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Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
2024: Ranked #1 Law Podcast
Host: Tyler Owen and Clint McNear discussing topics, issues, and stories within the law enforcement community. TMPA is the voice of Texas Law Enforcement, focused on protecting those who serve. Since 1950, we have been defending the rights and interests of Texas Peace Officers by providing the best legal assistance in the country, effective lobbying at state and local levels, affordable training, and exemplary member support. As the largest law enforcement association in Texas, TMPA is proud to represent 33,000 local, county and state law enforcement officers.
Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
#038- "FinancialCop"
Ever thought a grocery store worker could become a seasoned financial expert? We sat down with Nick Daugherty, who took a detour through law enforcement and high school trip sales before he landed in the world of finance. Nick's journey is packed with funny and insightful tales that will keep you glued to your headphones.
Nick openly shares his financial struggles as a rookie cop, including an unexpected descent into $80,000 of debt. His tale of luxury car leases, extravagant car audio upgrades, and credit card reliance is cautionary yet inspiring. He doesn't stop at telling the story of his financial hardship; he also shares how he clawed his way out. He offers insight into his strategy: budgeting, understanding the psychology behind debt repayment, and the benefits of both.
Nick doesn't just provide financial advice; he tailors it for a specific audience - fellow law enforcement officers. With memorable anecdotes from his time as a police sergeant, he highlights the importance of a financial safety net, keeping financial plans simple, and the value of regular updates to wills and beneficiaries. And, for a bit of police wisdom, he wraps up with the 'KISS Principle' - Keep It Simple, Stupid—Nick's journey from debt to financial wellness promises to be entertaining, enlightening, and educational. Tune in, sit back, and prepare to learn from one man's financial rollercoaster journey.
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
This episode is sponsored by financial cop. The views expressed in this podcast are for informational purposes only and are not designed to advise you on how to handle anything specific to your finances. No, we're listening to this advice. Guarantee your financial success. Discussions in the show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult with your investment professionals before making important investment decisions. Advisory Services offered the retirement plan advisors LLC, A fairly registered investment advisor. Rpa and financial cop LLC are not affiliated. Nick is a registered investment advisor, representative license life insurance agent in Texas and a certified master financial coach. Do your own diligence and educate yourself by your finances and how you wish to plan them. This is your future.
Speaker 2:So I think we sit across the table from the girl I wanted to marry and explain to her the guy she wanted to marry was $80,000 a day.
Speaker 3:Hey, bluegrid podcast. We're back this week. Clint McNeary, your host, and Tyler Owen TO, got a great episode today that I wish I had heard when I was 20 years old. Absolutely 50 years old Nick Dotcher with financial cop.
Speaker 2:Welcome, all Welcome. I'm not actually honored to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Welcome to the BlueGrid stage man. It's a pleasure to have you on. I think a lot of people are going to be beneficial from this, this episode.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's funny, clint, you say I wish I had this 20 years ago. That's probably the number one thing that me and Mike here when we teach classes. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I can imagine. Yeah, it ought to be, and I'll get into a funny story about my Academy class in a bit Long term. Guys, guys and girls would benefit greatly from getting this much earlier. Yeah, how was your drive down this morning?
Speaker 2:It's good, other than Dallas traffic and Austin traffic, two worst places. I guess you could throw Houston in there.
Speaker 1:But yeah, houston's way better. I mean, I think the Austin traffic in my opinion, yeah, it's smooth through Waco now that's not bad.
Speaker 2:It is. I mean until they try to start construction again.
Speaker 1:So Did your car drive like a old crown Vic, smooth sailing.
Speaker 2:Hey, don't knock on crown Vicks.
Speaker 1:Oh well, we'll get to that in a minute. We'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 3:We always kind of kick off, tell us who Nick is. Where were you? Where'd you grow up? Were you born?
Speaker 2:Well, I came to Texas as quick as I could when I was 18 months old. I'm originally from Arizona and so I'm pretty much born and raised in Texas, grew up in Irving, and it's kind of part of my story I grew up in the south part of Irving. Are you from Irving?
Speaker 1:I'm from Irving what part? Irving High, right there off of O'Connor.
Speaker 2:That's Nemitz High School.
Speaker 1:Oh God.
Speaker 2:Look last. Oh, I was in 2003. Oh, I was 97.
Speaker 1:There you go. Okay, a little older, I mean, I was old as him, yeah, yeah, no, we're not as old as Clint, yeah. And then it's Valkings. Shout out to Nemitz, valkings, yeah.
Speaker 2:So grew up in Irving and you know Dad was a paint contractor, mom worked in the retail industry, so we had a great Where'd you grow up at. Uh, shaker, urban Story right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Good area. We'll back when we were kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you remember the Miniors.
Speaker 1:Abs a freaking Lutely man. Now, that was a fiesta now.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you an interesting story about Miniors. I started as my first real job, ended up getting promoted to the produce department.
Speaker 1:Oh shit.
Speaker 2:But out of the five or six of us in produce, four of us became cops. I'll be damned, really yeah.
Speaker 1:So, uh, yeah, the tallies grew up in Irving. Uh, a lot of Irving down and then we're for PD, but man, that was a great area. So I grew up around the corner of Miniors. My, my, my grandparents had a duplex. It's right there behind. Was it Burger Street? Yep, best burgers in Irving, oh my God, yeah, right down the street from a Elliot school, la elementary.
Speaker 2:That was my, that was my old guy.
Speaker 1:I went to Elliot as a kid uh, never be the same. And uh, after I went there, and so, yeah, I graduated with Irving high school, nice.
Speaker 3:So 75% of the Miniors um vegetable department became police? What is it about handling rutabagas and avocados? It was very strange.
Speaker 2:You know it was. You know became best friends with the first guy that became a cop. He went to the Soto and he's the reason I became a cop, because I was he's my roommate at the time and I was selling senior trips to high school kids and you know, having a blast going to live in Cancun and I got tired of dealing with the high school kids and watched him go through the academy and I'm like man, this looks like this could be a cool job. So that's awesome.
Speaker 2:That's how I got in the law enforcement.
Speaker 1:Bobby Dan.
Speaker 3:Huh, she went from putting out avocados to selling senior trips and partying in Cancun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good transition. It was a it was a big transition, you know. I, you know remember one day I'd gone to my senior trip and I went back again the second year and when I got back I got a call from the VPSL and he goes hey, nick, I don't have anybody selling senior trips, would you be interested? Oh, by the way, if you come work for us, you get to go live in Cancun, all expenses paid for two months out of every summer, and I literally quit my.
Speaker 3:Let me think about that. Okay, yeah, I don't know how.
Speaker 2:a lot of nitros aren't going to jump on that. So I literally quit my job at the grocery store on Monday, dropped out of college the same day, flew to California Thursday to learn how to sell stuff, came home Sunday and moved out of my parents house on Friday 12 days.
Speaker 1:Pariquito Spanish.
Speaker 2:Pariquito yeah, Enough to make. Enough to make people think I speak it fluently to where I had to say whoa, whoa, whoa, Dispossessive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you moved to Cancun at 19.
Speaker 2:For in the summer I lived in, I still lived in the Metroplex of Dallas, but every summer from a two months. Yeah, for about two months yeah.
Speaker 1:Was there a? Was there a certain resort that you lived on?
Speaker 2:So we worked with about eight or nine different resorts.
Speaker 1:You could just pick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow yeah.
Speaker 1:Do they still have that job available?
Speaker 2:I don't know, we can't promote it Dnba.
Speaker 1:So I would not mind doing that.
Speaker 3:I would not be in law enforcement if, at 19, I'd been in Cancun at a time no you know, you, you, I people laugh about.
Speaker 2:You lived in Cancun. But it's so instrumental to my actual story because, as you know, the South side of Irving is not the nice side of her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty rough.
Speaker 2:I had a great childhood. We didn't exactly live a life of luxury, so I went from working at a grocery store, I don't know, making seven, eight bucks an hour, to selling senior trips, making $48,000 a year, plus commission which is a lot back in 1999., Wow.
Speaker 3:That's a lot.
Speaker 2:What happens when you hand a kid that came from not a lot that kind of money? We start doing stupid stuff on steroids, which is no different than what we do in law enforcement right now. Right, we hired these rookies 22, 23 years of age. We pay them more money than they've ever made in their entire life and give them a lot of responsibility to give them access to unlimited overtime, and it's no wonder they do a bunch of stupid stuff with money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So where'd you go? To what law enforcement so you? So you're doing the senior trip deal, and then at what points do you were like, yeah, this probably isn't a career field that I kind of want to stay in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was getting tired of the wishy-washyness of high school kids and again my roommate was going through the police academy for to become a DeSoto cop.
Speaker 1:And I mean who would want to stay in Cancun with blow and strippers and nightlife and liquor and this unbeknownst of party animal stuff type? Who the hell would want to leave that?
Speaker 2:We were the responsible senior trip company.
Speaker 1:That's what I told you. All right, that's how I sold to the parents and you went to.
Speaker 2:Nimitz Bullshit. Oh, come on. My carter was the party school.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, yeah, you're true, you're true.
Speaker 2:So I decided to become a cop and Grand Prairie was the first of I don't know six, seven, eight departments. I mean, back then that's what you did, right, you applied for every place because there were 400 people at every test and Grand Prairie beat out Fort Worth by about 30 minutes. And so so that became a Grand Prairie cop, and it was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. What year was it?
Speaker 3:2003. Grand Prairie were in their own academy at that time. Did you get through a regional Went to Cog Cog?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:In what year?
Speaker 2:Uh, graduated, it was hired in 03. I graduated the academy in August of that next year, of that year, actually, okay.
Speaker 3:And Grand Prairie back then was Grand Prairie's changed a whole lot, Just a little. Yeah, they did not have the. I mean I got hired in Garland 92 and nobody would have applied at Grand Prairie in the early nineties and that place is is the place. I mean it is one of the premier places to work in more Texas.
Speaker 2:It was a rough place to work for. I mean, we had a lot of really bad areas. We didn't have a lot of good areas, and you know it's. It's changed dramatically, uh, since then. I mean now it's again one of the premier law enforcement. I mean right now, as we do this podcast. If you told me Grand Prairie would be the highest paid agency in North Texas, I would have laughed at you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well cause. And what's weird about Grand Prairie is typically, historically, for most cities, the south side of any city is typically your worst side. Okay, so Grand Prairie it was strange because the north side was the rough part, At least when I was growing up we would go to Grand Prairie high schools at the Gophers I think and then the south Grand Prairie side was the N. It was the Indians or warriors, warriors, and they were red and gold or regular, but uh, yeah, Grand Prairie has always been kind of a weird, weird place, but it was. It was nice back there. South side was.
Speaker 2:I gave you an interesting statistic about Grand Prairie it is the longest city in the state of Texas. Really, it is 27 miles long. We boarded Venus on the bottom, fort Worth at the top. We boarded Venus on the bottom. We boarded Venus on the bottom.
Speaker 3:Hip, uh, FTO turned out on what shift, deep nights, you know.
Speaker 2:I I'm. It's strange I never worked deep nights outside of being in training, not even when I was a sergeant.
Speaker 2:Oh well, so that we go back to the early 2000s and grand prairie. We were on eight hour shifts and the deep night shift was the premier shift. Everybody wanted that shift. So when I got out of the academy, I got out of field training and we went to our first bid. I mean, you couldn't even bid for deep nights if you were a rookie. Well, by the time I finally was able to qualify to bid for deep nights, I had a choice Go to deep nights with Tuesday, wednesdays, offer, stay on evening shift with Friday, saturdays off. And I was dating my fiance at the time.
Speaker 2:And so it's like so I would have loved to work deep nights. I had a blast when I was in training on deep nights, but I just couldn't ever qualify. And then I promoted to sergeant and same thing I ended up being on day shift the entire time.
Speaker 3:I was lucky out there. That's cool. How many years in patrol for you make sergeant.
Speaker 2:Uh, nine years. Well, so I did five years in patrol and went and bid, was a school resource officer for three years, worked at the high school and the alternative campus, and then I served on an underage alcohol and drug task force and then at nine years of services when I promoted to uh in my opinion the single best job in the department which is patrol sergeant. Unfortunately, I'm a nerd, Hence the money. And, as you know, when you work for the chief of police as a sergeant, you work at his will. So, unfortunately, I got a call one day and said, hey, go up to the chief's office and Walked up and Steve guy said, hey, you heard about the Intel sergeant retiring right. And I'm like, don't do this to me, I've never been in a cubicle in my entire life. And he was, eh, need you to take over Intel? And so uh did three years in patrol and then that's where I rounded out. My career was in Intel. That's awesome, that's cool.
Speaker 1:What? What high school did you risk resource officer?
Speaker 2:Uh, did South Grand Prix for a little bit. Then grand prix and then the alternative campus. I was both.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure there's drastic difference between both of them Just a little bit yeah. Just a tad. Yeah, I grew up some grand prix guys in high school. Not saying that I'm an angel, yeah, and retired, what year?
Speaker 2:Uh. So I left law enforcement full time as a sergeant in 2017, gave up my sergeant stripes I still serve as a reserve uh, officially gave that up about two months ago and that I've had my official 20 years of service.
Speaker 1:So you can still get your years of services reserved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I'd not qualify for retirement wise, but qualify for 20 years honorably retired for carrying wise.
Speaker 3:I got you, yeah, Okay, so you have an interesting story of of what began the path for you for financial cop. What year in your career did that kick off? Or just, I guess, start from the ground, what? What? It's a crazy story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really started back with the senior trip company. I mean, I was making a crap load of money and I just was driving crappy cars at the time because it was working at a grocery store, right. I mean, my first love of my life was a 1989 silver Ford Festiva, right, silver bullet basically, or the silver bubble, and I put a stereo in there because you know what, what are you supposed to do as a kid? And take the backseat out and put a stereo. Well, I.
Speaker 3:It's always smart to put a $3,000 stereo in a $2,000 car.
Speaker 1:It's not the Irving thing.
Speaker 2:So the two. I don't actually tell the story of my class, but the reason I got rid of that car is I had to get rid of it because the stereo actually broke one of the welds in the roof.
Speaker 3:So the base hit it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was horrible. And so I ended up getting a 1993 Honda Civic coupe, putting a stereo in that. Then I started doing the senior trip and you know, buddy of mine was like you know, hey man, you make $40,000 a year. That Civic doesn't look like a $48,000 your car. And so I upgraded that car and got a 2001 Honda Civic coupe and of course you use credit cards to put a $5,000 stereo in that.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately for me, I went to a car audio competition at Dallas Market Hall one year and walked out and said, man, my car sucks. And I decided I wanted to compete on that level. So the year before I became a cop I dropped my car off at the car audio shop and said I want to be one of the top 10 cars in the nation when it comes to sound quality. So I went back to Cancun, came back home two months later and picked up a $21,000 car stereo system. God All on credit cards. Wow, I was playing the credit card shuffle game where you're shuffling credit cards around to get a 0% interest transfer and they get another credit card. And I became a cop and I discovered the most beautiful program in the world when I got done with training called STEP right. So electric traffic enforcement.
Speaker 3:So did Grand Prix not look at your credit, so I had good credit because I always paid my bills.
Speaker 2:I just had a lot of it. So on the credit, aspect I didn't fly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I liked with it.
Speaker 2:And so I started working overtime like crazy, and it was a good thing I did, because I kind of had got myself worked into a situation where, if I didn't work 20 hours of overtime every week, I couldn't pay my bills anymore, god bless.
Speaker 1:I mean kids at this point kids not married yet.
Speaker 3:The best advice my dad gave me when I got hired. He didn't want me to be a cop. He said if you're going to do it, you're not going to become in in in slave to part-time jobs, yep. And he said you're going to have buddies that are part-time horse and I'm just telling you not to do best piece of advice I've ever had. And I didn't have the money Some of my friends have, but I have buddies working 20 hours a week, every week. For the first 15 years we were there.
Speaker 3:That's practically me Wow.
Speaker 2:And the thing is is that the stereo destroyed the car and so I had to rip it out. So here I am with about 30,000 total and all my cost car stereos and credit cards and I got a car that's $7,000 upside down on the balance and a buddy of mine said hey, you should go to Grand Prairie four because they take care of us Grand Prairie cops. Right, we literally destroyed your car.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, destroy the electrical system completely.
Speaker 2:And so I went to Grand Prairie four and said hey, I got a problem, I'm 7,000 upside down on the balance of my car. And he goes, runs my credit, comes back with a big old grin and says don't worry about being 7,000 upside down, we'll roll that balance in in the next car. What kind of car would you like? I said, man, that yellow mock one Mustang was pretty. And so I bought a brand new 2003 mock one Mustang as a rookie. And of course you know when you drive it like you stole it because you got a badge and a gun. You also have to replace the brakes and tires every six months, like we do in our squad cars. And that became expensive.
Speaker 2:So I decided I will backtrack. I also met Carrie at the time, who I just figured out quickly was going to become my wife, and so I thought maybe it's time for me to go get me a grown up car. So I decided to do something even worse and go trade that Mustang in and that Mustang in. Mind you, 7,000 upside down on the accord, several thousand upside down on the Mustang, and I did the worst thing you can do, which is lease a car. I leased a fully loaded $36,000, accurate to yell. And I got home one night exhausted, not exhausted because I worked my shift in patrol, but because I did five hours a step before my shift started. And I remember I walked over to my kitchen table and it was the first night I ever added up all my bills and it was that night I realized, as a rookie cop, I was $80,000 in debt. Wow, like credit cards and car credit cards and cars, so it was all credit cards.
Speaker 1:And of course, you're probably renting or doing the courtesy officer. It's courtesy, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean heck, if I had lost the courtesy officer job, I'd have been ruined. I'd had to go up to 25 hours of overtime a week.
Speaker 3:So what do you do with $30,000 worth of stereo equipment?
Speaker 2:It gets sold for about 2,500 bucks. Traders village yeah yeah, it's not worth very much. As a matter of fact, we just moved recently and I actually still have a couple of the old pieces because I couldn't park, because they're so expensive. Oh my God, not selling this $1,600 speaker for a hundred bucks.
Speaker 3:So at 80 grand, how much on credit cards.
Speaker 2:Uh, probably about 40 is to 45 is was all in credit cards.
Speaker 3:What is minimum payment for for young listeners or or non-law enforcement? What would minimum payments just to keep the principle moving on, 40,000?
Speaker 2:It's around 450 to 500. Disc ever take Wow, not counting the least payment on the car. That was all upside down equity as well.
Speaker 1:And you're up and your percentage rate at that point was what? 18, 20%.
Speaker 2:Uh well, it's a lease, so it's an internal that you don't technically see with it. So it's it's part of how they sell the leases, is? It's not about the interest rate, it's about the monthly payment. Uh, but I was, in order to afford the monthly payment on all the upside down equity, I had a very low mileage allowance which was setting me up for a another.
Speaker 1:Blimey, yeah Down the on the on the credit card. You're looking at 18, 19%.
Speaker 2:Easy. I don't I mean easy, yeah, I mean I don't know what they were back then. I mean today the average interest credit card is 20% plus, so Wow.
Speaker 3:So four or 500 every month, just to keep the principle, just to. I mean just to keep, just to keep it basically neutral boy, yeah, Wow.
Speaker 1:So at what point did you realize, man, this is bullshit. I got to do something about this.
Speaker 2:You know, I added the debt up that night. It was $80,000 in debt and I think the real kind of bullshit old crap moment for me was Carrie's title changed from girlfriend to fiance and I kind of forgot to tell her this little bit of information. Ooh, yeah. So I think we sit across the table from the girl I wanted to marry and explain to her the guy she wanted to marry was $80,000 in debt, she happened to be debt free and if you will marry me today, we can do together 18%.
Speaker 2:If you want to pay, maybe yes, so you can imagine the look on her face and I looked at her. I said, carrie, I got a plan. And she kind of looked at me back and she said, you better? I was very lucky, you know, when I got released from training. My beat partner was a 20 year vet that became one of my best friends and he was that car, that would, that cop that would go car to car and pound financial wellness into their head. I ended up getting introduced to the Dave Ramsey program at the time too and I fell in love with this debt snowball mentality and I committed to Carrie that night that I'm like I'm I'm going to pay off all $80,000 before we get married.
Speaker 3:What year was that? Or about how long were you doing?
Speaker 2:This was about 2005, ish give or take, and so I pushed our wedding back a little bit and over the next 24 months I worked over a thousand hours of overtime and on March 3rd 2007, we got married, 100% consumer debt free. Everything about the house that's awesome.
Speaker 3:So you started on what? Roughly what day with $80,000?.
Speaker 2:Somewhere in 2005 ish mid 2005.
Speaker 3:And when were you out?
Speaker 2:March 3rd 2007 was our debt free day.
Speaker 3:Damn two years.
Speaker 2:I did that intentionally, so I could always remember our wedding anniversary, by the way.
Speaker 3:Two years.
Speaker 2:Now you know, I always I have people when we teach the class, we go through a progression of things. You don't pay off $80,000 in debt by working a thousand hours of overtime. Right, I had to get rid of some stuff, and so what was the first thing I got rid of? It was the Acura. I was upside down. I mean, I was way upside down. I ended up having to get a. I sold it. I had to get a loan for the difference because I was so upside down and I ended up driving Curie's.
Speaker 2:Then 2001 V6 Ford Mustang that I hated because it was a V6 and it was beat up and I had a Mach 1 before but it was paid for and we bought her an Ultima and we started working that debt snowball and that's how we paid off everything. And it's that whole sacrifice I mean, for two years I drove a shitty car. For two years I didn't go to restaurants, I didn't go on vacations. We live like no one else and if you go out in the parking lot right now, there's a fully paid for, fully loaded, accurate TL out there. You know, that's, that's what you have to get when it comes to the finances. It's about the sacrifices initially, so that you don't ever have to sacrifice down the road. But that's how this started is that's where I started getting interested in finances.
Speaker 3:So, for listeners, what when you sat down and realized, okay, I have 80 grand or anybody? If they sat down and looked and said, okay, I have a boat, a car, a house of $30,000 on credit card, maybe a little student loan, and what would a person, what would the initial assessment? Would you tell them to begin a snowball plan? Look at interest rate first. Look at the payment.
Speaker 2:No, it actually isn't even the snowball. You look at first. It's the number one thing we hate doing that you have to look at first. It's the dreaded B word, aka the budget. Nothing starts with a plan. Unless you have a budget, you can't pay off debt, just like you can't really technically save for retirement and a vacation and other things without understanding what your budget is. And so I had to get a grasp of what my outflow versus my inflow was, and I kind of came to a realization that you know we have this gift in law enforcement called overtime, right In.
Speaker 2:Far too many of us use overtime as a mechanism to elevate our standard of living. Well, I changed and said you know what we're going to use overtime? To build our financial strength, and I'm going to use it to accelerate things. And so I really cut down on the budget, right. No restaurants, no vacations, those kinds of things. To figure out what I had wiggle room wise, and then through that and then continuing to work 20 hours of overtime, since I was already used to it. We use that to build the debt snowball.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned interest rates. You know there's two schools of thoughts. There's the debt avalanche, which is kind of Suzie Orman's method where you list your debts from highest interest rate down and then there's the debt snowball where you list your debts from smalls to largest and I get a lot of debates with people about, well, if you do the avalanche, you're focusing on the highest interest rate, credit card first, so you're saving more money? Well, yeah, but see, money is not a mathematical equation, money is a psychological equation. Right, right, it's the psychology. I get people.
Speaker 2:You know we deal in the cops, you guys at TNPA deal with us. You know we need, we need raises, we need raises. Right, we're not getting paid enough. And I'll agree, yes, we need to get paid more. But all too often you hear these cops go if I could just get a 10% raise, well, no, the raise doesn't help. The money is the symptom. The problem is us. We have to recognize what we're doing. And good statistic, two things I've studied since I got involved with this marketing of debt and millionaires and I've registered about every study of millionaires you could ever get your hands on, and the largest one ever done was by a guy named Chris Hogan. He wrote a book called every day millionaires where he surveyed over 11,000 millionaires. Of the 11,000 millionaires surveyed, a third of them reported becoming millionaires, having never earned more than $100,000 in any given one year of their entire life. Wow, no kidding.
Speaker 1:So I've got a couple of questions. So one I've always been told in my whole life lived debt free. Pay off your shit, okay, so that means my house, my cars. But now I've got another financial guy that has nothing to stop the way with TNPA. It's just a guy that my father had used and they're in the mesh plugs.
Speaker 1:And he was telling me and this for your listener, our listeners out there, give you kind of an understanding I'm transitioning from God's country to South Texas Well, not South Texas, austin, south of Austin. And so he was telling me he actually made the recommendation of man get, get your house and get it financed, which was mind boggling to me, because this is coming from a financial guy my entire life, just like your dad did. He told me hey, get your shit paid off. And then I've got a truck, my wife's got a Jeep. Of course you know those are low interest rates, and so his ideology behind it is it's like man, you're not paying that much in interest. So if somebody's in my situation, the new listeners out there what recommendation would you have? Just off that Is it, is it smart to pay off your debt, or is it? Is it better? On taxes, I mean, what, what? Where's the happy medium here? So you gotta understand something about the financial world.
Speaker 2:The financial world, just like cars, just like grocery stores, they're all trying to make money, yeah, and if you don't invest with them, they don't have what's called billable assets. And this is one of the biggest things that is core to us in the financial cop team is that we look at financial planning from a different perspective, cause I go back to millionaires, and when you study millionaires, do you know what? Millionaires don't have Debt?
Speaker 3:They don't use debt for anything.
Speaker 2:Right, you know you talk if you ever watch Shark Tank. Right, you know Kevin O'Leary, mr Wonderful, constantly writing articles. You want to become wealthy. Stop using debt for everything. Why? Because one of the number one characteristics of millionaires in this country they don't play the interest game, they play the no payment game. Because what does that payment do to you from a cost opportunity down the road to be able to do something else?
Speaker 2:Right, I get in the retirement plan space. I get in arguments with my peers cause they're like you're telling people to stop contributing $50 to $100 a check and pay off credit cards. Well, first off, why are we trying to convince somebody to put money in the stock market and hope we make 10% while we're paying 20% on a credit card? That's the question. And 20% on a credit card? That's about half backwards. Right, that's right.
Speaker 2:But the second thing is is if I can get somebody debt free, build a fully funded emergency fund. Now, when the water here goes out, we don't have a crisis moment, we're not rating the 457 or doing a deferred comp loan, but, more importantly, instead of doing $50 to $100 a check, you're doing $500 to $1,000 a check, and so I'm going to catch up quicker and then at the end of the day, when you retire, your retirement account's going to be bigger. You're going to be financially prepared for retirement. And you're not calling your financial advisor going I need money because my AC went out. You're calling your advisor because you want to go on a fishing trip right, or a cruise or something, and so that's or living cancun.
Speaker 2:Correct, and so that's. The difference is is yes, your interest rate may be lower, but, the same token, what is that payment that you're tied to costing you in the form of opportunities? We go back to law enforcement. Right, we're losing our brothers and sisters in this industry like crazy. I mean, you guys remember back in the day we got into this job and it was meant I got to do 30, 35 years. Now it's. I got to do 25 to 30. Now it's just get me to 20. Yeah, I'm limping across the finish line. Well, and how many you?
Speaker 2:know I didn't, I didn't finish it yet but in the field, how many times have you heard a cop say I just, I got a dream, I got an idea, I just I, I, I don't want to, I can't leave law enforcement, I don't, I don't have any other skills, right? What I've found is that a good chunk of those it's not that they're scared because they don't have any skills, it's they're scared because they're tied to a payment they have to make. Yeah, now, when I left law enforcement, I jumped off a cliff. Right, I gave up a hundred thousand dollar a year salary, right, my pension.
Speaker 2:I had one of my fellow Academy mates call me recently and start planning his retirement. I looked at him and I said man, I hate you and he goes, why we were hired together. I'd be qualified for my pension right now. I got to wait until I'm 60. And so I jumped off a cliff and I had people tell me you're an idiot man, you're giving up this government job. But I had no debt to hold me back for a dream, and so when I jumped off the cliff, I went. My worst recourse is that this doesn't work out, I go back and I'd be a lateral somewhere. Oh damn, what did I lose?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How many of our cops get held back because it's about having to have a certain income to fulfill the payments, but they're miserable because of it?
Speaker 3:So to his point about like houses the house is a pretty good right off each year in Texas. Does that balance out if you pay your house off?
Speaker 2:Let me ask you this If I give you a hundred dollars, which would you rather have? $20 back or $80 back, 80 back? So if you take $100 in interest and you write that off your taxes, what you're saying is, I'd rather give the bank 80 bucks so that I don't have to give the federal government 20 in the write-off. I'd rather have the $20 go to the federal government and keep $80 myself. So the whole tax write-off equation of this just doesn't compute.
Speaker 2:When you dig into the math it's kind of like the. You'll hear financial advisors say don't pay your house off, invest in the market, because your mortgage is 3% but you can get 10 in the market. Well, that's a play on marketing. Works. If I do the math with the interest rates, that works. If I change the equation to the dollar amount, it doesn't anymore. Unless you have $300,000 to put in the market. Because if you make an extra principal payment on your house and that saves you $800 in interest on the back end of your loan, but that $1,000 goes in the market and it makes 10% this year, what did it make? It made 100 bucks. So same kind of equation. It's just again. This is why I studied the marketing aspect just as much as I did the millionaires, because it's just a play on the numbers to make it look good in that perspective versus another perspective.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to leave here and go talk to my wife. So you recommend?
Speaker 3:I've always heard hey, if you can make that 13th house payment each year, you recommend that.
Speaker 2:To a certain degree, and so we preach. We have our program that we call the eight phases to financial training. And you know, if you've ever followed Dave Ramsey has a seven baby steps and we designed our phases of training to kind of mimic the FTO phase. Right, we've all been through field training. We know you don't start in phase one and go to phase four. Right, sometimes you can accelerate the phases if you're a lateral, because you get to skip some stuff. But unfortunately sometimes for crude struggle and we got to pull them out of training and they've got to go to remedial to fix the problem.
Speaker 2:Sometimes when you're working a financial plan, the water heater goes out. It's time to go to remedial and step out of the plan, fix the water here and go right back into the plan. And so we preach those phases where we preach phase one being budgeting. Right, you got to do a budget every month. Phase two is to create a $2,000 baby emergency fund. Phase three is to do the debt snowball, focus on becoming debt free, paying off everything but the house. Then we go into emergency fund savings, then we go into extra retirement savings. Phase six is saving and invest for big purchases. You got kids. Let's talk about college planning. You want to buy a Corvette. How do we buy it? Buy that Corvette that doesn't cause us to go back forward.
Speaker 3:I need to skip to that phase. What is that phase? Remember live like no one else so you can live like no one else.
Speaker 2:Then we get to phase seven. So I don't want to go full bore and pay in the house off until we're debt free with an emergency fund. But then I don't want to go full bore on the house while neglecting retirement at the same time.
Speaker 2:So we start to do those in conjunction. So law enforcement we talk about. Tunnel vision is a bad word, right. Tunnel vision will get you killed In finances. Tunnel vision is pretty good in the beginning, right. I want to tunnel in on the emergency fund. I want to tunnel in on being consumer debt free. But once we get to phase five, now we can go back to our head on a swivel, right? I want to focus a little bit towards retirement, a little bit towards big purchases and a little bit towards paying off the house so that we can get back to living like no one else.
Speaker 1:So what do you think as far as you mentioned I think it's phase three, the emergency fund kind of padding that emergency fund. Phase four actually Phase four. Sorry, I was going off Clint. Clint told me three. What point? How much? Should one have an emergency fund? Because I'm again back to kind of my parents raising me, or my, my, my wife's father. He always told me three months, at least three months. Is that a good? Is that a good recommendation for our listeners?
Speaker 2:Yeah, three minimum. I prefer closer to six, just because we're cops and we like to plan for the worst, so I'd rather have. I've never met anybody that said, oh damn, I saved too much.
Speaker 3:So for our listeners, yeah, to be specific, what you guys are referencing emergency fund. So everybody's cost of living may be very different. Some people's debt may be five grand a month to survive, Some may be three or 10.
Speaker 3:Whatever it takes, if, if me and my spouse become unemployed right now, the amount of money it would take for us to continue survive for three months, five months, six months, whatever that, whatever that fund and it's going to vary forever family, but whatever it would take, if both of us are unemployed or the apocalypse absence today, that we can survive. Is that right, is that fair? It's really easy to figure out because remember phase one is the monthly budget.
Speaker 2:So what your monthly budget is, that's what you multiply times three or six. Now you get stuff in there you can cut out right In an emergency emergency in an emergency emergency. But that's a general rule of thumb as we tell people what your rough monthly budget is, three to six months of that.
Speaker 1:It makes sense and you know this is what's fascinating. This is the kind of segue into to a second part of this or third portion. You were a TMP. I remember when they were at Grand Prairie Still am man.
Speaker 1:Still am, you know. And then you got Mike Parker, you got James Bab, you got guys that have actually cops right, and that's what I find always awesome about you and your team is the fact that you guys have been where we're at. You've been the 21 year old guy that's made obviously a hundred thousand dollars, but I know, god knows, it wasn't back then when you, whenever you started Grand Prairie, was poor, like probably 50 or 60. But man, you've, you've walked the shoes that most of your clients that you're giving this advice to, and so that's what I find so awesome about financial cop and I find that you know you're not preaching something to somebody that you didn't walk yourself. You're not preaching financial advice to doctors or lawyers. I mean you're you're preaching the shit to cops. That you know because you've worked in it. You might, james, and you know you're always trying to expand that team with other cops, and so you know I just kudos to you for doing that man.
Speaker 2:It's. You know, I got it in this industry because I wanted to have somebody that had a voice that understood right. Far too often. I mean, there's a lot of really good financial firms out there, a lot of good financial planners, but the reality is is unless you've put a gun in a badge on for 10, 15 years, you just don't understand. Well, let's call it spade of spade.
Speaker 1:Cops are weird. I'm calling a lot. You can get pissed off. Tyler Owen, dot at Owen that TMP, a dot org. We're a strange bunch of people. Yeah, and so to give advice to a certain industry or a certain group of people that we know as cops, it takes a special breed of person.
Speaker 3:Well, and we're a bit hard headed. The funny story I was going to share. My Academy class started 31. I think we graduated 28 or 29. Last day of the Academy we had a commander named Plumlee Rex Plumlee, kind of like Sergeant Major Plumlee was and a few good men not a few good men.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm fixing off. I'll say in a minute the Marine Sergeant. We were soldiers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was just like him. He was a rough, respected, hard man. Last day of the Academy said y'all are going to field training, you're getting back. Then Z71 trucks were the thing, z71.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think there still are, oh man they like they were back, then it just come out that Z71 package.
Speaker 3:They just come out. Plumlee said 28 of you are going to field training. A bunch of you morons aren't going to make it and I know a bunch of you dumbasses are going to end up at a car dealership. This was on a Friday. A bunch of you dumbasses are going to be at a car dealership tomorrow. I'm telling you don't go to a car dealership because you're not going to make it through training. What'd you go by?
Speaker 3:Z71. So when I pull onto the back lot with the weekend off, when I pull on the back lot that next Monday night, sunday night or Monday night for our first night in training on deep nights, garland, at the old station, the parking lot was really dark out the back. So when I pull in, I black out because I have dealer tags and we were told don't do it. So I'm trying to hide in the trees and park in the dark. Well, I look all these others Z71's with paper tags are pulling in, trying to park. So I get out and it's all my Academy mates. We're all in brand new Z71 trucks.
Speaker 2:I have a slide in my class. It's called the FTO starter pack and when I tell my story I get to that point where I say you know, hey, look, I fell. I fell for the FTO starter pack. And it's these pictures and says this is what we do, right, we get out of the academy, we get a sports car, our truck, we get a rifle, we get a tattoo. We did a nurse, a teacher or a dispatcher broke right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, four guns, universal right. Yeah, four wives.
Speaker 3:So that comes a little after FTO. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Man, do you got anything else that you want to kind of touch on that that you think is crucial to the you know listeners and law enforcement guys that they're in financial situation right now that they can maybe call you or laying on you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the things we're going to do is I'm going to give you guys a QR code to throw up here, and so anybody watching this you know we're we're well known for two parts. We're really well known for our financial wellness. You know we're one of the largest in the country. We've taught over 30,000 first responders from 3000 agencies and we have our entire virtual academy, and so what we're going to offer is anybody watching this pack podcast can get free access to that for a full year, oh yeah, so we've got our four hour class on there right now.
Speaker 2:within the next couple of months we're actually adding budget workshops, retirement seminars. We're building one of my a class that's near and dear to me. We're actually going to put out outside the academy for free. We're building a pre marital financial coaching class for first responders.
Speaker 3:So the QR code you're talking about, then click on it and get this for free, for free for one year, and so we're like I'm going to put it a clamp.
Speaker 1:See if you can guess. Right here, right here, right here, right here.
Speaker 2:And so the second thing we're known for is the financial planning. So we are a fiduciary only financial planning firm, which is a unique entity. Right, there's about 300,000 firms out there. What does that mean? So fiduciary is a term that says you're required by SEC regulation to put the client's interest ahead of yours at all times, not just some of the time, but all times.
Speaker 3:Now, break that down into dumb caveman marine terms.
Speaker 2:So you get two different types of financial firms out there. You got what are called broker dealers and you got registered investment advisors. So the fiduciary is under the registered investment advisor side of things. Think probable cost right, have to do what's right at all times. The broker dealer side is under the suitability side of things Think reasonable suspicion 51% correct. And about 90% of the firms out there are dual registered. So you kind of never know which one you're really working with. And there's nothing wrong with being dual registered. You just need to understand that aspect.
Speaker 1:Can you ask a firm if they are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, in the class you guys are getting access to for free, we actually have a section it's my favorite section called how to interrogate financial planners.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 2:Right, we're cops, right yeah, we go ask tough questions on the streets to elicit lies. How do we ask these financial planners and advisors the same questions to elicit either a lie or elicit some trust?
Speaker 2:And get a lot of flat from my peers about this, don't care, this is about taking care of our brothers and sisters. And so that's the question we tell people ask is are you a suitability advisor, a fiduciary advisor or both? And if they come back and they say, well, we're a fiduciary advisor, well, that's, that's fine. So let's follow it up and go, well, do you also have your suitability license? And if they go, well, yeah, well, you asked them both and they tried to straight. You know kind of go skate a line and so put them through the ringer on that. If they say they're both, ask them okay, how are you going to treat me today? Are you going to treat me like a suitability advisor or fiduciary advisor or both? And then the number one question which is my favorite is is fees, what are your fees? I tell people that you should be able to slide a four by six postcard across the table and say Mr or Mrs advisor, what's your fees? If you get past the second line of this four by six postcard, I'm going to get up.
Speaker 2:And there's some new laws that are best interests on the suitability side, where that would have to be explained in a contract. But it's kind of one of those. How well do they explain the contracts of that sense? Whereas, instead of having to come and go, I think this is the best product in convincing you and selling you on that product per se. On the fiduciary side, there is no selling of products because that advisor gets compensated the same, no matter what they do.
Speaker 2:It's designed in a manner where if your investments do better, we do better. If they go, if the market goes down like last year, we go down and our fees go down. So it's it's it's more transparency, and that's what we're really big at at financial cop is 100% transparent. I tell people at the time it's a blessing and a curse to work with my brothers and sisters. It's a blessing because we can sit across the table and we are cops. There's that icebreaker. It's a curse because if you screw up one thing, you might as well shut your doors right. Word travels fast in this industry.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, and the most law enforcement. If you screw one of us over, then you kind of get that idea that they're going to be, you know so it's.
Speaker 2:It's why we're honored to have the support of TNPA. It's why we're honored to be the exclusive endorse firm for the relentless defender apparel group.
Speaker 1:So we've we've got some pretty big people behind us that have said well and it goes back to what I just said a while ago- is the fact that your team have been all been cops and that's why I've always really you know, not the other firms out there aren't as respected as financial cop, but the fact that you guys walk the same shit that I did. You guys have been, you know, had to make the arrest and had to fight the people and walk the same block as every other cop out there. That's what I find, you know, so honorable. Uh, you know that you're you're now giving advice to cops that basically, our membership made up of a member.
Speaker 2:So and you're, and we tell people all the time interview all the firms. Right, you just took it with somebody because we're a cop right. Put them through the ringer and you're.
Speaker 1:You are a good looking man.
Speaker 2:There's no doubt about it. Yeah, yeah, you are trainers for FOP as well?
Speaker 3:Is that right?
Speaker 2:Uh, so we have taught for the FOP wellness symposium twice. We did their conference a couple of years ago. So we, yeah, we have done some stuff with them. We've been teaching for concerns of police survivors for geez I think, six out of the last seven years. Uh, so we've we've done some pretty pretty major conferences where we just not we don't just get invited to go teach, we get invited to come back over and over, which is, I think, one of one of the biggest things. I am honored when I get an invite back Go ahead.
Speaker 3:Well, no, I think that's cool because y'all've taught at Lehman leadership, you've taught at Kareuth police institute teaching young leaders, and I think y'all teach all new supervisors at DPD.
Speaker 2:Not DPD. So we teach all the school of police supervision classes for ILEA. That's right, that's right we teach all the leadership academy at Kareuth. We do the leadership command college at Lehman. We just got done with all 1200 chiefs for the police chief leadership series. So we, we, we hit a lot of the leaders throughout their career. Guys, and these aren't just optional. These are some of these are mandatory classes these supervisors have to go through.
Speaker 3:And we had Joe King, host of bridging the divide um ATO, dallas ATO podcast on and he said that you guys are going to be again collaborating on wellness financial adding to enhancing their wellness program.
Speaker 2:And looking to figure out how we can kind of help support them too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool, that's good stuff. And I think just just follow back on the concerns of boys, survivors and so forth. We don't me and Clint not saying we're failing, but we, we don't mention this enough is the fact that how important having a good will in place, speaking of financials and if you're a TMP member, you get that as that is a benefit of your membership package. So if you do yeah, if you do not have a will in place, I strongly, strongly, strongly urge our listeners, if you are a TMP member, to reach out to a field rep. You know, give us call. One hundred eight, four eight, two zero eight eight. We can get that set up for you through California and rainy de bravo.
Speaker 2:I'll give you a sidebar. We have a giveaway on our website where, if you go there, at the bottom of every page is a free download for a 16 page fillable legacy go bag. There you go, right, we all have a go bag on our squad car. Well, what's our legacy go bag for our family to create so that, if God forbid, that day happens, your family knows where to go to pick up? Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's great. Great advice on Tio's note, when you update your will, if your will was two X, y's ago as a beneficiary, update your will, contact the city or the county, update the beneficiary there. Those don't all crossover. Yeah, if you're in TMR, st, cdr, s, contact them, update your beneficiary, your 401k, your 457, contact us and update all of that. A lot of people update a will and they think all of those things populate and crossover.
Speaker 2:Every two years. We tell people every two years I don't care if nothing's changed, pull your will out, make sure it's still meet what your, your wishes are. And then go, not just change, but go verify the beneficiaries are still correct. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We had TMRS on several episodes ago and to mine I did not know this episode Great episode.
Speaker 3:Shout out to Debbie.
Speaker 1:Munoz yeah, yeah, so I did not know. This A will does not supersede a beneficiary on your TMRS or your 457 or your IRAs. So your will may say I'm giving all my shit to Nick and Clint and they can fight amongst them however they want to dispute it, but if my beneficiary.
Speaker 2:yeah, I think it'll be much We'll work it out yeah.
Speaker 1:But if my beneficiary package says that I'm going to give it to Natalie Garza, our awesome, you know blue red co-host here on the on the backside that we never get to see, she gets all the money, not Nick and Clint. So I just want to be clear on that. If you do not know that that's why Clint was mentioning TMRS, tcdrs is that fact that you have to change your beneficiary except your will.
Speaker 2:You guys have seen the horror stories we have on the crisis the crisis coaching we do with, with, with officers that have passed away. I mean, I can't tell you how many times we get there and it's like, hey, I you know. Does he have a pension? Yeah, he has a pension. Who's the beneficiary? The ex-wife.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's like it's. It's almost like they have to relive that that horror story again and it's just it's horrible, it's a bad. He and him have seen it, you've seen it. It's just a bad situation.
Speaker 3:So what is? It may be a dumb question.
Speaker 1:What is the number one?
Speaker 3:What is the Number one failure that you see young cops begin Is there. Is there one thing that you could say that?
Speaker 2:It's the thought process of I don't need to do anything to prepare for retirement.
Speaker 2:Because I have a pension, right I, when we teach academy classes, I hear people all the time I don't need to do a defer comp. Right, I got a pension. And by the time they realize that the pension's not going to replace their income, they've lost their most valuable asset, which is time. Yeah, and so we, we, we got to get these. We're actually working through an entity right now where by the end of this year, we're hoping to make our virtual academy free for all recruits in the state of Texas. It's kind of a trial before we expand that out nationally, because if we can get these young recruits to recognize, hey, I need to start doing a budget, I need to get my debt under control. We start getting them, you know, saving for retirement. Now, when we get to 20 years, if we want to go, we go and we're not stuck with what every department has, which is grumpy, is in every briefing. That brings the entire shift down, because they're miserable, because they hate this place, because they can't afford to retire.
Speaker 1:I wonder if financial wellness will ever be. Of course it's not going to be as as as big as you know mental wellness or health. You know physical wellness, but how awesome would it have been if you or I would have had financial wellness being taught in the academy.
Speaker 3:What's like they've had to do in the NFL. Yeah, they realized in the NFL you're giving a 22 year old kid a couple of million dollars a year.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Teaching.
Speaker 3:You didn't even know how to open a checking account. Yep, why don't you teach that from the ground floor? Yeah, before you turn, you know a 20 year old NFL with millions of dollars, or a 21 year old cop with no bills and 70 grand.
Speaker 2:There's not a. You're setting them up for failure. Yeah, that's what the recruits are Is. They are millionaires, they're, they're, they're, they've been, if you think about it, from the day you start working on this industry until the day you retire. Most of our cops are going to earn three to $4 million in income, and so they are millionaires. Yeah, you know. It's just a matter of what you do with the pieces of the puzzle during that time period that dictates whether you stay a millionaire or you retire, bro, that's powerful, Clint McNeer and Tyler Owen and maybe even Nick Dottray.
Speaker 1:we will try our damn this next year to maybe file a bill filed. Maybe financial wellness can be added to the academy.
Speaker 3:I thought you were going to announce right now that within a couple of years we're going to be millionaires. Oh well, I mean.
Speaker 1:I hope so. Just put you on, put me on as your beneficiary.
Speaker 2:Just take some discipline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so to your point.
Speaker 3:One of the guys in the academy that graduated ahead of me got an FTO named Mark Castile. Shout out to Mark. He told the. He told John do you have any debt? No, you know John. Do you have any debt? No. Do you have any kids? No, do you have. Do you have any debt? No, to get out of my phase of training, you're going to walk across street city hall. You're going to sign up for the max 401k or 457.
Speaker 3:You're going to max it out or I'll fill you out of FTO, and John told me the story a couple of times. He's like I was so freaking pissed off, but it was a. It wasn't that many years later, when he knew the date, he was becoming a millionaire. He literally knew the date Wow, within, I think, six or seven years he knew on what date he was going to become and he's like now.
Speaker 3:I could kiss Mark Castile's face and it shocked me that a 21 year old kid right now that gets hired at grand prayer or wherever, needs to understand. If you live right, you're going to earn 4 million, 3 or 4 million in the next 25 years. You have a choice right now you can be like this fat guy talking right now, or you could. You could, you could retire a millionaire with 25 or 30 years on. That's huge man. It goes back to what you said earlier about the.
Speaker 2:do I pay off the house or do I invest Right? You know, one of the things that we our philosophy at financial cop is is is the kiss principle. I keep it simple, stupid, why we're not teaching anything that's revolutionary. This is stuff our grandparents did, right. And a percent this is, it's just common sense principles. But I know that when you keep things simple, things tend to work out. When you start getting complicated in financial plans, you start trying to do like.
Speaker 2:that's where Murphy happens. Murphy is going to happen. A kid's going to break a leg, an AC is going to go out of, cars going to break down. But if I keep it simple, we create the the fail safe right. If, if my AC goes out and I got to replace my AC unit, does that suck? Yeah, it sucks, but does it stress me out Financially? No, that's what the emergency funds for. Is there a, is there a percentage that you recommend.
Speaker 1:Before we'd hop off here of what somebody's, let's just say that one of our listeners uh, there are in their total income Monthly is $5,000. Is there a percentage of what you recommend on total bills? So your total bills would be a house car? Uh, if they do have credit card debt, we're going to take that out. But I mean, is there a percentage? What you recommend with financial card, what, what, what is that? So for your mortgage?
Speaker 2:I like to try to keep your mortgage as close to 25% as possible of your, of your gross, and just to be a gross, I'm sorry of your. Take on pay. Take on pay, okay.
Speaker 1:So principal interest taxes and your insurance combined. Household income combined household income. Can you go over that?
Speaker 2:Yes, they will approve you for more than that 25%. Anything more than that. It gets tough to do other things like retirement planning. Yeah, you know, for cars.
Speaker 2:we recommend that you add all the engines in your home up to go boats, atvs, cars, et cetera. The value of your engines in your household should not be worth more than half of your current take home pay and that's an indication that you don't have too much side up on an asset that's going down in value with an asterisk. I tell people all the time, you know I don't like buying brand new cars because of the depreciation factor. We do a whole lesson on this in the class. But when you become debt free with an emergency fund, you're saving for retirement and you're the you know assets minus liabilities, you're officially a millionaire. If you want to go splurge on a car, go splurge on a car. You've earned that right. Cash for it, cash. Well, yeah, exactly, cash for it.
Speaker 2:You know we tell people after babies or after a baby financial phase four your debt free with a fully funded emergency fund in your. You've got nothing but the house left. You want to fly first class, right? Go drop 150 bucks on a stake you know you live a little that.
Speaker 2:That that's you deserve that. It's about the sacrifices early. Right, you want to boat? You can buy a boat. It just needs to be in the right phase, not when you get out of the academy. Cool, I just want to. I think I want to go back to Nick the cop. What was your best day?
Speaker 3:on the job and your worst day on the job, oh uh worst day on the job was Christmas and I remember the year it was the the shooting we had in Christmas day that did drug on all day long.
Speaker 2:It's just um. You know, I was fortunate as a sergeant never have to be on duty when we had an officer shot that passed away. But we had, you know, we had a lot of people who were on duty and we had a lot of people who were on duty, and we had a lot of people who were on duty and we had a lot of people who were on duty, but we had, you know, several officers shot that day. Uh, best day on the job, I don't know. Just about every day I was a sergeant on patrol. I mean that. I mean there is no better job than patrol sergeant.
Speaker 3:Good gig.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's your, it's your, you're, you're in the middle, right, you? You, yes, you have some admin roles, but it's your ability to still be one of the guys and effect change. And you know, I, I actually, if you want to know my favorite day um, hopefully this dispatcher is not listening we had this dispatcher that for years. Right, it's five 58, right before quitting time and there's a delayed BNV report. And so when I got promoted, I was lucky.
Speaker 2:I was a nine year sergeant, so I got put on the 30 year veteran shift and so I gained a lot of respect the first week because, even though I was the baby, this dispatcher five 58, I remember what number, you know 135 responded to this. You know, bnv report, this delay, and I'd been wanting to do this for my entire life and I got on. I was like one 30, one 30, go ahead. I believe that call can hold for deep nights. Yeah, that was one of my favorite things I ever did. That's awesome. So got a lot of street cred with the guys he was like.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, finally somebody in it.
Speaker 2:But too I got to tell a dispatcher for years and she couldn't tell me no.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome. So what would 40 year old Nick tell 17 or 18 year old Nick?
Speaker 2:Um, there's speakers that sound just as good, that aren't 16.
Speaker 3:No, Jensen by Jensen kicker kicker, not Jensen, bad word.
Speaker 2:Um, I would go back and say you know what it's, it's, it's okay to splurge a little bit in moderation, but don't think that you have to have the image of the Joneses. Yeah, you don't have to have the best of everything, and it was. It actually was easier back then because we didn't have Facebook. Right, it's tough for now.
Speaker 1:Big time. Social media plays a big part of it.
Speaker 2:And and that was what I wish is that I didn't have to have the impression of look at me, I'm going to all these vacations, I'm buying these nice cars. I could have still had nice cars, I could have still had a nice stereo system, but it didn't have to be that nice, right.
Speaker 3:Don't live solid advice. Champagne lifestyle on an old Milwaukee budget yeah.
Speaker 2:And if you do that, when you do get to 40, guess what you do get to do? You get to live the champagne lifestyle. At that point, if you take the right steps in your discipline, you get to enjoy it then yeah, solid advice, I like it All.
Speaker 1:Right, man, we got some rapid fire questions coming at you.
Speaker 2:Oh good, Uh-oh.
Speaker 1:What is your favorite cop movie, your line from a cop movie, your favorite patrol vehicle and your favorite drink of choice?
Speaker 2:Favorite patrol vehicle hands down Crown Vic. Anybody that says not yes. So I was the fleet coordinator and I was the last sergeant to ever drive the Crown Vic, I'm telling you you're not going to win this debate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Crown Vic, this it's a workhorse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's the workhorse Cop movie. I got to be honest. I didn't watch a lot of cop movies because I really embraced the. When I was out the door, I was out the cop mode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I just never watched a lot of cop movies.
Speaker 2:That's smart. That's all. That's good advice too. Drink of choice. I'm weird, right? You know everybody in Texas. They're all bourbon drinkers. I am a rum fanatic because of my Cancun days.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm talking like rum that you drink, like bourbon on the rocks that you would just like 18 year old and a a a Dom Ponte 18 year. I've had people in my house are like rum. Okay, I'll get your bourbon, I'll hand them a dark glass and they'll start drinking. They're like what the hell is this?
Speaker 3:I'm like it's rum and they're like no, we had another big room drinker on.
Speaker 1:Matt is Malinsky. I think it was his last name, the Lubbock guy.
Speaker 3:He's a huge room guy. That's right, that's right, that's right Is it high on sugar, though?
Speaker 1:Is it rum high on sugar? It?
Speaker 2:is. But the good in Yale run is just. It doesn't taste. You have a hint of sweetness, it's just. It's like a good bourbon, it's just smooth.
Speaker 1:As long as it doesn't taste like an Angel's envy, I'm 100% okay. So what?
Speaker 3:what would a good quality rum? What brand? What?
Speaker 2:will you look?
Speaker 3:for to try.
Speaker 2:Dom Ponce, 18 year, is my favorite. They have a seven year old with a little lighter. That's good for rum and coke. Escapas is another one. They have a white label, that's good for rum and coke. A black, that's a little bit better. And the XO is good, just on the rocks. Those are my two go-tos.
Speaker 3:Cool.
Speaker 1:All right, I like it. Yeah, absolutely. You got anything else, clint? Nope.
Speaker 3:Click on the QR code QR code that he'll probably put over my face. It's a great opportunity. Appreciate you guys coming on and your staff is.
Speaker 2:Mike Parker, james Bab and I've got Brian Boxer's retired sorcerer from Carrollton, and then we've got our back in staff with Amy Parker and Kari Dardi, mike and Pfeife of me.
Speaker 3:And so your staff. Grand Prairie, mesquite Plano and Carrollton.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, Good. With Rapid League we're going to be expanding into multiple states in the next 12 months as well. Good Wow.
Speaker 1:Good deal. Awesome man. I appreciate you, brother again, and your experience and everything. It's just. It goes to show that man, you just know who you're investing your stuff with and that's why, again, y'all being cops and everything, it's just a good. It's just a good program. So appreciate you being here, appreciate you guys coming in. Thank you guys, it's an honor to be here. Hey, you guys stay safe out there. Hit that like subscribe button. Do not beat up Clint too bad. If you guys have any questions. Bluegrid at tmpaorg. It's bluegrid at tmpaorg. Man, it's been a good episode.
Speaker 3:It's been good.
Speaker 1:Drive that forward like you stole it when you go home and like a crown Vic. I will.
Speaker 3:North and bound.
Speaker 1:God bless you guys and, as always, and God bless Texas, we're out.
