Money Made Human Podcast

If you've listened to all eighteen chapters, you've heard almost every word of SpendFirst. Tomorrow, Wednesday, November 11, it's out in paperback, hardcover and Kindle. It also includes a six-week action and reflection guide you can use on your own, with a group, or as part of a book club. Get your copy: https://spendfirst.com/book Reading your advance copy? Starting November 11, A...

If you've ever wondered whether all your effort with money is actually adding up, your bank balance and your net worth can't tell you. Your financial progress number can. Chapter 18, the final chapter of SpendFirst, is where you hear how to calculate it: everything going toward your future, divided by your income, as a percentage. Savings, extra debt payments and retirement contributions...

If you've been asking yourself "should I save or pay off debt?", there's a step that comes before either one, and once it's in place the whole payoff feels different. Chapter 17 is where you hear that debt says nothing about whether you're good with money. Some people who are great with money carry debt, and some never use it at all. What matters is your approach, and...

You finally get some money into savings, and then the car needs a $1,200 repair. The balance drops, and it feels like you just lost all your progress. If you've been trying to figure out how to save for a goal and it keeps getting wiped out, look at how many jobs you're asking one account to do. $5,000 in savings can still feel like nothing when you're counting on it to be your emer...

Say your goal is to save $500 a month. Then an unexpected expense comes up, and that month you only manage $400. You still saved $400, but because you missed the number, it feels like it didn't count. If you've been trying to figure out how to reach your financial goals and you keep ending up right there, the fix is in how the goal is set up. Pass/fail thinking is why so many goals fall...

If you've ever looked up how to set financial goals, you were probably handed a number that sounds responsible, and that is usually the problem. A goal you adopted out of obligation runs on willpower and willpower runs out. Once you budget by paycheck, a goal stops being a wish and becomes a line in the plan. Chapter 14 is where you hear something you do not often hear from a financial profes...

If you have ever gone looking for how to plan your finances for the year and given up somewhere around February, it probably was not a failure of effort. Traditional budgeting keeps you looking backward, sorting through what already happened and accounting for where things went wrong. After an hour of that, who has the energy to think about the next few months? Chapter 13 is what becomes possible...

Most guidance on how to budget with irregular income assumes a paycheck that arrives the same way every two weeks. Chapter 12 is where the system flexes to meet you where you actually are. That's anyone self-employed, freelancing, on commission, working overtime, or running a business where no two months look the same. It's also anyone with a perfectly steady paycheck who is living throu...

Most guidance on how to free up money in your budget starts with a list of things to cut. Chapter 11 starts somewhere else, with the plan you've already built and the small places where it doesn't quite fit your life yet. By now you've been running SpendFirst for a few weeks or a few months, and your SpendFixed list has stopped being a list of bills. It's a snapshot of your lif...

What if there were a number that told you, honestly, what your money can do for you? Once your bills are handled, your everyday spending is covered and the expenses you know are coming are planned for, whatever is left has a name. It's your SpendFlex. It's the part of your money that gets to go toward the things that actually matter to you, and it's where money stops being about sur...

Here's what nobody tells you about starting something new with your money: the first time rarely goes perfectly, and that's completely okay. This chapter is the honest reality check for how to plan your first paycheck with SpendFirst, so you know exactly what to expect and don't mistake normal for failure. When you run it for real the first time, one of two things happens. Either th...

Your bank balance is lying to you. Not on purpose, but it only counts what has already happened. It shows you a number that looks like money you can spend, when a lot of it is already spoken for by bills that haven't hit yet. If you have ever asked how much money you should have left after bills, this chapter is about the number that tells you the truth instead. There's a different numbe...

What if managing your money came down to one short routine you run every payday, and then you were done? No daily tracking, no checking your balance ten times, no guessing what's left. That is what to do on payday when you budget by paycheck.  That's what this chapter is about, and it's the point where the whole system starts to feel light. Once the three waves are in place, every p...

Here's the wave that makes so many capable, responsible people feel like they just can't get ahead. You have a good month, put a little toward a card, and then the tires and the vet bill land in the same week and it's gone. In this episode, Kelsa reads Chapter 6 of SpendFirst, about SpendFuture, the money you set aside for the expenses that don't show up every month and always...

If you feel a little pang of guilt almost every time you spend money, that guilt was never really about your choices. It's about a hundred small purchases with no clear place to put them, so every one turns into a question. This chapter is about SpendFreely, the everyday spending that moves with your life. The groceries, the gas, the coffee, the Target run that somehow covers four “categories...

If you’ve ever felt fine at the start of the month and strangely broke by the middle of it, this is for you. There is a clear reason for that mid-month squeeze, and it comes down to timing you’ve never been shown how to see. If you have ever wondered what a fixed expense actually is, this is the chapter. Today we're defining SpendFixed, the fixed expenses like rent, utilities, and subscriptio...

Some months your money feels calm, and some months it feels like chaos, even when your paycheck stays exactly the same. This week on the podcast I'm reading Chapter 3 of my book, SpendFirst®. It's the chapter where a lot of people finally set down the self-blame and see that their system was the thing missing all along. Most budgeting sorts your spending by category: housing, food, fun....

Does your budget feel like it’s fighting your calendar? Most financial advice tells us to plan in 30-day blocks, but your life happens paycheck to paycheck. This episode is how to budget by paycheck instead of by the month. In this episode, we dive into Chapter 2 of SpendFirst to explore the Paycheck Rhythm, the simple but transformative shift that turns your budget from a chore into the heartbeat...

Chapter 1. If you’ve tried budgeting apps, spreadsheets, and rules and still ended up unsure, this is the episode that explains why, and why it was never a flaw in you. Kelsa Dickey reads Chapter 1 of SpendFirst, including the story of Jessie and Joe, a capable couple doing everything “right” and still drowning.  The problem was never discipline. It was that traditional budgeting never helped them...

This is where it begins. In the Introduction to SpendFirst, I'm reading the opening of my new book and laying out the premise the whole season is built on: You can manage almost anything in your life, so why does money still feel like a guessing game?  The answer isn’t more discipline. It’s finally being able to see how your money moves, today, next paycheck, and three months from now. If you...

The Financial Coach Academy Podcast is now Money Made Human, and Season 2 starts here.  In this short welcome episode, Kelsa Dickey shares what the new show is about and what makes this season different from anything she’s done before: an entire season spent reading her book, SpendFirst, one chapter a week, in her own voice.  If money has ever felt like a guessing game even though you’re capable e...

This is the final episode of the Financial Coach Academy Podcast and the final episode of Season 1. Starting June 25, this show becomes Money Made Human. In this episode, we’re talking about what 157 episodes built, sharing the story of a listener who changed how I see this show, explaining why the name is changing, and laying out what’s coming in Season 2: The full SpendFirst® book, read chapter...

Every year the same hesitations come up when I talk to coaches about conferences: I won't know anyone.  It's too expensive.  I'm not far enough along.  I don't have time.  I can probably learn all of it online anyway. This week I'm replaying my conversation with Philip Taylor, CPA, entrepreneur, and founder of FinCon, with a fresh intro and outro for FinCon 2026. Philip ha...

Someone on Reddit spent more than $4,000 on a conference and came home with six business cards on their desk and nothing else. No meetings booked, no follow-up calls scheduled, no real conversations. They did all the things people tell you to do: They worked the expo floor, sat through the sessions, showed up to the networking cocktail hour. And they still felt like they had lit that money on fire...

A few weeks ago, an email came across my desk from a financial coach who said she'd never struggled this much to make something work. She'd been posting consistently, running webinars, building a community, and getting engagement on every post. And she had zero coaching clients and six months of runway left. Her friends and family were telling her there wasn't a market for financial...