A Conversation About Money and Emotions with Christine Luken (Ep. 18)

Why do our emotions have such a strong influence on our finances?

Many people struggle with managing their finances because they don’t fully understand their emotions about spending, or because they feel pressure to maintain a certain level of living.

In this episode, Darren Wurz sits down with Christine Luken, the founder of the Financial Dignity™ Movement and author of “Money is Emotional: Prevent Your Heart from Hijacking Your Wallet”, to talk about the connection between the way we control and spend our money and our emotions. Christine chats about certain factors that determine our financial decisions and also mentions what mentality we should have when it comes to our money.

Christine and Darren discuss:

How emotions can lead us to poor financial decisions and why making more money does not solve underlying issues
How understanding and harnessing the power of emotions can help us achieve our financial goals
The power of creating a specific vision and goal with positive and negative emotions
How professionals, such as attorneys and doctors, struggle with money management due to lack of time and disorganization, and pressure to maintain a certain lifestyle
The impact of money scripts and how they can unconsciously affect our financial behavior and decisions
Using money as a tool for good
Why budgeting isn’t the most healthy way of managing your finances
And more!

Resources:

Connect with Darren Wurz:

Connect with Christine Luken:

About our guest:

Ready to master your money and become a financial success? Then you need Christine Luken, the Financial Dignity® Coach, in your corner!

As the Founder of the Financial Dignity® Movement & a Certified Financial Counselor, Christine has coached hundreds of high-earning professionals to pay off staggering amounts of debt and massively increase their net worth over the past fourteen years.

Christine’s three books, Money is Emotional, Manage Money Like a Boss, & Financial Dignity® After Divorce, have landed her over 100 podcasts, TV, and radio interviews, establishing her as the authority on money and emotions.

When she’s not coaching clients from her office in Cincinnati, you can find this Certified Divorce Specialist & member of the Financial Therapy Association curled up with a good book, a fluffy cat, and a strong cup of coffee.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] We are on a mission to help lawyers and law firm owners maximize wealth and achieve financial independence. Welcome to The Lawyer Millionaire with Darren Wurz From Wurz Financial Services. In this podcast, we will help you build wealth, minimize your taxes. And plan for retirement with money management strategies designed for the legal profession.

Join us in this journey where we help you manage your money so you can make the most of your future. Start feeling confident in knowing you are well prepared for retirement and on track to financial independence. Now onto the show,

Darren: When you think about money, do you think of spreadsheets and formulas, or does money conjure up emotions for you? Well, according to today’s guest, not only is money emotional, but it is the emotions of money that cause us to make poor money decisions. I’m your host, Darren Wurz, [00:01:00] Certified Financial Planner and author of The Lawyer Millionaire, The Complete Guide for Attorneys on Maximizing Wealth, Minimizing Taxes, and Retiring With Confidence.

Our guest today is Christine Luken, a financial coach to attorneys and high income professionals, and a longtime friend and colleague of myself. She’s also the author of several books, including the one I Know best, Money is Emotional. Welcome to the show. Christine. How are you today?

Christine: I’m awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

Darren: Awesome, awesome. I love it. Great. We’re, I’m so excited that you’re here. You and I have known each other for a really long time. And I love the work that you do around helping people figure out why they make bad decisions and helping them make great ones, and figuring out what their money scripts are.

What are the causes behind some of these things? You know, I work with a lot of folks who make great money.

Christine:Mm-hmm.

Darren:But they still [00:02:00] struggle. And that’s kind of an ironic and strange thing, isn’t it?

Christine: It is. If you don’t understand That money is emotional and a lot of people think if I just make more money, all my financial problems will go away.

But the problem is even though our income has gone up, our habits haven’t changed usually. And the underlying causes that are driving our financial behavior are not being examined. They’re largely in the dark and that causes people to be at the mercy of their emotions sometimes.

Darren: Yes. At the mercy of their emotions. I love it, and money is emotional. It certainly is and that’s the title of your book. Can you tell us exactly what that means and why is money so [00:03:00] emotional?

Christine: Well, you know, just a tiny bit of my story. You know, I don’t do financial coaching because I’ve always been perfect with money. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I hit financial rock bottom at age 26 despite having an accounting degree. So I had all the head knowledge and I was actually working for a multi-million dollar manufacturing company as their staff accountant. So I had all the head knowledge and yet, I was not doing any of it, and it was because as the subtitle of my book so eloquently puts it, “My Heart Hijacked my Wallet.”

And it was because I was in an unhealthy relationship with someone who had terrible money habits. And because of that relationship dynamic, it caused me to do things that were against what I knew was logically the right thing to do with my money. [00:04:00] And it’s so interesting because I didn’t find out until after I published the book that science has proven that it is impossible to make a purely logical money decision because the moment of decision occurs in the same part of our brain that processes emotion.

And they actually kind of found this out by accident. They had this, um, they were doing this study with these stroke victims and the only damage they had was in the part of the brain that processed emotion. So they were very high functioning, but they really had a hard time interpreting emotion in other people and expressing their own emotions.

During this study, they took a break for lunch and they said, Do you want a chicken sandwich or do you want a hamburger? And literally none of the study participants could make a decision. So they found out entirely by accident that the moment of decision happens in the same part of our [00:05:00] brain that processes emotion.

Darren:Mm-hmm.

Christine: So literally, we can’t leave emotion out of the financial decision making process. And that’s why, you know, It frustrates me when I hear financial professionals say, well just make the logical decision. And you and I have had this discussion before. It’s like, well, you can’t, you have to consider these emotional factors.

Now, this isn’t like horrible news to say that, okay, your heart’s always gonna hijack your wallet. We can learn. I mean, honestly, just the first step is understanding that we can’t completely unplug from our emotions, but we can understand how to harness their power and use them to actually achieve our goals.

And we can learn some tricks to short circuit some of those negative emotions that have a tendency to trip us up in certain areas.

Darren:Harnessing the power of those emotions I love it.

Christine:Yes.

Darren:And so we [00:06:00] have these emotions and we understood the first step is understanding that.

Christine:Mm-hmm.

Darren:And understanding that that is an impact, sounds like, the road to a lot of changes in life.

Christine:Yes.

Darren: Admitting we have a problem, number one, right?

Christine:Yes.

Darren:So harnessing that power, how can we harness the power of those emotions? Give us maybe an example of that.

Christine:Yes. So the example that I love to give is actually saving for retirement. So it’s like perfect that you and I are having this discussion. So one of the things I have people do, and I’ll use myself as an example! You know, when you think about retiring and what does that look like. For a lot of people it’s a very vague unspecific goal, right? It’s like, well, yeah, I wanna retire one day. But they haven’t really given it real thought of “what does that look like?”. So, you know, for me, I know it’s gonna be close to a tropical beach because I hate the [00:07:00] cold, right? So, you know, my husband and I have visited Maui several times. That would be an ideal location.

There’s several places in Florida that we really like, so we can get really excited about it because, We can literally see ourselves in those places because we, we’ve visited them, right? You know, it’s like, well, I know which golf courses I’m gonna play on. We know which beaches we’re gonna snorkel at. You know, we’re already thinking about like, oh, if we move into this neighborhood, this is like perfect for riding bikes, so we’ll get some bikes! You know, and so we can like, start to get really excited and harness the power of those emotions.

Now sometimes, there are people who the positive emotions aren’t quite enough, right? To get them moving in the right direction. So we can actually use negative emotions and we can also harness their power. Power as well. So if we think about [00:08:00] what don’t we want retirement to look like?

Darren:Mm-hmm.

Christine:So several years ago when, um, I was actually touring some different nursing homes for my mother-in-law because she had cancer and she needed more care.

There was one particular nursing home that as soon as I walked through that door, everything, every cell in my body was screaming at me to leave. I mean, it was just like the environment wasn’t good. You know, you could just feel the energy there. It just wasn’t. This was not someplace I would wanna put anybody that I loved in.

But I still, you know, did the tour with the person who was in charge. And it left such a deep impression on me that every time I think about should I put, you know, should I be maxing out my solo 401k? Well, you know what I think about, I think about the tropical beach and that pulls me forward, but, [00:09:00] that yucky retirement home, that also pushes me in that same direction because I’m like, yeah, you know, I wanna retire with palm trees.

But if I’m like, uh, yeah, you know, maybe I can do something else with that money. Well that scary retirement home is also like kind of chasing me from behind, right? So I’ve got like the palm trees in front of me and this not so great nursing home, and those memories pushing me from behind and that really accelerates me in the right direction.

Darren: That’s so good. I love that. You know, a lot of people I talk with are in that place where they don’t have a clear vision of what retirement looks like, and Yeah. So it is hard to convince them to save for this ethereal retirement that it doesn’t really have a concrete image to it.

You know, I see, I, what I see in some of the people I work with is they’re just kind of on [00:10:00] thismouse, this hamster wheel, right?

Christine:Mm-hmm.

Darren: Of trying to stay afloat. Maybe they have student loans, maybe they have debts. They’re trying to run their law firm, and all of these things are pressures on them, and they’re just trying to stay afloat with all of that.

Christine: Mm-hmm.

Darren: And so they haven’t taken the time to really sit down and, and then I have the, it’s like, how am I supposed to think about retirement? I’m just trying to stay alive in the moment. But maybe that’s the best thing you could do, would be to create a vision for yourself that can inspire you and pull you forward.

Christine: Yeah, and that’s definitely something I do with all of my one-on-one coaching clients. You know one of their first homework assignments is to create a vision board because, you know, we’re gonna start to build a plan for them to do things like tackle that debt, you know, that student loan debt. And having that reward and that vision that’s pulling you [00:11:00] forward. It helps to keep you motivated when you’ve got actual work to do, and you’ve got changes that have to be made in your finances.

Darren: Yeah, paying off credit cards doesn’t inspire me, but…

Christine: Right.

Darren: Paying off credit cards so that I can do X, Y, and Z.

Christine: Yeah!

Darren: That inspires me! That’s great!

Christine: Absolutely!

Darren: Absolutely!

Christine: Yeah. Well, and that’s one of the things I, you know, when we’re looking at people’s spending and we see what are those monthly payments? What are those interest payments? One of the first things I ask him is, when this is paid off, what are you gonna do with that monthly payment?

Darren:Yes.

Christine: Right. And then they’re like, oh, well then I could afford that Mercedes, right? If I had all this credit card debt paid off. And it’s like, Yeah. That, that’s a, that’s a possibility.

Darren: Fantastic. And I love what you said there. I can afford that. I can do that. You’re a big advocate of people enjoying their money, aren’t you?

Christine: Yes, I do. I am not, I’m not one of those people [00:12:00] that’s gonna tell you to eat beans and rice and, you know, buy a Ford Fiesta especially, you know, a lot of my clients are attorneys. They’re doctors. They’re, um, You know, they’re executives or they own their own company. And so for them it’s like, Hey, yeah, I do wanna drive a luxury car.

And for most of them, if they’re making six figures, we can certainly make that work. But for many of these clients I see disorganization and lack of time being a big factor. They really don’t even know where all their money’s going, and that’s one of the reasons why they hire me so I can come in and get them organized and pinpoint those places where they may be wasting those dollars that could be put to something that’s more meaningful for them.

Darren: Yes, disorganization is a key one. I have a client I’m working with right now and he asked me to kinda look through his credit card [00:13:00] statements and, and help him figure out how much he’s spending. And one of the things I’m seeing is I’m seeing a mixture of business and personal expenses. Across a variety of credit cards. And so that’s really confusing and very difficult to plan for. And so, yeah, you know, that’s a big thing. Attorneys are busy being practitioners and business owners. What are some of maybe the other reasons that law firm owners, attorneys, you know, some of these high income professionals often times struggle with money.

What are some of the things that you see in your experience?

Christine: Yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing is just because somebody’s smart doesn’t mean they’re an expert with money. And I think, you know, I’ve had doctors come to me and they say, I’m smart. I graduated from med school. Like, why is this hard for me?

And I’m like, you didn’t go to school for accounting, right? Like, did your parents actually sit down and teach you about these things? It’s like, [00:14:00] I love to say that money and sex are so much alike because we’re expected to be good at them. No one teaches us anything about them. And then it’s also not polite to talk about it.

Darren: Very true. Yeah. There are some very common themes there, definitely.

Christine: But there’s a lot of shame and embarrassment when people are like, I feel like because I’m smart, I’m a doctor, I’m a lawyer, I’m a, you know, I’m a business owner,that I don’t even know the difference between a Roth and a regular 401k.

Right. So for me it’s like, okay , you know, one of my gifts is explaining complicated financial things in very simple and easy to understand ways. And I think people really appreciate that about me because you and I both know there are some financial professionals that.

Make things sound even more [00:15:00] complicated than they are so that they look smart. Right!

Darren: I’ve never, like, I’ve never done that!

Christine: No. Like, you’ve gotta hire me because I know all these things and this is too hard for you to understand.

Darren:Sure, sure.

Christine:And, and that’s kind of like the old, you know, paradigm of finance and in advising, you know?

Where it’s like we want our clients to participate and we want them to be educated and take ownership of their finances. So the other thing that I see as well is this lifestyle expectation. Because if you’re a doctor, if you’re a lawyer, it’s expected that you’re gonna have a Mercedes, you’re gonna have a BMW, you’re gonna live in a big house.

But if we, if we enter into those things too quickly, then we get in the situation of, you know we’re still spending everything that we’re [00:16:00] making. Right. And I know it’s hard because, you know, when you’re a paralegal or you know, when you’re in med school and you’re doing all your interning and all that good stuff.

You know, it’s like you’re starting to do the work, but you’re not getting the pay of being a lawyer or being a doctor. And so like once you hit that point to where you finally get that big paycheck, then people have this mindset of, now I get to live. Right? But if we don’t make it a plan of action to pay off that student loan debt, then.

We get to a place where we’re hitting almost 50 and we still have it, and I do see that a lot.

Darren: Yeah. Yeah, I have seen that too. And I’m so glad you mentioned that having a certain lifestyle, sometimes what I see is this need to kind of fake it [00:17:00] until you make it.You know, you need to kind of present yourself a certain way to your clients and things.

Hey, I’ve been there, I’ve done that. You know, I think a lot of us have, it’s natural. I think, you know, pre pandemic, I used to pay good money to have tailored suits. And, uh, now that none of us are meeting in person anymore, it’s kinda like, oh my goodness, why was I wasting so much money?

Christine: You only need the shirt and the jacket. You don’t even need the pants anymore.

Darren: There you go. Right. Absolutely. You know?

Christine: Oh gosh. Yeah. That is so true.

Darren: On the flip side, and this is something I wanted to ask you about, you know, we’ve talked about this before, this idea of money scripts. And, um, maybe not just that we haven’t been taught certain things, but maybe there are certain things we have been taught!

Christine: Yes.

Darren:That have been destructive.

Christine:Mm-hmm.

Darren: Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Christine: Yeah. So people might have heard of [00:18:00] these, you know, money scripts or sometimes they’re called like money narratives or money stories, but essentially it’s the things that you were taught about money as a child. A lot of times we kind of brush those off because we say, well, oh, I was just a little kid.

But there’s something really important that people need to know, and that is children’s brains are very different from adults’ brains. So when kids are between ages like two and seven, they’re primarily in theta brainwave state, and that’s known as the super learning state. This is why a four year old can learn.

English, Japanese, and Spanish, like all at the same time with relative ease; and as adults I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to my Spanish lessons and it’s like I can pretty much say I’d like a cold beer and where’s the bathroom? Right? Because [00:19:00] it’s when kids are little, they have so much to learn in a short period of time, right?

They need to learn language, they need to learn you know how to survive and thrive in the family unit and in society. So it’s almost like if you think about theta brainwaves, it’s almost like this open door to the subconscious mind. And adults do enter theta brainwave state, but only when they’re under hypnosis or in that space between waking and sleeping.

Like right before you fall asleep at night when you first get up in the morning. And so, If someone says to a child, it takes hard work to make money, or money doesn’t grow on trees, or what do you think we’re made of money? Or rich people are evil and greedy. As a young child, you don’t have the sense of judgment that you [00:20:00] and I do to say That’s not true.

I don’t wanna believe that. They just incorporate all of that as the truth and it goes straight down into their unconscious mind. And so we can be operating out of these money scripts in our adult life and we may not even be conscious of them, which is pretty crazy. So, for me, that was something that I was taught.

You know, about you have to work really hard to make money. Now, I don’t think that my parents were trying to traumatize me. I think they were trying to make sure that I didn’t waste money, or I didn’t break an expensive toy that they bought me, right? They were trying to get me to be respectful of their money.

However, when I became self-employed, that money script kept popping up and blocking me where it was like. [00:21:00] Anytime I would encounter an opportunity to make money that seemed quote unquote too good to be true or too easy, I would immediately dismiss it. Because deep down inside, I had this belief that in order to make money, I had to work really hard.

Or that there was something wrong with it, right? Like if someone makes easy money, it’s because they’ve ripped somebody off, or you know, there was almost like a morality around it. And I really had to do some work to first of all uncover it and then to reprogram that into what I wanted it to be versus what it was.

Darren: Yeah, that is very fascinating. I think one of the ones that’s common among people, you know, some of us who grew up in more of a religious setting, we kind of were taught that money is evil. Money is the root of all evil. And so there is this, [00:22:00] this negative connotation that money has.

That maybe it’s not ethical to want to be successful or to be profitable.

Christine: Right.

Darren: And I’ve run into this when people react to the title of my book.

Christine: Yeah!

Darren: I have had some negative reactions to the idea of The Lawyer Millionaire. Like for some reason it is unethical to aspire to be profitable as an attorney, as a law firm owner, and I push back against that.

I think that there’s nothing wrong inherently, you know, if you are doing a great job for your clients, you deserve to be compensated and be compensated well, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Now, if you’re, you know, cutting corners and, you know, cheating people out of their money, that’s a whole different story.

But to do quality work and to do it well, um, that is very common. So I wonder if you’ve run into that where you know people instead of [00:23:00] thinking that they deserve all of this, uh, this wealthy lifestyle. Maybe they’re inhibited in terms of their aspirations because of they don’t feel it’s ethical somehow.

Christine: Yeah. Well, and the first thing I like to do is to clarify that the actual scripture verse says the love of money, is the root of all kinds of evil. So essentially what that means is if you’re putting money before people, Right. So if money is the God that you’re worshiping, then that can be a problem.

So what I tell people is, you know, we need to aspire to have a great life, to have great relationships. The money is just the frosting on the cake, right? If we just have the frosting with no cake, it’s just, you know, that that’s not what it’s all about. So, Money is really [00:24:00] a neutral medium of exchange.

We are the ones who have put the emotional coloring on it, so to speak. When we were born, we had no opinions about money. We had no knowledge about money. Our opinions and our emotions about money were formed because of our experiences or what. Our parents or other authority figures told us. So the analogy I love to use is a pen, right?

So I can take this pen and I can write a love letter to my husband, or I can take this pen and I can write hate mail to somebody. Now my husband doesn’t thank the pen. Tell the pen that, he loves him or her or it, it’s like he knows that it is the person whose hand the pen is in, right? So money takes on the morality of the [00:25:00] person that’s holding it.

So if you’re a good, generous, kind person and you have money in your hands, you’re gonna be able to do a lot of good for the world. If you’re broke and you’re stressed, it’s really hard to donate to the local homeless shelter or to give to the cancer foundation or whatever the case may be. If you’re broke and you’re stressed about money.

Darren: A hundred percent, and, and that’s one of the things I tell people, you know, by being a successful law firm owner, by aspiring to be successful and be the best that you can be and make as much money as you can.

You are being a force for good in the world, both in the economy.

Christine: Absolutely.

Darren:You know, you are employing people. You are doing good for your employees and for the people you’re working with. Then for your own family, you know, you were in a position to do good for them, to do good for your kids, to do good for your [00:26:00] parents.

And so there are a lot of good things that can come from that. Absolutely. Very cool.

Christine: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Darren: So Christine, I want to talk about the B word real quick. Budgeting.

Christine: I was like, uh, which B word are we talking about?

Darren:You have some unique, um, ideas about budgeting. You know, a lot of people hate the term budgeting.

Do we need a budget? How should we approach that?

Christine: Yeah, so I don’t like the term budgeting because to me it feels like dieting. And when people come to me, I always tell them, I was like, there’s no financial keto here in my world, meaning we’re not cutting out all the fun. And this is really about a sustainable approach. So it’s more like the Mediterranean diet, right? So we’re gonna eat a lot of fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables, but there’s still room for some wine and some chocolate, [00:27:00] right? That we’re gonna do a lot of healthy things with your finances. But I’m gonna make sure that you also have room for fun built into the plan. And with most of my clients, they’re making multiple six figures. So that’s, that’s a hundred percent doable because what I’ve found is that when we cut out all of the fun, then we almost have this. It’s almost like a binge and purge relationship with our finances, right? So if you take somebody who has been completely unrestrained in their finances and isn’t tracking anything, is just spending what they want, and then you put them on a plan that is very regimented and very strict, then they don’t know what healthy looks like.

They only know two extremes. And so what happens is at some point you’re gonna get sick and tired of this super disciplined plan, and the only other thing you know [00:28:00] is to be completely unrestrained. This is why I don’t like traditional budgeting, and I think it actually can be damaging for a lot of people.

And so my approach is, you know, we start crowding out the bad habits and we do it. You know, very gradually, so I work with my clients over a six month time period, and I don’t ask them to change anything in the first month. Right. During the first meeting, I can probably identify like 15 things that they can start doing. During the first month. I’m like, look, this is just all about awareness. We’re becoming aware of what’s actually going on, what does the desired result look like? And once we clarify those two things, then I help them create their prosperity plan. So the spending portion is one part of the plan.

This is the other reason why I [00:29:00] don’t like budgeting, is because it only deals with your income and your spending. It doesn’t deal with ,you know, a plan to pay off your debt, a plan for your various savings and investing goals. So this is more of a holistic type plan, and I find that most people, if we can start making very small, tangible adjustments every time we meet, by the time they get to the end of the six months, they’re usually blown away by how much progress they’ve made.

And it hasn’t really felt that hard. Like that’s the crazy thing is they’re like, it doesn’t even really feel like it’s been that hard for us to do this. And the other thing I do too is I help them to discover for themselves the things that are important to them and the things that they can do without.

Darren: Yeah, [00:30:00] absolutely. So it’s kind, it reminds me a lot of exercising, you know, it’s like, yeah, you can’t just jump into, I’m gonna go to the gym an hour every day at 5:00 AM If you’ve never gone to a gym before in your life, you’d need some gradual time to get in there. Yeah, and the other thing I was thinking about is the cheat day.

You know?

Christine: Yes.

Darren: You need that to keep a diet sustainable, you know?

Christine: Mm-hmm.

Darren: Otherwise you’re right. You’re just gonna go nuts.

Christine: Yeah. Well, and one of my other taglines is I say my clients go on vacation while working with me. You know, it’s, we built in those fun things and so it may be three months into our coaching where we say, okay, you know, we’ve been putting X amount towards debt.

We’re gonna skip this month, we’re gonna spend this on vacation, and then next month we’re gonna get right back to it. Because the other thing that you’re teaching people is that it’s okay to fall off the wagon and get back on, [00:31:00] right. You haven’t failed. I call it planned failure. So I’m basically conditioning people to say, you’re not supposed to do this perfectly.

Darren: Mm-hmm. I love that.

Christine: And we all know progress, like. People think progress looks like this straight line that goes like up and to the right, but you and I both know what kind of goes like this. You know.

Darren: It definitely does.

Christine: You have these up and downs on the way up, just like the stock market, right?

Like over a vast period of time it’s going up, but there’s a lot of little ups and downs when you zero in on a tighter timeline and that’s a hundred percent normal.

Darren: It’s very normal. Absolutely. Well, Christine, we’re, and you’re the end of our time here, but I want to ask you a few things. First of all, why don’t you tell us about some of the other things you’re working on, some of your other books and some of the new stuff you have coming out.

Christine: Yeah, so. One of my books, especially for those [00:32:00] attorneys who are in the audience who are divorce attorneys, my book, Financial Dignity After Divorce is a fabulous resource for those clients who are going through divorce because you may see them kind of heading towards the cliff financially with making some decisions out of emotion, and this book can really help them.

You know, identify and process those emotions in a healthy way so that they’re gonna come out of their divorce with a healthy relationship to their money and feel confident and in control with that. And the other thing that I’ve got coming out and actually I’m sure by the time this is aired, it’ll be.

It’ll certainly be available! Is the Manage Money Like a Boss course. And this is for business owners and it’s basically a simple system for them to [00:33:00] manage their business finances, and even if they’ve got an accountant or a c p that’s helping them, it’s super important for them to have enough information to be able to communicate with their accounting person and understand. I actually had an attorney client quite a few years ago, who he had asked me to look at his QuickBooks for him, and he was paying somebody $500 a month to quote unquote do his QuickBooks. Well, we got in there and we found out that this person had done nothing for seven months. Nothing.

Darren: Oh, wow.

Christine: Yeah, so even if you’re paying somebody to do this, it’s important for you to be armed with enough knowledge so that you’re really being the boss of your money in your business.

Darren: Great, great stuff. I love it. I’m looking forward to seeing more stuff come out from you. You’ve got several [00:34:00] books going in your podcast, all that’s wonderful.

Great resources for people. One other thing I want to ask you, you mentioned a little bit at the beginning, but something I’m asking all my guests, your idea of the ideal retirement for yourself.

Christine: Oh, it’s definitely gonna be with palm trees. I’m not sure if it’s going to be Maui, just because I think I might get stir crazy living on an island.

So, I’ve been visiting Venice, Florida quite a bit, which is on the Gulf Coast, and so I think retirement may be owning my own little, uh, mini real estate empire down there. And, uh, that, that’ll be my, my part-time job.

Darren: Okay, wonderful. That sounds great.

Christine: In between golfing and laying by the pool.

Darren: Yes, I know you are a golfer. I’ve seen a lot of golf pictures, so that’s great.

Christine: Yes. Yep. I’m not great, but I love it. [00:35:00]

Darren: So, Christine, if people wanna learn more about you where can they go?

Christine: Yeah, they can go to my website, which is christineluken.com. I’m also very active on LinkedIn, so be sure to connect with me there as well.

Darren: Great! Thanks so much for joining us.

Christine: Hey, thanks for having me. It’s been fun.

Darren: And thank you, the listener for joining us for this episode of The Lawyer Millionaire. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please like, share, subscribe, and why don’t you give us a five-star review on Apple or Spotify while you’re at it. To learn more about us, please visit the lawyermillionaire.com where you can download your free guide to retirement planning for attorneys and order your own copy of the book, The Lawyer Millionaire.

I’m your host, Darren Wurz. Wishing you great success in all you do. See you next time.

Thank you for listening to the Lawyer Millionaire. Click the follow [00:36:00] button below to be notified when new episodes become available. This content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only. This content is not intended to represent investing or tax advice. Always seek the advice of a qualified investment or tax advisor with any questions you may have regarding your own financial circumstances.

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