then it's just easy for it to kind of slip away over here a little bit. It's like death by a thousand cuts. So it's the lack of seeing or knowing where the money is going in general. And oftentimes for therapists, it is a money making issue because they've never, like you mentioned, they've never calculated, well, what is the cost of doing business as a therapist? Have you ever calculated that? Do you know what your overhead is off the top of your head? Is it written down? A lot of therapists don't know their numbers, so when you don't know your numbers, then you can't have a clear intentional plan about how to hit them and then thrive that so your fees don't reflect or align with the cost of your business.

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(41:40):

And of course you feel how you feel because it's chaotic. It's chaotic and disorganized. So I think the biggest issue is more so disorganization and lack of clarity and awareness than anything. And then when you get clear, yeah, sometimes it stings a little bit, but then you are empowered to do something about it, make the money plan, like you mentioned, having that ability to say, okay, well even if there's, it's not what we can do right this second, you have a aspirational roadmap to where you want to go, and there's building blocks that are very specific that you can take action toward stepping on to get to the next level. And so it's not any specific expense, which is the interesting thing. It's more so just being unaware.

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Michael Fulwiler (42:30):

It's free to learn and consume, and then setting up a system for yourself and for your business can be free or very inexpensive. Bookkeeping can be as easy as setting up a Google sheet or an Excel spreadsheet every month, putting in your income, putting in your expenses. I talked to a therapist who asked me, why do I need to do bookkeeping? I can just look at my bank statement and I could see how much money I have. And then I asked, well, how much money did you make last month? Or What was your profit last quarter? And it's like, I'm not sure. It's like, okay. And that's not to shame anyone, but it's just saying if you're on the system in place where you're tracking these things, it's harder to manage. There's a saying in marketing, what gets measured gets managed. And so if we're doing a bunch of marketing activities, but we're not managing the impact of them, we don't know if they're working or not.

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(43:30):

So we're kind of just in the dark. And I think it's the same thing with your finances. If you're not measuring them, it's really difficult to manage them and make change. So I think what I'm hearing is it starts with when it comes to debt, specifically figuring out what your net worth is, figuring out that baseline, and then with your practice, just starting to get a baseline of how much money am I making every month, even before you're setting goals for a money plan, what does the business look like today? And I think just having that baseline can be a good start.

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Jacent Wamala (44:05):

And personal finance is personal, so I do have to say, while there's so much free and helpful information out there, I think what hangs people up is taking a cookie cutter approach from the internet or the viral challenge or whatever the case is, trying to apply it, maybe making some progress, then hitting a wall or falling off because it wasn't to their specific situation. This is why it's helpful to have a money team, because then they can get into the weeds with you of your specific circumstances instead of just taking the snowball method off the internet or the 30 20, the 50, 30 20 way of budgeting off the internet because personal finance is personal. So just because so-and-so said to do it like this and they got results from it, doesn't mean that's what you should be doing in that exact same way. Same for me. My journey is my own, how I hit my goal was how I hit my goal. My students, every single one of them, their journeys are completely different, and that's really cool. When y'all are working with folks, I'm assuming you're not giving them the same exact recommendations and referrals and action items in their businesses. I am making an assumption. I don't know, but I'm assuming,

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Michael Fulwiler (45:22):

Yeah, people will ask, how much should I set aside for taxes? Well, it really depends. It depends on where you live. Do you have state income tax? How do you file your taxes? How is your business set up? There's all of these inputs that inform the output. And it sounds like it's the same thing with your personal finance. I'm really glad that you went there because you hear terms like the snowball method or the waterfall method, I think 30 20 something, Dave Ramsey told me that I should do this. Right. So could you talk about a few of those common strategies and what those are for folks who might not be aware?

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Jacent Wamala (45:58):

Yeah. So when it comes to let's say debt payoff, there are options like the snowball method, which would be listing out all of your debts, who do you owe and how much? And putting them in order from smallest to greatest paying minimums on everything. And then anything extra will go on the smallest to be able to knock it out. And that then creates this snowball effect that over time you're getting rid of the littler ones and then more and more money is going onto the bigger ones as you eliminate them. That's what I chose to do because it felt the most psychologically rewarding. And so I'm going to come back to this after I talk about the other one. Avalanche method is when you are attacking your debts based on your interest rates. So you list out all of your debts, highest interest rate to lowest interest rate, and then you're paying minimums, but you're attacking the one with a higher interest rate because it's going to save you more money.

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(46:54):

So it may not look like much has changed. You still have the same amount of accounts that you owe on, but you're saving money at the end of the day because the higher interest debt is going down faster than the other ones. And then what has come to awareness? For me recently when I'm talking to folks, I always get asked options, should I do, which way should I pay off debt? What's the best way? And I say the best way is the way that's going to work for you, what's going to be the most rewarding? Because that's what you're going to be more consistent with. If you're discouraged, you're going to give up. So would you be more rewarded by seeing things get eliminated, having less accounts? For me, that was a snowball method like, oh wow, I paid off this card. I can set that aside.

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(47:40):

It's off my mind. Are you going to feel rewarded by knowing that you're saving money at the end of the day because you're a math person or you're just whatever the case is, logically that makes more sense to you? Cool. But the other one is, do you feel motivated by, let's say your credit score? So if you were to see your credit score go up, would that be something that felt like it was rewarding? Then I would say listing out your debts or credit specifically as prioritizing those, and then prioritizing in order of utilization. So if you've got cards at one's 50% utilization, one's at 30% utilization, one's at 10% utilization that you would pay your minimums on everything. But then anything extra would go to the one with the highest utilization because if you bring your utilization down, then your credit score is likely, I can't say a hundred percent, right, is likely to go up.

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(48:30):

So you need to pick a plan that is going to help you stay doing the plan, having accountability is important and all of that. So that's just on the debt side of things. When it comes to money management, I always recommend profit first. For business owners, they even have profit first for therapists. So how to create a financial structure for your business, that does make it easier because you're creating different accounts for these different areas. So you've got your profit account, the account where everything comes in, there's your operating expenses account, your owner's compensation, which is your own personal checking or whatever the case is, and you're saving for taxes as well. And when you do it that way, when money comes in, you're splitting it off into these different accounts and you can then look at your accounts and say, this is how much money is in there for this thing.

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(49:21):

Even though you're still going to need financial understanding of statements such as your profit and loss and whatnot, but managing your money becomes easier because you've split up the money to some extent, and you're not commingling funds friends, okay, we cannot commingle our funds. Then there's something like 30 or 50, 30, 20, right? That's for you to be able to spend 50% of what you're making toward needs and then 30% toward once 20% is getting saved. So Alicia, who I mentioned, she realized that doing an every dollar budget, which is giving every single dollar a job, didn't work for her. Great. That's awareness. We did buckets for her. It wasn't 50, 30, 20, but it's creating percentages for each category that makes sense for your specific. So 50, 30, 20 may not be for you. It may not be like if you live in California, that's going to be different than if you live in North Carolina or something like that. Cost of living and whatnot. And so yeah, there's plenty of techniques and strategies. I think they're great to be able to try out. It helps you have a starting point, but like you said, what's measured can be managed, so you have to measure if it's working or not. Have you been doing this for a few months and notice that there's things that need to be tweaked or did you only do it for two weeks and you gave up and you haven't tried anything else since?

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Michael Fulwiler (50:48):

I love this. There's a couple of things that are coming up for me. One is that it almost reminds me of how everyone has different learning styles. It's like some people, they like to watch things. Some people like to read things, some people like to write it down, and if you try one thing and you're like, oh, I don't like to learn or it doesn't work for me, well, there's other things that you can try. It is also like people who try one form of therapy and it doesn't work for them. Maybe CBT doesn't work for you. And then it's like saying, well, therapy doesn't work for me. And so I think if you've tried to make a budget, if you've tried to pay it on debt and the strategy or the approach that you used, it didn't work for you, what I'm hearing is that it's okay to try something else and don't get discouraged, and hopefully that's encouraging of there's other approaches, other methods. Work with someone like Jacent here to figure out what's going to work for you and be most motivating.

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Jacent Wamala (51:56):

Yeah, that's it. You hit the nail on the head,

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Michael Fulwiler (51:58):

How can people work with you?

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Jacent Wamala (52:01):

So there's only one way to work with me that's in our community. Oh my gosh, so cool to see because again, I thought I was a unicorn. So to see that other people are able to get these tangible results in such rapid timing is amazing. So if you want to learn more about joining the Financial Freedom Accelerator, then I would love for you to reach out using whatever's provided. And either way, I say this, either way, reach out and let's have a conversation. Because at the end of the day, my goal isn't to work with everyone, honestly. My goal is to make sure that everyone I talk to has what they need to move forward and make progress. And so that's kind of just the mission is how do we leave people, places and things better than we found them, even if it's not aligned for us to work together, can I recommend a book or a podcast or the strategy that makes more sense for you, whatever your next step items are, because our community is invitation only, but we're always looking to figure out how we can help, especially therapists be able to make their work sustainable.

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(53:05):

There's so many therapists, I feel like that are dropping out of the race early or that are burnt out and unable to create sustainable careers because of finances. And it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be like Alicia was about to get rid of her practice and be a school counselor. That school would've been great off to have her, but she still had work to do, and all we had to do was tweak a few things to help her to be able to make that more sustainable. So it really depends. So I would love to personally have a conversation with you to hear about your challenges, to hear about your vision and your goals, and to be able to share with you what I know will help you to be able to start making progress immediately in the next few weeks, in the next few months, definitely in the next year because your life could look so much different. So I'm sure all those things will be provided and I look forward to chatting with whoever's interested in just being able to get more information on how to get rid of this debt so you can live your best life.

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Michael Fulwiler (54:03):

Yeah, it's definitely encourage you to reach out. You're also on Instagram as well, posting stories all the time, which I know I love to see and follow along. I got your kids on there. Where else can folks connect with you? Are you mostly on Instagram?

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Jacent Wamala (54:17):

Yeah, so you can find me on a day-to-day basis on Instagram, but on YouTube, if you're hoping to deep dive on information and learn more, I try to give away such helpful information that you could make progress from there alone. So I would highly suggest it's just my first and last name just sent Oma that you come and join me, subscribe over there and let me know what you want me to answer In my content. It is directly informed by those who connect with me, so I would love to be able to share whatever could be helpful for you to be able to get to the next step.

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Michael Fulwiler (54:50):

If you're watching this on YouTube, go subscribe. We'll tag just sent in the description. We're going to wrap up here with a few rapid fire questions. First one, what is your hottest take about paying off debt?

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Jacent Wamala (55:05):

My hottest take about paying off debt is you have the money and ability to do so. We spend money on, like you said, all kinds of things. We're spending money on Starbucks and this and that. There's a way. So being stuck is you self-sabotaging, have a high income skill and you're not using it.

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Michael Fulwiler (55:31):

People need to hear it. What is the book or a podcast or video about money that you recommend the most to people that you work with

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Jacent Wamala (55:42):

About money in particular? Probably we should all be millionaires. It'd be we should all be millionaires or profit first.

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Michael Fulwiler (55:53):

What do you think therapists need to hear right now?

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Jacent Wamala (55:57):

I think therapists need to hear that regardless of what's going on, the work that you do is significant and impactful and needed necessary in the world. I think it's easy to feel like discouraged, or are people going to want to pay for therapy in certain economic times or it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to lean in because more than ever, people need authentic human connection and support. So it's a great time to lean into the work that you do to however you specialize, to increase your rates. Yes, during a time where things might look however economically, you might need to pivot a little bit, but more than ever, people need you and your service the way that you show up in the world. And thank you. Probably therapists need to hear. Thank you. Thank you for how you serve.

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Michael Fulwiler (56:49):

I echo that. What's the biggest money lesson that you've learned?

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Jacent Wamala (56:55):

The biggest money lesson I've learned is that it has nothing to do with money. It has to do with the realization that your own worth and your net worth or charging what you're worth. Those things do not go together. Your worth is intrinsic. It came into the world with you when you got here, but the worth of how you serve in the world is significant and impactful, so you do want to charge accordingly to that. And so I think that money is kind of an echo of the things that we think and what we believe. I call it your background, your beliefs, and your boundaries, and when we start to work through that stuff and do the mental personal development work, the breaks can get released and completely change your entire life.

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Michael Fulwiler (57:42):

Can you say that again? Background beliefs

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Jacent Wamala (57:45):

And boundaries.

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Michael Fulwiler (57:46):

Boundaries. We love alliteration. That's one takeaway from me.

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Jacent Wamala (57:51):

I love alliteration.

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Michael Fulwiler (57:53):

Yeah. Finally, what is one thing that you want therapists to take away from this conversation today?

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Jacent Wamala (57:59):

One thing that therapists can take away. If the primary priority financial goal is debt, then my one thing would say it's possible for you to get out of debt sooner than you think with less of a headache than you think. It's not going to take what you think. It's easier than you think to get out of debt. You can do it and make it happen.

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Michael Fulwiler (58:24):

Just do it.

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Jacent Wamala (58:25):

Just do it.

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Michael Fulwiler (58:28):

Just then. Thank you so much. This has been amazing. I was taking notes over here. I'm sure folks were as well. Really appreciate you. Really grateful for our friendship.

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Jacent Wamala (58:39):

Thank you. Thank you for all you do.

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Michael Fulwiler (58:40):

Thanks for listening to this episode of Heard Business School, brought to you by Heard, the financial management platform for therapists. To get the class notes for this week's episode, go to joinheard.com/podcast. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll see you in the next class.

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