As we get closer to the end of the year, we typically think about our New Year’s Resolutions. One resolution that ends up on many people’s lists is to get out of debt and save more money.
What we don’t often talk about is the powerful connection between our wealth and our health. Like my guest today, Krissina Wise, we may take our health for granted in the pursuit of wealth and not even know we are doing it.
Krisstina spent between $250,000 and $500,000 getting her health back after a major health scare while at the pinnacle of her career success and has made it her mission to help people not only have a love affair with their money, but also with taking care of themselves so they can lead fulfilling lives.
This conversation is power-packed, so get ready!
During my conversation with Krisstina, we chatted about:
- The pivotal moment in which she almost lost her life.
- What Krisstina needed to learn to get her life back on track.
- What wealthywellthy means and why it is important.
- Does wealthy have to mean having a lot in your bank account?
- How do we find our financial sweet spot?
- What does it take to be a millionaire?
- What steps we can take to fall in our love with our money without sacrificing our health.
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Listen to the podcast here
Looking After Your Health And Wealth With Krisstina Wise
Introduction
As we get closer to the end of the year 2024, we typically think about New Year’s resolutions. As you may know, if you’re a longtime audience, I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. I’m more of a theme or a word of the year type of gal. One of the resolutions that you or many people may put on their lists is to get out of debt, save more money, or maybe both. The thing we don’t talk about is the powerful connection between our wealth and health.
My guest for this episode, Krisstina Wise, took her health for granted in the pursuit of wealth and didn’t even know it. You may have a symptom here or there but overall be healthy. You don’t know you’re sacrificing your health for wealth. Krisstina spent, in her mind, $250,000 to $500,000 getting her health back after a major health scare. What’s even more confusing is it was while she was at the pinnacle of her career success. Think about that.
Since that big learning and journey, she has made it her mission to help people not only have a love affair with their money but also with taking care of themselves so they can lead more fulfilling lives. This particular conversation is power-packed so get ready. During my conversation with Krisstina, we chatted about the critical moment in which she almost lost her life, what Krisstina needed to learn to get her life back on track, what WealthyWellthy means, and why it is important.
Does wealthy have to mean having a lot in our bank account? I asked Krisstina, “Does that mean we have to have a lot of money to be wealthy?” I get her opinion on that. How do we find our financial sweet spot? What does it take to be a millionaire? If you have a goal of being a millionaire, she’s going to give you the financial formula to become a millionaire. What steps can we take to fall in love with our money once again without sacrificing our health?
Here is a little bit more about Krisstina. Krisstina Wise is a real estate mogul, a millionaire coach, and a creator of several multimillion-dollar businesses, including GoodLife Luxury, The Paperless Agent, and WealthyWellthy. She is also an international speaker and the award-winning author of the Amazon bestseller Falling for Money, a romance novel for your bank account. Named one of the 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders in the country, she has been featured in USA TODAY, as well as by Apple, Contactually, and Evernote for her creative leadership with emerging technologies.
After nearly losing her life in 2013 and spending almost $500,000 to get it back, she is changing the world again by inspiring others to build extraordinary wealth and optimal health. By sharing her extreme successes and abysmal failures, Krisstina reveals the elusive secrets of the uber-wealthy and why health is where to invest first. Through cutting-edge research-based education access to the world’s top wealth strategists and doctors, Krisstina is helping millions each year discover the true path to wealth, health, and happiness. You can find Krisstina on her WealthyWellthy Life Podcast, her free weekly millionaire masterclass, and her website, WealthyWellthy.life.
If this show has made an impact on you, please be sure to share it with a family member, a friend, or a colleague. You know that those ratings and reviews matter. I wish they didn’t but they do. They help the show continue to gain traction and grow. If you can take a minute and leave a rating and review, and I promise you, it takes a couple of minutes, I would so appreciate it. If you’ve already done that and you’ve passed that kindness forward, I thank you so much.
If you haven’t yet downloaded one or any of the freebies from my website, you can check them out at BraveWomenAtWork.com. The freebies are 24 Career and Leadership Affirmations, 5 Steps to Managing Imposter Syndrome, and Get Paid: 10 Negotiation Tips. I do want to call out Get Paid: 10 Negotiation Tips as we’re entering the end of the year 2024. You might be getting geared up for your annual performance reviews and those conversations with your boss or bosses. It’s a good time to look at what you want to negotiate in the new year.
If you’re in a position to do so, it doesn’t always have to be pay. It can be other things such as your schedule or benefits. Maybe you want to do a co-share or be a project lead. There are so many things. The sky’s the limit but check that out to jog your negotiation muscles and get ready for those tough conversations. Here’s one other announcement. If you haven’t yet heard or you’re new to the show, I am hosting my first-ever women’s leadership conference that is not virtual.
We are in person. We’re giving hugs and education in person in 2025. It’s called Thrive in 2025. I had a dream. My colleague, Hope Mueller of C.L.I.M.B. Conferences, and I were making it a reality. The conference is going to be held in Chicagoland from June 25th through the 28th in 2025. You can learn more about the conference and register at www.Thrive-in25.com. Let’s welcome Krisstina to the show.
Krisstina, welcome to the show. How are you?
I am braving the snow here in Park City. We had our first snow and it’s still snowing.
You said you and your husband are healthy so I’m assuming you ski and do all of the winter sports, correct?
We do all the things.
We’re going to find out all about that. I found your story in all seriousness when we first got to know one another. I so appreciate you finding time and being here with me but I want you to share your story. Anywhere you want to start because this is a big question. What is your background story? Especially how you had your situation. I’m not going to spoil it on stage. What happened after that? You tell me where you want to start your story and then tell us your stage story because it’s important to the work you do.
My story will resonate for any entrepreneur, probably any type A, and anybody who’s confused about money. This part of my story that you’re referring to is I was on stage. At this time, I was a leader in the real estate industry. I won national awards. I was on the floor with the Zillow CEO when Zillow went public. I was a leader in the industry. I give that example to show where I was.
I was keynoting and speaking on the stage. There are about 800 people in the audience of these other top leaders. I don’t even remember what I was talking about but it was an important audience. These were the leaders of the leaders, the top 1% echelon of the industry. I was blown away that they had invited me to keynote this talk, me of all people. I’m still a “who am I” type of thing but I was not thinking about it.
I rehearsed and came up with this talk that I thought was going to blow everybody away. I practiced it like a Broadway play because this audience was so important. I’m about 95% of the way through. Probably three more slides to the end, all of a sudden, I hear this screeching noise in my ear. The only way I could describe it is to imagine a freight train going full speed and hitting the brakes. Imagine what that screeching sound would be like.
I heard it from ear to ear. I was paralyzed on stage in front of 800 people. I couldn’t move or think. I was just standing there. I don’t know if it was for 3 seconds or 3 minutes. It was on the lower end but I couldn’t move. All of a sudden, I snapped out of it fast. I got my bearings, finished my talk, and that was it. I get off the stage, go backstage, and then go around the front during a break. Everybody’s clamoring towards me. They are saying, “Krisstina, can I book you here and there? Name your price.” It was crazy. My adrenaline’s high. I’m super excited.
Once that all wore off and the next talk was coming, I was walking to my hotel room. In my head, I thought, “Krisstina, girlfriend, you’ve made it. You can name your price. With all of that hard work and everything you’ve done, you’ve made it.” I was thinking in my head, “You started in a trailer home with nothing.” This is unbelievable because I did get to that level. I get to my room. I’m a little wonky. I’m feeling nauseous. I ended up feeling so bad that I caught a plane home later that afternoon. I was supposed to be there for three days. It was terrible.
All of that story, within 48 hours, I couldn’t get out of bed or finish a sentence. It went from bad to worse. All my hair started falling out. I couldn’t sleep. It was black and dark. It was horrible. Many of us have had this type of moment but the moral of that story is what’s so fascinating for me to even reflect on it is here I was at the height of my career and out of nowhere, I was out and over.
Many things happened during that period but the first thing is I had spent ten years grinding, hustling, and doing all the things we do as entrepreneurs. I read all the books, hired all the coaches, and did all the things. I was successful. I had two multi-seven-figure businesses and all the stage presence. Within six months of me being able to not get out of bed, my business started deteriorating and falling apart.
For my business, I was putting $1 million per year in my pocket and household. Not the business a million but me a million. Within nine months, I had to put money into the business. I was like, “How the hell is this happening? I spent ten years in this business. It cannot function without me.” This was 50 employees. I thought I had all the staff and the people.
What had happened is I was so stressed all the time. I pushed myself all the time. I didn’t sleep or eat well. I traded my health for wealth because I was so hungry to prove myself, win all the awards, be the top in everything, get all the accolades, and make a lot of money. That was my only driver while running marathons as a single mom and everything else.
What happened out of all that is I woke up to realize that we work so hard for our business without anything else there to catch us. What if something happens? How do we cover the cost of our living? It cost me $250,000 to get my health back. The good side of this is when I’ve been building my business, I’ve been investing in some real estate. I was able to sell real estate to be able to keep my business going and pay for my $250,000 worth of health.
Childhood And Recovery Journey
I had a little bit of passive income but all of that woke me up to want to do what I do, which is teach entrepreneurs that, 1) In this quest for success, financial reward, status, or whatever we’re after, we have to take care of ourselves in a process. We can’t sacrifice our family, health, and other relationships and be so singular-focused without consequence. 2) While we build our business as an asset that hopefully will have value and provide income, it’s important that we have a portfolio of other assets diversified outside of our business so that we have that safety net in the case that if nothing ever happens, we build wealth in these two places but if something does happen, then we’re not destitute and about ready to lose everything. Here I am to teach money and entrepreneurship in a healthy way.
In this quest for success and financial reward, we have to take care of ourselves in the process. We cannot sacrifice our families, health, and relationships. Share on XThat is quite an arc of a story. I’m not a therapist but you came from nothing so you probably also had that upbringing that you didn’t want to be in that destitute place. Was that a driver for you since childhood?
There are two parts to that. The way I grew up might be the way a lot of people grew up. Neglect, alcoholism, and absentee parents. I performed as a child and was a straight-A student and a super athlete to try to get my parents to their attention to come to my games. My parents never came to my games or anything. I was a great student and athlete.
The thing is because I didn’t ever work on that and it’s what I did as a child, that carried on through adulthood. Much of my success was driven by that same thing I didn’t get from my parents like, “Look at me and how good I am. Look at all these amazing things that I’m doing.” That was one driver, living out that childhood thing that never got addressed. The second thing was we had nothing. I was very motivated to have money so that I would have a different lifestyle when I grew up.
It’s those two things together that were dangerous. I was so motivated by money to escape that financial life that I grew up with combined with this need to be seen because I didn’t feel ever good enough and always felt neglected. That meant that no matter how successful I was and how much money I made, it was never enough. It was constantly living in this place of dissatisfaction and never being able to celebrate or enjoy anything. The never-enough achievement matched my feeling of never enough.
Thank you for sharing that. This is poignant. How long were you sick? If you don’t mind sharing, what was the diagnosis? What ended up happening to you on stage? You spent $250,000, which is a big investment, to get your health back. What happened to you?
On stage, I had a stress stroke or a mini-stroke. There’s an acronym for it that’s escaping me at the moment. I think I have brain fog because of the mold in the house I told you about. People have them all the time and mine was pretty strong when I went to the neurologist and all these things. That was the first domino. At the time, I had lots of heavy metal poisoning. My diet was terrible. My whole life was a stress pot. It’s all of those things together.
With what happened to me during this process, I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody but as we all know, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me because it caused me to pause, look at my life, and clean it up. I had so much trauma as a child so what happened at the same time is that when my body started breaking down, I was so physically and mentally strong my whole life. A lot of it is to survive like so many of us have. Most of us as adults are still living in our survival patterns as children until we do the work.
I was so physically, mentally, and psychologically strong. When my physical strength started breaking apart, all that trauma started to surface. Not only my body is going through all these things and was diseased and unhealthy but also my mind. All of a sudden, I was experiencing horrific anxiety, depression, fear, regret, and remorse. It was a dark period where I had to go through all that.
1) Losing all of my money and health woke me up. In financial terms, my body needs to be my number one asset. I need me first. As entrepreneurs, that’s the lesson there. 2) I understand the balance of money. Money is not about status, achievement, success, accolades, and proving ourselves. Money is to underwrite the cost of living a good life.
When we can connect to, “What is a good life? How much money is enough? Where am I? Where do I not have to prove myself to anyone? This amount of money provides a good life and helps me take care of all the things I care about,” it becomes more of an eternal thing versus an external proof. The final piece for me is that in the psychological period, I buried things my whole life. I didn’t ever talk about childhood or upbringing. Going through that dark period forced me. I didn’t believe in therapy. I thought therapy and meditation were BS and made-up stuff.
You’re a different person, apparently.
I meditate every day. I love therapy. It forced me to go to therapy and do the work there to be able to clean up all that stuff that had been still haunting me annoyingly. Mother Universe took a 2X4 and knocked me out on the knees because I was so hard-headed and wouldn’t pay attention. I need a real wake-up call.
I’m happy that I went through all that because it led me to one lesson so that I could create a life that is happy, healthy, meaningful, full of well-being, full of love, and all these things I care about while building business and wealth. I get to teach these lessons that I’ve learned and applied in this comparison of living in the status and achievement game, as opposed to building wealth and success for internal satisfaction or reward.
That’s amazing. One thing you said is finding that enough number. I don’t know if this is the same because, on your site, you also referenced the financial sweet spot. I’ve had these conversations with my husband, “What is enough?” How exciting. This show is listed in 38 countries. I’m going to comment on Americans because we’re Americans.
Calculating Your ‘Enough’ Number
There’s this insatiable need to do more, be more, and make more, and all this stuff. It’s a hard question to answer because your enough number may not be my enough number. If someone’s like, “I don’t know how much enough is for me,” do you have any thoughts on how people can find their enough number? I don’t know if it’s the same as your financial sweet spot but I’d love to know about the enough number to start.
The enough number is the financial sweet spot and whatever resonates more one or the other. What I found going through my whole story is that it’s important to determine how much money is enough. If there’s never an enough number, we never reach a place of satisfaction. We will always be dissatisfied and complain that our situation isn’t the way we want it to be. That leads us to live this life of needing more to try to feel happy. The game of life becomes a chase.
It’s a pretty simple number to come up with, even though few people do it because when we don’t know, we probably should do it. Number two, how would we get to that number if we wanted to? The idea first is to reach out and ask how much is enough in terms of what’s called net worth. It means how much money is a stockpile of money somewhere. Usually, the way we stockpile money is an asset, whether it’s in stocks, real estate, crypto, or a combination of all those.
Have an amount of money that is in the form of assets, saved out, and invested in there. The idea is over our working life, we work and make money. We work to make money for two reasons. 1) To pay all of our bills, and 2) To set aside money so that we have money that will pay our bills in the future when we don’t want to work at all or work is hard. During our 40 years of working, we’re working two jobs for our current life and future life or retirement.
It’s important to understand that that’s what we’re doing during our 40 years of work. We want to waste as few of those years as possible to have all that money go towards our current life and not put the money aside for our future life or retirement date and goal. That’s called net worth. We’re working for income but also building net worth. That’s the two things. We’re working for income to pay bills and expenses but also working to buy assets, which is that net worth.
The idea of creating net worth means money invested for retirement is that on the day we retire, we’re unemployed. The first question I like to ask most people, especially a little bit younger, is, “If you were forced to retire today and would be unemployed starting today, how would you pay your bills and how long could you pay them?” For most people, the answer is not too long, maybe 1, 3, or 6 months.
The idea is to understand that one day, we will be unemployed and will not work anymore, either out of choice or not having an interest. That’s the day that we have to have some other form of income to pay those bills. That’s called nonworking income or asset income. The idea is how you determine how much is enough, which are these three pieces.
Determine when you want to retire. It’s 10, 20, 30, or 40 years based on how healthy you are. Let’s say it’s 25 years. “I want to retire in 25 years, meaning I want to be fully financially free. I don’t have to work and worry about this.” What we do is to determine the first thing. How much does it cost to live your life? Know that number and the cost of your lifestyle. This is important. If we ever want to create financial freedom, we have to know the cost of our life.
Let’s say our life costs $100,000. That’s the total cost of our bills. That means if we’re working and we can cover that lifestyle of $100,000 a year in total expenses, multiply that times 20, that’s how much net worth we need to be able for that net worth to cover the cost of our bills. If our lifestyle is $100,000, multiply that times 20, and that’s $2 million. We can pull out 5% and that covers our $100,000 a year. It’s a very simple financial rule of thumb.
That means that our enough number or sweet spot is $2 million. What’s that saying is, “If I have $2 million of net worth stored in some asset form, it will pay me $100,000 a year of passive income and that will cover my bills.” There’s a little bit more to it but not a lot more. To be able to understand this means we can do this. The first part is the lifestyle. The second part is determining how many millions we need to be able to be financially free. The third part is calculating how much we need to invest annually to be able to hit that $2 million.
Assuming we had zero net worth and we wanted $2 million. We have 25 years to create that. We can put into ChatGPT that says, “How much do I need to invest over the next 25 years at a 10% interest rate to be able to have $2 million at the end of that 25 years?” ChatGPT will come back and say, “You need $1,700 a month or $25,000 a year that you need to put away towards investing. If you do that, you’re good.”
When you do this very simple sweet spot, how much money is enough numbers, that’s what you have to do. Are we investing the $1,700 a month? Yes or no. If we’re not and we ever need to retire, we need to start doing that. If we know that we’re making enough to be able to pay for a $100,000 lifestyle and in addition to that, we can invest that extra $25,000 of investment money, those two numbers mean that we’re going to be fully on track to hit our numbers.
Assuming $100,000 is plenty of money to cover the cost of our life and $1,700 is going to give us that same thing, then we can be satisfied. We are fully on track to hit our numbers. These numbers feel good. If it never gets worse than this, we’re happy. That’s that satisfaction point. If you’re not there yet, that becomes the financial goal. “We’re not making enough income to hit these numbers. We need to reduce our expenses or a combination of both to get on track.” Once you are, then you do that. Money can be fun to make and pay the bills but you’re tracking it and doing the things.
That’s awesome. I’ve talked about this on the show before. The idea of it is tied up in how your parents handle money. You’re even afraid to look at your bank statements. You have had a prior bankruptcy or whatever your situation is like a health crisis, like you had. It can be very emotional and hard to look at. You say it’s easy but that’s probably what makes it so difficult. People don’t want to do the calculation and look at the hard math to see what needs to be done to get to financial freedom.
Facing The Hardships And Creating A Plan
There’s certainly that mentality that if we don’t know about it, it’s all going to work out.
Under the rug.
We all know life doesn’t work that way. We have to face the truth and reality. Regardless of how things feel, if we want to improve our situation or create the future we want, we have to tackle these things. The mindset piece is important. If we want to lose 25 pounds, we have to step on the scale. Stepping on the scale when we’re 25 pounds overweight is not pleasant but it’s not until the day when I’m sick and tired of being 25 pounds overweight and not fitting in my clothes, looking the way I want to look, or having energy. I’m tired and I want to change my life. I’m going to do it starting today.
We may get a health coach and hire a trainer. We may get on and start studying what we need to study. It comes with that desire to finally quit ignoring this thing that is very troublesome and bothering us to want to finally be resolute to make the change. When we become resolute, we hire a trainer or coaches, do the things, and change our diet but it starts with stepping on the scale and maybe putting a tape measure around our waist for the different things.
It’s very unpleasant but that’s the starting place. It’s facing where we are, the situation we don’t want, and coming to terms with what that reality is. We juxtapose that with the reality we do want in the future. When we have the place we don’t want that we’re willing to face, get the data and all the accurate information, swallow the pill, and know what we do want, then it’s super simple. There’s been a million people before us who have done it, been in the same place we are, and created the future that we want.
There’s a step-by-step thing and then all we have to do is map out what we need to do to get from A to B. It’s that simple and money is no different. We have to face it, step on the scale of money, face our money and situation, swallow the pill, do the thing, come to terms with it, fill what we need to fill for five minutes, and compare that with what we want. When anybody does those two things, the rest is easy. It’s easy to work with me or someone like me, read books or do the podcast or YouTube, and start creating the plan. It’s not hard in the physical sense. What’s hard is what’s between our ears.
Secrets of Becoming A Millionaire
It’s the mental and the acknowledging to get started. You’re right. I’m going to take to the other side of the spectrum. Even after the health crisis and good for you, you’ve built Goodlife Luxury, The Paperless Agent, and WealthyWellthy, which I want to learn more about why you dated that. It’s cool. Let’s say that someone has had those tough conversations with themselves and has started but is like, “I want to be a millionaire.” I’m talking to the person on the other side of the spectrum. Would you say it’s the same process we talked about? They’re farther down the path. What would you say the secret of being a millionaire is?
It’s pretty simple. It is a very simple math like we talked about. It’s like, “If I want to be a millionaire in a certain period, how much money do I need to invest based on the timeframe I want to hit it?” It’s that simple. Before we had to do compounding calculators and these things, ChatGPT will tell you so it’s super simple. Everything we’ve said is being resolute. “I want to be a millionaire. I want $1 million of net worth in my portfolio. That is my number one financial goal and everything else follows suit.”
Once you decide that, it’s a decision. I can’t express the importance but you have to decide. That becomes your North Star of, “I’m going to become a millionaire by the time I’m a certain age.” Depending on where people are in their journey, that’s the ultimate pin. The first pin that I like people to get to is what I call The $100,000. That means that you have $100,000 of net worth.
If you have zero or negative like a lot of people in this country, 78% to 82% of all Americans are month-to-month. The latest statistic that I saw is that 33% to 34% of all Americans earn over $150,000 a year. Over 1/3 of them are paycheck to paycheck. Another 36% of those earning $50,000 to $100,000 are paycheck to paycheck. We think that making more money is going to get us out of this trap. Making more money many times gets us deeper. We make more and spend more. We are more deeply trapped.
The only way to get out of that mentality of trying to hustle more and make more money is to focus less on income and the focus more on net worth. The first goal is a $100,000 net worth. You have to adjust your finances and start looking at, “How much money am I making relative to how much money am I spending?” Restructure that. “I’m starting to make sure that I’m saving enough and putting enough aside that gets me to that first $100,000.”
The only way out of the hustle mentality is to focus less on income and more on net worth. Share on XWhen you get that first $100,000 starting to work, it will start compounding and moving. When you keep adding to that, it starts growing very quickly. It’s important to get to that first six figures or $100,000 as quickly as you can. How fast you can do it is how much fuel you put on the fire, which means how much you invest. There’s this very simple dial if you will. If you make $100,000 as a take-home pay and spend $100,000 on your lifestyle, there’s nothing to invest.
If you dial that down and spend $90,000 and invest the $10,000, you can put that $10,000. That $10,000 a year for 10 years, if you did it that, you’re going to have that first $100,000. You need that first $100,000 in the market to get any type of momentum and for it to start compounding. Under than that, it’s too slow. If you dial it back more like, “I’m going to cut my expenses even more to $80,000 and $20,000 a year,” we took that 10 years to 5 years. We can multiply and still add to it. It’s very simple math and behaviors to do this with very simple calculations.
We need to know how much money is enough and make sure that we set these pins and organize our finances accordingly. We need to know how fast we want to hit these numbers. On this call, we’re doing this in less than 60 minutes and most of this was me telling my story. Maybe in 10 to 15 minutes, I’ve given all that we need to do to be able to answer your question and become a millionaire. The question then is, “Why don’t we do it?” Only 7.8% of Americans are net-worth millionaires, not including home equities because you can’t pay your bills with your home equity. Why is 92% of Americans not a millionaire when it’s this simple? We’re financially illiterate because money is not taught in school.
It’s a shame.
We don’t know what we don’t know and that is robbing us of financial freedom. We don’t even know the questions we should be asking. Our mindsets, fears, self-talk, stories, and beliefs are limited or false. That’s keeping us. The third part is it’s built-in. It’s a comparison. As we start making more money, the natural thing is we spend more money because we want to look good to everybody else. We want to have a certain status and be in the $100,000 club, $250,000 club, $1 million club, $100 million club, or the billionaire club.
I heard plenty of stories of billionaires. I knew a guy and his name was Joe. Joe had sold his company for $500 million or something. It’s crazy. He and I went and had coffee. I knew him when he was in a startup. We were friends before either one of us had any money. He went on and built this thing. I’m like, “Joe, congratulations. I remember when we were both eating rice and beans. Look what you did.” He said, “No, I’m not happy. This isn’t good. I have to be a billionaire.”
That’s the mindset piece. He couldn’t be satisfied because he hadn’t hit the billionaire club. He didn’t have that status yet. It’s the need for status to compare ourselves. We drive a BMW or Mercedes. We live in a big house. We have fancy watches and bags. We do these things not because it necessarily brings more meaning and joy to our lives. We do this because we want to look good to impress others. It’s not even conscious. It’s a subconscious thing with this desire to fit in and feel good about ourselves. It’s that ego piece.
That’s what’s robbing us from becoming millionaires. We have to fight against that. We have to drive lesser cars and live in lesser houses if we’re serious about this. We need to pay attention to our money, get over our mindsets, manage our money, and become stewards of our money. When we think we’re spending so much time trying to prove ourselves to look good to this external world thinking that gives us this positive feedback that makes us happy, it is causing us financial distress.
True happiness is having financial freedom. That’s the whole moral of the story. I told my story but on the other side of that, when I learned these principles and practices and redesigned my life, I was able to create financial freedom in less than ten years. I get to live financially free and teach financial freedom because it works. You follow the formulas and the formulas work.
Why? It’s math and math is formulas where you put A plus B equals C. You can always get the C when you factor in A plus B. The thing is we get even these mindsets like, “I’m not good at math. I like don’t money. I want somebody else to do that.” The math part of the money, especially with ChatGPT, I call it middle school math. We can all do it. Get rid of the story that you’re not good at math. Don’t worry.
It’s not calculus. You can do this too. Use your ChatGPT. I have a quick story and then I want to talk about WealthyWellthy. I’ve been in financial services for a long time in my corporate work. I’ll never forget there was this older gentleman. You would never think this, Krisstina. He comes in and he’s got sweatpants on. He’s a super nice guy. He comes in with a duffle bag and all this stuff. I was sitting in and observing an appointment with a financial advisor because that’s the business I was in. I was training financial advisors, doing marketing for financial advisors, and things like that.
Looking at them on the outside, you’re making these judgments. We’re like animals. We make judgments on one another. You’d be like, “This guy doesn’t have a penny to his name.” He puts the duffle bag like a farmer. I’m from the Midwest. He opens the duffle bag and there’s all this money in it. He was a millionaire. It was crazy. He took all of his hard-earned earnings from the farm and went, “Am I good?”
The reason I say that is because he didn’t have to drive a Lexus, Beamer, Lamborghini, or whatever into the banking parking lot. He didn’t need to have a three-piece suit or a Rolex. He came salt to the earth with his duffle bag. How much more salt to the earth can you get? This was many years ago but I suspect if that gentleman was alive, he would do the same, even in our digital age. He was a beautiful example.
You said it’s two-pronged. We’re all taught to strive for how much we make but you’re also talking about how much are we spending. There’s another side of the coin. How much are we squirreling away for our future net worth and future unemployment, which I love? I wanted to share that because it came up in my brain.
You want to be the contrarian versus connecting to, “People are looking at me when I’m driving my fancy car and I feel a certain way.” We can connect it to, “People look at me because I drive this car. If they only knew.” It’s a different dialogue. Connecting to the positive thing of something else is more aligned with the long-term outcomes we want to produce with ourselves.
With those millionaires or multimillionaires, we understand that money is a game. It’s part of the game of life and it’s a very important game inside the game of life. If you don’t understand the rules and strategies of the game, you will be played. You cannot be ignorant, naive, or illiterate if you’re going to win the game. Winning the game is financial freedom, which is what everybody says they want. If you want to win, you have to learn the rules, laws, and strategies.
There are different levels of play. My level of play to financial freedom isn’t the billionaire play. That’s a different level. You get to decide what level but you have to play well enough to reach the levels that you want. It’s not going to happen by accident. Even if you win the lottery, 90% of lottery winners lose it all within 3 years.
They don’t know the rules of the game. They get an instant win and then they don’t know what they’re doing. They blow it all. Their family members come calling. That’s a whole other episode. I come from a teaching household. My mom was a teacher for 37 years. Please, comprehend what Krisstina was saying in these principles a couple of times. I welcome you to take some notes because this is the blueprint to financial freedom or whatever your financial goal is, whether it’s being a millionaire or not being paycheck to paycheck. At a minimum, don’t be paycheck to paycheck. Use these tools because they’re so valuable. Thank you for sharing them.
You’re welcome. One final thing I’ll say too is that there’s nothing wrong with wanting the Rolex, a car, or these things. It’s just that at the beginning of our wealth-building journey, it’s an either/or in most cases. It’s either the Rolex watch, the fancy car with a car payment, and these things or to become a millionaire in the beginning. That’s the either/or. “Do I want to look good to my friends or do I want to become a millionaire?” It’s a trade-off. You get to decide which path you’re going to take.
When building your wealth, it is up to you if you want to look good to your friends or if you want to become a millionaire. You get to decide which path to take. Share on XAssuming you want to become a millionaire. You start building this net worth and creating passive income from your assets. Use the passive income to buy a Rolex while you’re still building. You’re still putting money away and investing on an annual basis but it’s the dividends or the cashflow if you don’t want to reinvest that. Use the asset. Your money is paying you money. Use that to buy the bags, Rolexes, and cars.
That way, all you’ve done is to lay the gratification of having those things if they’re important to you and you want them but it’s not your hard work that’s doing it. It’s your money at work doing it. If you’re motivated by these nice things, that’s awesome but be motivated like, “I need to build the net worth that pays for the nice things.” The nice things and motivation cause you to build a net worth. These things aren’t robbing you of your net worth. Your net worth is what’s allowing you to buy them. It’s like reverse engineering everything that we do in most cases.
Here’s one other example of reverse engineering I find comical. My husband is also a financial advisor. Listening to you, I geek out because I have this all the time in my life. People don’t think like this. Our phone carrier, I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, is Verizon. You get your monthly Verizon bill and he’s like, “Forget these people. We spent so much money.” If you think about it, we spent so much money on subscription services, phones, and all this kind of stuff. He’s like, “I’m going to buy stock.” They have a dividend-producing stock so he decided to do it. He gets enough dividends so that it pays for our monthly bill.
That’s smart. I love that. That is a great example. I’m going to remember that one.
I’m not telling people to do that. I’m not a financial advisor nor are we giving financial advice. You are and I’m not. I’m not telling you to go buy Verizon stock. That’s a reverse engineer example where people don’t think that way. They just pay their bill. This is an example of how your money can work for you and not against you. I wanted to share that one.
That’s such a great example. If you keep thinking about, “This asset can pay this part of my bill,” all of a sudden, all your bills are paid.
Understanding WealthyWellthy
It’s fun. Before we go, I want to make sure that we talk about your book. You have so many beautiful resources so if there’s anything else you want to share like the resources you provide to your clients. The book that is on your site is Falling for Money: How to Have a Lifetime Love Affair with Your Finances, which is what we’ve been talking about. One of the reasons I wanted to ask you about the book is you’ve already had successful business ventures so why did you decide to write the book? You didn’t have to write a book but it seems like you’re so passionate. You tell me why you created the book.
The book was a passion project. It’s an interesting story. When I wrote the book, I didn’t plan to write a book. There’s a little bit of magic to it because I wrote the book straight out of coming out of my illness. I was in the works of selling what I could sell asset-wise and business-wise. I knew I wanted to reinvent my life and I got a second chance of life so I want to do it differently. When I was doing all that, I was in this place like, “What am I going to do next?” I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I just know I’m not going to do what I’ve been doing and how I’ve been doing it.
When I was in the real estate industry at the time, I was a blogger. This was when I started blogging when blogging was a brand new thing. I was an early adopter of those types of things. The whole industry followed my blog. I did a real estate blog, a real estate agent blog, and a real estate tech blog. It had a huge following at the time. I stopped blogging for two years.
It took two years for me to get my health back and get to the place where I could think again and live a semi-normal life at the time. I’d quit everything. I disappeared. One thing that if anybody needs to get a reality check on their ego, my ego was big back then because I was pretty famous in my industry. Within two years, everybody went on to the next superstar. People move on fast.
There’s an ego hit for you.
I was like, “I guess I’m not as important as I thought I was. They replaced me pretty quickly.” I sat down to write this blog and was thinking, “I had 1 million people following me but out of the 10 people, maybe still, I’ll write a blog.” What happened? I kept writing and writing. This was before people wrote your books for you. I never wanted to write a book or thought I could write a book. It wasn’t easy to write a book. Maybe a 1-500 word blog would be my longest article. I kept writing. I wrote for 30 days straight and took 1 day off. I wrote from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. I didn’t take breaks. It was working out for me.
What’s so fascinating about that is that the book wrote itself. It had to come out of me. With the book, I talk a lot about my journey that we talked about here and these lessons woven in as I learned them over that two-year period. When it was all said and done, I found an editor, the editors loved it, and it went on to be a bestseller. It’s still selling pretty well. I thought it was going to be about real estate, life, or something but it ended up being about money. It was my whole money story. I didn’t try to write a book about money. This book came out of me. It was from there that I realized this is the universe telling me what I need to be doing.
That was the whole path for you to work and teach on money.
Exactly.
I’m glad I asked.
I was like, “I think I got the message here.” I had to get over a lot of Imposter syndrome because I was like, “Who am I to teach money? I’ve made all these serious mistakes. What do I know?” Talk about a calling, I was called to first, write the book. It’s like a muse was writing this. The second piece was I’m going to do this. That’s what I do. I’m very convinced that I’m meant to do this work, teach this, and help people redevelop their relationship with money so that they can have financial peace of mind, ultimately create financial freedom, and live a WealthyWellthy life.
Tell me about WealthyWellthy. Is it Wealthy as in financial and Wellthy as in healthy?
Yes, Wellthy like in wellness. That name came to me in meditation when I was doing all of this. The big piece was money is important. We need to accept that. It’s an important part of life, happiness, well-being, peace of mind, contentment, and fulfillment. Money is a part of life. It’s not the end all be all but it’s a significant chunk of our overall ability to live a good life but it can’t all be about the money.
It’s never fulfilling and meaningful if it’s never enough. Money is to underwrite the cost of living a good life. A good life to me is a life that’s full of wellness, where we have good mental health, physical health, emotional health, relational health, and experiences. When we know what a good life is like, “This is my life. I’m fulfilled and satisfied,” and then we quantify how much money is enough, that’s this WealthyWellthy.
Money is about status and achievement, success, and accolades. It is about underwriting the cost of living a good life. Share on XIt means our goal in life is to live well. The financial piece is how much is enough that pay for the cost of living that well life. When those two are in tandem and work together in partnership and synergistically, then money’s not something you’re always worried, complaining, or anxious about. All the things that most people live with on a day-to-day basis or are somehow worried about money go away. Money is woven into this overall part of life that is like any other part of life.
This is so important. I appreciate the work that you do. Think about it. It is expensive out there. We go to the grocery store and pay bills. All the inflation that we thought was going to come down hasn’t come down that much or gradually. Putting these foundational pieces together, you’re not going to be a millionaire overnight and you’re not even going to be at $100,000 overnight but it’s those habits. As you’re saying this, it’s about mindset and good habits. Atomic Habits by James Clear, go get the book, everybody. It’s about putting your foot one front of the other, putting a little aside, and still living a good life. We’re not talking about being miserly here but having a good balance.
Well said.
I always end this way. What are 1 to 2 ways women can be braver at work?
Embracing Financial Bravery
What I’ve found is that women are making more money than ever. Those wage gaps are starting to close. Why? It’s because we’re skilled and valuable. We can make whatever income we want to make. Where women have gotten brave is being able to make money and earnings, going out there, and bringing home these good paychecks.
The money confidence comes from when we get beyond this desire to just make money. We get good at understanding, loving, managing, and growing it. As women, when we understand money, are confident with money, and all these different pieces, it’s funny how even more brave we are at work. We have value of money and our value to money. How much money we make is connected to our overall life and being a millionaire.
We can go back and be braver at work to ask for raises and new roles because we’re connected to something bigger which is our financial future, the generational wealth that maybe we want to create for our family and our kids but when we’re connected to something bigger that’s meaningful, it creates this bravery all the way downstream to the beginning that we show up brave, especially at work. When you have this money confidence and power or what I call feminine financial power, it creates courage across the board.
When you have money confidence, you gain courage across the board. Share on XEpisode Wrap-up
That’s so good. We’ll end on that. How can women find you and all of your stuff online? Give us all the details.
There are a few different places. If anybody wants a free digital copy of my book, go to FallingForMoney.com. Get a nice little digital company. You can breeze through. It’s not very long. I have a YouTube channel where I teach little sound bites like things we’re talking about. It’s not more than 15 to 30 minutes of sound bites. That’s @KrisstinaWise on YouTube. I like people to go there. The third and final piece is I always say pick your poison. This is for the brave women who went to do this because it takes a lot of courage to set up a call. That’s Krisstina.com/call.
That puts you on my calendar. We’ll do a 45-minute money conversation. We can chat about anything like investments, debt, or, “My financial situation is terrible. I don’t know what to do.” It doesn’t matter. I’ve been in the worst financial situation I’ve been in. I understand everything. No need to feel ashamed or embarrassed. “I can’t call her because my money’s a crap show.” If it’s a crap show, call me anyway. We’ll laugh about it together because I can empathize.
You’re like, “I’ve been there.”
I’ve been there more than once, sadly. Of all the people who tell me their money stories, I can almost say in most cases, I can trump that one. I love to have these conversations. I’ve made people millions of dollars in a 45-minute conversation. It’s very worthwhile if you’re courageous enough to get over that mindset piece and set up a call. I’m harmless. I promise we’ll laugh together, talk about whatever, and see how it goes.
That’s awesome. Krisstina, thank you so much for being a guest. I learned several things on our show. I’m confident that so many others did. I appreciate the work you do. Everyone, please make sure and read this a couple of times. Take some good notes. Here’s to you building not only wealth financially but wealth in health and a happy life. Krisstina, thank you so much.
It’s my pleasure. Thanks so much, Jen.
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That’s a wrap-up of my discussion with Krisstina. I hope you found our conversation both valuable and inspiring. Here are a few questions to think about or journal on until next time. What is your personal definition of WealthyWellthy? By that word, the word Wealthy and then a new word, Wellthy. How can you fall in love with your finances while taking care of yourself? What is the first small step you can take? As a reminder, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The show is also available on any other podcast platform you enjoy. Until next time. Show up, be a WealthyWellthy woman, and be brave.
Important Links
- WealthyWellthy
- Falling for Money: How to Have a Lifetime Love Affair with Your Finances
- WealthyWellthy Life Podcast
- Money Masterclass
- 24 Career and Leadership Affirmations
- 5 Steps to Managing Imposter Syndrome
- Get Paid: 10 Negotiation Tips
- Thrive in 2025
- Atomic Habits
- FallingForMoney.com
- @KrisstinaWise – YouTube
- Krisstina.com/call
- Brave Women at Work – Apple Podcasts
- Brave Women at Work – Spotify
About Krisstina Wise
Krisstina Wise is a real estate mogul, Millionaire Coach, and creator of several multi-million dollar businesses including Goodlife Luxury, The Paperless Agent and most recently, WealthyWellthy. She is also an international speaker and the award-winning author of the Amazon Best-Seller Falling for Money, a romance novel for your bank account. Named one of the 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders in the country, she has been featured in USA TODAY, as well as by Apple, Contactually and Evernote for her creative leadership with emerging technologies.
