Audit Your Life Vision | Brendan O'Rourke | Growing Money with Sean Trace

I sat down with Brendan O'Rourke, Managing Partner at Greenway Financial Advisors, and this conversation is one of those that quietly shifts the way you think about money. Brendan works primarily with retirees and pre-retirees, and the wisdom he's gathered from sitting across from hundreds of families comes through in every answer he gives.

We got into why so many people feel financially stuck even when things look fine on paper, and his answer has nothing to do with income. We talked about the difference between having a rigid plan and simply moving in the right direction, why telling people to follow their passion is often terrible advice, and how wealthy families think about money in ways most people never get exposed to. He also broke down the three-bucket framework he'd give his younger self: spend, protect, and grow - simple, boring, and genuinely powerful.

When it comes to your money, are you more of a detailed planner or a "pick a direction and course correct" type, and has that approach actually worked for you?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Very very infrequently do people come in with a specific question about a line in the tax code, right? I mean, there's a certain there's a certain person who thinks that way, but more often than not, it's the interesting, more flashy part of wealth that gets um that that gets spoken about uh as opposed to the blocking and tackling in meat and potatoes, which which secret, uh this shouldn't be a secret, that is that is it in a nutshell. The meat and potatoes blocking and tackling in wealth creation and financial planning, that's that really is it, you know, capital I it. That's that that's where the magic happens, is with just uh spending less than you than you are, right? Stuff like that we all know, but it's have you actually looked to see um, you know, are there are there tax um minimization techniques that you can use to that are just low-hanging fruit that you haven't you haven't just come across yet?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

All right, welcome everybody back to the Growing Money with Sean Trace Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Trace, and I've got an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Sure. Well, first off, Sean, thanks for having me. I I appreciate the reach out and the invitation. Um, I am Brendan O'Rourke. Um, and in probably in the most broadest sense, uh, I like to think that I help families and and more specifically help families make financial decisions. Um, the families that I mostly help are retirees or pre-retirees. Um, and they come to me really looking for, you know, a number of things. Uh, oftentimes it's some combination of of um strategic help, implementation help, actually bringing the plan, you know, their their financial plan to life. Um, but I'm I think we'll get into more detail on that, Sean, as we kind of chat here. Um beyond the the the professional side, I'm a dad. I have three kids under the age of five. Um so kind of a family man, a busy family man. I know you're a busy man yourself uh as well, so we can kind of relate over, relate over that. Um and that's that's really me in a nutshell. I also, you know, I'm a bit of a fitness enthusiast. Uh that keeps, you know, when I when I'm not working with the kids, try to keep my body in uh in in good shape. So that that's me in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

That's awesome, man. It's it's cool because you know, one of the things too that I I love about this is that you can see that one of the things I like about really great financial advisors is that they're really normal people and they have normal life experiences and they try to help people figure out their steps because it would be great if there was a book that said these are the answers to life. But I will tell you that I've been looking, uh, but I haven't found it yet. Not saying it's not out there, but I just haven't seen it. And I do know that there's a lot of cool people that are doing cool things though, and can help steer people in the right direction. What leads me to my first question for you. Like, for people that are listening, like, what does a financial advisor actually do for someone like me or like one of my listeners?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

It it kind of goes back to the about me, my intro about who I am. Um, each family, and as I said, I I work predominantly with with pre-retirees. So my my target audience is is kind of specific in that sense, but I'll speak more broadly to how financial advisors help people like you, Sean, like people listening in. In my mind, I always ask myself when I'm having a conversation with with a potential new client, or you know, you could say a prospect conversation. There's a really helpful question just to say, what brings you here today?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

What are you actually looking for help with? And through my time working with, you know, at this point, hundreds of families, I've recognized that often it's some combination of help, contingency, and time. It's some combination of those things. So when I say help, I mean it could be somebody who feels as though they have a good grasp on what they on what their kind of overarching strategy is, but they want a professional to come in and say, okay, you got 70% there, you got 80% there, let's get you from 80 to 100%. Let's really make this a robust strategy. Um, you have some people who come and say, hey, I know what the strategy is. I just need help bringing it to life. I'm a busy professional. I have I have a bunch of kids, I have, you know, interests outside of my financial life. I want somebody to actually think of it almost like a personal trainer. Like I know what I need to do to get myself in shape, but I need somebody how I'd like somebody, I'm I'm seeking somebody to help kind of bring, you know, bring the plan to life. And then the contingency one is is always interesting. Um, again, particularly working with with retirees. It could be contingency for for a spouse, or it could be contingency, call it institutional knowledge for the next generation. And often it's there's some combination of of potentially both those things. An outside, independent, trusted partner who knows mom or dad's or whoever's desires and is helping um shepherd to you know to to whoever eventually inherits that wealth, or or potentially if it's if it's you know spousal contingency to make sure that the spouse who isn't as interested in the financial uh side of their lives is well taken care of if need be.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

I love the personal like fitness personal trainer analogy because to me it's spot on. Like I can go to the gym and I can go and do the same exercises, and you see this all the time. Even people who go regularly to exercise. The thing that's wild is that you know, you see like fitness trainers, like people who don't do leg day, you know, or like people that are training, like you know, like, or they just only row. I saw I knew this one guy that all he did was rowing, and granted it was a great, pretty great, you know, full body exercise. He started noticing that there was imbalances, and he just wasn't, you know, the way that he set up the way that he wanted to be set up, you know, and instead, you know, if you can go and work with a trainer, work with a a person, a a um financial planner that can give you a plan. Because a plan is the best thing that you can have, like whether it be like at the gym or in life, you know, dating, whatever, man. Like, as long as you have a plan, it's a good thing, you know? And not just in enacting the plan, the ability to enact the plan, I think, is a big deal, you know?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Right, absolutely. Just to continue with the trainer kind of metaphor here. If you if those of us who have gone and worked with any sort of coach, a golf coach, a ski coach, a physical trainer, yeah, what they ultimately end up trying to do is figure out where where you're putting all of your time and effort is often where you don't need help. You often need help on the putting green, right? You can hit your driver's streak, you're good at with your iron game, but your putting is the shortcoming. And you often, as a as a as a person, training that thing that we don't like to do is uncomfortable. So we shy away from it, right? Pull-ups, another great example. Like a lot of people don't like doing pull-ups because they're hard. The only way to get better at pull-ups is by doing more of them. So you could you could say the same thing about finance. Often people will ask about investing because it's interesting, it can be sexy, it can be um very uh very infrequently do people come in with a specific question about a line in the tax code, right? I mean, there's a certain there's a certain person who thinks that way, but more often than not, it's the interesting, more flashy part of wealth that gets um that that gets spoken about uh as opposed to the blocking and tackling in meat and potatoes, which which secret, uh this shouldn't be a secret. That is that is it in a nutshell. The meat and potatoes blocking and tackling in wealth creation and financial planning, that's that really is it, you know, capital I it. That's that that's where the magic happens, is with just uh spending less than you than you earn, right? Stuff like that that we all know, but it's have you actually looked to see um, you know, are there are there tax um minimization techniques that you can use to that are just low-hanging fruit that you haven't you haven't just come across yet, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:59

This is something too that I I'm fascinated by because you know one of the things too, I think people don't know. Again, I I say this all the time. People don't know what they don't know. And you know, and it might seem you know, like, oh yeah, of course, obviously you're just saying some stupid thing, like saying, but like, yeah, but when you talk about finances, people don't know, you know, all right, what is this, you know, thing that you could do? What is this plan that you could do? People don't realize that there is an awful lot that can be done, you know. Whether it be like, let's go back to the gym analogy, you know. Well, I didn't know early on that, you know, hang on, there's different aspects of the gym, you know, like, hey, you gotta have some cardio, you gotta have uh weight training. I thought that I was in great shape when I played sports in school and I was lanky and lean, I was always getting hurt. And I someone like I didn't understand that, you know, like, oh, you mean you can play sports and still not be in great shape, you know, like you there's actually what like what conditioning? Like, what is that? Because no one taught me that. No one was there to teach me that I didn't know about this thing. And I think that with personal finance, there's a whole bunch more that people don't know that they don't know. And it it just gets me to this question of like, if a person's just getting started, what's the first thing they should do with their money?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

It's a it's an interesting question. So somebody who's just getting started, um, who's uh presumably you're saying somebody who's saved a bit of money that wants to do something with that money? Is that what you're asking, Sean?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah, yeah, kind of along those lines.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

I I I would argue that you have to look at where their biggest risk is. So I would I would I would back up and I would make the argument to say, what is the purpose of that money that you're setting aside? Is it for near-term protection? Is it to make sure that you have something, a nest egg, so to speak, or a protective reserve in the event something happens in your life that you, you know, the classic one is you lose a job, disability, right? That you you can rely on that money to be there. Um drastically different recommendation than somebody who's saying this is long-term money, I want it to grow for me, I want to compound over time. So I I would ask the question of just, and maybe this is part of the discovery process with that person, is is saying, Well, why are we saving this money? Why are we putting this aside? And how does it fit within the overall context of of the rest of your financial life?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah, right, I love that too, because you have to fit things uh into that context of their overall vision, you know, like say a good example, getting back to fitness because it's an easy one for a lot of people to reference. For me, I train Muay Thai, right? So I go to the Muay Thai gym. Now, one of the problems is when I first started going there, coaches started training me like they were training some guy to become a professional fighter. I don't want to be a professional muay thai fighter. That's not my ambition. That is not where I'm at, and that was getting me messed up constantly. And finally, I pulled the coach aside and I was like, dude, I'm not there. Like, and I don't ever want to be there. I I have I'm a 40-something year old dad. I want to focus on being able to be fit, have good cardio, be strong enough. So if something happens, if something pops off, I can be, you know, able to defend my wife and daughter. I can be ready to react. If there's a tiger that jumps out behind me, might not be able to outrun it, but I'm sure as hell gonna try and not get winded in the process. You know, those are things that I would hope that I can pull off. But yet I'm not trying to be a professional fighter. And I think that that's kind of the context that you got to have. Like, where is that person at in their life? Are they a 25-year-old kid who's got their first job and they're starting to make a little bit more money? Are they someone that's approaching retirement? Are they someone that's in the peak of their career? I think all of these people are gonna have something different. And yet some of the same principles would still always apply to them, you know, like how you, you know, spending less than you make, you know, that's pretty universal. It's pretty freaking important. You know, if you're not doing that, you're gonna have problems. But yet the specifics get much more nuanced for each situation, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

It makes total sense. Um, again, I'll just I'll I'll talk about the families that I'm mostly helping, which are retirees. That trans that transition, Sean, from accumulating wealth to getting to most of the time, you know, oftentimes when I speak to somebody for the first time, they're at their peak wealth level. They've been working their whole career, and now they've amassed a certain amount of wealth. And now they're asking me, you're telling me I need to go from having a paycheck hit my account once or twice a month. That spigot is that that toggle, that dial is getting turned all the way down, and I need to need to recreate that on my own. I was really comfortable with the set it and forget it, put the money into the markets, let it rip and ride over the last 20 years. But now I'm approaching a different phase of life where I need to um consume that wealth that I've built. And I feel like I need to have maybe this is the more macro point, I need to have a strategy and a plan to again, everybody's different. Some people like a plan that is that is, you know, to the T, uh, very, very detailed, very dialed in. But other people just like to go through the process and say, these are my North stars. I'd like to leave something to the kids. I'd like to ensure that we can do these um things in retirement that are important to us. Maybe it's traveling to Asia, maybe it's doing, you know, oftentimes it is some form of travel or some form of experience that they that folks didn't have during their their working lives. Um, for for many families, it's it's some sort of charitable charitable pursuit. Um, some interesting conversations about how to do that in a kind of a tax-avvy way. Um, but everybody, you want once you contextualize it around your personal life vision, um, you can get more intentional with how you use that wealth that's been created. So, again, going back to somebody just starting out, I would argue it's it's I don't know if simple is the right word, but it's a little bit more straightforward for somebody just starting out, right? We we can we can kind of say if this is maybe a barbell approach, there's a certain amount that we need down here for near-term um uh protective reasons, and then there's a there's a portion of the money that we can invest kind of just for the long term and let it ride in the markets, and the volatility is is it's kind of irrelevant between here and there.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

I think that's so so power poignant too. Like the the shifting gears is something that people have a really hard time with, whether it be from I remember when I had to shift into dad mode for the first time. And you know, so I'm sitting there thinking about myself, I want to buy this, and it very much was a financial shift that happened becoming a dad, you know, like sitting there, I have to now start planning ahead for this child's college. Well, they're two years old. I'm like, yeah, that's not that far away. You know, it's like people go, Oh, we got time. And I was just like, No, you don't. And one of the things, too, that I was thinking is like whenever you shift gears, you know, maybe you're that guy who ran road races and now you're trying to do a triathlon. Or maybe you sat on your couch all day and played, you know, Grand Theft Auto, and you're like, I want to just hit the gym. It's okay. There's shifts, but I think that people have a hard time wrapping their mind around these shifts at time because they require us to think and interact in a way that we might not even know how to. I I mean, I remember the first time going into the gym, and I'm looking at these machines and I'm like, what even is this thing? Like, this looks like some medieval torture device, you know. Like, what do you do? And and and see, this is the thing. Like, you see all these videos online making fun of these people that are using machines wrong. Then maybe we should be celebrating that they're even showing up, you know, and yet like figuring out what is it that they need to get to where they want to go. And that's again where circling back on working with a professional is so important because you might not know how you're doing that machine wrong, you know. Can I tie that to finance?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

There's a there's the there, there is there, there is such a good um connection here with finance. A lot of people who sit in the chair that I sit in, um investment advisors, wealth advisors, people in the the professional money management space will look at somebody in their 20s and say, you shouldn't speculate with your money. A lot you'll often hear again, this could be something you see on TikTok or Instagram. You shouldn't invest in individual stocks. It's that that special diversification word, right? You're much better off diversifying. I would argue that there is there's a there's merit and benefit to somebody young actually going and understanding what investing in an individual stock, what that means. Or understanding what investing in a speculative asset means. What do I mean by that? When I say, oh no, no, that's a speculation, that's not an investment. For somebody just starting out to have that discussion, and I've had some fun conversations over, you know, my my time in the I started my career working in on the alternative investment side and then kind of migrated over onto the private wealth side. And when people hear alternative investments, it sounds like this opaque black box. But when you really just unpeel the onion, it's just a lot of financial engineering at the end of the day. And if you can bring it break it down into first principles, it's it can be a fun little exercise to say, okay, this is a long, short hedge fund. What are they really doing? They're betting on certain companies and they're betting against certain companies. And of course, they use debt and leverage to kind of go boost those returns a little bit. But at the end of the day, that's what they're doing. And I think that can be again, maybe this goes back to the one of the first questions you mentioned. For somebody just starting out, being curious. I love it. Being curious about the space, I I think can can really open your eyes to getting you to a place that you need to be, but you have to you have to take the steps necessary to get from from here to there.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

I love that. I love the idea of getting curious because there's a whole lot we don't know about, you know, and I think that, you know, um, if we can look at that, like I remember remember when you started school and you showed up on that first day and you're just like excited to be there, and you didn't know what school was going to be about. You know, you're just like, you know, you're this kid who's just like, dude, this is gonna be cool. I know all the other kids are doing this, and that's completely different. And you know, and we get this beginner's mind, and you're you're wide open, you're open to whatever, you're just excited to be there, and you're excited to learn, and you're excited to see what could happen, what could be the direction that things go next. But the we get this weird space later on where we start kind of judging stuff or pulling back, like that's not the way I operate, that's not the types of things that I do. And the reality is we start putting ourselves in a box, you know. I'm not a hedge fund guy, I'm not a this type of guy, you know, that's not what I do. But like at the end of the day, just be curious, you know, it's like be open and experiencing different things because you know, maybe you've done, you've been the person who puts peanut butter on your toast for 20 years, you know what? But maybe someone comes along and says, Hey, I'm gonna tell you about this new spread. And if you instantly shut it down, man, your world's gonna be that much smaller because of it, you know. But if you can say, Absolutely, all right, let's see what this spread is all about. I'm not gonna put, I'm not gonna buy, you know, go to Costco and buy 25 cases of it yet. But I am gonna say, let's try it out and see what it tastes like. Let's see if this is something that might actually taste good, you know. And I think that's the difference between the let's go buy cases and the let's experience it. Let's play, let's play a little bit, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Which is which is part of what makes being a parent so fun. You get to go through all these firsts again. My wife and I were actually talking about this this morning. We have Three, I told you, we have three under the age of five. And each one, yeah, yeah, we're we're busy, we're busy, and she's got a career, and I'm I'm running my own personal thing, so we're we're a busy family, but it's so much fun, Sean, to watch each one. My son is extremely, he's the eldest, he's extreme, extremely sensitive. My middle child is she's two and a half and she's fierce, and then my baby is 10 months old and she's just happy. And to watch them each go through the world with these different um, the way they just interact with the world, approaching food, approaching people, approaching everything. It's just fun for us to get to kind of relive that and watch them do it. And um, yeah, they go just kind of this this idea that um new experiences are really character building. I almost feel like I think that's what I'm saying, vicariously through them. I'm I've experienced ketchup, you know, multiple times in the last couple of years and just kind of watch the way that they they react to new flavors, to new, to new things coming across their uh senses.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Right. It's interesting too, because I think one of the things that's pops up for me is like, I think that people start saying, Yeah, I like it. I agree, I get, I hear what you guys are saying, but I feel stuck. And I want to ask you like, why do some people feel stuck financially, even when they're making decent money, even when they have things going okay? What's that thing that locks some people down, you know?

SPEAKER_01 23:34

I think primarily the stuck feeling is again, this is me speculating, of course, but not understanding. I think I think the feeling of of of stuck can be a symptom of not understanding where one is relative to their where they want to be.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

I love that statement, man. And not it's it's not fully understanding their I think it's probably a feeling of overwhelm, Sean. I think when we say stuck, it's a feeling of overwhelm, uh, of decision fatigue, of the paradox of choice of all these things where how do I make decisions? How do I choose the path forward if I don't have a clear vision? And I I actually see this kind of through through life with people who are deciding what they want to do for work. Yeah, deciding what their career is gonna be. It's overwhelming to to have such it, you're almost better off just segmenting or saying, I'm gonna focus on these three professions that I've identified, opening up the aperture and saying I can do anything. It can just be absolutely overwhelming. Um yeah, that that's what I I would argue that a lot of people are are feeling stuck because they don't have a clear vision of of where they're going in the future.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

I love that. I think that clear vision is something too that you can't always see, you know. It's like if I told myself 10 years ago where I would be at and what I'd be doing right now, 10 years ago, Sean would be like bullshit. I don't see that. And you know, it just that that former version of myself would say, No, you're not. That's not possible. That's not what you do, that's not who you are. Not because it's it's just because I couldn't even comprehend it, you know. And so I want to ask you this like, how can someone start to get a bigger vision of what's possible?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Okay, so so I think that this started with the chicken soup for the soul, this kind of idea of people should follow their passions. Right. This the this concept that as if I at 18 or even 20, or frankly, even at 39, can follow my passion and then monetize it. I think that's actually a disservice to tell people to go find their passion. I think um there are a lot of like, like, am I now passionate about uh financial advice and about investments? I would say I am. What I'm passionate about is the feeling that I get watching somebody who came in with a bunch of papers who just is about to retire, feeling extremely overwhelmed. I literally received an email this morning from a family that I've recently started working with, and they just thanked me for the clarity, the hospitality of coming to the office yesterday, and I I had we had a lunch ready for them. That is, I do it through the medium of finance, but at the end of the day, I am I am helping people. I'm a guide in a sense. So I think that the it's it's easy to say, I like yoga, air go, I want to open a yoga studio. Well, yeah, 90% of the time is spent doing administrative cleaning mats and and doing the books. I think I think you can you can talk yoga, you can find people who are interested in yoga, but you don't necessarily need to start a yoga studio to to live that life. I think the important question there would be something like do I like what it entails to be self-employed? Do I want to be kind of constantly on the clock and thinking about how to bring business into this place? Or would I rather go find a different avenue to help people, if that's what my my end goal is, is to help people, maybe, maybe with physical fitness, maybe it's with mobility or or or what have you. But taking a step back and saying, what is and cal Newport writes, you know, I'm I'm ripping all these ideas from Cal Newport. Um, I think his his work on this is is kind of really interesting, but he would call this lifestyle-centric planning. Back into the lifestyle that you want to have, and I've kind of internalized this and used it with my retiree clients. It's lifestyle-centric retirement planning. It's thinking about who do I want to surround myself with, how do I want my day to unfold, um, so on and so forth. What are the hobbies that I want to spend my time doing? What do I want to think about? What do I want to read about? All that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

I love that, man. And one of the things, too, I wanted to ask, because it's like people start to get clarity, but there's a lot of noise. I wanted to ask you like, what are the biggest money mistakes or myths you see families making over and over? Because there's a lot of them out there that people are doing, you know?

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yeah, yeah. Um myth, I would call this a bias. I think the the the one I run into a lot is this this concept of recency bias, um, which is to say that things that have recently happened will continue to happen. Uh this happens very, very commonly with financial and financial markets, in investment markets, where if we've had a 10-year string of, which which we have, it's 2026 when we're filming this, we've had a string of just incredible investment returns through public markets. And it's easy to just assume that will continue in infinite, just into the future for the rest of my life, there will be good investment returns. Um, similarly, we saw during, you know, I'll use COVID as the most recent example of this. Um, people uh we as humans will look at the last war we fought and kind of assume that war will be the war that we'll be fighting for the rest of our lives, so to speak. And that's not to dismiss the potential for another pandemic. Of course, that could happen again. But the thing I'm concerned about, uh, and the thing I would argue we uh somebody who's putting money to work or investing money, wealth creators, uh, should concern themselves with is not the last war, but the potential for, I'll use the word uncertainty. Um, we don't know what the next thing will be. So are we prepared again? Less this is less applicable for somebody who's who's younger and has a really long time horizon, but somebody whose uh income spigot has turned off or they're they're kind of recreating their their own paycheck. We need to be prepared for to invest into markets that aren't as good as they have been over the last decade, or for some kind of um event to occur potentially. Are we ready? Do we have a standard operating procedure in place that we know break glass here if we need to? These are the things that these are the steps that we would take um if something happened. The classic one here is a health event, right? Do we know if in in the states here um um Medicare, long-term care coverage isn't covered by Medicare? So, do we know how we would fund uh coverage, how how we would fund those medical expenses in the event that we needed them? Um, just having, again, it can be a broad kind of plan. Um, you don't need to get, you don't need to get too granular on on every you know, potential catastrophic um event occurring, but it's just knowing the tools that are at your disposal. I call them release valves, right? Like equity in a house is a classic release valve that a lot of people don't aren't really thinking about. Like, oh, you actually do have, you know, so and then I live in the Northeast outside Boston, and a lot of people have a million dollars plus a lot of the people I help have a million dollars plus tied up in the equity in their houses. And they're not really thinking about that as a tool at their disposal from a financial planning standpoint. And it's like, well, if if something did happen, you do have access to at least some of that money in the event that you need it.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

I love that, man. I love that people have the clarity and they can get clarity by talking to someone because it's like for me, I didn't know this stuff, I didn't know any of this stuff, you know. And I was like, oh, so I need to get this job, then I need to buy a house, then I need to do this. And I I didn't have any type of plan. And you know, this is what I want to ask because I I have an opinion now, but I want to ask you do people really need a plan, or can they just figure it out as they go? It's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

It's it's going to sound funny coming from somebody in the the chair that I sit in to say, I don't think everybody needs a capital T, capital P plan. But what I do think it is an extremely personal decision. Um I think destination is more I I think I think direction is much more important than destination. So it's saying are what are we trying to accomplish? And do we actually are we actually headed in the direction that we're hoping we're headed? So I for somebody who says, I only want to work until I'm 55 and I'm currently 35, for instance, I think yes, having a plan is is probably a prudent decision to ensure that they can actually achieve that goal. But if somebody's more open-minded to working kind of until they need to stop working, and they're willing to, the term I'll use here is a lifestyle adjust. They're willing to change their lifestyle based on what the world throws at them. I don't think that person needs to get too granular from a planning perspective, um, particularly tactical planning. I think they just need to ask that kind of that that foundational question of are we moving in the direction that we want to be moving in? And if the answer is yes to that, then just keep moving in that direction, recognizing that you're going to have the course correct over time. You'll appreciate this. There's this analogy. Again, you can apply this to parenting. I think it's a great analogy. As a parent, we're we're holding a bow and we have an arrow kind of rocked and ready, and we can we can point it up at the sky or we can point it down to the ground and we can point it over to the side. And at some point, you let that arrow go. And you can point it in a certain direction, but wind is going to come. And whether you were one degree up or one degree down will have significant, significant, a significant influence in where that arrow eventually lands. I I don't think you can get so pinpoint precise from a planning perspective, particularly if your time horizon's long enough. It's just making sure your your bow is pointed that way, not that way. And and then again, trying to course correct along the way.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

I love that, man. I love that because it's like one of the things too that I I liked was the idea of the old mariners of old. You know, think about you know, the the sailors crossing the Pacific or the Atlantic or any great ocean. And they they had the tools to kind of like, we want to go to that place, right? And then they had these tools that allowed them to continuously reorient in the direction that they wanted to go. And honestly, like a storm comes, it blows you this way because you're the wind, man. That's the way he got around. So you sat there and go, okay, well, we got off track, but let's retrack. You know, right now I had a tough month last month. It caused me to dip into my emergency fund. I'm not happy about that. Like, I'm really unhappy about it, but like that's why the emergency fund's there. You know, it's there so that you can so you can dip into it, you can do that. And then this next month, then we start building it back up. We start getting back to where you want. But like, and like that's where the storm blew me this way. Now I'm re-angling this way and getting back on track. And I think that that's the thing I'm trying to remember it for myself is like have the plan, but also be ready to chart your course. I wanted to ask you another question. Like, um getting to I I'm fascinated by different, like, different ways that different people uh look at money money. Um, how do wealthy families think about money differently from everyone else?

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Uh they're human, um, first and foremost. So all the foibles that we uh that that non-wealthy, and again, wealthy is such a subjective thing. I was helping families when I was living out in Los Angeles with extreme levels of wealth, uh, multi-generational levels of wealth. Um I I think from a kind of from a broad, like a high-level standpoint, if you think about the people who are maybe most wealthy, they're willing to spend money, and this kind of sounds weird, but um spend money to make money. And really, it's just a form of investment. Are they spending money on themselves, investing in themselves in the form of of um schooling or investing in their own companies? Um, are they investing in other companies, um, either private or public? Um, I think you know that's a big, I think that's a big underappreciated component to wealth creation is just that kind of equity component, either in yourself or in or in other companies. Um and then the the other kind of maybe this is more of a tactical thing, but I think oftentimes wealthy people understand the distinction between buying being being sold something and and actively buying something, if that makes any sense. So there are certain things again. This dovetails with with wealth advice, but there are certain financial instruments that are sold. There are others that are bought, and the ones that are bought are often much more boring, much more straightforward, um, yeah, much less opaque, so more clear in how they how they work. Um and this kind of goes maybe to the last point, which I think is is a lot of wealthy people find a way not through great effort, but find a way to simplify. And again, that's highly um qualitative, but find a way to simplify their overall lives. Um, I mean, the classic one is the business owner who only puts essentially reinvests everything back into the business. Are they diversified? Absolutely not. But they have a wealth creation machine that they're comfortable with and they have conviction and that's the best place to put their money. And it's a really in an odd way, it's a really easy decision. It's like any I'm gonna spend a certain amount, and anything that I don't spend or pay to taxes is going to be um reinvested back into the business. Uh, and that that's how I'm creating wealth.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Um, yeah, it it's interesting because it's it's it's mindset stuff, you know? And I think at all at the end of the day, whether you're talking about savings, investment, tax planning, whatever it might be, there's a mindset to it. And like I think one of the things that I would say, and I've seen, is that people that are wealth-focused, and I'm not talking what we talk about wealthy, but wealth-focused. They want to grow money, they want to get into a place where they have that financial freedom, look at these things in different ways. They're not terrified of taxes, they plan for them, they're not overwhelmed by challenges, they've set aside money for that. They're not, you know, restricted as much as other people might be in some ways because they've prepared for it, you know. And I think that it's a mindset thing. And it's like I train Muay Thai every day, or not every day, uh, three days a week. And I work out almost every day trying to keep myself healthy and fit. Why? I'm one of those people who's prepared for the type where things could go down, man, and you don't know what it's gonna be. It might be that you know a boat starts sinking because I've seen stuff, I've I've seen bad things happen, and I'm like, let's have that mindset to prepare for it. And I think one of the things that I'm saying is is like, I think that when people start having a mindset shift of being proactive versus reactive, whether it be like, you know, uh with taxes or savings or whatever, or investments, it's just again being proactive versus reactive is such a core thing to me that I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And and again, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have an elaborate plan to get you there. It's I think a willingness to a willingness to pick your direction and go into it with conviction and then of course correct over time. Like I think that's that's a that's a big recurring theme here that we've kind of danced around is this idea that life is going to happen and your plan today, like use you as an example, right? We could use you as a great case study here. Like you you you said a moment ago that you wouldn't have guessed that you would be where you are today 10 years ago. You probably wouldn't have guessed five years ago you'd be where you're sitting here today. And so there's like a willingness, if you were rigidly sticking to a plan, you wouldn't have that willingness to be open-minded to potential things that come across your desk. I I moved back again. I can use myself as an example here. I moved back to the East Coast during COVID um for kind of family reasons. Um, and now I own my own business. I had to be open-minded to that potential, that opportunity, um, and and and and willing to to take on a different challenge at that point in time. Um yeah, I think I think a willingness to be stay flexible can really help us build wealth over time if we're willing to do it.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

I love that. I want to ask you one last question. If you could go back and give yourself some, your younger self some financial advice, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 42:57

This is cliche, but I I would I would likely say I would to start saving earlier. Just watching money compound over time has been it's your powerful thing. Um, which is it's impossible. Uh, I I recognize that. And uh put put me at you know at 18 or even 16 when I was working, my first job was at McDonald's. I would have loved to start uh a Roth account when I had just started working. Um, but I think kind of even more broadly speaking, I would go back and tell myself that having a strategy, having some sort of foundational strategy that you can kind of fall back on is is imperative. And what I mean by that is is um set aside a certain amount of money with each dollar you earn, set aside a certain amount of money that is that is earmarked to be spent, a certain amount that's earmarked. to be you could you could set aside a bit to be protected so to speak but then set aside a a particular amount to be grown and then just those three buckets if you could just do that kind of consistently over time again boring blocking and tackling but if you could spend protect and grow and come up with a way to to systematically allocate money to those buckets um I think I think you can you can build some significant wealth um by just that basic by having that basic strategy in mind. I love that man where can people go to find out more about you and what you do uh people can find more about um me uh Brendan O'Rourke and our firm is Greenway Financial Advisors where I'm the managing uh partner at the firm to green greenwayfa.com