Ep. 79 - The Money Talk

Good morning everyone - today we're going to talk money.

Chances are, your money situation isn't optimal.  

Today, I'm going to share my story with money...

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...where I came from, where I'm at today, and where I'm going

On today's show, we discuss:

• Rob's history with money
• Childhood, growing up
• My history with bankruptcy
• My history with debt

My history with Dave Ramsey

• Talk radio dating back to 2008/09 on the road
• Good option to take a break from politics / sports / talk radio
• All sounded the same anyways in each city I lived and worked in 
• First podcast I ever listened to
• Continued listening in 2011 in California all the way to 2013 in Texas
• Pretty much stopped listening at that point
• Had actually begun to create content, blog and podcast under name "The Nameless Wayfarer"
• Then Utah trip -> Coma in Denver in Sept 2013 -> home
• Used credit cards to fund my move home
• Used credit cards to fund my time chasing other people's dreams from 2014-2016 
• Burnout 2.0 in August 2016
• FPU 1.0 in Jan-March 2017 at Wellington 
• FPU 2.0 in Jan-March 2018 at Heartland Community Church
• FPU 3.0 in Jan-March 2019 at Heartland Community Church
  • Finally decided to get serious and begin working with Joe Mains Financial Coaching - great coach, message me for a referral!
  • January 2019 had 23k in consumer debt
• FPU Coordinator 1.0 in Jan-March 2020 at Medina UCC
  • Coordinating a class seemed like the best accountability partner
  • Finally became debt free in June 2020
• FPU Coordinator 2.0 in Jan-March 2020 with a virtual class

“We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.”
― Dave Ramsey, The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning everyone. Today we're going to talk about money. Chances are your money situation isn't optimal. And today I'm going to share my story with money, where I came from, where I'm at today, and where I'm going on this episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. And this is a show where we talk about how and why we are building the lives of our dreams. This is episode number 79 of the All Around Growth Podcast. And my name is Rob Kaiser. And I am your host. Today is Friday, January 8th, 2021. And like I said, we're going to have the money talk. I figured that since I go around talking about Dave Ramsey quite a bit, and have attended Financial Peace University several times and am now a coordinator for Financial Peace University courses. It might be a good idea to share my own history with money. And that goes back all the way to you know childhood. And I was born and raised in an upper middle class suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, on the west side. Everything for us growing up was fantastic. We had a wonderful family life. My brother, my sister, and I. I'm the oldest of three. My uh, I mean, we we we wanted for nothing. Um my my we had we attended private uh Catholic grade schools and made our choice of where we wanted to go to high school. I decided to go to the public high school to play football with my with my uncle who was the head coach there, and my brother and sister followed suit, but that's another story for another time. Um I had jobs in high school. Uh we didn't really have an allowance. I mean, I remember doing chores and and kind of earning money, and I remember my my my parents, you know, took us and, or my dad specifically, took us and opened up a bank. I forget the name of the bank, but I can remember the building. It was a strange white building. Um and it changed hands several times throughout the years, but um you know I I I as far as I can tell my my parents tried to teach me about money as best they could. And then I, you know, I I was in high school and just doing the high school thing and getting ready to go to college, and you know, the the the learning of money I guess kind of stopped in high school. There was so much of a focus on athletics and other things like uh like that that um it never came up, and when I got to college I could get a pizza or a t-shirt or a frisbee for signing up for a credit card, and I like many people didn't really understand credit cards. My parents never talked to me at that point because I was an adult, and I'm sure that if they tried, I put a stop to that conversation. Like many teenagers, I was kind of a hard-headed jerk. And in my early 20s, I uh structured my internship so that I could move out to Colorado and stay there. And I lived there for a couple of years, and during this process of moving out to finishing school and moving out to Colorado, I managed to rack up more thousands of dollars in debt than I had in years of life. And in my early 20s, I declared a bankruptcy. And uh I guess it's worth pointing out at that time um the bankruptcy in part was due to a pretty serious car accident that I had in my early 20s when I had a seizure behind the wheel and drove into a cement truck on the highway and had the roof almost sheared it completely off of the 1988 Subaru DL that I was driving at that time and had to get cut out of the vehicle. I still have the one remaining intact window from that car. That was the rear, one of the rear uh wagon side windows. I'd have to look at it to actually remember which one, but I'm gonna make some nice wall art out of that. So after that accident, I I moved home shortly after. That's again another story for another time. Bought another car, had gasket blue, I was out of options, had to move home. Um and when I was here back, you know, moving moved back home to Ohio with my and was living with my parents in my early 20s, that's when I went through the bankruptcy. Okay. So in my mid to late 20s, I went through some rough times, you know, after this bankruptcy, I then got a DUI and uh life was uh not I was that was not at my highest point at that time. I then decided to move to North Carolina and live there for a few years. I learned how to play old-time music, and then my parents bought this property where I live now, known as York Meadow Farm. And that was around 2007, uh, 2008-ish. No, when they bought it, it was earlier than that, but when I decided I decided to move back here around that time to help them develop the property and maintain the property and what have you. Um but at that time the housing bubble burst and the economy took a dump and they could not get financing to build on the property at that time, and I went ahead and took another job that allowed me to fast track and gain some experience, and that was kind of my foray into the corporate world, and I began that through forestry, utility forestry, surveying utility lines along rights of ways, or surveying trees along utility rights of ways, uh gathering data, and then soon I went from an independent forester to managing projects to managing territories and large numbers of employees, uh, upwards of 40, almost 50 people, and fairly large accounts, and um I was on the road a lot, and this is probably around 2008, yeah. Like I said, 2008 when the housing bubble burst, and by the time I was on the road and and and moving forward with management was around 2009 and 10, and I was listening to a lot of talk radio, and uh when you're traveling and listening to talk radio from town to town and listening to the news and such, all of a sudden I noticed that the news started sounding the same, and I was looking for something different to listen to because I couldn't take it anymore. And that was also the beginning of the transition of my mindset from you know about government and my kind of what I was yeah the the the changes in my mind in government, I was kind of a democratic-leaning individual at that time, and when I went into the corporate world, I became Johnny Republican and uh became a good conservative. Now, like I said, I was looking for a break from all this talk radio because even then I could see that it was all the same, it was all a joke. So I began listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio, and um that was that was interesting. So, you know, my history with Dave Ramsey dates back to about that time, 2008-2009, and um and that was a good option. It was a good option to take a break from the politics and the sports, talk radio, and um Dave Ramsey also became the first podcast that I ever listened to because I was looking for options and ways to continue listening when I wasn't available to listen to the radio show. So I continued listening to Dave Ramsey's podcast in 2011 while living in California, pretty much all the way to 2013 or so when I was doing the last project that I did in the world of forestry in Texas. And uh at that time I had actually sort of stopped listening to the podcast and stopped listening to many podcasts at that time. I had begun my deep dive into the world of permaculture, and I had actually begun creating content under the name of the Nameless Wayfarer because of all of the traveling and journeying that I was doing, and I was trying to get back into the habit of writing and blogging that I had done in the past, but house it in a way so I wouldn't lose it. Now I've I've I've done this this kind of thing several times, and I've got content everywhere, so I'm looking to you know hopefully grow and develop uh a website which I've secured called RobKaiser.me, which is basically the story of my life. Um but basically that during that last project in Texas, um I had previously scheduled a backpacking camping trip to Capital Reef National Park in the backcountry of Utah with my friend Rick. Flew up to Denver with my gear in September, and from Denver we drove to Utah, and on the way home, at the tail end of the trip, I suffered a series of seizures, and by the time we returned back to Denver, um, Rick thought I was sleeping on the uh on the drive home, but uh, it turns out I was having a uh a series of seizures and I had locked up and basically had entered into a series of status epilepticus. And I was medically induced into a coma at that time in September of 2013, late September of 2013, and my final project in Texas drew to a close a little bit earlier than anticipated. Now I've got to wrap this up real quick because I'm pulling in here to work, but um at that point in time to get back home. I had stuff in storage in California, I had stuff in Texas. I, you know, just like any normal person, used credit cards to get all of my stuff back home and move back home in October of 2013. Now I also used those credit cards to fund my time chasing other people's dreams from 2014 to 2016, largely driven around the ideas of permaculture and small farming. And in uh 2016, you know, I realized that this was not sustainable, so in August of 2016, I experienced burnout 2.0 in my life, and burnout 1.0 is part of what led me to um end up making the decision to move to California. So, you know, I experienced burnout 2.0 in August of 2016, and I end up making the decision to attend Financial Peace University for the first time in January of 2017 at a small church in a small town called Wellington, because that's just where I found it. I had a burning desire to attend it, and Wellington was kind of a haul, but I decided to do it anyways. Financial Peace University 2.0 was at a local church at and called Heartland Community Church here in Medina, and uh I had such a good experience the first time that I decided to seek it out in advance and I found a local church and had a wonderful, wonderful experience with the coordinators there, so much so that I returned for a second class the next January in 2018, and um, you know, I didn't take it real seriously the first couple classes. Uh, even though I returned in 2018, you know, part of the reason I returned was that I knew that making this a lifestyle was going to be a good decision. It was gonna be something that I needed to do. So I kept returning, I kept coming back, I kept working the program. But even in 2018, I was still doing what I've learned to call Dave ish. I wasn't working the program outlined in Financial Peace University exactly as it was intended to be worked, I was modifying it a little bit as I saw, and subsequently not making the progress that I was hoping to make. So when I went back for the second class in January of 2019 in Heartland community church, I finally decided to get serious and work with a what did they call it, endorsed local provider, ELP and Dave Ramsey certified financial coach. And in January 19, I had $23,000 in consumer debt. And by the time January 2020 had rolled around, after working with a coach for 12 months, I'd be I'd made pretty good progress on paying off my debt. And I figured that I could either go through another class or I could take the initiative and become a coordinator in the new church that I had just become a member of the Urior. And it seemed like even though I was carrying that coordinating the class seemed like the best accountability partner too. That was an accurate assessment. While he pulls up while I give him a friendly wave. But um yes, I was indeed correct in understanding that coordinating the class would be the best accountability partner. And uh I became deck three in June of 2020, despite the strange year that we had last year on account of the coronavirus. And since then, I have moved forward with baby step three, and I am proud to say that I have three months right now of emergency savings. I am working towards six. But quite frankly, I am working towards 12. But now that I've got three, I understand my goals and how I can achieve them a little bit more effectively. So you know, I scaled it down, I'm working towards six. Everything's a little bit more manageable. You know, I think I talk to a lot of people about this whole thing with financial piece of university. I wasn't really active in a church, but this whole experience with you for two years at Heartland Community Church got me feeling as though I wanted to get back involved in the church. So that was a contributing factor to my decision to start attending different churches and find or at least try to find a church home. And I was successful at doing so. So and that was the location of the first class that I coordinated last year. And this year, actually this month, in just a couple of weeks, we will begin a financial peace university class online. It will be a virtual class with all of the uncertainty regarding in-person meetings and things like that. I've never done a virtual class, I'm not sure how this is going to work out, but I'm going to try to continue to promote it and hopefully we will get some people signed up. And I need to be a little bit more diligent about doing that as I sit here and speak about it. Anyways, one of the quotes from The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey that stood out to me the most was We buy things with We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like. Oh, I'd like to read that one more time. We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like. Now while that was in the Total Money Makeover, it may have also been from the Fight Club. I don't know. But man, if that statement doesn't ring true, I don't know what does. Anyways, guys, I hope that this episode was a valuable use of your time. Hopefully that uh gives a little bit more insight into my own situation, my own story with money. That's uh that's where I came from, it's where I'm at today. Oh, where am I going? I'll tell you where I'm going. I've I've I've really come to embrace Dave Ramsey and everything with his program and his various programs and everything that falls under that Ramsey team umbrella. I've begun listening to so many different people on his team, like Chris Hogan and Ken Coleman. And Chris Hogan has got a book that I haven't read yet, but it's called Everyday Millionaires. But he's got a podcast, and I enjoy listening to it. And I also enjoy Ken Coleman's podcast, which I recently found, which is helping me utilize and implement additional tools on finding your purpose and finding my purpose, that is. So check those guys out. Check out everything from Dave Ramsey and Lampo Enterprises or Ramsey Solutions or whatever he calls himself now. I I'm a firm believer and I sub I'm a big supporter of everything that he does and the people that work under him and the principles that guide his business. So where am I going with my money story? I am I am going to I'm gonna be an everyday millionaire. So um that's the plan and I'm sticking to it. So again, just got distracted because um we got some people walking around out here. I'm here, I've got to get to work, but anyways, I hope this episode was a valuable use of your time. When I talk money, I just want to make sure that you know I'm transparent with my own history about it so that people know where I'm coming from and the direction that I'm headed. So yeah, hopefully you enjoyed the show. If you did and you'd like to provide a little bit of feedback, go to the show notes, scroll down to the very bottom, and you'll find a link where you can click to rate and review the podcast. That helps, that'll take you to Apple Podcasts. You can give a five-star rating, or if you feel so inclined, provide a written review. All of those things help the show, and uh I truly appreciate your support. If you have a question or any feedback for me, drop me a line at allaroundgrowth at gmail.com. And last but not least, I'd like to encourage you to join the community on Telegram Messenger. On your desktop, you can just type t.me slash all around growth in your internet browser, you'll find us there. Or if you've got the telegram messenger on your uh smartphone or tablet, just search for All Around Growth and you'll connect with our small but awesome group. All right, this is Rob Kaiser, and you've been listening to the All Around Growth Podcast. Thank you for your time, and I sincerely hope that you had a great day. Thanks everybody.