How do you manage your money and mental health after surviving a traumatic accident and then undergoing a major career change? That is what Elizabeth Westendorf has gone through in her life and you’ll want to hear her story.
Elizabeth Westendorf is an Associate for Atwood Financial Planning, LLC and a comprehensive fee-only by the hour financial planner. She specializes in working with young professionals to help them start financially strong and meet their goals. Her interest in financial stories is out of her own mental health journey where she saw the intersection of mental health and financial security. She also writes about her own experiences on her blog Owning the Stars.
In this episode, Elizabeth shares how her accident changed her perspective on money and mental health and how she’s dealing with them after healing.
After reaching what she thought was success in her career and realizing from her mistakes the connection between money and mental health, Elizabeth left her full-time job and became a personal financial planner.
She shares how she considered the money aspects during the transitioning of her career and how self-employment affects her mental health. She also talks about the financial challenges that women are facing today and how to address those.
If you want to take a new direction in your life, listen in and learn from how Elizabeth was able to rebuild a vision for her life into something new.
What You Will Learn From This Episode
- Elizabeth’s money mistakes and the connection between money and mental health
- Managing mental health after surviving a traumatic accident
- Money and mental health aspects to consider/manage during career transitioning
- The mental health effects of self-employment
- Financial challenges that women are facing today and how to address those
“As I fixed my financial mistakes, I noticed that there was a direct correlation with my mental health.” – Elizabeth Westendorf
“There’s a good chance that I’m going to have other issues later on because of my accident and so it’s just coming to terms with that mentally and recognizing my own physical limitations now is kind of a constant effort that I need to think about.” – Elizabeth Westendorf
“Sometimes you do get everything that you thought you wanted. And then it changes.” – Melanie Lockert
“There’s a whole lot of risk in staying somewhere where you know you won’t be happy and that you know will kind of erode at your mental health long-term.” – Elizabeth Westendorf
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Timestamps
02:22 – Elizabeth’s experience that made her realize the correlation between money and mental health
06:52 – When Elizabeth was hit by a truck and how it affected her perspective on money and mental health
14:00 – Why Elizabeth left what she thought was her dream job to focus on being self-employed
21:24 – The “sunk cost fallacy” – how it’s preventing you to pivot and how to deal with it
24:40 – How Elizabeth considered money/financial aspect during her career transitioning
29:00 – How self-employment affected her mental health
33:34 – The financial challenges that women are facing today and how we can address those
40:20 – Elizabeth’s money tip
Resources and People Mentioned
Connect with Elizabeth
Connect with Melanie
- mentalhealthandwealth.com
- melanielockert.com
- Contact: mentalhealthandwealthshow@gmail.com
- Attend our next Money Management Check-in Party
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