Kathi (00:03.178)
Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And guys, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, if you’re part of the Facebook group, if you’re part of Clutter-Free for Life, you know that while we all struggle with clutter,

One of our other common struggles in this group, and if you’ve heard about my upbringing, you know it was for me as well, is money, our relationship with money. And guys, I am so excited to introduce you to a new friend, but I’ve been following her on TikTok for a while. You guys, her name is Stephania Maria, and she is a multi-disciplinary coach. Okay, I could barely say it, so she’s gonna have to explain what that is.

Her take on money is so interesting and so different and I knew it would resonate with all of you. I’m going to, in the show notes, I’m gonna put every way you can connect with her. She has something free for you at the end. But Stefania, welcome to Clutterfree Academy.

Stefania Mariaa (01:20.133)
Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Kathi (01:23.138)
I’m so excited for this conversation because you know lots of times when I’m talking to people who are money experts No, no we have not lived the same life we don’t understand each other They don’t understand why I live the way I do I I’ve never been able to live the way they have and it just is it’s almost never

a productive conversation. And then I saw you talking about, you were using words like financial intimacy, and you were using words like spending by proxy. And that’s the one that I’m like, okay, this girl is coming on the podcast, I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to hunt her down. So you have a very unique view on money. You even say you don’t do traditional finance, but you look at the relationship,

we have with money and the connection between your things like spending habits, emotions, and energy. Can you explain a little bit of that? Because I feel like we talk so much in our group about the relationship and the emotions we have around our clutter, our things. But you also say that that’s around money. So can you explain what you mean by that?

Stefania Mariaa (02:47.685)
Yes, I mean, loaded question, but absolutely. Yeah, so money and the way that we relate to money is really an extension of what is going on internally. And I’m sure we’ve all heard the conversation around, like, the clutter in your home is reflective of the clutter in your mind. The way that we interact with our finances, whether it’s from a place of scarcity, feeling like there’s not enough.

Kathi (02:50.011)
Huge question, you know, just take the next 45 minutes. It’s fine

Stefania Mariaa (03:17.545)
also from a place of abundance, feeling as if we’ll always have access to more. Both of those in my world are actual extremes that deny the truth that lies in the opposition. Okay. So what I mean by that is that our relationship to money has to be true. It has to be honest. It has to be vulnerable and has to be personally transparent.

Kathi (03:31.497)
Okay.

Kathi (03:44.224)
Yeah.

Stefania Mariaa (03:44.805)
And that’s why I call it financial intimacy, because you have to be intimate enough with yourself to determine if the way that you’re using money or the way that you’re not using money is honest, or if it’s really a projection of an internal dynamic that you’re working through.

Kathi (04:01.43)
Yeah, it’s so interesting that you talk about scarcity and abundance because we always think of abundance as a good thing, but okay, so I understand perfectly the scarcity mindset. It’s why when I find a shirt that I like, I go buy six of them because what if they run out? What if I can never get this shirt again? You guys, I don’t do that anymore because I live by the principles of clutter-free, but.

I could see where people do, you know, it’s buying groceries at the store when you have the money, even if those are, you know, and they’re on sale, even if you’re not going to cook those right, you know, it’s those kind of things. But tell me more about money and abundance because yeah, like right now, my husband and I are in our highest earning potential that we’ve never ever been in. You know, we’ve got

you know, we’ve got some extra. What does that do to our mindset when we’re in that abundance?

Kathi (05:14.43)
So what does that do to our relationship with our money?

Stefania Mariaa (05:27.109)
Absolutely. So the first thing to recognize is that the way that I look at it is that scarcity and abundance are on the same spectrum. They’re just opposite sides of it. So on the scarcity side, we have so much attention to saying that I’m not going to have another dollar.

Kathi (05:41.246)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Stefania Mariaa (05:42.469)
But then on the flip side, there’ll always be another dollar. But if we pedestalize any one mindset, we also have to omit the negatives aspects of it.

Kathi (05:53.606)
Okay, so explain those to me.

Stefania Mariaa (05:54.749)
Okay. So absolutely. So when we have scarcity, if we’re hyper-focused on scarcity, we’ll say, oh my gosh, I don’t know if I’m ever gonna get another dollar or another can or another pair of shoes. I need to go buy six sets or whatever the case might be. Like there’s a freak out, a panic that happens. It denies the reality that you will always have access to more. Like there’s just a fundamental truth. Like you will always have the ability to get another can.

Kathi (06:00.226)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (06:12.907)
Right.

Kathi (06:18.982)
Mm-hmm, right. Yes.

Kathi (06:25.194)
Mm-hmm.

Stefania Mariaa (06:26.825)
And for some who are coming from a history of maybe their parents or they themselves came from poverty, it’s like, no, no. There is a chance that we may never have another opportunity to buy a good pair of shoes. Right? So scarcity is very much a part of their lived reality in the past. But today, there is still an opportunity. There’s always going to be tomorrow. There’s always going to be this chance for you to get whatever you need in the present moment.

Kathi (06:34.412)
No.

Kathi (06:39.803)
Right.

Kathi (06:45.44)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (06:51.381)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm, right. Yeah.

Stefania Mariaa (06:55.209)
if you’re operating from presence. So over-reliance on scarcity denies the truth of abundance that you will always have access to more.

Kathi (07:05.055)
Mm-hmm.

Stefania Mariaa (07:06.381)
But when we go over to the other side and we over rely on abundance, it says, oh, I’ll always have more. This is actually the place where extraction patterns exist.

Kathi (07:11.68)
Yeah.

Kathi (07:16.671)
Okay.

Stefania Mariaa (07:18.174)
So what it says is, oh, I don’t have to be responsible for this dollar, I’ll always get another dollar.

Kathi (07:25.714)
Oh, so I can spend on things. I can stop paying attention to my money. Like I don’t have to check my, you know, oh, so what if I have streaming services I don’t use? Because I can always make more money.

Stefania Mariaa (07:31.34)
Exactly.

Stefania Mariaa (07:43.013)
I can always make more money. And what you’ll find is a lot of the people who really push this abundance mindset, they actually lack financial intimacy. Cause if I were to ask them, how much does your life cost per month? They have no idea.

Kathi (07:55.478)
They don’t know. Yeah, yeah. Oh.

Stefania Mariaa (07:57.465)
but what they know is that they can still make money and that their bills are covered. It’s like, yeah, but you don’t know where your money’s going. And the reason why this becomes a problem is that when you meet these, like, you know, I’m gonna throw out some celebrity names here, but like Steve Harvey, Dana Carvey, 50 Cent, all of them had this tremendous ability to make money, but they lost millions of dollars through false hires, through poor accountants, through whatever.

Kathi (08:11.822)
Mm-hmm.

Stefania Mariaa (08:27.501)
because they weren’t intimate enough with their financial reality to say, hey, where’s this money going? Because they just had this beautiful, tremendous ability to make more money. So they ended up having these crazy financial leaks. And so abundance denies the truth of scarcity that this dollar matters.

Kathi (08:27.738)
Yeah.

Kathi (08:33.792)
Yeah.

Kathi (08:40.962)
Yes.

Kathi (08:48.822)
You know, you probably weren’t even born when this happened, but I remember a conversation between Oprah Winfrey, and I think it was Toni Braxton, and she had somebody very close to her, I think it was a relative, who embezzled just almost all of her money. And Oprah said, this is why I sign every check. This is why I’ve got my eyes on every…

dollar. It’s not that Oprah has to be counting the tens of dollars, but the tens of dollars are a sign. You know, there’s an old saying, watch your pennies and your dollars will mind themselves, something like that. And it’s so it’s so true that we don’t want to become scrooge-like or miserly or ungenerous.

Stefania Mariaa (09:34.518)
Mm-hmm.

Stefania Mariaa (09:44.272)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (09:46.146)
but I would rather my money be going to the animal shelter than to a streaming service I don’t watch. And so, yeah. So let me ask you this. On the other end of the scale, the scarcity scale, scarcity side of the scale, those are the words I’m trying to tell. So I grew up with an unemployed, my dad was unemployed for much of my childhood. My mom, you know.

Stefania Mariaa (09:54.818)
Right.

Kathi (10:13.598)
It’s so funny how often shoes become a part of this conversation. I think shoes are a real symbol for people. But my mom, I remember, was wearing cardboard in the bottom of her shoes because she couldn’t afford new ones. You know, like those are the things I always remember. And so when you say there’s always the ability to get another dollar, I’m like, but what if I can’t? Like, that is always my initial reaction. And so how do you overcome that kind of

Stefania Mariaa (10:38.073)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (10:42.222)
thinking that kind of re I mean it’s really trauma is really what it is. So how do you start to heal from that trauma?

Stefania Mariaa (10:47.141)
Absolutely.

Stefania Mariaa (10:52.773)
So one of the things that I, and I teach this as like a foundational lesson in all bodies of work that come through the financial intimacy curriculum, but it’s the principle of sovereign participation.

Kathi (11:05.671)
Okay, explain that.

Stefania Mariaa (11:07.573)
Yeah. So it’s rooted in the practice that you are a sovereign being. You are the supreme and ultimate authority over what takes place in your 3D reality. Okay. So if we operate from this lens of, but what if I can’t make another dollar? It requires you to not participate in the making of another dollar.

Kathi (11:17.504)
Okay.

Kathi (11:23.255)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (11:28.4)
Mmm, okay.

Stefania Mariaa (11:30.413)
So already you are opting out of life based of fear, history, generational trauma, whatever the case is. And I’m of the mindset of, we can try to heal our trauma for the rest of our lives. And ultimately the question is, are you still gonna be a participant in your life today, even if you’re not healed?

Kathi (11:33.82)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (11:39.757)
Yeah.

Kathi (11:46.215)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (11:53.51)
Okay, so making choices even if you’re not fully healed, but making healing choices. Okay, okay.

Stefania Mariaa (12:00.213)
Exactly. Right? Because, you know, I also grew up very underprivileged on the wrong side of the tracks by definition and by geography. And one of the things that was really clear was, you know, my dad would go buy work shoes, but he was replacing them every like three months because he was buying these cheaper work shoes because he couldn’t afford something more.

Kathi (12:07.516)
Right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kathi (12:25.358)
I don’t… Right.

Right.

Stefania Mariaa (12:30.901)
And to this day, I still watch my dad repeat to himself, I can’t afford something more. I can’t afford the better quality.

Kathi (12:36.706)
Hmm.

Kathi (12:40.056)
Right.

Stefania Mariaa (12:41.301)
And I’m actually quite, for lack of better terms, triggering to my dad because I’ve completely removed myself from a lot of those conversations. Because the way that I look at it is, well, how can you participate today where getting the thing that you actually need that is more of service to your life isn’t an obstacle, but an opportunity. Every limitation is an invitation.

Kathi (12:49.027)
Right.

Kathi (12:58.572)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (13:02.994)
Right. Because… yeah.

Yeah, because if I mean, and again, how funny that shoes come up, right? This is core to those of us who didn’t have money growing up. We knew like you didn’t, clothes you could kind of slide on, but shoes were really important. People know like I have a core story about as a single mom buying my son shoes that has guided this whole conversation. But you know,

I’m not going to use your dad as an example, but to buy those work boots, if he was able to put aside or if somebody was able to put aside a dollar a day for a year, even while wearing the cheap shoes, by the end of the year, you have $365 where you can get the shoes that will last maybe a year. It changes the whole dynamic of what we do.

Stefania Mariaa (14:01.221)
Exactly.

Kathi (14:06.514)
And so instead of getting credit and having to pay for something that you purchased and recover from that, if you can get ahead of that, my husband and I have different accounts where we put money in to save up for things that we want in the future instead of recovering from the past. And that has really healed some of my inner, we were not.

but we struggled hard. So it’s my inner struggling child. And to be able to do that, I think that’s so fascinating. So tell me, I would love to know from you, what is the definition of financial intimacy?

Stefania Mariaa (14:50.061)
Yeah, so I’ve redefined it because I didn’t like the current way that it’s interacted. So traditionally financial intimacy is the intimacy between partners, right? It’s a husband, a wife, whatever dynamic you’re in, discussing your financial matters. I think that is kind of a useless experience of financial intimacy because people don’t know how to be honest about their finances with themselves.

Kathi (14:54.092)
Okay.

Kathi (14:59.713)
Right.

Kathi (15:05.45)
Yes.

Kathi (15:15.968)
Oh, okay.

Stefania Mariaa (15:18.157)
So to become financially intimate is your own personal relationship to being honest, to being transparent, to be vulnerable with yourself about what your life requires in terms of its resources. Because even in my work, I don’t just talk about money. I talk about time and energy, because those are all resources in our life. And if we’re only ever focused on money, we’re gonna lose time and energy to live the life we want.

Kathi (15:47.034)
It’s so true, right? I’m not exaggerating when I say just two hours ago, I was teaching in Clutter Free for Life. And we were talking, we’re recording this in November, even though it’s going up in January, where we know lots of people are focusing on their money. So you guys, I got you, we’re gonna do this in January. But we were talking about, you have three resources, time, energy, and money. And you have other resources too, like creativity and things like that.

Stefania Mariaa (16:12.707)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (16:16.278)
But time, energy, and money are the ones that you are constantly balancing and you are overdrawn on. It’s very easy to become overdrawn in any of those. And we have budgets for each of those three resources. We have only so much time, we have only so much money. And as I get older, I realize that my energy needs to be budgeted. And so I love that you’re speaking in these terms. This is amazing.

Stefania Mariaa (16:32.173)
Absolutely.

Stefania Mariaa (16:46.465)
Yeah, it’s totally aligned, right? One of the things that I find so interesting about it is that we often talk about financial debt.

Kathi (16:48.573)
Right.

Kathi (16:55.594)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Stefania Mariaa (16:57.185)
We don’t talk about temporal or energetic debt, but temporal debt, when you’re debted to the clock, that’s where obligation comes in. That’s where self-sacrifice comes in. That’s where martyrdom comes in, right? If we’re in debt energetically, that’s where burnout exists. That’s where hustle culture exists. And I’m not against debt. I’m gonna be very clear, okay? Because debt was a bet.

Kathi (17:00.362)
No, we don’t.

Kathi (17:05.109)
Yeah.

Kathi (17:08.798)
Yes.

Kathi (17:14.987)
Right.

Kathi (17:21.536)
Okay.

Stefania Mariaa (17:26.559)
on your future self.

Kathi (17:28.352)
Hmm, interesting, okay.

Stefania Mariaa (17:30.637)
Right? It is saying that you will become the kind of person who can repay this. Doesn’t matter what you pay for.

Kathi (17:35.834)
Okay, I’ve never heard that before, interesting.

Stefania Mariaa (17:40.329)
Yeah, it doesn’t matter what you’ve used debt to pay for, whether it’s a house or a pair of shoes, right? Like it doesn’t actually matter because debt is just a bet on you. That you are going to be the person who you need to be for your life to pay it back.

Kathi (17:45.332)
Okay.

Stefania Mariaa (17:58.157)
The issue is that financial debt is actually the easiest to manage.

Kathi (18:04.67)
Okay.

Stefania Mariaa (18:05.357)
because once you start getting into temporal or energetic debt.

They’re very unforgiving.

Kathi (18:13.374)
Yes. And when you get into energy debt, that’s when your health starts to be affected. And that is when and I really think time debt is when temporal debt is when your relationships become affected because you’re paying the clock on things that are not important to you.

Stefania Mariaa (18:21.642)
Exactly.

Stefania Mariaa (18:31.673)
Absolutely.

Stefania Mariaa (18:37.829)
Exactly. Now my question would be, how can someone be wealthy if they have all the money in the world, but they are in time and energy debt?

Kathi (18:47.922)
No, no. And you know why this aligns so beautifully with clutter is because when we have clutter, and I define clutter as things you don’t use, love or would buy again. Like if you have a messy desk, somebody told me I have a messy desk because I’m researching my ancestry.com. And she goes, it brings me great joy. And I said, I do not believe that’s clutter. I believe that that’s bringing you great joy.

But if you have a lot of things around you that you don’t love, you don’t use, and you wouldn’t buy again, that is costing you time because you can’t find the things that you actually use and love. It’s costing you energy because you can’t go to bed without taking everything off your bed in order to sleep in it. And it’s costing you money because you can’t find the things you need.

And so you’re back at the dollar store or Walmart or Target, depending on, or even Macy’s or Nordstrom, depending on your economics, your money, back stock, but we wanna be wise with our resources. We want to be that person who knows where our time, energy and money is going. Okay, this is such a great conversation that we cannot do it.

in one episode. We’ve already maxed our, we’re already in debt to our episode friend. Look at us. But you know what? That’s okay because we believed in this episode and we are going to do so. But I do before we before we go, Stefania, you, I mean everybody can find you at financial, financiallyintimate.com and we’ll put those links in there. But tell me about the teen money masterclass.

Stefania Mariaa (20:18.405)
Bye!

Kathi (20:41.563)
listening to this, have teenagers in their lives. Why teen money? Why not old person money, Stefania? Because we need help too, why teen?

Stefania Mariaa (20:50.861)
Well, because this isn’t actually for teenagers.

Kathi (20:55.33)
Good. Okay. Tell me more Inner Teen that’s right. I’ve heard you talk about this. This is so good We’ll talk about more this more in the next episode, but go ahead. Tell us what it is

Stefania Mariaa (20:56.838)
Yeah, so the-

Stefania Mariaa (21:01.069)
Yes! Okay, so- I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Absolutely. So inner teen money master class, which I affectionately call burn book to bank book because I’m a millennial that watched Mean Girls in high school. But the reason being is we often talk about healing our money wounds. And everyone wants to talk about our inner child, right? All of the money beliefs that were superimposed from our parents in what we were growing up in. But the reality is most of our actual money beliefs that get

Kathi (21:13.166)
Hahaha!

Kathi (21:21.342)
Yes.

Stefania Mariaa (21:34.873)
projected out into reality, are from our inner teens.

Because during our teenage years, we’re just learning what autonomy is. We’re just learning how to be mini adults, but we’re not adult. We’re still underdeveloped mentally. We’re starting to get our first jobs. And we’re dealing with these inner child wounds that never got addressed. And so between ages of 14 and honestly like 22, but like I say 14 to 19, we’re creating our…

Kathi (21:51.309)
Right.

Stefania Mariaa (22:10.261)
Oh, narratives that may be in rebellion to what we were raised in, or conformity to what we are raised in. Both are opposite sides of the spectrum. Now I talk a lot about these spectrums where one side denies the truth and the opposition. Ultimately, what financial intimacy allows me to do is guide you back to what’s in the center. What’s in the center of scarcity of abundance is reverence. What’s in the center of

Kathi (22:22.872)
Yeah.

Kathi (22:33.922)
Mmm.

Kathi (22:37.745)
Okay.

Stefania Mariaa (22:39.597)
conformity and rebellion, autonomy. So if you are really reverent, a deep embodied sense of respect for the autonomous individual you are, there are certain ways that you are going to use your money, your time and your energy that are an extension of that self-respect rather than a reaffirmation of the belief systems that actually harm you. And so in the money masterclass,

Kathi (22:42.623)
Oof.

Kathi (22:49.243)
Mm-hmm

Kathi (23:04.894)
I love this. I love this. Steph- Go ahead.

Stefania Mariaa (23:09.617)
I take you through kind of the process of why this is so important to look at. And it really is an opportunity for you to explore, well, do I actually want to become financially intimate and look at these pieces of my money story? Or am I going to continuously re-inflict these really painful practices, these really behavioral habits, behaviors that are quite painful for me? And that is just a, it’s a free class. It’s like…

Kathi (23:13.602)
Yeah.

Stefania Mariaa (23:37.217)
I think it’s like 30 minutes long. So it’s not very long at all, but it is one of those like mini courses that really allow you to tap into parts of yourself that we do not as a society spend any time with. Like the fact that anybody is working on their money stuff and not looking at their inner team, mind boggling to me.

Kathi (23:40.148)
Yeah.

Kathi (23:55.178)
Wow, that’s so interesting. And as you’re just talking about it, my teenage years were the most broke years in my family. It was surrounding the most money stress. And I think that’s the issue for a lot of people. And if you’re thinking, why did I buy that? Why did I spend money on that when I needed to pay a bill and I decided to do something different? If you have any of that, why did I do that?

This sounds like such a great place to start. Stefania, thank you so much for being here today and thank you for coming back next week because we’ve got more to talk about.

Stefania Mariaa (24:34.329)
I am so excited.

Kathi (24:36.13)
Okay, and friends, if you enjoyed this episode, if it revealed something about yourself, if it’s something that could help someone you know, you know, take a moment and share the podcast with friends or loved one on our own social media. We would love for the word to get out about what Stefania is doing and about how that relates to our money and our clutter. Friends, thank you for joining us. You’ve been listening to Clutter-Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. And now go create the clutter free life you were always intended to live.