Ep. 530 - Financial Fortitude: Navigating Wealth Wisdom with Sean

Welcome to Episode 530 of the All Around Growth Podcast!  Join us for an enlightening journey into the realm of financial wisdom from our valued Patreon supporter, Sean.  In this episode, airing publicly next week, Sean shares practical wisdom regarding effective financial management.  

Discover Sean's down-to-earth approach to finance, likening it to a coach urging the team to focus on the basics.  Much like in sports, financial success often hinges on clear objectives and strategies.  Sean emphasizes the simplicity of key goals, such as getting out of debt and saving three months of expenses.  Sean writes:

"Often, when more elaborate things fail, it has more to do with an unclear objective (strategy) than bad execution (tactics)." 

Tune in to hear Rob's response to Sean's insightful topic suggestion, as we delve into the dynamic world of financial management.  Explore the simple yet profound wisdom on setting financial goals and achieving them—a simple journey that, though not necessarily easy, involves one key component to success that many people often fail to understand.   

Don't miss out on this episode full of valuable insights and actionable advice!

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Discussion Links:

The Art of War 

Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps 

Financial Peace University 

Should You Give While Getting Out of Debt? 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

If we stand together, we'll never fall.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Well, hello there and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am thrilled to have you join me on this captivating journey of life here at York Meadow Farm. In this weekly expiration, in this podcast, together we go through seven fundamental facets that shape our lives financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. In today's episode, we've got episode 530, where we are going to dive into the realm of finance with insights shared by our Patreon supporter, Sean. Now in our previous episode, which was episode 529 titled Highlights and Updates, as we wrap up the year at York Meadow Farm, we unraveled some unexpected, well, it was an unexpected episode of recent developments at the farm, which included rebranding and other exciting news. We addressed some audience feedback and hinted at a forthcoming episode which is going to involve career and contentment and all kinds of other things. And that episode is inspired by Wayne, who is hanging out in the Curiosity Corner over in our Patreon community. Now, speaking of the Curiosity Corner, that is a Patreon tier that you like Wayne can subscribe to. Shout-outs for your contributions to the show and any kind of links that you want to include in the show notes. And basically, by contributing at this builder level, you have a direct impact on content creation and show development in the future. And then over at the Curiosity Corner, we've got exclusive access to monthly QA sessions, ask me anything sessions, and special mentions during episodes and basically inclusion in the virtual supporter hall of fame. So we've got Wayne hanging out there all alone in the Curiosity Corner. And if you guys want to participate in the Patreon community and steer this show in the direction that you want, then by all means check it out at patreon.com/slash allaroundgrowth. Now, responding to some requests in the Patreon community, we've actually introduced a fourth tier, something called the big ask, right? And that is a high dollar exclusive opportunity to become a vital navigator of the podcast's destiny. You can do this anonymously, you can do this for the big mention, whatever you want to do, it's kind of up to you. Um, this was encouraged, something that I was kind of reluctant to do, but I am here to listen to the audience and take their suggestions and input because I'm new to this, I respect the audience, I respect their suggestions, and this is what we're doing. So we've got the big commitment, the big ask, and it is called the virtual voyager. Okay, and um so that that is that includes everything, everything from the other tiers along with a monthly phone call. Uh oh, and a big discount on everything at the farm store, 25% off of everything at the farm store. So if you want to participate in the big ask and be a visionary voyager, then you can do so at patreon.com uh slash all around growth. So currently we've got three Patreons in the paid membership tiers and a fourth participating for free. If you're interested, you can join Brian, Sean, Kitiki, and Wayne in helping us keep growing. Like I said, patreon.com slash allaroundgrowth. Join the community there and let's keep growing. Although we have no new YouTube subscribers this week, once we reach our goal of 10 Patreon subscribers or one visionary Voyager, we will resume live streaming and sharing content on YouTube. That's going to also allow for increased uh quality of the audio recordings in podcast form. We're 40% there, and the show's direction is significantly influenced by the audience. So if you like what you're hearing today, consider joining Patreon and contributing to the show. Now, as I mentioned, the show is heavily influenced by our audience, and today we are delving into finance with practical advice from our Patreon supporter, Sean, on financial strategy and tactics. Now, today is Tuesday, December 19th, at the time of this recording, and this is episode 530 of the show, like I said, and the title for today's show is Financial Fortitude: Navigating Wealth and Wisdom with Sean, or navigating wealth wisdom with Sean, rather. This episode will be released to Patreon subscribers sometime today, on the 19th, or tomorrow, December 20th, and it will be available to the general public next week. So let's get into it and explore the world of financial management according to Sean. Now, in the financial chat, and we've got chats for each individual topic in the Patreon group in the in the community. We've got a financial chat, we've got a physical chat, we've got a personal development chat, we've got a family chat, so on and so forth. And all of the topics that are being discussed in the show come from these chats. So Sean had an awesome comment recently that read as follows. Did you ever play organized sports as a kid? And have you ever been in a game where your team is getting pummeled and the coach tells you all to focus on the basics? The same is with finances. Getting out of debt and saving three months of expenses is a clear and easy to understand outcome. Often, when more elaborate things fail, it has more to do with an unclear objective or strategy than bad execution or tactics. And he continued with another comment that read, about 2,500 years ago, Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War. In it he said, Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. He writes, tactics and strategy should always complement each other and are two sides of the same coin. That comment, these two comments rather, from Sean are very wise, and that is exactly what we're going to talk about today. So many of us, myself included, either have had or are currently having challenges financially. We've got debt, we've got bills, we've got things to keep up with, maybe we've got car payments, kids in school, so on and so forth. You get it. I don't need to explain the specific challenges that you have because the challenges that you have are different than the challenges that I have, and they're different than the challenges that Sean has, different than the challenges that Wayne has, Kiriyaki has, Brian has. We've all got our unique and individual challenges that are specific to the context of our unique and individual lives. Now there is one constant that can help anyone and everyone get beyond these challenges, and it's very easy. It's a set of simple steps, and it's something that is very prominent out there in the world, but it's also something that not very many people actively engage in and engage in consistently. So what is that, you might ask? It's Dave Ramsey's baby steps. It's the baby steps that are outlined in Financial Peace University. I know I've talked about this in the past, but I think it's worth mentioning again, because what this does is it provides a very clear framework and a very specific set of mechanisms and steps to help you achieve your financial goals. Whether your goals are having that car paid off, having your house paid off, building up savings for the kids for college, whatever it is, you can tailor this, and the program is going to work for you if you implement it exactly as it is outlined in Financial Peace University. Why do I say this? And why do I say this with confidence? I say this with confidence because I did it and then eventually became a coordinator for Financial Peace University in the winter of 2019 into 2020. The seven baby steps are simple. We've got baby step one, which is the establishment of a $1,000 emergency fund. And then we've got baby step two, which is the debt snowball. Right? And just to be clear, I'm going to look this up so I can get this exactly right. But with the debt snowball, you accumulate your debts and pay them off smallest to largest in that order, regardless of the interest rates of whatever it is, credit cards, anything. So you've got your debts paid off in baby step two completely, all debts except the house, using this debt snowball. Okay. Step three is saving three to six months of living expenses in a fully funded emergency fund. Step four is investing 15% of your household income in retirement. Step five is saving for your children's college fund. If you don't have children, move forward to step six, which is paying off your home early. And then step seven is building wealth and give. Alright. Simple, right? Simple but not easy. Step one, relatively easy. Save a thousand dollars for your starter emergency fund. Keep that in a safe place, keep it in an account, keep it in a safe in your basement, but don't touch it. It's for emergencies only. Step two is where things get a little more complicated. We're going to pay off all of our debt except for the house using the debt snowball. Paying off the cards, credit cards, student loans. What you do is you list off all of your debts except for the mortgage, put them in order from smallest to largest, regardless of the interest rate. Pay minimum payments on everything except the smallest one. Attack that with a vengeance, and then once that's gone, you take that payment and put it toward the second smallest debt, making minimum payments on everything else except that one. Once that's paid off, repeat the process. We're snowballing our debt payments and using it to knock out those debts one by one. Okay. The rest of the steps are pretty simple. I'm gonna link to Dave Ramsey's baby steps. I'm gonna link to Financial Peace University in the show notes, but I want to share with you one secret to all of this, and it was the secret that allowed me to unlock exactly what it was that contributed to me hitting a plateau with my debt and ultimately giving me the ability to get beyond that plateau, make success, get out of debt, and finally get back to building some wealth. Now, I've since then I saved money, I quit my job, I'm self-employed, I'm building the family business, establishing a new business, taking that in a slightly different direction after doing some restructuring of all of the businesses here on the homestead, and I am actively working on this again. I am on step three. It's been a long, slow journey, but I'm actively working to establish or reestablish that three to six months of living expenses in a fully funded emergency fund. I have no debt, I'm operating these businesses and participating in everything that's going on here debt-free. I live a very modest life. But what happened in the past and why I plateaued is because I didn't follow the program specifically. I didn't follow it to a T, right? And what I mean by that is part of your budgeted line items includes giving, making a tithe, charity, okay? However, you want to structure it, some people get turned off about the word tithe because it's biblical and I don't believe in religion, and whatever, whatever, whatever. Justify it, whatever you want, but if you're not doing that, if you're not giving away some of what you make to a charity, to church, or giving it away in some way, shape, or form, you are going to plateau and you're not going to make progress. Period. I fully and firmly believe that. That's where I was. I couldn't get past this hurdle of paying off my debt in its entirety. Then, because like I am now, at that time I was a single man. I still am a single man. And one of the things that's that's encouraged in this program is to have an accountability partner. For most people, that accountability partner in the program is their spouse. Now, like I said, I'm single, and I explored different ways to have an accountability partner. I even worked with a financial coach for a period of time who served as my accountability partner, and that worked well until I realized that I could put the money that I was paying the financial coach towards my debt snowball and you know keep working and keep working. And that's what I did. So I decided that the best accountability partner for me as a single man would be to coordinate a course. I would therefore have to work the steps exactly as they were outlined. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel confident communicating just how effective they were. And so, in order to do that, I decided to adhere to them specifically as they were outlined, and I started tithing to the church that I was attending at that time. Well, suddenly, somehow like magic, I started gaining traction. The first payment, the first dollars that were spent after I received paychecks and put them in my bank account were to the one I was giving it away to. Within a matter of time, all of a sudden, I became debt free. By giving money away first, I became far more cognizant of my spending, far more aware of what I was doing with my money and when I was doing it, that it allowed me to get over that final hurdle and gain the traction that I'd previously lost and move beyond that plateau. I got out of debt. I took all the money that I was making in payments and put that in the bank, and I started stashing cash. I had my three months of emergency savings saved up. That was what seemed appropriate to me. I saved up another few thousand dollars on top of that, and I found myself in a position where I could leave my job and I was able to do so earlier than I had originally planned because that's the way life worked out. In doing that, it allowed me to spend the entirety of last year, 2022, working with my dad, and I'm grateful I did that, and I'm grateful things worked out that way because, as many of you know, my dad was diagnosed with cancer in March of this year and passed away in May. And I was able to take what I learned from him, working one full season with him, continue executing on the business plan that we had, rebranding, forming a new business, and then taking it to another level. We are now in three retail locations, soon to be four, and selling more at every single market than we ever had in the past, and experiencing success, and this is only the beginning. Today's show was originally going to be a show on something about finance, obviously, because we rotate through these topics. And I was originally going to just use it as uh a way to talk about the amount of money that I'm about to spend on equipment, food processors, and things like that that are going to go into the commercial kitchen as we build, and and basically say, hey guys, if you want to build something, you gotta spend something. But then all of a sudden, because of the community that we have, we got this fantastic topic. Fantastic input from everybody. And I thought that that was incredible, what Sean wrote. And then we had additional comments from Kiriyiki that read, you know, a micro version of this is, you know, she writes that she has a savings account that lets her make buckets or sub savings accounts for specific things. So she's got one for an emergency fund, one for a car down payment with a specific dollar goal, one for Roth IRA contributions with a specific goal. And then fun goals too, like savings for a camping camping trip or traveling across the country or whatever. The she she continued by saying the point is that having specific amounts spelled out in the organization of different buckets makes it easier for her to achieve the goals and see everything at a glance when she logs in. She's also able to program automatic contributions to those different buckets on a specific date when she gets paid, and it makes it relatively automatic and painless. And these are also great strategies to use once you've got that foundation built and set. Automations are awesome. I use them when I can, but there's not really a whole lot that needs to be automated because I don't have a lot of expenditures and I also don't have a lot of income coming in at this point. But I the things I have automated are, you know, for example, like cell phone bills and things like that. You know, certain business expenses that are much easier to be managed with automation. But ultimately, that comment from Sean, which was the whole driver behind today's show, was spot on. And I'm gonna read that again because this really resonated with me because I did play sports as a kid. And if you played sports as a kid, then it's gonna resonate with you too. And he wrote, Did you ever play sports as a kid? Have you ever been in a game where your team is getting pummeled and the coach tells you all to focus on the basics? The same as with finances. The reason is basic because the outcome is clear. Getting out of debt and saving three months of expenses is a clear and easy to understand outcome. Often, when more elaborate things fail, it has more to do with an unclear objective strategy and then a bad execution tactics. So we've got unclear strategies and objectives that are the bigger contributing factor to our failure than poor execution. What Sun Tzu wrote is also incredibly applicable. And Sun Tzu in the Art of War wrote, strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. We don't want to experience defeat with regard to our finances. Why? It's pretty obvious why. But I'm gonna tell you that I never experienced anything like the freedom that I experienced when I finally got out of debt. A tremendous weight was lifted off my shoulder, and I was able to think in ways that I never thought were possible. It was amazing. So when Sean writes that tactics and strategy should always complement each other and that they are two sides of the same coin, he is exactly right. And if you think that getting out of debt and saving three months of expenses is difficult and that you're never going to be able to do that, then I would strongly recommend Financial Peace University and adhering to that plan to a T. It may involve doing things that you don't want to do, like selling your car and buying a beater, and doing some uncomfortable things like getting rid of your Netflix subscription, getting rid of your Amazon Prime subscription, getting rid of all the subscriptions that you have for the period of time while you're getting out of debt, and that's exactly what I did for a couple of years. I really streamlined my life and focused intensely on getting out of debt and building up that savings. And you know what? It worked, it worked until it didn't because I wasn't working it the way that it was supposed to be worked, but once I decided to do it and fully commit and give, then everything started to come to fruition, and I started to achieve those goals, and I did, and you can too. So, guys, I hope that you found value in this topic today. Big shout out to Sean and the Patreon community for making this topic possible. I look forward to seeing you next week in the next episode on something physical. So God bless and have a Merry Christmas.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Truth is always the best way to the world that makes me art. I'm an odd fellow I'm an odd fellow, no. I'm an odd fellow. If we stand together, we'll never fall. We can make a difference and answer the call. And we can help somebody else.