Money Doesn’t Have to Be Scary: The 5-Minute Habit to End Financial Anxiety - with Suzette Wheeler

0:00 Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Thrive after 45. I'm Denise Drink Walter heart whisperer, midlife mirror and mentor. And every week I am honored to share energy and space with inspiring guests. Whose stories reflect so many possibilities of thriving beyond 45? Together we'll uncover the whispers of the heart, the power of midlife transformation, and the wisdom that fuels expansion. What changes when money stops feeling intimidating and starts feeling understandable.

0:40 It is an honor and a privilege to welcome Suzette Wheeler to the show today. Suzette brings more than 33 years of experience working at the intersection of finance strategy. And real world decision making. She spent three decades leading financial analysis and business innovation projects for local governments, and since 2013, has worked in a residential and commercial real estate as as an advisor helping individuals and organizations make informed, grounded. Financial choices. She holds a master of business administration with an emphasis in finance and economics.

1:23 But what truly defines Suzette's work is her ability to translate complex financial concepts into language people can not only understand, but use and use effectively. As an author and professional speaker, Suzette is dedicated to building financial literacy for the non-financially literate, helping people move from confusion and avoidance into clarity and confidence. She is the author of MA Math Hack Secrets, level Up To Keep More of Your Money. It's a practical guide that's designed to empower everyday people to improve their financial picture without feeling overwhelmed.

2:09 And since stepping into professional speaking in October of 2025, Suzette has. Already impacted over 350 lives, and she continues to be invited into associations, conferences, and events to speak on financial literacy as a foundational skill, not just a numbers game. Today we'll explore what it means to truly understand money. Why so many capable people feel stuck around it and how financial literacy can quietly but powerfully change lives. So wonderful to have you hear Suzette today, and as I was reading that intro, I'm putting my hand up going, yep, that's me.

2:54 It's not a numbers game. Oh, I hate numbers. It's not my thing. So good to have you here. Thank you very much. So what is financial literacy? What is that? Financial literacy is the ability to basically simplify any sort of situation that you come across. Financially, like with, has to do with grocery shopping, mortgages, car loans, loans, credit cards, and be able to understand it so that you can make wise decisions and save a lot of money and save more of your money. So. This is brilliant.

3:36 Thank you for just what we, our introduction shared. You make the complex, understandable, and now all of what I thinking about financial literacy makes incredible sense. So thank you for the work that you do. And I know it's not only for just our audience of women thriving after 45, but I know this will be impactful for. Children right on through to adulthood. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. De yeah. I think, um, yeah, children, the, when I was, let's just say when I was growing up, yeah.

4:17 We had a class called Home Economics and yeah. And not only did we sew pillows, but we learned about financial literacy. We learned about how to balance a checkbook, how to understand credit, how to understand your checking account, how to spend well, how to save more. And those classes, many of those classes are not offered now in high schools or even middle schools where I, I had my class in the middle school, right? So they're not offered and. So this, when I thought about all of this, I said, I have to write a book about this because there's so many people that need this.

4:57 They need to learn how to keep more of their money in their pocket by making these wise decisions. And they didn't, they may not have had this class. So this just make made perfect sense for me. I love that. You know, in our household, I'm gonna s shine a little light here that my family might be like, really? You said that, but I'm gonna do it anyway. In our household, as the children were growing up, I was known you had language prob you wanted to do your language homework, you went to mom, you wanted to do your math homework, you went to dad. Right? There was, that's just what happened in our house. In order to get through it as quickly as possible and as functionally as possible. With as much understanding as you could because I always felt, I'm not the numbers girl.

5:40 I don't do numbers. I don't, I don't wanna do money, Paul, you do money. I have to tell you though, that has changed over time in terms of me understanding more around money. And I think what's really important in this conversation is, particularly for us as women in midlife, is if we don't understand and have the foundations. We are gonna be left out, quote unquote, in the cold, aren't we? Because right. There's so many things that if you don't understand the literacy of the finances and understand money and the numbers that are associated, how it all works.

6:24 There are so many things that can happen in life at any point in time, but our audience being 35 or 45 plus thriving, we need to understand that. And so you talk about, in your book about hacks. Are there such things as hacks to understand how this works? Yes. There's um, there's these math hacks and once you. Figure these out and start learning these, you're gonna go, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how much I could save. And you know, they thrive after 45. Mm-hmm. I have met in my, my speeches, I always talk to the people after the speech.

7:06 Yes. They're one who lost their husbands and their husband was the main financial guy. Now they have to be that financial person to manage their own finances. There's so many things Or, or divorce or, you know. Yeah. Any sort of life changes or you start, you bring in a family member who is disabled or is Yeah. You know, needs help and, and so that changes your whole family finances. There's so many things that could happen that could change your life. Right. You know? Yes, yes. Even marriage or remarriage, you know, all of that can change. A thousand percent. And it's interesting you say that because we at midlife, there's a lot of things that shift and change in our lives, whether we want them to or not.

7:51 It can go either way, but yes, totally. And so circumstances are opening up our eyes. Let's try and do it before circumstances might have to arise for us to wake up. How can we do that? Tell us about these hacks. Give us an idea of what's, what's coming up in terms of. Some ideas from your book that we as listeners can go, oh my gosh, I didn't even think of that. Yeah, so, um, I, I'm pulling up chapter two and it talks about percents. And we may have learned about percents in, in like, it would been middle school, maybe even elementary school. Mm-hmm. And percents off like percent.

8:33 You usually see something that says 20% off, 30% off, 50% off. Gotta get this deal if you sign up tomorrow, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And you're thinking, great, I gotta sign up right away because 20% sounds like a lot of money. Yeah. But do you really know what 20% off is? I mean, can you quickly calculate that? This, uh, this book talks about that, about how to quickly calculate and figure out if a like 20% off of, let's say a hundred dollars, that's$20. Mm-hmm. That makes the product$80. Is that really a good deal? Is that a really good deal? Or is there something else out there that may not be on sale but is a better deal?

9:14 Right. And you can pick some, you can pick and choose. Like a grocery store too, like X percent off or this product is now buy one. Have you seen the buy one get one 50%? Yes. How much is it really? And so again, it's calculating like if you had$10 and And the second one that would be half off, that'd be half off. That's$5. So the two items together is$15, which means each one is$7 and 50 cents. So you do that quick math. Yeah. And then you, on the opposite, on both sides of that aisle and the, the other items for sale. Like, well, maybe they're not on sale, but maybe they're$2 cheaper than that.

9:56 You don't know until you start doing the quick math. Yeah. And that's, that's the math hack. The percent right. You see it everywhere. That's a very important one. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, there's some other things in here too, like, um, I go into, uh, credit cards and to really, really understand credit cards. Mm-hmm. The, the interest rate and making sure that you monitor your interest rate, your minimum payment due, you usually have a minimum payment due, right. Your maximum balance, and then having a plan to pay off that credit card and the other credit cards. So there's actually a method that I teach about. Reducing your debt overall on credit cards.

10:39 And I know in the United States there's a lot of credit card debt. There's people that they don't think about comparing prices, picking the best price or cutting back on some of their wants, you know, and seeing their needs, but not buying everything that they see. So there's, this is a way to, to rethink the way you spend as well. Mm-hmm. Love that. Love that. And yeah. Do you find, we had this conversation in my house a few days ago about, oh, I ne I am never, if ever, rarely have cash anymore because everything can just be, oh, you know, ping, ping, ping, ping from my phone, from my watch anymore if I wanted to set it up.

11:27 Is that dangerous because of ease. Do you find that there's more, um, happening in terms of financial strain because of the ease of which, and people aren't making the connection? This is plastic. Oh yes, it's going up, but we're really not understanding what are we really doing with our finances in that regard? Yes. The, um, it's so easy to tap and pay. Yeah. It's so easy just to get outta the store with whatever you want. Mm-hmm. But one thing about cash. Yep. I like using cash and I like using cash because you can actually watch the money, leave your hands and go into the person that is taking your order or purchase.

12:13 Mm-hmm. And if you're out and about and you're buying a hamburger or you're buying something, and if you have cash in your wallet, say, okay, my budget this week, 200. $200 and I'm going to spend it on, you know, groceries or this or that, and you can actually watch how your money is leaving your pocketbook. And if you're, you're out of your$200, all of a sudden it's like, oh, oh no, I need to make another withdrawal. Then you can kinda see that you may be overspending. There might be an opportunity to, to cut back on that, on that spending. Right. But that's why cash, because you can actually see it. You can see those expenditures. It's not so easy. Like a credit card.

12:53 Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good. Yeah. Um, were there in terms of financial literacy and actually being taught from family or school or whomever, um, um, how. You mentioned that it was happening in home economics, and of course a lot of times those are completely gone anymore'cause those are the extras. Mm-hmm. And um, so where are people gonna be getting their information about money? How to spend where, obviously you, but how else can people also start to understand money in a way that they haven't before?

13:41 I, uh, well, I'm gonna be putting a online program together where it walks the person, yay. Signs up all the way through the process, and we're gonna have some group, um, coaching calls as well, so we can share successes and, and, and talk about that and answer any questions, because I have, if you read, you know, the, the book, you can get a pretty good understanding, but. The, uh, the online's gonna make it even easier for someone to, to go through that process, because I've noticed and from, I like to talk to a lot of people, and especially the people that my, my seminars and my groups that, you know, how did you learn this?

14:21 They said, well, we really didn't, you know, we didn't, we didn't know, you know, our, our parents didn't, didn't even know. Yeah. Our parents were always in debt. So, yeah, it's, uh, it's. It's definitely just trying to get yourself educated in the basics and learn how, like start at the grocery store. That's the first place to start. Yeah. Start comparing prices and things like that. It's amazing what you can save there. It's, and. And it's, we do it E all the time. We're always, it's not like we're going out of our comfort zone. We're not doing a, oh my gosh, I'm gonna go buy this big thing over here. How do I create the plan to make that happen?

15:02 What I'm hearing you say, and please correct me if I'm wrong, you still need to do the budget piece for everything. Otherwise you're going to end up overspending. As a result of not being planned. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so definitely I, I have a chapter just on budgets, just on creating the profit and, um, all sorts of budgets, not just your personal budget, but budgeting for your holiday spending. For, you know, Christmas, Hanukkah, things like that. Budgeting for, well, we have, uh, Thanksgiving, but like your national, national holiday, you're having a big event. Budgeting for that and putting your budget together for that is just so important.

15:45 The, but there is a budgeting set and I will, I'll offer this little hack. Uh, a truly the best kind of budget is one where 50%. Of the items are needs. So 50% of your budget are needs. So things you have to pay, utilities, rent, car loan, credit cards, things you have to pay. Mm-hmm. And then you have a, uh, 30%. Which is wants, and those wants could be adjusted depending on how big your needs percentage is. 'cause you may be paying more than 50%, right? Maybe you have with, you add it all up and it's somewhere like 60%.

16:27 So your wants are the other things that you want to do. Like, you want to go to dinner out, go up to dine out, wanna go to a movie, wanna go to a show. All these things that are wants. And then the other 20% are, is savings. And that should be money that you put aside. I would say at least five, 10% of your budget should be savings because you'll be thanking yourself in the future when you have that money, not just for retirement, but have an emergency fund that you set aside money. So something breaks, your car, breaks down, something else happens. Your life insurance policy comes due. You have an annual, uh, registration due. You can pay for it.

17:07 You have the money, you're not putting yourself in debt. Right. For debt. Right. Are there any aspects that you talk about in your financial literacy components that talks about um, investing? Yes. Yes. Okay. So when you first, when you're starting off and you're putting money away, you're usually putting it into like a savings account or a money market account. Then when the money starts growing. Then you wanna put it into higher interest earning investments. Mm-hmm. And that could be your next step could be a certificate deposit or some other type of thing.

17:51 But when you get enough money together, you'll want to start putting that into either a 401k, we have a 401k retirement account. Or, um, some sort of, uh, investment account that you can save for your retirement. Mm-hmm. And in those cases, that's where a financial advisor comes in, right? And that is a person that can help guide you in that direction. So you have to be really careful about choosing a financial advisor that they're, that you have a bit of safety in there because you know it investments, they can be. They can pay wonderful dividends or they could also lose. So you have a win-loss.

18:33 You, you have to, based on your risk, the risk, right into that investment. So yeah, that's where financial advisor come in. I, I sell real estate and I, I'm a financial advisor for real estate, so I help people buy and sell and I'm, I, I look at everything from a financial perspective. Sure. So I'm looking at everything that they're buying and selling is, can they make money? Right. Okay. How can they make money? When's a good time to maybe switch us out? Um, can they, we have a, well, we have a rule called 10 31 Exchange where you can save on taxes if you, if you wanna trade out real estate, that type of thing. But there's a lot of features there, but, right.

19:13 My specialty, but for, for investing in like 401k or other types of investment vehicles for retirement, that's, that would be a financial advisor. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Is there anything else that's coming up for you as you've, you know, you mentioned earlier you have, when you go in and do your speaking engagements, people will come to you and say, I don't know a thing, and I'm now single and I've been married for 25, 30 years. Yeah. What do I do? Is there anything that you can share with us as we get ready to close that you really wanna make sure people and women that are listening.

19:56 What is a really good thing? Instead of pushing the panic button, what can we do instead of pushing the panic button? I think for if you, if you find yourself in a situation like that, the first thing that you should do is figure out what your budget is. Figure out what your income coming in is. What it will be. 'cause things will be changing as well. Of course you'll be receiving other, you know, there maybe if your spouse passed, you'll be receiving income from there possibly. Right. But you have to figure out what your budget is. I mean, how much are you spending right now? Mm-hmm. And how much money are you bringing in right now? And that's, that may be hard trying to put all that together. I actually have a spreadsheet that, that I share with my, the participants when I, when I go out and speak.

20:39 So if anyone wants that, send me an email. Nice and I'll the, the spreadsheet, but yeah, so anyway, yeah. Figure out what your budget is first. Yeah. And figure out what your expenses are, because the first thing you're gonna wanna do is stop the red ink. You're gonna wanna stop any sort of a large expenditure. You may have to cut out some things just to make sure that you, that you're not, you know, spending too much money. Right after that. And you may not have ever had to write a check or even deal with the checking account because maybe the husband had it, you know? Yeah. But when things like that, yeah, you definitely have, that's the first step, is figure out where your income is and what your expenses are.

21:20 Find out where you are right now. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I think, yeah, I, I, with what's coming up for me too, which I think is from my thinking, is really important. I need women to listen and understand that. They need to know that they're not alone on this. There's a reason why Suzette is doing financial literacy. It's not because there's myself sitting in the corner going, I don't know what I'm doing. Clearly there's a need for this. You are not alone, so don't feel like. You can't do it.

22:00 Don't feel like this is too much. It's, there's a lot going on, but it is doable and that's why Suzette's doing what she's doing because it's out there. And you'd be surprised how wide and deep it exists, right? Mm-hmm. And I would say even before any sort of event happens just now. Yeah. Yes. If your, if your husband or wife is doing all the finances to ask to be able to be included in that so that you can understand what's happening now. Yeah. And, and be yet educated and say, I, I really wanna learn this. I, I really want to know, um, to understand and appreciate.

22:43 What our budget is, what our income is, and, and where money's being spent so that I, you know, unfor, if any unfortunate thing happens, it'll, I'll be okay. Yeah. So yeah, start now. Love that. Start understanding now. And you can't really start too young. You really can't. So if you have children and you're like, uh, but they're only six and seven, I'm sure Suzette would say there's. There's things you could do, right, Suzette? Yeah, definitely. Definitely start. I'd say the grocery store is like your first place and having them actually work with them on like a, a savings account and start Yes.

23:24 Generating one. It could be in your name, but that they're, they're putting their allowance and savings account. Just something to get them started and understanding money. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Because what we don't want is people freezing and. The whole negative connotation around it because we know it's part of life is money in and out. Right? It's, it's, it's what we have to do. Mm-hmm. So in order to do the best for you by you, because of you learning all of the pieces that can be scaffolded in a way that makes sense for you no matter where you are on the continuum of understanding.

24:06 And the financial literacy aspect, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Amazing. Mm-hmm. This is exciting and I'm, I'm excited to, to hear that and to know and encourage you to start moving forward on your, your financial journey, you, the audience, and, and start learning about this. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And of course. The book is available and we will have that in the show notes. If you're watching on YouTube, we have it up on the screen, so if you're not watching on YouTube and you wanna see the visual jump over and check it out. Um, we'll have all of that in the show notes so that we will have ways that you can follow Suzette connect with her.

24:54 Um, find out more about this new online course that I'm so happy to be able to spread the news on that. Is there anything Suzette, you would love to leave our audience with, knowing that they get an opportunity to do this for themselves? By themselves? Because of themselves. Mm-hmm. Um, is there anything that you would love to share as a closing point? Yeah, you, I, I say you can do this. Mm. You can do this, you can learn this. This is not hard. This is really easy. I mean, I, I learned it in like, I, my dad forced me to learn it in like third and fourth grade.

25:36 'cause I was failing math. I say I am not a, I'm not a natural math person. Just saying. So if you're not a natural math person, you can still do this. Yeah. I wasn't natural math, so yeah, definitely I encourage you to do it. This, this is not hard. This is easy. I, I break everything down into simple concepts. It's, and walk you through it and like you shared at the very beginning, it's about understanding. It's about really grasping money, but not for the sake of money itself, but it's for the life that you want to live, and you choose to live, and you can live a better life, a more complete life when you have the deep understanding of your finances, right?

26:25 Yes. And a more relaxed life. You won't be stressed out. By saying, I, I don't understand this, or I'm in debt, or whatever. If you can understand it and start acting on it, you can live a lot more peaceful life. Mm-hmm. A lot easier life. Definitely and And who doesn't want that? Exactly. Oh, so great. Suzette, it's such a wonderful conversation to have with you on such an empowering topic that is doable. You can do it. And Suzette. As you have already witnessed through the listening and watching if you're on YouTube, that she makes it understandable.

27:12 She breaks it down so that it is doable, and why not do this for you? By you, because of you, right? Yeah, definitely. Why? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here with us. Before we do close, I want to share something very gently. I'm currently stewarding an early form formation of a live in-person experience, and it's called Ignite the Inner Uprising, and I'm creating it for women in midlife who are. Ready to deepen their relationship with leadership, with their wellbeing, and with personal sovereignty there.

27:57 It isn't something I'm rushing loudly and promoting with bells and whistles. It's really being built slowly with care and deep respect for the women. It's meant to serve. So today's conversation around financial literacy and confidence and clarity, if that has stirred something in you, just know this. That there will be a space to gather and reflect and reconnect more fully with you and who you are. But for now, just stay connected. And when the timing is right, you will absolutely hear more about Ignite the inner uprising.

28:41 And I really encourage you to share like follow. Give us reviews so that people can hear these incredible conversations, particularly around financial literacy, which is important for all of us worldwide. Thank you for being with us today, and I wish you nothing but the ability to thrive after 45. Thanks again, Suzette. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to share. Yes. Have a good night everyone.