Money Conversations with KJ
Money Conversations with KJ
The Path to Financial Freedom: From Paycheck-to-Paycheck to Planning
Is financial success simple but not easy? In this candid conversation, escrow officer Bryan Hearn opens up about his journey from financial struggles to stability while juggling career growth and raising three young daughters with his wife.
Bryan's financial education began like many of ours – watching his parents (a saver father and spender mother) rather than through explicit money conversations. His early adulthood followed a familiar pattern: making money, spending freely, and accumulating debt without considering long-term consequences. The wake-up call came when maxed-out credit cards forced him to move back home with his parents – a humbling experience that transformed his relationship with money forever.
Marriage proved another turning point. What began as a discussion about a car purchase evolved into deeper conversations about debt, budgeting, and future planning. Together with his wife, Bryan developed a detailed five-year financial plan with clearly defined milestones and contingencies. Their disciplined approach includes monthly budget reviews and adjustments for life's unexpected changes, like having children during the economic uncertainties of the pandemic.
Perhaps most inspiring is how Bryan and his wife are passing financial literacy to their young daughters through a creative "treasure box" system where chores earn "money" that can be exchanged for rewards. This early education creates subconscious financial habits that will benefit them throughout life.
For listeners at any stage of their financial journey, Bryan's story offers practical wisdom: distinguish between needs and wants, write down your expenses, reassess regularly, and surround yourself with financially responsible people. The path to financial freedom isn't about complicated strategies but rather consistent habits and thoughtful planning.
Ready to build a roadmap to your financial promised land? Subscribe for more real-life money conversations that will empower your financial literacy and remind you that you're not alone on this journey.
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Welcome to Money Conversations with KJ. Kj is a lifelong entrepreneur who's made a lot of money, lost a lot of money and found his way back again. If you're looking for a sterile how-to, you're in the wrong place. Kj and his guests will walk you through real-life situations told by the people who live them, and they are as messy as they are inspiring. Each episode will offer lessons learned, advice on how to replicate successes and avoid pitfalls, and a new perspective to power your financial literacy. Far from a one-size-fits-all, this podcast can help you build a roadmap to your personal promised land Milk and honey for some, whiskey and steak for others and remind you that you're not alone on this journey.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Welcome back everybody, welcome back. I have an exciting show today. I'm always trying to find somebody to come out and share their story and you know it's all walks of life, all different kinds of positions that they do and today I have a special guest. I've known this man now, I think coming up on seven years, would we say roughly Seven, eight years. Yeah, yeah, welcome to the show, mr Brian Hearn. So, yeah, thanks for coming out. Yeah, thanks for having me. You know, brian and I met because I met your mother first.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Brian is an escrow officer, so there's a lot of you know out there. Excuse me, I'm in real estate and I flip houses and we're always at title Opening or closing right. And, yeah, met your mom first and then met you, and now we mainly deal with you. I think your mom first and then met you and and now, uh, we mainly deal with you.
Speaker 2:I think your mom finished right, she retired she's fully retired now, yeah, fully retired and you kind of took over and I want to get into that you and you and I were talking about before we start. I'm like, how does one aspire to be an escrow officer, right? Um, we talked about how, at 18, I don't think a high school graduate would aspire to say I, I'm going to be an escrow officer. But Brian's married eight years, three kids, three girls, and two of them are twins, and so we can all empathize on he's having the time of his life, right now.
Speaker 2:I say in the mix of things.
Speaker 3:Yep, that's right.
Speaker 2:In the mix of things enjoying life, enjoying kids and raising kids and making money, doing what you got to do. Well, that's right, in the mix of things enjoying life, enjoying kids and raising kids, and making money and doing what you got to do. Well, brian, I want to start off with my first question, that is, with all of my guests. How old were you when mom and dad sat you down and taught you about money?
Speaker 3:That's a great question and I don't think we ever had that. Birds and the bees talk of money and it. It really was more watching them, seeing what they do, how they do it. We never really sat down and talked about it, which was interesting and watching them. And so I'm also the youngest. So I got a sister who's four years older. She was the the scholar. I was more of the sister who's four years older. She was the scholar, I was more of the jock. So it was also just funny seeing the different conversations that they would have with my sister versus they would have with me Struggle with school. I mean it was much harder for them to get me motivated for school than my sister. So it was again, it was funny seeing those two different conversations. So never had that conversation.
Speaker 2:You know you're, as everybody who listens to me regularly knows, that's the norm. It's not abnormal, it's actually normal that. But you had just mentioned how, watching mom and dad, right, and I've had this conversation so many times, and if you can remember, right, how far back can you remember when you realized what money really was and what we use it for? How old do you think you were when you said, hey, oh, I get this to go get that.
Speaker 3:I would say around that 15, 16 age, right when they're hey, you're legally old enough to go collect a paycheck.
Speaker 2:It's time okay, well before that. Though, if we think further back, because as far back as depending where you live, again, this this is, I mean, in new york city may be different than if you live in rural america, somewhere where your parents, you want to go to the store and get some candy or whatever, and and mom or dad toss you whether it's 50 cents or a dollar and you run down and go get your candy. It's typically age anywhere from five to seven, five to eight, right? Do you remember those times?
Speaker 3:I was very blessed. I never had to. They never said all right, to earn this go, it was, they just gifted they just gave it to you. They gave it to me.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And so that's why I'm asking, like, all right, because a five-year-old you give a five-year-old a dollar bill, they have no clue. All they know is, hey, I give this to the man and he gives me the candy I want has no clue what we had to do to make the dollar, how much a dollar is really worth. Other than, hey, one dollar gets me two of those, right, I of those right, I'll take two, yeah, type of thing, right. And so, as we reflect back and think about it, this is when we actually start developing our money habits yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3:So I, in that aspect I would say elementary school, the, the snack bar, right. So here's 20 bucks for the week so you had to make it work.
Speaker 2:Make it work. Don't blow your 20 bucks in two or three days Right.
Speaker 3:So if that's awesome though, yeah, correct.
Speaker 2:Right, because what does that teach you?
Speaker 3:How am I going to?
Speaker 2:budgeting.
Speaker 3:Correct Budget that $20.
Speaker 2:That's very early stages of a budgeting lesson, right, and I hear these stories of hey, I love when grandpa comes over on Sundays or whatever, because grandpa always gives me 20 bucks or whatever. You know what I mean. It's like free money, yeah, because grandpa, grandpas, like to give money anyway. But that taught you then early like, hey, it was like either sometimes we would get it, like I never got an allowance, I would get money. Right, because if you ask Right and it would make sense, mom and dad, you know most parents are like, yeah, yeah, here you go, go away, right, um, but if they said it's 20 bucks, it has to last for the week, versus just here's 20 bucks and some kids be three days later, hey, I need another 20. I'm out, right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But if your parents shared with you, this has to last for the week and it probably took you maybe a few weeks to understand Holy, holy crap. That really can go pretty fast. Or I have to be careful how fast I spend it. How was it for you?
Speaker 3:For me it was what do I really want? And then now I've got extra for other things.
Speaker 2:See, I love that you said that, because this comes down for a whole rest of our lives what we really want, right, there are wants and there are needs in life and, unfortunately, most people who struggle with money just spend it on their wants and don't really worry about their needs. Now you at an early age, sounds like, okay, I knew what I wanted, which is irrelevant, I don't care Candies, new sneakers, whatever, or like hey, but I'm saving. Well, sneakers, for his example, right. We're always expensive, like I got to save to go buy those, you know, a hundred dollar Jordans or whatever, right, and so don't blow all that money, but that's good to me. I think there's subconscious learning lessons. You didn't think about that when you're five, seven, eight, 10 years old. That I'm budgeting my money, that was that. Never even came into your mind.
Speaker 3:It doesn't come into any of your old mind. I didn't even think about that until you addressed the question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but subconsciously it created a habit, right? So if I had to ask you, if you had to grade yourself at this point up until, let's say, you were 25, how would you grade yourself with money? Were you really good with money, okay With money or horrible with money?
Speaker 3:Up to 25. I was I'd say I was bad with money, Okay.
Speaker 2:Normal.
Speaker 3:Paycheck to paycheck, blowing it as I got it. No real future forward thinking.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Once you get the girlfriend, things start to change. Oh, I need, I need to save for that dinner, I need to. Forward thinking starts to happen right, once you get married. Even leading up to marriage, you know now what's your debts, what's my debts, because now it's our debts, right, how do we go from there?
Speaker 2:so, yeah, up till 25 it's. It's normal. I think you know we all go out to start to make money. Roughly, it could be anywhere between the age of 15 and 18, right, it just depends on your parents. And as we're out there doing that, and when you say horrible, because you have no money, then you make a couple of bucks and you think you're going to buy the world Number one and you just make it, spend it, make it, spend it, and we don't think about it. You mentioned earlier how you watched mom and dad. Now if you could share with us when you watched mom and dad and I've had so many of these conversations people are either savers or spenders, and some say by nature, I say by design, right, and so if you had to describe mom and dad, were they both the same or was one one or the other?
Speaker 3:one or the other.
Speaker 2:Mom was a spender, dad was a saver right and so you watched him see, and about what age do you think you recognize that?
Speaker 3:I'd say later in my teen, so between 16, 18, 16, 18, realize that realize, like mom's a spent, I can get money from mom right it's gonna be tough to get money from dad hey, mom, don don't we need this. Right.
Speaker 2:Right and again. And now you're a parent and although your, your kids are pretty young are you thinking about those things?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we actually. So we're already teaching again the subconscious of. So the girls love mermaids. So we, you know I made a treasure box. Well, to get into the treasure box, here's the chores, and, and each chore is a different dollar amount. So we printed fake money and, hey, if you do this chore, you get this. We put it in the little box End of the week, or even as they want hey, I want the treasure box. Well, how much money do you have and do you have enough to open the treasure box? So we are already starting that with them at this young age.
Speaker 2:That is really awesome. Again, the girls don't even realize what they're learning. But as a parent, now, how did you come about? Who thought this up? Mom, mom, yep, think, guys, we're all falling in love and is this the right one? And you start to basically we're interviewing, right, is this really the woman for me for the rest of my life? How much of her, her money, knowledge, did you guys discuss? A lot so and that's a lot, a lot, we know. Real quick.
Speaker 2:Let's not jump too far ahead, because there are people listening here that are single or maybe dating, and maybe just I've been dating this girl three months or whatever. Let's talk timelines and what triggered you to have that discussion, because talking about money in society is almost about as taboo as talking about sex. People don't want to talk about money, right? My podcast I named it Money Conversations with KJ because I believe we should share knowledge. Now, people generally don't want to talk about money because of mainly the reason they don't have it. They're not doing the right things with it.
Speaker 2:If you talk with someone who does have money and does do the right things, they're very open about it. You know what I mean. So it's a fear of embarrassment, but I say we can have money conversations without me knowing how much money you do or don't have. We can talk habits, we can talk investments. We could talk, dude, I made some investments Really and I made a lot of money Really. What was it? Was it stocks? Was it real estate? What was it? And you can have these open conversations with people and they'll learn. So back to your wife at what point did you say? You probably said to yourself I'm really falling in love with this girl, but I need to know more. And then the money conversation. Money conversation came about. How, how deep in that, into that relationship?
Speaker 3:I would say we were about a year in okay year in and I and what really triggered it was a car purchase. Oh so she had an older car she was wanting. You know, she was working up, making more money. She's like I deserve a new car. I'm. That's when it started that conversation of do we, do you need a new car? The car runs great. Nothing wrong with the car. It gets you from point a to point b and it's not a beater. Why? Why do we need this? So that's when it really opened up that conversation.
Speaker 2:So about a year in is were you living together at that point, sharing bills?
Speaker 3:so no, and that's why I had to back off that conversation a little bit, because I'm like it's your money, it's your life right now. You make it, you do this is you now? We, we're starting that journey, but we're not a hundred percent committed. So I, I can only input as much as I can, right, right.
Speaker 2:So that makes sense. Um, you'd be surprised how many people don't jump in that car. Was that a hard conversation to open up about?
Speaker 3:No, and that's that's one that I'm very blessed. We have a very open dialogue and we've always had really good communication.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 3:That's great.
Speaker 2:So some of you guys out there, so far the lesson is really understanding the difference between a want and a need. I mean, who doesn't want a brand new car every two or three years?
Speaker 2:Everybody you know, because these cars are amazing that keep coming out. They cost a lot more money, but they're amazing that keep coming out. They cost a lot more money, but they're amazing. And ultimately, though and we'll get into why I believe maybe when you think that you deserve the car, do you deserve the car for now, or is your future more important? You know what I mean, and so it's kind of sounding to me that you followed more in your father's footsteps about money than you did your mother's. Is this about right? Yep, when did they recognize it, mom and dad?
Speaker 3:Marriage. Once I was like, hey, this is the one I'm going to marry. And then they started asking those questions of have you guys talked about finances? And I had all the answers, and that's when they're like, oh well, okay, you're further along than we thought.
Speaker 2:Kind of a thing, right exactly. But prior to that, prior to that announcing um engagement, I want to get married, I'm in love, no other what. What money, lessons or conversations had you had through the years with mom or dad?
Speaker 3:I would say prior relationship ended, had to move back home. So there was another one of hey I, I can't support myself right now. Can I move back? Took 30 days being under mom and dad's roof of you know what I can make it on my own. I'm out of here. So had that conversation. Showed them you know my, my costs and what are my expenses. You know what's what can I afford. And so showed them that they both agreed, got our blessing. Do you need help finding a place?
Speaker 2:Well, what do you think is the best if we I want to describe this correctly because it's it's a simple question, but I want you to think about it up to this point right now. What would you believe is the best financial advice or lesson that mom or dad taught?
Speaker 3:you.
Speaker 2:That you're like man.
Speaker 3:I'm glad they taught me that it'd be two needs, or needs versus wants. Do you need it or do you want it? And then the savings part how much are you bringing in? This is how much you should be setting aside. That's one thing that they really tried hitting home, and that's one I just struggled with, because I I was making enough to make ends meet, wasn't thinking forward to what. What do I need to save? I don't need to save anything right now.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna live my life interesting um and I get this, this similar answer right in that it's basic teachings from a parent who's not really deeply financial literate that they use the term save your money and then the lesson doesn't go any further than that. That's like the tip of the iceberg when you ask people to save. So I have my program that I sell on my Money Mastery Institute website and one of my chapters in there is savings. It's actually the third one and I call it saving with a purpose Because, like you just mentioned, you think to yourself whatever age that was young adult why am I saving For what I want? X, y, z, whatever this want is, I don't need to save right.
Speaker 2:The reality is, if you save for a purpose right and you understand hopefully most people understand early before 25 time is our most valuable asset and I need to grow money and it takes time is what grows money right. And so if you save for a purpose right and we've heard these lessons from like a davesey mainly that start putting your money in different buckets right, I'm saving for a car, I'm saving for a house, I'm saving for vacation, I'm saving for college, all these different buckets that we can put money into. Well, back. Most people like yourself, normal before you had a family. You asked yourself why am I saving when the reality is? Well, we save, or should save, at an early age, understanding how compound interest works. The rule of 72 is in your favor. When you're 20 or 22 or under 25 years old, it's so much in your favor you don't even have to save a whole lot.
Speaker 2:Just be consistent and everybody well, not everybody, the majority of people are going to reach the age of 50, 60, 70, whatever man. You start early back there in them early 20s and your 50s you're. You got a chunk of money, but nobody teaches this right, and so we have to be proactive. So let's switch gears. You talked about, okay, a new mom was a spender, dad's a saver, your sister was a scholar. You weren't. You did the typical made money, spend money in home, out of home, back home very typical stuff in America, for sure, and I think probably also in a lot of other parts of the world. Again, I got listeners all over the place and I think money is universal. I don't care if it's the dollar, all the different currencies that are out there in the world. Everybody's playing the same dollar game of trading time for money, typically in the beginning, and then, as we get older, you're going to learn that that's not the whole direction you want to go, and we're going to talk about what you do in a minute. You don't technically 100% trade time for money, because you get paid more dollars when you close more transactions. So we'll get into that in a minute.
Speaker 2:But as as we talk about how people need to think and act different with their time and money is the big lesson I try to teach people, and before we started we talked about simple, not easy, right. A lot of these lessons are so simple, really simple. It's nothing's complicated. You don't have to be a college scholar to understand how to play the money game, but I always say it's like any game whether you're playing checkers or monopoly or any of these kid games that we learn and tell you learn the rules of that game. You're not any good at it, you don't even know what you're doing and your opponent's going to beat you every time. And so let's go learn the rules of the money game, which are fairly simplified. They get commonly complicated when we're growing money because there's so many different ways to grow money. Right, let's talk about debt. How were you with debt in your early years? When did you realize, holy crap, I got some debt.
Speaker 3:Moving back home with mom.
Speaker 2:Was it a lot of debt or something manageable?
Speaker 3:At that time, because my income it was a lot of debt. Okay, I mean credit card was maxed. I mean it was, yeah, I, I was in trouble.
Speaker 2:You were having fun.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:You're just yeah. Do you remember how old you were when you got your first credit card and did you get it on your own, or did your parents help you get that first one?
Speaker 3:So parents did help and that's when it's when I graduated high school, got the college card and, you know, help building that, that credit there. So that's when I had my first credit card and yeah, that's that's. Yeah, I didn't, didn't learn. I was told, pay it off each month, you know, or have a little balance. I was told those things but I was never held accountable.
Speaker 2:No one checked on me to be like are you doing it? No one's ever going to check on you. I don't care how old you are. You could give a 12-year-old a credit card. They're just going to go start swiping, especially in today's world on the internet. Your parent wakes up and they get their bill at the end of the month. They're like holy crap, right, little johnny just charged up 500 bucks worth of you know nonsense. Yeah right, um, how did that make you feel when you had to move home because you had debt?
Speaker 2:oh not good, not good, right, good feeling so you know, some people learn their lessons quick, Like you. Only got to do it one time and I'm not doing that again. Other people, they'll do it over and, over and over again. What was the big change in your mind? If you remember, the feeling wasn't good. You know we have to put our tail between our legs, so to speak. Go back. Can I live? You know I need to catch up. Can I be here however long? You made a conscious decision of changing your money habits money habits.
Speaker 2:How'd you do that? What'd you specifically Cause people, a lot of people out there, like well, I don't know how, I don't know how to change my money habits, I don't know how to change my money mindset. So what caused you? What was it that, if you can remember, caused you to reevaluate and actually make a change?
Speaker 3:It was the, so the cause was living under my parents' house with the rules, the rules man.
Speaker 3:It was the rules of. It was almost the rules were worse than I was in high school. I had more freedom when I was in school, so that was the cause and how I did. It was the again. The needs and wants Really honed that down of what do I need and what am I spending on my wants. And that list was drastically different and I sat down and what are my needs? It's here, it's all I need, what do I want? And I was spending everything on the want and making sure I had just enough for the needs.
Speaker 2:So as you say this, were you actually physically writing these down or everything was in your brain? I was just thinking.
Speaker 3:I created an Excel sheet.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Did all the. You know, what do I? What do I have to spend? What insurance phone? All of those? What are my hard bills that I have to pay?
Speaker 2:Was that the point in time in your life where that became the norm, where you wrote down all of your bills and followed them, or not? Not yet.
Speaker 3:Not yet. That was to kickstart me to realize what do I need to get out of the house and get back on my own and start fresh, start new. It didn't start back, those details didn't really start until I started talking. Marriage. And then now okay, now let's go get back to, let's write down all my debts, all your debts, what's our income and how old were you when you guys got married? So I was 25, 26.
Speaker 2:When you got married Okay, because I find that in today's world that's 20, 25, 26. When you got married Okay, because I find that in today's world that's a little young, actually. Right, I find through conversation that most people don't start taking money seriously until they're around number 30, plus or minus a year, because you'll reflect, you've been making money 10 years and 10 years later you're like I don't have anything. Yeah, I bought a car, Okay, whatever. And you've been making money 10 years and 10 years later you're like I don't have anything. Yeah, I bought a car, okay, whatever. And I've been on a couple of vacations, okay, but you don't have anything. Right, you don't have a good savings going, you don't have a plan. And then they reflect and they start to make better decisions.
Speaker 2:So for you that happened earlier. You're below the curve, which is great because, as we talked earlier, you're below the curve, which is great because, as we talked earlier, life compounds just like money, right. So you're definitely on a better track than most as far as when you hit that 50, 55, 60 age and you've implemented all of these good habits, they're going to reap good rewards. But now you're in the mix of raising kids and we know that the expense of all that is right. Um so when you had that first go around of credit card debt and then you got out of that debt, did you get back in debt again, ever again?
Speaker 3:the wedding okay, yeah so until the wedding no, it was manageable. Never maxed out a credit card um always had, did always have a balance, but that was to help build my credit score. I did have identity theft so that hurt that. So I had to build to bring that back up. But no, never, never got back to that. That spot it was. I learned that lesson.
Speaker 2:Well, who taught you the lesson of credit, the how valuable and how we should treat our credit? Who taught you that lesson?
Speaker 3:A banker when I was first trying to sit down of, okay, what's it going to take now to buy a house, and what are the do's and don'ts? I've got this credit card, so, okay, you only have one, let's get a couple more.
Speaker 2:And so, really, a loan officer, a loan loan brokers, who yeah, which, which a lot of them do that Right, especially for the the first time home buyers. Right, you're, you're young and maybe you're young and getting married or you just want a house. Yeah, they're going to help you in that direction and so they're a good resource for the beginning, because when someone wants to buy a home, they've obviously worked real hard, saved dollar X, whatever amount that may be. They think it's enough, and sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't right and I asked that question so it wasn't mom and dad didn't teach it.
Speaker 3:If they did, lesson didn't sink in. It didn't sink in and I was probably one of those hardheaded kids where it's like mom and dad, you don't know nothing, you're going to tell me A. If someone else tells me A, I'll listen to the other person. So I was they probably did teach tried to teach me that lesson.
Speaker 2:I didn't let it sink in. Didn't let it sink in? Well, that comes to my next question then Do you have a mentor, or have you ever had a?
Speaker 3:mentor.
Speaker 2:I never had a mentor and I still do not. Okay, how do you feel?
Speaker 3:about them?
Speaker 2:Are you a mentor for someone?
Speaker 3:Um, my wife is currently Okay, so she, she's mentoring someone. I, I wouldn't say I'm a mentor. There's a couple of our close high school friends that we stay in touch and we hold each other accountable and, oddly enough, it comes down to hey, are we going on that golf trip this year? Well, I got to save here and here. Okay, let's talk about it. How are we going to get us to get on that golf trip?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I highly encourage people to get mentors. You know, if you play sports, a coach is a mentor, right, because he's coaching, whatever sport it is, he's coaching you, and a lot of coaches do coach life lessons. You know what I mean. And for the kids who really get into sports long, you know 10 plus years it's normal to have a mentor, because you want that sounding board, almost. You're not afraid to ask questions, and that's what a mentor is for. Come to me and ask questions, right. I mean like a doctor, right, Doctor doesn't know what's wrong with you until he asks you a question and you got to tell him, right, it hurts here. Yeah, right, otherwise you can't just walk in and say, hey, doc, I'm in pain, where you know what, what cost it? Let's, let's look into this thing and can.
Speaker 2:A life mentor, a business mentor, um, a relationship mentor, right? I think if people have any or all of these mentors in their life, boy, life gets a lot easier, right? I've always prided myself as far back as I can remember. It's like I want to learn from other people's mistakes. I want to watch you make that mistake and then I don't want to make it right. Right, you know whether it was riding the bike and you did something stupid, crashed and scuffed up your knee or your hands or whatever, like yeah, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2:Right you know what I mean, and so I think if people, you guys out there listening, if you don't have one and you're struggling, um, don't be afraid and or embarrassed to ask someone to be your mentor, because where you are right now, right, you have, even at the young age that you're at, you still have plenty of life experiences. So if someone that was either your peer or five or 10 or 15 years younger than you, if they approached you and asked you, hey, brian, could you be my mentor? What would you say?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I tell everybody this you are rarely, if ever, going to get somebody to say no, I don't want to be your mentor. No, because when we learn things in life and we get good at whatever we want to share, most people do want to share. I actually haven't found anybody that said no, right, you know what I mean. In understanding, though, what a mentor is, a mentor isn't someone you're calling every week about advice. Right, I can't take up all of your time, but if I can touch base with you once, twice, even three times a year because I'm, or I just have a question, I'm not sure who do I call, and sometimes it's not mom or dad, or, in my case, mom, dad's gone. If I I have people that I can ask questions to, I definitely, definitely think that we all should do that, so give it more thought. Okay, and you'd be surprised. You know the best form of learning anything in life, the best form of learning is teaching. I agree with that.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so if you become a mentor, you'd be surprised how cause you're teaching. Whatever it is that you're teaching that lesson. It's going to come back to you. It's going to be better for you at the end of the day Right. So the being a mentor is not just about giving your time and help. It's going to help you. Yeah, it really really well. Um, what do you think was your worst money decision?
Speaker 3:your worst money decision so the running joke in our household was above ground pool. We bought two, not not together, but the second one like why, why do we buy that? We only used it twice, right, and we moved and it was. You know, we let it go get nasty and like we just spent X amount of dollars on something we never again that needs and wants. We didn't need it, we wanted it. So that and that was that was during a time where I didn't have the money Like I didn't have the couple hundred dollars to go spend on above ground pool, right. So that's, and that's one of the after that that really made that switch of what is my money going to do for me.
Speaker 1:And is it?
Speaker 3:is it gonna? Is a pool going to do anything for me? Is that pool going to make me money? Am I going to charge $5 for my buddies to come over and swim in the pool?
Speaker 1:Right Maybe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I might buy the pool, other than that, a couple of different cars that we had purchased. They were lemons and I first looked at it and I said that's a lemon. But I listened to my happy spouse, happy house. I listened to my wife and she really wanted it and, yeah, that didn't work out so well.
Speaker 2:And again, these are life lessons that I think normal. Most people do these things right. Our wants oftentimes supersede our needs, right? But I think that happens because how old were you? So you got married at 25-ish, whatever and I'm sure you sat down and you guys talked about future plans, you know, because you get married and you're like we're going to be married forever, right, and we're going to have kids and we're going to retire and we want to do all this in between, right, it's called a plan. Did you actually write a plan out at that point in time? We did, okay.
Speaker 3:So we knew what we wanted, where we wanted to go and how detailed was this plan? It was a five-year plan that detailed each year our milestones. As long as we get here, we can get to here, and if we don't get to here, here's a contingency of how we're going to get back on track. So in each year, come January, sat down and reevaluated.
Speaker 2:Who came up with this idea? You or your wife? My wife? Your wife, because you're doing all the normal things that an 18 to 20-whatever-year-old did is just go out and work. It doesn't really matter what you did to make money, but you're making and spending right. So it sounds like your wife maybe had a little more financial literacy education in her younger years. Have you had that conversation? Hey, how do you know all this? So I did.
Speaker 3:And going through those lists and that's actually where the switch happened. So I'm looking at all these debts on her side. I'm like why do you have all this? And then I thought I was bad.
Speaker 2:You thought you were the bad and she had a lot of debt.
Speaker 3:A lot of debt, and so that's where the switch happened, where then I started staying more on top of things and I was, hey, it's January, let's sit back, where are we at? And then I ended up actually, sometimes we even have a month, or every couple months we reevaluate hey, life change happened, let's now reevaluate, let's not wait till January or wait till next month. So that after sitting down and and seeing that I was like, okay, we need a plan, because you've got this credit card, this credit card, I'm like what's the interest on this? What's the interest on this? What's the interest on this? What are you making those payments? And once those answers came out, I'm like, yeah, we need a plan.
Speaker 2:We need a plan.
Speaker 3:We need a plan.
Speaker 2:It's exactly the reason why people live paycheck to paycheck and 63% of Americans today live paycheck to paycheck because they don't have a plan. They live paycheck to paycheck, as the term describes. They don't know what they're doing next month other than I've got to pay rent, my car payment, my cell bill. They know they have to pay those things, so I have to go to work tomorrow to make my check, so I can do that, but they don't have a long-term plan. Come together more out of fixing a problem than I'm really looking fast forward because I'm a genius or whatever. You know what I mean and I think at your age it's awesome that you're doing that.
Speaker 2:And then back to and I'm sure you've probably heard this too no-transcript be careful who you choose for your spouse, whether you're the woman or the man, because the term behind every great man is a great woman. And then vice versa. Right, choose your partner wisely, because there are people out there that fall in love and they have the worst combination because they're both spenders and don't make a lot of money and you're doomed. Right, someone has to take the reins and say, hey, we, we can't keep doing this. But simple, not easy, correct, you know? Talk about. How old were you when you gave serious thought about retirement and what did retirement mean to you? The word retirement, what is? What does that mean to you? And how old were you when you said we probably you were married when this happened? We have to think about retirement and what we're going to do to get there.
Speaker 3:So retirement, did that thought, did come? Did it come before you got married? Ever it did, okay, and that was when I actually first started in the title and escrow world. Before there were no 401k options. So now I'm going into a real business, if you will. Who offers that? Hey, mom, what's that? And whatever the company is matching, that's what you put in. Okay, what, what is that? Whatever the company's matching, put that.
Speaker 2:That's all you got.
Speaker 3:That's all I got, and they always keep that going. I said, okay. So then that kind of turned like all right, I'm not getting the answers I'm looking for, so then, okay, go out and do some research. What does that mean? Okay, so then I do that research, all right. Well, that's not going to be enough for retirement, because retirement to me is I don't have to work, I've got enough money to either sustain the rest of my life comfortably, or what I've done in the past is continually making me money, so I don't have to work anymore. So that's what started that thought process of all right, so you're, you're now getting me into that investment world of I'm putting money somewhere and I'm either setting it for getting it or I'm actively moving money around. That's when that started, and that was when I was 21, 21, 22. Was it real?
Speaker 2:confusing for you. Did you lean one way or another? I mean, I teach in my investing module, right? There's two kinds of investors passive investor, active investor Typically when you're younger, you're going to choose one of the other and then, as we get older, depending on what we do for a living, you can do both, and a lot of people then will just do 100% active investing. So it just depends, right, how deep you want to get in that realm. But for you, you understood then what a 401k was. You understood that that's not likely going to be enough at 35, 40 years later, right, because you were in your early 20s. How much research did you do? And what did you? What'd you? What'd you come up with? That told you okay, that's not enough, I need to do X. What'd you do?
Speaker 3:So I first went to the HR director at that company. That was my first resource. Hey, what is this? So got some knowledge there, did my own research, going online, finding out stuff there, and that's when, shortly after that that's, my mom transferred from one company to another company and we're we have a very open dialogue about money, and so I saw the amount that she was transferring from company a to company b.
Speaker 3:How long have you been investing in this, she told. Told me, quite quite a while like that. It's not enough. That's that's what really triggered me of that spooked you, yeah, so I'm right now investing all this to me. All this money, that's a lot of money I'm putting away, cause, again, I was used to pocketing and so that way I could just spend it as I wanted, Right, so that was very passive, cause I, again, it's that's a set it and forget it. Yep, it's just automatically taken out. Yep, never see it. So that's what triggered me of there. I eventually, yes, continue, continue that. But I'm going to need more. So once I've got enough in this bucket, I can then start doing more.
Speaker 2:How do you feel about the 401ks now? I mean now that you, whatever research you did I don't know how much you did, but after the research and it's been a few years now you saw what your mom transferred wasn't a number. It actually shocked you. How do you?
Speaker 3:feel about it. I still think it's a good way to passively invest. I think I need to. I need to now go more the roth route. I think that's going to be a more viable option. Um, but it's again making that switch. Finding the time to cause this was forever ago. I need to do more research. What's the steps? Should I keep that and have her off or do I roll it? I need to do more research on on that.
Speaker 2:I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, but I share this lesson with most people. You know a 401k plan with your company. If you're maxing out with them, then that's free money. And everybody says, why would you not take free money? The reality of it is, at whatever level that you're at of your contributions and that money, um, you're not growing money at a fast pace just yet. Right, right and back to the lesson of compounding.
Speaker 2:Time is our most valuable asset and we, most people, don't learn that till after the age of 30, do they realize? Holy crap, I got to 30 pretty fast. Right, I feel like I was 12 years old riding my bike and I'm 30. Right, and I'm 63 now. Trust me, I feel like I was just having kids, you know, a few years ago.
Speaker 2:But anyway, the value, when you really truly understand the value of time and you see a vehicle like a 401k, and if you're the type of person that doesn't like to do the homework and is extremely risk adverse, then I say yes, then go that route, go some other routes, We'll get to that Roth in a minute. Yes, then go that route, go some other routes, we'll get to that Roth in a minute. But if you know, if you're really good with your money and you do your homework with it, there's much better vehicles to grow money in. We're actually that 401k 30. I know I I know a few guys that have had their 401k 30 years. They've made really good money. They make multiple six figures a year and so they've grown it and it's like a million bucks and you're like that's a lot of money. I grew a 4 million bars in my 401k. I'm like, yeah, but you know, if you to use different vehicles 30 years ago, you wouldn't have 1 million.
Speaker 3:You'd have 10 million.
Speaker 2:Okay. So don't be so excited that your 401k has a million bucks and guess what, you haven't paid taxes on that money yet, correct. So that million is not a real million, depending how much money you make a year, right, how much when you're ready to start taking it out, what your taxes are. So my advice always is that I'm not a financial advisor, so you don't have to take this advice. I'll just use round numbers. If you're a person who's done well in life and you made $250,000 a year and you've had your 401k and you've grown it and you're like, hey, I'm 60 and I'm done, I don't want to, I don't want to work anymore, right, then stop your job, right, don't take a dime yet. You need to go do whatever you're going to do for the next year, even if it's living off your savings. So your next income tax year that you file for you're not in that tax bracket, the highest one when you're making $250 a year. You know you got to wait and get down to let me get down to that 15% bracket, even capital gains bracket. You know what I mean, because you could go take it that first year and you're in the 38% bracket 38% of a million bucks, and not that you should take all your money anyway. Your 401k should be like a faucet and just turn it on, just trickle it, whatever your monthly expenses are, but do the math. Generally speaking, it's not enough and, like you mentioned earlier, the difference between passive and active income is your active income generally is going to create residual income. Passive income you're just growing money, compounding, which compounding is the greatest thing ever and everybody should take advantage of it. But active investing is because you're investing in things that are paying you back.
Speaker 2:That's when retirement happens, and I don't like to use that word. Retirement. It's a horrible word because it means basically the end. Like. It's not the end, right? The reason people like I don't know some names that everybody knows a Warren Buffett, right type of person? Or Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, right? Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire before the age of 35. Like you would think, oh, that guy can go retire, but retirement was in his mindset. He wanted to create and he still wants to create today. It's not about the money for him, right? Where most people who trade time for money week in, week out, year after year, they can't wait. You know, I'm 63. People have been asking me the last couple of three years. Hey, kj, when are you retiring? I'm like, what are you talking about? Like I've been an entrepreneur. I haven't had a boss since I was 22 years old or something. I says it's not the end. The end is when you put me in a box. That's the end. Right I go. I make a living talking to people. What?
Speaker 3:do you think?
Speaker 2:I'm going to stop talking to people, right? So no, the goal is financial independence, financial freedom, and I think at the early age, when you're in your twenties if you kick that word retirement out of your vocabulary and go I'm striving to be financially independent. What does that mean? Well, right now, my expenses you know I'm single and they're not a lot. They're four grand a month or whatever, right. But I know I'm going to get married and then they're going to double or triple, right, I could be to 10 or 12 grand a month. Fine, then I'm going to retire and they'll go back down again. So let me create a passive residual income that makes me 10 grand a month. When I get to that point then, yeah, maybe I won't trade time for money, no more, I'll just watch my money grow. So what steps have you taken? What advice would you give people out there that you've been doing that you feel really works for you and it's and you could see? You could see a um, a finish line.
Speaker 3:Budgeting really, like you said earlier, putting write it down, don't keep it in your head. Write it down, get an Excel sheet, put it, put it somewhere where you can visually see it and don't forget about it. And that's the other thing. Don't write it down and then it gets lost in the shuffle. Always have it. So you're constantly either updating it I mean we, we update ours monthly, what either updating it I mean we, we update ours monthly. What was our electric bill? What was our gas bill? I mean literally plugging in real numbers, real time, so we can actively see what's going on. So actively budgeting would probably be my biggest thing is write it down, see those numbers.
Speaker 2:We live in the age today that is, that is so easy to do compared to 15, 20 or longer ago. When I was young, you had to actually physically write it down. Now they have apps that are free that we can do this. There's so many ways that we can track our spending without even realizing we're tracking. Because if, in fact, you most of your expenses, whatever you pay, whether it's gas, you know, dinner or whatever is on some sort of a card, right, debit card, credit card when you plug those, those cash, that automatically it's going to track that for you and it'll tell you at the end of the month you spend x percent of your income on dining out, right, and if you're short, you're like, damn, we went out too many times last month. We got it. We got to curb that going out thing. We got to, you know, stay home and cook or whatever. Yeah, again, it breaks it down. It's super, super cool. Mint does it. There's a free version, there's a paid version and there's a bunch of other ones out there that you can download. I always highly recommend them because we need simplicity.
Speaker 2:I think people struggle with money because it does take effort. It does take not a lot of time, but a little time. Studies show people spend way more time figuring out their vacation next year than they'll spend weeks and weeks than they do about their budget. Right, I want to grab something real quick and show you, because I should have grabbed it.
Speaker 2:But hold on and and and I don't hardly, I don't really like pitching my stuff on my podcast, but I just want to show you because everything that you guys are hearing from brian is he did everything like a normal kid would do before the age of 25 make money, spend money, get your wants, don't worry about your needs. Then got married and got serious and responsible. Not everybody does that. A lot of people still get married and have kids and don't be responsible. And so I have my book and I have my financial literacy roadmap book here that's available on my website and I wanted to show Brian this because I haven't told you about these and you can see the title of my book is what a new roadmap to for financial success.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:And so, as you talked about writing them down, we're just building a roadmap. You know we get in our cars. Like you had to come to my place today, I gave you the address, likely, you plugged it in your phone or the GPS of your car how to get here, right, right. So you got in your vehicle from where you were to go point A to point B and there was a map to get there, because you didn't know what streets to take until you saw that thing. Right, we got to treat life like this. We truly do. You know, back before we had navigation, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:That wasn't a good, but that's such a great analogy, I believe. Now, in today's world, you know we can go on vacation to another city. We're just boom, boom. There it is. Oh, this, follow the blue line, right, follow the blue line, we're going to get to where we want to go. And so I wrote this book laying it out. It's a roadmap to where and how we want to reach financial success. Now, financial success is different for everybody. Not everybody wants to be a billionaire. The more money you make and you deal with people who have money, they go to title and buying houses from you know, a hundred grand to a hundred million or whatever, right, and there's a lot of responsibility with with money.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:The more you make, the more responsible that you need to be, and some people just don't want to be responsible and that's okay. So that's okay. Your roadmap's not taking you to the moon, it's taking you across town.
Speaker 3:You're fine.
Speaker 1:You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean, and then I created this here, this roadmap book that describes exactly what you were just telling the folks. We do a self-assessment, we got a goals worksheet and you talked about how you write your stuff down.
Speaker 2:Right, you can't follow a roadmap if you don't have a goal a destination right, and that's what this, this chapter, is all about in my book and then in here you kind of write these things down. Now people will buy my program. It's all digital. You can buy the book digital and you can go in there and change those numbers whenever you want. And you say you do it every month. Every month's a lot because our expenses I mean your gas every month and your power bill they fluctuate a little bit, but not a lot. I always say you really need to check your numbers on two things If you either got into more debt or you got out of more debt, that's when your numbers change, that's when you should make adjustments. Or you make more money or you make less money. At any of those four points, numbers are going to change. Yep, that means habits have to change.
Speaker 3:And that's, and that's why it went to monthly. So, covid, Right Happened. That's when we had our first child. So we went from two incomes to one income with a child. So that's why we were like it is month to month. It is, you know, there was supply shortage. There was the formula. I mean, it was at that point it was month to month. We're like what are we doing? Okay, you and I are having top ramen tonight. Let's go buy some formula. So that's, and that's why it started that way. Before it wasn't. And then, once that happened, that's when I got it, let's see, cause we had our goals. If, hey, the electric bill was extra high, did you really need it that way? Or can we, you know, change a little bit? Cause if we did brought that down by just just an X amount of dollars, we can then continue to grow this other side, right? So so that's that's why it really became a month. A month was for that reason.
Speaker 2:How often do you have money conversations with people, whether it's family or friends?
Speaker 3:Often, I would say often, yeah, yeah, we're again. We're fortunate. Our, our sphere, our, our group of friends and family are are open. You know, those don't talk religion, money, politics. We talk all three.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that's great. I think that's what will change the world, right, if we all can share in these lessons. Because if you're talking with that group of people, your core group right, I call it your circle, and I'm sure you've learned things from other people. Oh yeah, oh, wow, I thought this, but Bob was doing that. You know what. Let's make a change. Correct, you know what I mean, and that's that's almost like a mentorship. It's almost.
Speaker 2:You know, people who get, let's say, you're an alcoholic and you got to go to AA. Now, right, those are. You got to go to those people. They're going to help you, right, what do you mean? So I really commend you that you have these types of conversations with your circle of people. So you guys out there listening, if you're not in a circle of people that you can trust to have those conversations, you need to either change circles or change the people in your circle. Right, we are the five people we hang around with. If you hang around a bunch of people who just spend money and don't do anything good with it, that's who you're going to be, right. And if you hang around people who are investors, work hard, do the right things with money. That's who you're going to be. So we got to be careful who we hang around with. We really really do. We teach this to our kids. We need to live it ourselves, not easy.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Because Bob, who's a very irresponsible person, is probably fun, as can be. I love hanging out with Bob, but Bob's not good for me. Maybe I'll just see Bob once or twice a year. You know I'm not going to see him on the regular Exactly, Does that make sense? So final question here You're not that old yet. You've had a lot of good life lessons. If you could go back in time right, everybody wants to go back in time If you could go back in time, what would you tell your 20, 21-year-old self, 20, 21?
Speaker 3:year old self. What changes would you make with their life and or money? That's a good question. That's a really good question for life. Like we were just talking about that sphere. If you can't have open conversations about your life and have it reciprocated where your friend is also reciprocating, ditch those friends early, get rid of them, find those other people, but that's not easy to do, no, especially when you're 20, 21 years old, right?
Speaker 2:Right? So you're giving your 20, 21 year old self advice, right? Did you find yourself at that age where you had people where you knew, like I really shouldn't be hanging around this guy?
Speaker 3:There was a few, there's a few that, and it took longer than it should to to cut them out. Okay, and I knew, I knew you knew instinctively yeah. You're not good for me and but yeah they're, they're fun, like you said, and you're in that age where you know let's have fun.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So so that that would be a big one. As far as the lifestyle in, in, in, like you said, surround, really dive into surrounding yourself with who, who you want to be in in, successful people and are doing the good, right things. Cause I was surrounded by those people but they were responsible, they were, they were doing those. Hey, I'm not going to go out tonight. What? Why? Man? Wait, no, I I've got a, I got a goal. Oh, okay, it was weird for me at that time. Right now, it's like I should have been with them more, right? So that was that's the lifestyle. Then, as far as finances, yeah, really really diving in more into what, what, what is investing and what does it really mean? Investing doesn't mean you have to have 20, $25,000. Don't have to have a big amount of money to start investing.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:And that was my misconception is I? I had to have 50 to a hundred thousand before I can even start thinking about investing? Never crossed my mind. I was like I don't have enough money yet. It's like no, you did and you should have.
Speaker 2:Right? No, I talked to people. Investing is about a habit, right? Um? We all have have different kinds of habits, but if your habit in in um lots of lessons about it, the first lesson you should know when you start to make money is the mo. I always ask what's the first bill you pay when you get your paycheck Right, and most people say my rent or my mortgage. I'm like, well, you messed up already, because the first person you need to pay is yourself. And if you could learn that lesson when you start making money at 18 or 20, it's not about a lot.
Speaker 2:it could be 10 bucks every check all right whatever yep, you know, and build that up over time it becomes a habit like no, I save it's regular. You know I start small and grow. It is a great, great lesson for people and it's never too late correct it's nice.
Speaker 2:So you learn that lesson at you know a later age. But it's, that's okay. You know you're still young enough. You're going to be able to compound money another 25, 30 years until you know then. So the people, if you're out there listening to this in your mid, late 60s, you don't have a lot of time to compound money, right, you don't. So you need to find higher returns. You need to find, uh, investment you can make that can pay you some sort of a dividend, something, and it'll just be.
Speaker 2:We can't depend on one investment to fund our retirement, right, our financial successes. A lot of times, for a lot of folks, it's multiple buckets. You know, hey, I need the government to give me that check. I need a little bit from this job over here, a little bit, from that investment over there a little bit, and all those little bits add up to OK, okay, I can live on this monthly type of thing, right, if you're starting later in life and in it. But, but it's never too late. I always encourage it.
Speaker 2:Um, but man, what a great story. I think um, like anybody, started a little struggle early, but you're a quick learner, obviously. Yep, quick learner. Great life um, there and for a lot of you guys that are out there wondering what should I do? Just start, get a plan right. Make a plan, write it down right. Don't try to just wing this in your head and don't think I can't do it or I don't have enough to invest. Those are all the wrong answers, right? It's all a mindset.
Speaker 2:The first chapter in my book is all about mindset. Until you fix that, you will struggle with money. You'll struggle in life. So thanks for coming out, appreciate it. Your story is awesome. And for the rest of you guys listen, do me a favor. You're out there. If you haven't already subscribed to my podcast, please do that. We get these out as often as we can and you guys are all over. It's awesome. I appreciate each and every one of you listening to these great stories and just get the takeaways from them right. They'll help you. They really will. All right, guys. We'll see you guys on the next one.