Welcome to this week's Intangible Balance Sheet Episode. My Guest this week is Sara Parrish. Check out our conversation for more on how the following elements all play a part in Sara's life.
Listen in for so much more!
Please check out and subscribe to my Youtube Channel and Newsletter!
JOSH KLOOZ, CFP®, MBA
WEALTH ADVISOR
Phone 281.719.0036
Text 281.699.8691
Fax 281.719.0156
jklooz@carsonwealth.com
1780 Hughes Landing | Suite 570
The Woodlands, TX 77380
Music by bensound.com
Welcome to this week's Intangible Balance Sheet Episode. My Guest this week is Sara Parrish. Check out our conversation for more on how the following elements all play a part in Sara's life.
Listen in for so much more!
Please check out and subscribe to my Youtube Channel and Newsletter!
JOSH KLOOZ, CFP®, MBA
WEALTH ADVISOR
Phone 281.719.0036
Text 281.699.8691
Fax 281.719.0156
jklooz@carsonwealth.com
1780 Hughes Landing | Suite 570
The Woodlands, TX 77380
Music by bensound.com
Welcome in to another episode of wisdom and wealth. This is another of our intangible balance sheet series and Sarah Parish has agreed to come on and share a little bit more about her intangible balance sheet, and I'm so excited to dive in, sarah. Thank you for joining the podcast and welcome aboard.
Sara Parrish:Thank you for having me.
Josh Klooz:The pleasure is ours and Sarah. For those listeners that may be newer to the podcast, we like to say around here that there are certain true wealth is the thing that money can't buy and death can't take away. There's financial wealth, and then there's there's true wealth. Right, and the reason I call this the intangible balance sheet is because I believe that we're all a little bit irrational in life and there are certain experiences that I've had in life that, given any amount of money, I wouldn't trade them. I'd still go back and do them, and they have nothing to do with with a bad decision financially. It's just a life experience that I just put an irrational amount of value on because of what it means to me, and so that's kind of the genesis of the podcast. And then also, what are those first principles that you want to pass on to the next generation? But with that introduction, I think it'd be helpful, sarah, if you just give our audience a brief introduction to yourself before we dive into the conversation.
Sara Parrish:Sure, um. Well, my name is Sarah Parrish. Uh, I live in Houston, texas, with my husband of about to be 15 years and our four children. Uh, we are a blended family, so I have twin step sons and then we have a son and daughter of our own.
Sara Parrish:I was born in Brian, texas, um, but we moved around a lot for my dad's job initially, um, so I've lived in Laredo, texas, and then the early part of my childhood was mainly in El Paso. Um, so up until high school, every two years of my life we moved cities, houses or schools. Um, so it was a lot of a lot of moving. My dad is Mexican, so I'm half Mexican, a quarter Italian and a quarter Ukrainian. Um, my mom is from the North, she grew up in Pennsylvania, and my dad is from El Paso, so it's a very interesting mix of exposures, cultures, growing up Um, we moved to Houston after my parents got divorced, uh, but because of their backgrounds and how they grew up, I mean, I grew up eating like sauerkraut and tortillas Like. I've never really felt like I? Um could relate to this like southern culture, although I've lived in Texas my whole life.
Josh Klooz:That's incredible. So I've never heard those two foods go together, but it makes complete sense what you just shared. So, uh, one of the themes that I've uh committed to pursuing within the podcast is the influence that maybe our great grandparents or our grandparents uh play in our lives, or even, um, kind of the uh, the music, or even even the, the songs that are meaningful, or even maybe the, the TV shows that are meaningful to us as as we grow up. Do you have any stories, uh, in that that vein that come to mind?
Sara Parrish:Yeah, so my grandpa, so my mom's dad, my maternal grandfather. He was a jazz musician. He loved jazz music and some of my favorite memories growing up are you know him doing his silly you know jazz thing on the piano and he would always end it the same way, like running his fingers, you know, across the piano and like ending it and telling us.
Josh Klooz:He had a signature flourish.
Sara Parrish:He did yes, that's a great way to put it a signature flourish. Every member of my family growing up, including my mom and grandpa, we're all classical musicians, so to say that he, you know, had an influence would be an understatement. No particular song or person I remember sticking out, it was just that jazz music in general and the way that he would play it. And you know he was notorious for telling you know the same stories over and over again and about how he was in his jazz band and he played the trumpet, and it was that's what I remember the most.
Josh Klooz:So I would be remiss if I didn't ask did he play at any mobster clubs? You know, are there any cool stories there?
Sara Parrish:You know, I wish that I would have asked more questions. If he did, he never told us that it was. I'm sure that there are a lot. There's a lot more to be known. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2021. And so I will have to go back and ask my grandma some of those questions, but that would be a great story if he did.
Josh Klooz:So the other thought that has occurs to me is just the impact that our grandparents and and family's lives have on us. Does anything stick out to you as particularly formative as you were a kid growing up?
Sara Parrish:Yeah, so my, we lived a long way from my grandparents early on, so only saw my grandparents once a year, my maternal grandparents, and but the things that I remember always, every single time we would leave, my grandpa would talk about how your credit score is the most important thing in your life. And once we started driving you, you're behind the wheel and that's the most important responsibility of your life is being behind the wheel of a car. And it's so funny because I always thought he was so silly and average, like, okay, grandpa, you know those things were. He never explained to, especially why your credit score was necessarily so important. Just that it was. And you know, I just I guess that influenced the sense of financial responsibility, right.
Sara Parrish:And then now that I have teenagers that are driving, I want to yell that at them every single time they leave my house that being behind the wheel of your car is the most important responsibility that you have there. But just, I think, little normal things, you know. Just, my grandparents taught me how to swim and how to rollerblade and the holidays were at their houses. You know just a little the little things I remember about my grandpa reading his newspaper and they let us, they let us girls have coffee. You know it was mainly milk, right, we had our own little like little cups and just I think, because I there was a little bit of instability, just with any family that goes through divorce, right, but then also moving so much in my grandparents had always been this kind of constant, this constant there, their home was always the same, you always knew what to expect, and so I guess what they instilled would have been just a little bit just like family tradition and normalcy, you know.
Josh Klooz:So it occurs to me, the older I get, that life is a continuum of laughing at the progressive commercial to you know, finally ending up of like hey, that that that kind of hurts right.
Josh Klooz:That's way too close to home, but because we all we all play a different role in it depending on our season of life that you moved around so much, it occurs to me what, what sticks out to you from a mentors perspective of the different communities that you are a part of. Whether you were moving so much, are there any relationships or mentors that you had that stand out to you even to this day?
Sara Parrish:Honestly, that didn't really come in my life until college I met so a tiny bit of backstory that would make that make sense. Like most high schoolers, you know, you're kind of rebelling against whatever your parents are wanting to do, right, and one of those things was going to church I wanted to go to. Once we started going to church, I wanted to go to the Catholic church that my best friend went to across the street and my mom and stepdad were like no, we're going to go to the Methodist church, and it was in a different neighborhood where all the kids there went to a different high school. So college for me was this opportunity to make my own decisions, right, and I had started reading the Bible like the end of my high school year, and so, anyways, I went off to college like I need to figure out what this like Christian thing means. You know I want to. What does that look like? What does that even mean? Like, where do I want to go to church? What do I want to do with my time?
Sara Parrish:And I met a friend. Her name is Stacy, she was actually in band with me, so we shared stands and she was also a flute player at A&M. It was my first class, first day of college and she's my partner, you know my stand partner. We ended up being in the same student organization and she did my very first Bible study with me ever and she was just an invaluable friend. You know, I saw the relationship she had with her parents and I saw her, you know, living a certain way that I just I loved that about her and she was so open and patient with me as I was kind of exploring this faith that I had found and she was just instrumental in that time of life.
Sara Parrish:And then so from Stacy, there were other friends in that space. Some of them I'm still friends with today. One of them I met my husband through. But one of the things that, moving around a lot, I have noticed about myself that for most of my friendships they are limited to the stage of life that I'm in, right, so I don't have very many friends that have gone past whatever life stage. So once I've moved or, you know, graduated from college, you know I wish that Stacy and I still kept up, you know, all the time and that I could. But you know we live in different cities now and I think that because of the way that I grew up, I just like naturally move on to kind of the next phase.
Josh Klooz:Yeah, it sounds like that was a pretty changing in a pivotal event in life. So I am curious, as you look back on life to date, what other pivotal moments are there like that you look back on and you're like, hey, that that was a shift that shaped and kind of directed you on life's path?
Sara Parrish:Yeah, so let me see I took some notes here. I just want to make sure that I so we talked about, you know, my parents getting divorced and moving around and going to college. You know, really going off to A&M was just like incredibly Well actually before that, moving to Houston. Moving to Houston was a really big, pivotal.
Sara Parrish:I remember when we lived in El Paso I was a very shy child. It was my dad saw. The family is what you would expect of a typical Mexican family. They're large. I have so many cousins and so many aunts and uncles on that side. They're warm, they're loving, they're jovial, but I never really felt like I fit in there and that's probably been a theme for most of my life, you know, with the difference in cultures and things like that and moving around, but I never quite felt like I fit in. So it's a very shy child.
Sara Parrish:When we moved to Houston we moved in the middle of my sixth grade year, so it's kind of a big life stage anyways for a child and I made a group of friends that brought me out of my shell in a positive way. They were so wonderful and I became less shy and felt like I became kind of who I am today, and so I definitely view that move to Houston, which I thought was going to be just traumatic, you know, it really laid the foundation for everything else that has where I am today. So that moving you know, going off to A&M, making those decisions for my first time, but then really meeting my husband has to be outside of knowing Jesus the most, you know pivotal moment, I mean he's just amazing and every everything that I wanted but didn't know how to ask for a wonder if it would ever come to fruition, like has come since meeting him and like even better, if that makes sense.
Josh Klooz:So we just have this. I gotta ask how'd you all meet? You can't leave it there.
Sara Parrish:Oh, so it's a fun or foe of you, your cheesy love at first sight story, right? So I was still in college, was the summer before my senior year, and one of the mentors that I had kind of briefly mentioned his name is Jake. He was a good friend of mine who I had met he was dating my best friend at the time and so we had become friends and I was in town in Houston visiting some friends and he was the pastor of a church out in Montbelvue, which I didn't know what that was at the time, but it's east of Houston, and I was like I'm in town, I'm going to go hear Jake preach. So I show up and it's this teeny, tiny little church. Right, this Montbelvue was small town, very small little Baptist church.
Sara Parrish:So new people stick out right, and I was a new person and my husband is up there leading word. Well, mad, but he was my husband's time, but he was up there leading worship and I was like oh, he's really cute. And I'm like, nope, like in my head, like you know, like you're, you're not dating right now, like it's your senior year, you're going off to the Peace Corps, you're about to do all these things Like we're not interested in that Talking to myself. And well, matt noticed me and noticed that I was sitting next to Jake's mom. So after the service he asked Jake who I was. And Jake is funny when he tells the story that he's like you know, you're not allowed to talk to her kind of thing, you know, being like older brother, protective, and we were outside of the sanctuary and I was standing next to Jake's dad and Matt kept walking by, you know, and in Jake's dad, rodney kind of chuckles and is like Matt, have you met Sarah yet?
Josh Klooz:Was this the third or fourth time that he walked by? Probably the fourth or fifth time.
Sara Parrish:And I can tell that, rod, I knew, right, I knew, and he just had this. You know, nice to meet you. Rodney invited him over to their house for lunch, where we were going to be, and so we all go there and there's, you know, several people, a small group of us having lunch and all of the guys were outside grilling hamburgers and you know, as women were inside prepping and doing those kinds of things, and well, matt keeps coming inside, and so, finally, I was doing the dishes and I was like, does anybody want to try the dishes? And Matt jumped at the chance and I made sure to tell him. You know, like I'm graduating, I'm going off the Peace Corps for two years, I'm not available. And we sat next to each other over at lunch and talked about the CDs, you know, because CDs were still a thing like what CDs we had in our cars, and they were the same. And I just he was just so cute, you know, and so sweet, and he messaged me on Facebook the next day and we got married five months later.
Josh Klooz:Oh, wow, so Peace Corps didn't happen then, or didn't happen, nope it didn't happen.
Sara Parrish:Nope, that's the funny thing. Yeah, so my husband, because he had kids, he couldn't leave Houston. And so I just, I mean, I struggled a little bit with I really felt like I was calling you the Peace Corps. I'm like, why would you introduce me to my husband right before I'm supposed to make this decision? What are you trying to tell me? And kind of wrestled with that for a few months and did my own self-reflecting and praying and realized that like he's amazing, I can't pass him up. And if this means I'm supposed to be in Houston, then I'm. And here we are still.
Josh Klooz:That is so cool. So, zooming out a little bit and this is sometimes, especially even for myself, hard to do I want you to think like, four generations from now they're great grandchildren's generation, or their community what are some of the principles and events of your life that you feel are most instructive and helpful for them? Because I feel like there's events may be a little bit different, but the reoccurring themes are very similar, especially if I even look back at my grandparents' generation, and that's proved itself true the further you know, the older I get as well. But I'd be curious what are some of those events that you want to make sure that they remember and kind of have in the back of their mind?
Sara Parrish:So I want them to recognize, like Matt and I recognize, all of the moments in our life together that essentially like God's provision right. And so every little, teeny, tiny step from the moment we met when I thought I was supposed to go do something else, and God's like no, no no, no, no, this is what you're supposed to do next.
Sara Parrish:Or I'm like I don't know where. Now I need to find a job. You know, and God's like, oh no, I'm going to provide that. I know exactly where you're going to be. And we're, you know, looking for our first apartment, thinking how can we possibly afford an apartment in this one particular geographical space that we have to be because of our blended family situation? And you know, god's like I'm going to provide. And here you go, and that variable rate apartment, the day that you sign up to sign your lease, is going to be exactly your budget. You know, and oh, we need a bigger house. Like we have all these kids, like I've provided all these kids for us. But you know, we live in the city and it's expensive and you know where are we going to move to and and what's between these two houses and we pick one and oh well, that's going to fall through because I actually have the other one for you.
Sara Parrish:I mean, we have so many little stories like that and and Matt's my story together and I. It's a comfort for Matt and I, because I just know that we can't mess it up right, like we can't mess this life up, and there is a bigger picture and you know, and and God has it all figured out and there's a piece that comes with that and that's what I hope that my kids can see from our story out on top of just, you know, the love that we have in our family and the way that Matt and I are our marriage and the way that we virtually hard for that and had you know, had to fight for that, you know, during moments, and so I hope that they see that and that brings them peace, because their lives are going to look totally different from mine, you know. But that part of it God's provision is constant, and so I hope that that's the lesson that they take away from from our life.
Josh Klooz:Thank you for sharing that, and it is interesting to see how even the hard times are a form of provision, or even the difficult or the or the obstacles are a form of provision. Right, it's a reoccurring theme that I hear almost invariably, you know, every week. It seems it's anything else that we missed before we move on to the next portion at all.
Sara Parrish:I don't think so Okay.
Josh Klooz:Now the next piece some people view as morbid. I view it as beginning with the end in mind, but I think that our last balance sheet on earth is really our eulogy, because it's a sum total of kind of what we've given our time for. Really, if your eulogy were written as you think on it, both today and in the future Because I think it's easy to fall into okay, well, if it happened today, here's what I would want in it, but then there's also the idea of dreaming of what you will still become as well. What are some of the things that you hope are included in your eulogy?
Sara Parrish:Yeah, it's an interesting question. I have unfortunately attended too many funerals of friends and family that have passed away too early and seen the impact that their funeral can have in a positive way, and during those times, as I'm sitting there, wondered what I have had. Would my life have had the same impact? And so it may seem like a morbid question, but I've thought about it a little bit before. At the end of the day, I hope that people remember me as someone who loved Jesus and loved my family. I hope that they see me as a great mother and wife, that I was a loyal and kind friend and that, however I failed people, that they forgive me. I know that we make an impact with everyone around us. Everyone would make an impact, and I hope that in my job and in my friend circle and in my family that they just remember me as someone who followed Jesus and was loving and kind. I think that if that's how people remember me, then I would be happy with that.
Josh Klooz:To be sure, Sarah. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Is there anything that we didn't get to that you'd like to cover still before we sign off?
Sara Parrish:No, I think I'm good All right.
Josh Klooz:Thank you again for this time. I know it's going to be encouraging to all of our listeners. And then also, please know that we're wishing you and your family continued truth, beauty and goodness on the road ahead. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Sara Parrish:Thank you, josh, for having me.