Ep. 203 - Financial Health (Rob's Personal Experiences)

Today’s topic comes from a *long* list of potential show topics, and there’s a few reasons why I want to discuss financial health today.  The long and short of it is that if do not have our own financial house in order, there is no way we are going to be able to manage the life of our dreams – let alone a homestead.  

• Ep. 91 - Personal and Business Money Management Software 
• Ep. 79 - The Money Talk 

Financial Peace University – Virtual Class, January 2022 

• Ep. 200 - I fired my financial coach...AND my health coach!

Financial Health

Financial health is a term used to describe the state of one's personal monetary affairs. There are many dimensions to financial health, including the amount of savings you have, how much you’re putting away for retirement, and how much of your income you are spending on fixed or non-discretionary expenses. - Investopedia

thequickbooksdude

• “QuickBooks Online Home Finance Non Business, Personal Records” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5zcoHsTZLQ&list=PLqRhgBZfJuE7Q384t8vu8NZjcndmAimAz

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Well, alright, and welcome back to the show, everyone. Today we are going to talk about financial health. But before we get into the topic, this is episode number 203 of the All Around Growth Podcast, a show that provides insight and tools to build the life and homestead of your dreams. My name is Rob Kaiser, and I am your host. That's right, today's topic comes from a long list of potential show topics, and there's a few reasons why I want to discuss financial health today. The long and short of it is that if we do not have our own financial house in order, there is no way that we are going to be able to manage the life of our dreams, let alone a homestead. Now personally, as we grow into the homestead here and I realize how I fit into the plan, the more I realize that I need to focus on my own financial health and wellness. And that is important for anyone who's currently on a homestead, either as a tenant or an owner, or as someone who aspires to do so later in life. Now, wherever you are in life and whatever your goals are, having a good understanding of financial health and what it means to you will likely help you build a strong foundation to achieving those goals. Today I'm going to share with you my current thoughts to date on financial health. Now, previously I've only done a couple dedicated episodes on finances, and I'll link to them in the show notes. And the very first one was episode number 79, which was the money talk. And I covered all sorts of things there. Again, link to in the show notes. And in episode number 91, I talked about personal and business money management software. Now, this is episode number 203. And I talk about Dave Ramsey and Financial Peace University a lot, and it's become an integral part of my life as I'll be coordinating my third class this upcoming January in a virtual class online. And if you're interested in that, you can find out more information in the show notes. Since it's online, I'm there's no real reason to limit it to local people in the community here in Northeast Ohio. So hey, if you're interested in taking a Financial Peace University course, check it out. Links in the show notes. But even with all of this interest and side comments in the regular podcast, you'd think I'd have more content out there than simply the previous two podcasts that I discussed. But as far as I can tell, I don't. Now just a few weeks ago, I episode or I recorded an episode titled I fired my financial coach and my health coach. And that was episode number 200. And the reason for that episode was to discuss why I'm moving forward with my financial coaching. And well, not moving forward, but but how I'm making a transition from utilizing the funds that I had allocated towards my financial coach to utilizing those funds in my monthly budget for participation in the 48 Days Eagles community that I so frequently speak of as well. And if you want to learn more about the 48 Days Eagles community, there are links to that in the show notes. Now, admittedly, the link to the show notes, the link to the 48 Days Community is an affiliate link. I do promote that because I believe in it, but I want to be very clear about that and I don't want to mislead you. So you will see in the link very clearly that it's an affiliate link, and uh I'm being honest about it. I'm realizing that monetizing this podcast is part of the whole homestead gig. And if I want to do that, if I want to monetize things, and if I want to promote affiliate links like this, I really need to get the I really need to get a proper website up and running. And that I also realized that as I was looking back through past episodes, trying to determine what I'd already covered with regard to financial health and things of that nature. And basically, this is going to serve as a good project to springboard my familiarity with WordPress and you know get more comfortable operating that. But that's another topic for another time, and we need to get back to financial health. Now, I initially made a note about this topic specifically after receiving an email from Investipedia back on April 18th, 2021. And the term of the day was financial health. And we can read that financial health is a term used to describe the state of one's personal monetary affairs. There are many dimensions to financial health, including the amount of savings you have, how much you're putting away for retirement, and how much of your income you are spending on fixed or non-discretionary expenses. Now there's links to that specific email in the show notes as well, and you'll also find information on how to sign up for these daily emails titled Term of the Day. And this is something that I've been subscribing to for about a year now, and it's helped me improve my financial vocabulary. And this is a little tip that I learned from Jack Spearco of the Survival Podcast, whose work I highly recommend checking out as well. Now, in that email we read there are many dimensions to financial health, including the amount of savings you have, how much you're putting away for retirement, and how much of your income you are spending on fixed or non-discretionary expenses. But it doesn't really say anything about consumer debt. And perhaps it does, and I'm sure that it does, later on in the article. But I personally believe that consumer debt is one of, if not the biggest problem and sickness in our society. Now that too is another topic for another day. And I'm I'm running a bit longer than I was expecting, but that's okay because I'm feeling good about this content and I'm feeling good about this topic today. So we're just gonna run with it. Now as I reflect back as to why I fired my health coach and my financial coach, rather, it was because of our misalignment in desired protocols for money management, and how the categories in the budgeting spreadsheet were not quite aligning with the categories that I was using in Quicken. Which is not I was using both. I am using both. And not to mention this other issue that I had with, you know, my business. So there were there were all sorts of contributing things going on as to why I decided to fire my my my financial coach. And one of those other reasons was that I had basically decided to shut the business down, and I even did an episode on that, where quote, today Rob talks about shutting his business down and various reasons why not to start a business. This will be one of a multi-part series on shutting a business down. Close quote. And that was episode number 165 called Shutting It Down. And I think perhaps I've had a change of heart with the business, and I've had a change of heart about a number of things over the past few months, and a lot of that's had to do with my own personal health, which has apparently impacted my stance on financial health and my business, and how I'm going to manage all of it. And in terms of managing all of it, I recently stumbled across a guy on YouTube whose channel is titled The QuickBooks Dude. And he's got a series titled QuickBooks Online, Home Finance, Non-Business, Personal Records. And I've provided a link to that video in the show notes, and I'll even read the description for you as well, because that's how interested in this I am. This video is an introduction to this YouTube QuickBooks Online playlist. It's the only set of videos anywhere that shows you how to use QuickBooks Online for your non-business personal finances. Whether you are managing the finances of your whole family as one a complete entity, or using this playlist video series to keep financial records of a trust or an estate, these techniques will work for you and give you the ability to assess your financial position and see how well you did in any particular time period. Now, this is interesting to me because uh a number of different options, I I guess. I I originally defaulted to Quicken because I grew up watching my dad use it. In my mind, it's a legacy financial program. However, when I began using it for business purposes, I've been using it for years, and when I started this business up in 2014, I needed to manage those finance uh those records. I was doing a lot more when I started over the past few years, I've really laid off in terms of what I'm doing, other than spending money. More on that later. But I began using QuickBooks Online and in an effort to save money, I began using QuickBooks Home or Quicken Home and Business, both of which are Intuit products. And that worked well while I wasn't really doing anything, but Quicken seems to have a difficult time. Maybe it was the way that I had it set up, user error of differentiating accounts, especially when your uh business accounts are set up at the same bank as your personal accounts. And maybe I need to look into this and change management strategies, but all of this is that's that's kind of the whole point in all of this, is is is change. The fact that I'm receptive to it, and the fact that I've been struggling with some of these management tactics in implementing what I've been doing with my financial coach in conjunction with Quicken and then struggling with Quicken on my own. I've been looking at other alternatives, including but not limited to QuickBooks Online, and somehow I stumbled across this. And QuickBooks is something that my accountant recommends for the business, anyways. So I went back to that because I'm actually trying to do more things and learn how to manage my life with the business and how that factors into the homestead here and the overall long-term plan, so on and so forth. But I also, before I say anything else, I want to make it very clear that um I it's not like I had some problem with my old financial coach. As a matter of fact, I'd recommend him to anyone who's interested in financial coaching because he was great. The challenges that I speak of are really challenges that are self-created that came up in my own mind after doing the work that he suggested that I do. So if there's anyone that's interested in financial coaching, by all means check out Joe Main's financial coaching. And uh I'm happy to talk with you more about that in the group chat if you want to learn more. But I wouldn't change anything that we did over the over the 18 months that we worked together, and all of those challenges that that I experienced uh with him and and even after the fact are worthwhile and I wouldn't trade them for anything. However, here we are, now, and the only constant is change. Now, as I grow and learn more in order to improve my own financial health, I will continue to share my thoughts with you here in this podcast or in the occasional YouTube video as well. But this is really where I'm trying to keep the more focused content because this is the YouTube videos in such are more spur of the moment. I think that's a little bit more better suited for YouTube. However, at this point in time with where I'm at with the podcast, this seems to be working the best. So, anyways, like I said before, uh I mentioned the group chat. And if you're interested in participating in a group chat with audience members who are like you and on a similar path, you can check it out on Telegram at t.me slash all around growth. You can just type that into your internet browser and you will find us there, or if you've already got Telegram on your phone, you can just search for All Around Growth in the groups, join us there, or simply click on one of the links in the show notes. There is also a broadcast channel only for show updates if you do not want to participate in a group chat but are interested in receiving updates from the show. There's also a link to leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts and why. It really helps to leave a rating and review, especially on Apple Podcasts at this time. Things are changing in the podcast world, but right now ratings and reviews really help the algorithm, help expose the podcast to new audience members. And if you'd like to help do that, you can leave a rating and review, that's great, or you can simply share the podcast on whatever social media you use. There's also links to uh all episodes in the show notes as well. And if you have any questions, would like to reach out to me directly, you can do so at allaroundgrowth at gmail.com. Or like I said, simply join the community on Telegram at t.me slash allaroundgrowth. So that's it for today, guys. I look forward to keeping you updated about the change happening here in my life with regard to financial health. I look forward to keeping you updated with regard to all the change happening here on the homestead as well. And we'll see you here on the next episode. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.