Money Conversations for couples w Terry & Paul #516

How does our emotional connection to money influence our financial decisions? As your hosts, we're exploring this intriguing question alongside Terry from Cash Flow Co. and Paul, a mortgage broker from Loan Market. We're diving into the underbelly of finance, prying open the lid on conversations that couples often avoid, and unveiling how your relationship with your partner could be the key to better financial management.

Did you know that your career choices and financial priorities are intricately linked? Terry and Paul guide us through the maze of reevaluating career paths, shedding light on the importance of aligning your wealth-building strategies with what truly matters to you. We hear inspiring stories of people who chose joy over financial gain, a testament to the profound effect personal values have on our financial decisions.

And just when you think you've heard it all, we take the conversation a notch higher. Get ready to meet your financial alter ego. As we venture into the realm of financial archetypes, Terry and Paul help us identify our unconscious views on money and how these shape our financial behavior. We wrap up the episode with a stimulating discussion on financial independence and interdependence, and how to forge your path to wealth while keeping your relationships intact. Prepare for an enlightening journey into the world of finance and relationships.

Tune in now!

Paul:
https://broker.loanmarket.com.au/new-farm/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gmb
https://www.instagram.com/paulhixon_loanmarket/

Terry:
https://cashflowco.com.au/

Chapters

• 0:03 Open Conversations About Money for Couples
• 11:24 Emotional Connection to Money and Loans
• 17:57 Reevaluating Career Paths and Financial Priorities
• 27:09 Changing Careers, Finance, and Building Wealth
• 31:44 "Improving Relationships and Financial Mindset"
• 35:44 Alter Egos in Collaborative Money Management
• 39:21 Understanding Our Relationship With Money
• 46:30 Financial Independence and Interdependence
• 51:00 Finding Passive Income and Financial Help

Transcript

Lachlan Stuart: 0:03

The man that Can Project podcast, a podcast empowering queer driven men to live more fulfilling lives. We are here to challenge your beliefs, redefine success and talk about the important stuff in a relatable way. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. My name's Lockies, stuart. Let's get into it. Welcome to episode 516 of the man that Cam Project podcast, and today we're back with another beauty. We've got two incredible looking men across the screen. From me, I wish we could do it in person, but technology makes it just as fun online.

Lachlan Stuart: 0:39

Today we're going to be talking money, something, or it's a topic that many men think about. Many people in general think about a lot. Sometimes it keeps you awake at night. Other times you get excited by the prospect of having more of it, but so many people still don't know how to use it to get what they want from life. We stress about it, but we don't learn some very cool principles or understand it to make our lives better, our relationships better and our health better. So today I was very fortunate. Paul and I were actually talking at the gym two weeks ago and he was like I just met this guy, terry.

Lachlan Stuart: 1:11

You got to meet Terry, you got to listen to his podcast, too. He's quite brilliant, and both of the gentlemen have great awareness around money and deal with money day in, day out, which is why I know this is going to be an incredible one. We'll be touching on points around having open conversations about money with your partner, how our past experiences can shape our money beliefs, and so much more in this episode. But we've got Terry from Cash Flow Co, so their goal is to maximise your return on life by making smarter decisions with your money Beautiful. And then we've got Paul, a mortgage broker from Loan Market, who is very, very curious and passionate about helping you manage your money and get your finances down, or you'll get down on your property. So, gentlemen, thank you for joining me.

Paul Hixon: 1:58

Thank you.

Terry Condon: 2:00

Thanks for having us, Maki.

Lachlan Stuart: 2:01

Let's hit it hard. Let's go straight into the big question that a lot of men are thinking why is it crucial for couples to have open conversations about money?

Paul Hixon: 2:12

Shall I go, terry, I think I just see people coming into us every day, every week, and they're often on just completely different pages about money They've got. Either you've got one dominant person that handles all the money and the other person sort of hides in the background, or you've got one person that just happily spends the money and doesn't listen to the other, and I think a lot of the time that can cause just big stresses in a household. We ask people are you a spender or a saver? And it's never really one or the other. There's hardcore fires out there who really save money and are really good at it, but when they clash with the spender it becomes a real frustrating point in a relationship and can really send a relationship off course.

Lachlan Stuart: 3:09

What are your thoughts on that, Terry?

Terry Condon: 3:12

100% agree, mate. It's probably you know what's interesting. When we started the cashflow co, we really didn't start thinking that we were going to become very well experienced and well-versed in understanding the problem that Paul's just very well, very effectively articulated there. But essentially, that's essentially what we've actually had to do is to solve that problem, to help people make better decisions with their money, particularly with couples. You've got two people. If you've got different ideas about money, it can be very hard, because I get this image of like two people literally. Just I think it's like a cartoon. There's like two donkeys and they're pulling in different directions, towards different haystacks, and then it's like if we just had one donkey pulling one direction, you can have your hay and then we'll go towards my direction. It feels a lot like that at times and that's the norm, right? So look, if you're listening to this, don't judge yourself for that. It's just very, very difficult to talk about something that it's been taboo to talk about. It's not a norm, is it?

Lachlan Stuart: 4:10

Is there a right time to start having that conversation? I remember when I first started dating my wife she obviously out-of-me a buck. I was in a very different place in my life back then and I never felt comfortable talking about finances. And when she would travel a lot sometimes because I was just getting by, she would help me out to travel overseas and stuff like that, but we still never spoke about finances and I felt as a man I really struggled with not being able to contribute in the way that I believed I should be. And it wasn't until maybe four years into our relationships which seems a short time now, but in the grand scheme that feels like a long time to not really talk about where the hell we're at with finances, whether we are one of those savers or we are a spender. So is there something from, I guess, with you that you've seen as probably an ideal time to do that, or how you would even go about doing that?

Paul Hixon: 5:06

I think that's why we started this. To be honest, when I came across Terry's work, something popped up on Instagram or a sort of but all that hits the nail on the head is that people just don't have a time, they just don't get ready to think about it. They sort of half come together when they want to buy a property, but it can already, of course, frustrations by that point and arguments by that point. So I think that's what I really liked about Terry's process and the training that they're putting out there is it's just start to have a conversation. And what I was always I think you just nailed it there, locky is that I'm always of that idea that you've got to be saving, you've got to be saving, you've got to be saving. But for some people that's not their idea, and getting that's what Terry's piece came jumped out at me was that it's just get on the same page, have a structure. That's probably something better for Terry to talk to, I think.

Terry Condon: 6:07

Yeah, I think I mean. The insight you're getting to there, paul, is very, very simple Two brains solving one problem works way better than one brain. One brain solving one problem and another solving the same problem without any communication, and so it's so, so easy to feel like you're doing different things. But to come, coming back to the answer to your problem or your question, when is the right time? I think, once you know that this is someone that you want to invest more in the relationship with, it's not a, it's not an irreversible decision to manage your money together.

Terry Condon: 6:36

There's many ways that you can do it, and I think in some ways we've been led a little bit astray by what I would call overly rigid kind of prescriptions. You know, just read my kind of plan on a page, follow what I say, and usually what ends up happening is the person who's engaged with money reads the book, froths the book and then goes to the other person, shoves the book down the other person's throat and says do this, we got to do it exactly this way, this is the only way, and like not to point fingers, but anyone that says they've got the only money guy that you'll ever need, it's kind of leading you astray a little bit, because that person's never met you. How would they know that? And so you are the first time you've ever happened, and so is your partner. So it's really up to you guys to figure out how you want to work it together, and I think that's exactly what Paul's pointing out is. We're like let's play the game your way. There is no right or wrong here.

Terry Condon: 7:26

That is how you guys want to do it together, and wealth isn't money and money isn't wealth. Wealth is having more of what you value. So you want to start the conversation with what do you guys value? What do you care about? Because money's role to play is to get you more of that. But if you start with money and these prescriptions of X percent, x percent, x percent over here, that's actually not that compelling. Start with values. I reckon it's easy to have that conversation then. Okay, now how much money do you have? I think it's better and safer place to start.

Paul Hixon: 7:56

It's almost like it's not creating a game out of it, but taking the stress out of it. By creating a game out of it like make a way that money improves the process of money or the process of saving or the process of getting to what you want with money, needs to be a team effort, so you've got to get into the same game to do it.

Terry Condon: 8:21

Yeah.

Lachlan Stuart: 8:23

So with that, I guess from what I'm taking from that is then if there are so many money experts out there on the internet and it can be quite overwhelming one person saying do this invest in Bitcoin, the other person saying, save, save, save, then the other person saying have no debt, and it can be quite overwhelming. So what you're suggesting, the best place to start would be, is just sit down and start having a conversation, identify which one saw more appealing to you and then navigate that with your partner.

Terry Condon: 8:53

I think so right, like if you just set money aside for a second, because I just I think the world wants us to conflate those two things, and I'll make the same point Wealth isn't money and money isn't wealth. Wealth is having more of what you value. Money is just a vehicle for moving wealth from one place to another. And so when you're talking about managing money and optimizing for money, how do you know how to optimize if you don't know what you're optimizing for? So why don't you start with what you're optimizing for? What problem are you actually solving?

Terry Condon: 9:18

Are you trying to create more flexibility as a family? Do you want to spend more time with the kids? Is that important to you? Or do you want to have more adventures with the kids? And what does that look like? Does that mean that you want to pick up every six months and you want to travel overseas? Okay, what kind of jobs, what kind of opportunities, what kind of incomes, what sort of investments might you need to be able to support that? Now that stuff becomes pretty compelling to the person who otherwise couldn't really give a shit. You see what I mean, because you reconfigure and configure your finances according to what job it has to do for you, then, of course, the person who doesn't feel like a money person isn't going to be interested.

Lachlan Stuart: 9:56

Love that. How do our experiences and the upbrings that we've had to date shape that? Because I am a saver, definitely because I've always believed money doesn't grow on trees. If you, you know you've got to save for a rainy day, all of those sorts of things, and my wife definitely is likes to spend a little bit more than I do. So I've noticed in the beginning, before I started becoming aware of this, how frustrated I used to get. I was always like, come on, you know you're spending that. I could have had a year off work for that. Like, what are we doing here? And now I've sort of become a bit more aware of it and understand it's more than just what the numbers in the bank account can mean. We're buying experiences, or, you know it does bring you a lot of joy money, I don't get me wrong.

Lachlan Stuart: 10:37

I do enjoy what it can bring me, but how do people who are sitting here listening? They go. Okay, I want to shift how I think about money. I want to shift my relationship with money. What would that look like for an individual? For an individual, or a couple? A couple, a couple, a couple individuals?

Terry Condon: 10:57

Yeah. So I guess, if we've had the conversation we've just been discussing, we know what the money's for and we want to shift that relationship. If that is really really important to both of you, I think the next thing to do is to find out what the opportunity cost or otherwise the cost of inaction is. And it's interesting conversation to have between couples, but it's where I see couples get the most empathy for each other and really connect on what they're trying to do together, the life they're trying to build.

Terry Condon: 11:24

You hear that saying all the time we got so busy making a living we didn't make a life. If you actually sit down and ask yourself this question, why is it so important to like? What's the cost of doing nothing? What's the cost of staying the same? And really, what I'm trying to hit on here is that humans are so motivated they're much more motivated to move away from pain than they are towards pleasure.

Terry Condon: 11:45

So, as compelling as it is to have a clear vision together and it's very important for direction you don't just need direction, you need purpose, and the way you tap into purpose is pain. What is the painful situation that you want to avoid in order to move towards that thing? And if you have those two things together, it's almost like you've got two magnets right One magnet behind you that's repelling you, pushing you away from the pain, and another magnet that's pulling you forward. And so for me, if you get that right, what it'll do is it'll emotionally connect two people to their money. And this is, I think, where it's counterintuitive right.

Terry Condon: 12:19

Most of the time you go into money and finance and, paul, I'm sure you'll agree with me on this the way we're educated and in condition with money is you take the emotion out of it. I believe, we believe it's very important to put the emotion right into it in the beginning and then think logically about how you want that thing that you're emotionally connected to. And if you think about it, everyone talks about Warren Buffett as the best money manager on the planet. Right, but Warren Buffett's most lucrative investment Berkshire Hathaway do you know what it was? Can I swear on this podcast?

Lachlan Stuart: 12:49

Yeah, go for it, spice it up.

Terry Condon: 12:52

It was a big fuck you to people that tried to screw him over in business. It was a very emotional decision. I'm going to buy that, I'm going to prove you guys wrong and I'm going to become the best money manager that ever existed. 100% emotional decision, 100%. So anyone that says take the emotion out of money to do better with it, I really don't think it understands people and it's actually people that manage money. It's not money that we need to worry about, it's how we work with money.

Paul Hixon: 13:19

I think that's a bit. It's almost like you, locky and Amy at the start, and Terry, they're coming together with the. It's the emotion of it. But bring your emotions together to find an emotional goal. Like Locky, yeah, I'm saying the same thing.

Paul Hixon: 13:34

You know, I'm a bit of a saver. Clare stays and looks after the kids and so she's not involved in the money side of it and I want her to be involved in the money side of it. So you know, if you don't come to the same emotional point of why you're doing it, then you've got no way to move forward. And I think sometimes buying a house is one of the times that couples come together for it and it's the first time and it can become a frictional time because one of them really wants to buy a house, one of them really wants to save the money, or they both want to save the money and they've both got to change their habits for it. But that's one of just the first emotional reason that they get their money involved and start that journey together and it's, you know, just trying to find a plan that they can work together to come to the right outcome for themselves.

Lachlan Stuart: 14:28

Speaking of property, then why, from your perspective, Paul, is it important for you to help people pay down their loan as quickly as possible?

Paul Hixon: 14:37

I'm not paying that.

Lachlan Stuart: 14:38

Yeah, we're not you paying it down? Sorry, Jesus.

Paul Hixon: 14:42

It's like I help people get their houses and then my money yeah we're done.

Paul Hixon: 14:48

Moving's the worst thing in the world Now, obviously, well, no, obviously, but paying down debt. You pay down debt from after tax dollars. Obviously, the Australian dream is to own your own home, and there's an element of that you just can't get away from, because once you pay off your home, you can live for free. You don't have to pay rent. You know you've got to pay for repairs and pay for rates and whatever, but you can live for free and that gives you a level of financial independence that you can stop working at some time in the future.

Paul Hixon: 15:24

Paying down your loan faster than the minimum amount can just save you tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the loan. Anybody who's still in a fixed-rate loan now needs to look at what it's going to cost them when they come off a fixed-rate loan and start paying that now, because they're paying 2% and they can start paying 6%. They're going to get 4% ahead on their loan over the next couple of years just by making those additional repayments. So our thing is that we help clients but we also track their interest rates on their loans. So we've got a sweet-builder system in the background that we can actually see what we predict their interest rate is and we can look at when they're paying too much. So we can just try and fine-tune it, get them to keep overpaying and pay down the debt as quickly as possible.

Lachlan Stuart: 16:13

It's an interesting one. When you mentioned this one, we were speaking about it last week I never really thought about it. There was a book that I read recently as well, where he was all about getting your debt down as quickly as possible as well for that exact reason. And then, obviously, having Matt Lancon last week, where he talks about obviously, he doesn't have much debt as well.

Lachlan Stuart: 16:35

A lot of the time in my life when I've been looking at how do I create wealth, a lot of it is based around debt, and so now I've sort of started looking at other ways to do that and the importance of it, especially if you've got a 30-year loan, it can save you quite a bit of capital, and it's almost like one of those things now where what are the things that you're just blowing money on without even really thinking about it? For example, for me, I had every streaming subscription under the sun and you can only watch one at one time, right, you're hooked on one season for a month, and then you're watching some paying 40-odd extra dollars a month on something else that I could have been paying off on my home loan. So I started looking at all of those things and putting it in the home loan account as well, purely because of what you said a number of weeks ago.

Paul Hixon: 17:20

Yeah, look, it can have a massive benefit. There's definitely arguments to having debt, but not home loan debt. So, investment loan debt by having multiple properties, that over time they go up in value and in 20 years time they're hopefully doubling value, you can sell them off and clear down the debt and have money left after. But the home loan is the key, the home loan. Paying that home loan off and getting rid of it gives you that financial independence. But yeah, just small extras can make a big difference as you go along.

Lachlan Stuart: 17:57

What are your thoughts, Terry, around paying down debt and debt in general?

Terry Condon: 18:03

Yeah, I mean I'll come back to what we said before it really is horses for courses because let's say, for example, I've got a better opportunity than paying down my debt outside, so the extra money that I'm putting into the loan I can do more with it elsewhere and that isn't just a financial return. So, for example, if I do have a business, it's a dollar against my home loan versus a dollar in my business. If the business, if I can get like a 30% or 40% return on that dollar, then I can increase my personal income to pay the debt off sooner. So it's really just a kind of sequencing thing. But let's say, for example and this has happened we've got a family who they ran a business down here in Victoria and their kids are chronically ill, like chronically ill. So they are acutely aware of the value of time over everything else, and one of the best financial decisions I ever saw get made was them deciding once and for all that they were going to actually act on what they always wanted to do and make it actually happen to move, shut the business down, move, move north, take their girls up to the sun, up where you are, paul, because they wanted to live every day as much as they possibly could with their girls sun and surf and just have that adventure at the time.

Terry Condon: 19:23

Now I know that's cost them financially in that short term, but what's the point of money if it's not improving your life? It's not useful anyway. Now they weren't short on money and they're not going to go broke they're far from it and I would say that's one of the best decisions I made. So you might say, oh, I could have paid extra off on the home loan during that time and trade the best years he's going to have with his girls life. So Paul's 100% correct. You can reduce your stress and all that sort of stuff. And again, if you come back and you say, but what is wealth to us? It helps you make those decisions and it helps you have, I think, conviction in those decisions because you're not following a prescription. You're saying that's what's best for me and I know it. Does that make sense? Definitely.

Lachlan Stuart: 20:08

I really, really enjoy that. I had a gentleman on before who's a big branding expert and he does the same thing. He's like I work six hours a day, always finished at the same time, because what's important to me is dropping my kids to school, picking them up, having time with my family. After that is like, yeah, I could make a bucketload more money, but I make enough money in the six hours that I do a day and I don't work weekends, and that's how he's designed his life.

Terry Condon: 20:34

And.

Lachlan Stuart: 20:35

I think that's another good point to reiterate, terry just understanding and getting clear on what purpose money serves you, what it is actually giving to you. I have spoken to Paul about it when I started my business in 2014. The goal was always I wanted to be able to have flexibility, to travel with my wife and also, if I ever become a dad, to be able to be as hands on as I choose, to be not be stuck, which is why I chose to not be employed anymore, and there's pros and cons with all of these things, but that's what works for me, and some people still don't understand why I chose to do that. However, I don't really care. It's worked well for me and that's what you know. Going back to your point, terry, so that's Awesome to make me feel validated. Now go back to everyone and share. I'm doing the exact same thing.

Terry Condon: 21:22

I walked away from everybody's dream job. Yeah, People are like what are you doing? Can you? Well, I don't know. Yeah.

Lachlan Stuart: 21:29

Can we talk about that then? Because there are people who will be listening to this, who are in what is perceived as a dream job and they may be thinking this isn't giving me what I thought it would give me in the first place. How did you come to terms with the fact that you wanted to walk away, and what did that look like and how did that play out?

Terry Condon: 21:45

Yeah, so I spent the better part of 10 years in elite sport coaching, coaching the best athletes. If you made a list of the best athletes over the last 15 or 20 years, I probably worked with them or someone with or who worked with someone who worked with them. And you know what I love that job when I was young, really did, really enjoyed it, got so much out of it, understood literally everything I understand now and what do I apply to money through a human behavior lens comes from my background in coaching and understanding how big things get done, how big accomplishments actually happen and how achievement actually works, and so I don't regret that for a second. But there was a period of time where I started to realize, hang on, I'm actually moving closer to a period of time where I don't want to be picking up every few years and chasing the next track suit. And I got job offers in Ireland and England and all over Australia all the time. It's a great career when you're young. It's a horrible career as you age because when you're coaching in sport particularly where I was with physical performance, what ends up happening is, as you get older and more experienced, you actually become more expendable because you're getting further and further away from the athletes you're coaching in terms of age and younger and younger people. It's just a supply and demand thing. Younger and younger people, who are more qualified than you now because they've spent more time at uni, are nipping at your heels and they're like I'll work twice as hard for less. So all the economics work against you. And so what do you end up doing and what I actually?

Terry Condon: 23:18

I just looked ahead at the people in front of me and I said well, the people that survive. Unfortunately, they become political animals. They understand how to manage and manipulate people power perception and usually what ends up happening. And I would say that fully. At least one third of my colleagues had broken marriages. Now I just got together with my wife and I made this, had this realization, and I realized I'd made her move for the second time in three years and I'm like is this what it's going to be? Am I just going to keep saying, hey, we got to move again, pick up the kids, let's go, because I've got to have this job. I need the tracks. I just got to have the tracks because I don't know myself without it. And now I'm not saying everyone's like this, but what I'm saying is this is the pressures that people face and when I looked ahead, I was I actually don't want that, I don't like it, and the thing that I value much like yourself like is autonomy, freedom, creativity.

Terry Condon: 24:17

I was super innovative as a coach. I was always looking at new and better ways to do things and actually understanding how to look at things from different angles, and sometimes that was appreciated and sometimes during those environments people are just like hey, mate, just think like the rest of us and stop stop rocking the mass. I stopped stop rocking the I don't know what the expression is there, but, like you know, just calm down and I'm like oh, I thought this was a leak. I thought we were like going for the best, you know, but anyway. So there's a point where you realize you're an entrepreneur and it's because I just kept making myself redundant in every role.

Terry Condon: 24:48

I would build systems and those systems would eventually allow me to do my job better than you know I could with always just me. And you know I'd build these systems and I'd make myself redundant and I get bored and that wasn't seen as a strength, it was seen as a weakness. So I kept pushing for more and more challenge, more responsibility, and they were like no, look, we sort of have your peg, like stay there. So for me I was like, listen, wealth for me is not having my day scheduled eight months ago by somebody else from 8am till 6pm. Wealth for me is to be able to get up and own that calendar.

Terry Condon: 25:22

I still love coaching and that's exactly what we do, doing what we do now. I love helping people accomplish things, but I had to ask myself the question is the biggest team is the most important thing I'm here for? To help someone who's already rich, run 10 seconds faster or get on the field one week earlier? Is that the best thing I can do here with my skills, with my talents, with my abilities? And at a certain point I was like this is risky. Every year that I stay here, the risk compounds. Only a very narrow subset of people actually know and understand what I do, and so I need to get a broader skill set. That kind of led me down a different path.

Lachlan Stuart: 26:00

I love that. What about for you, Paulie? Like probably a similar question you were mentioning off air before that, you changed careers. You were doing sound engineering in that space. What then, I guess, drew you to wanting to make a change in your career?

Paul Hixon: 26:18

I think it goes back to that you were talking about. Your conversation with Matt on the previous podcast was just, you know, you get on a journey and is it going to achieve what you want from it, your success that you want from it? Are you going to get to the level that you want to be at? You know, both of you have actually talked about changing the emotional journey almost earlier on in your lives, and when we're dealing with first home buyers, it's quite often it's the start of their journey, their potential in their early 20s. They haven't gone on that path of changing a course or doing something different. They're just on that journey of trying to buy a home or start that career or, you know, get onto the first rung in the ladder.

Paul Hixon: 27:09

For me, changing careers was just one of those things that I was involved in, a business that just didn't exist anymore, pretty much so building recording studios was a big thing, but then, all of a sudden, it wasn't. People could make music on their iPads or their IMAX or whatever it was at the time it was 27 years ago so and I fell into real estate first, and then, after falling into real estate, I moved across to the finance side a bit more rain man for everybody. We had that finance centre. I went out and I was probably the finance guy, but that was. You know, that's just as one of those steps. It's one of those steps in your career as you move along, trying to lift yourself up to the next level of probably, you know next level of income or for, as Terry said, you know just that emotional step that's creating a path, your next path to go along in life.

Terry Condon: 28:10

That's probably why I got people ask me lucky. You mentioned before that. People ask you why you did that and that sort of thing. And I still sell people from you know, from my previous career, and they kind of just look at me. Really weird.

Terry Condon: 28:21

I had you get into finance and it was actually finance and understanding finance and investing and really really understanding it deeply that gave me that opportunity to walk away, try something new, take a risk better myself and build something.

Terry Condon: 28:36

And I'm like I want everyone to know this and I hate the fact that I had to learn it.

Terry Condon: 28:40

Then I want my kids to know this. Like part of the sort of secondary sort of gain of this for me is that you know, there's a body of work that we've created on our podcast that hopefully my kids stumble across one day and I won't be telling them, they'll just be listening and, god forbid, if something ever happens to me, it's there for them, you know, because I just wish somebody sat me down and said here's how the world works, mate, and if you want the world to work better for you, then learn this game and game it, because it's created immense opportunity for me in my life in terms of those little choices that I wanted. You can reconfigure things, and it's actually shocking how fast you can make this happen If you actually do understand the ins and outs of this for yourself. And it's not at all as difficult Paul, hopefully you'll back me up on this it's not at all as difficult as people make out the acronyms, the long words, all that sort of stuff. It's all just a lot of smoke screen, isn't it?

Paul Hixon: 29:37

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, definitely. It's funny you've come back to the game, making a game out of it, because you know we started with that game, the game of the emotion, of getting a couple on side with each other to play the game, to work the finance to their best, to then create the outcomes that they want. It's definitely getting on the same path Two people working together to get better at it.

Lachlan Stuart: 30:00

It's cool to see that you can sort of put that into place in what you were saying there, terry. It's like you hope that your kids, you know you come home from work one day, or you're working from home by the looks of it, but you come home one day and the kids have got the podcast on the TV or on the wireless just not the wireless anymore, that's my age On the iPhone or iPod just listening to it, and that's very similar to myself because it's money as a component. So if we look at like health, wealth and relationships being those three core buckets as Maddie was talking about, paul that we can educate on and we should be getting taught about from a young age, all I wanted to do is do one, you know, be 1% better than my dad was, and I hope that my children are that 1% better, and that's by having conversations like this, providing different perspectives, chasing after what we want and proving to people that I guess what how society worked 20 years ago or a couple of generations ago, we can now change that. What's normal, you know, money, beliefs, what's considered the norm even now, I guess my relationships. So one thing I struggled with was my wife out earned me for six, seven years. I've only just got her, thankfully, and it's been a bad but, you know, for so long and that was really hard to take as a once again, as a man and someone who wanted to be the protector and provider.

Lachlan Stuart: 31:16

But the moment that I just was like it is what it is. We're working together collectively. What's my role in it? What do I want to get out of it? I became comfortable and just focus on what I needed to do, which has grown. The business has grown, the podcast, and I just hope that people continue listening to this because as a by-product of learning, you know, learning from you guys, paul and Terry, about money and then going down the rabbit hole of how can I be better here, and then from me around mindset or health, it's how can I be better here? You're gonna be a better dad, you're gonna be a better mate, you're gonna live a better life and it's not that complicated. You just got to invest that time in there and really start taking responsibility for that.

Terry Condon: 31:54

I say that this is the cheapest skill you'll ever buy with your time and your money. Because if you think about how many decisions you make every day that involve money, and then you future pace that across the rest of your life and then you spread the cost of the time and the money that it would take you to get good at this, you'll see you'll never get anything cheaper because you learn at once. You benefit from it for the rest of your life. If you think about different professions, like if you're an IT or something like that, you're always having to update the knowledge and stay abreast of things. This is one game that doesn't change. It's the same thing. The principle stay the same. The way you configure it for you is very personal to you. So once you start to get that, it's one of the best investments you'll ever make. That one I don't know if you'd add anything to that, paul, but like I just think when people say to me oh, you spend money to figure out how to make money, I'm like you're not getting it.

Paul Hixon: 32:45

I think and I agree.

Paul Hixon: 32:46

I think yeah, I agree I think you know, I've potentially come from an older generation of, from my parents, were very much save, save, save, save, save, to a point where you know they're now you know old, old, old, care homes, old, and this, they're all their, all their life savings and everything's just pouring into care homes which, you know, if they didn't have money to stay with, pay for them in the UK.

Paul Hixon: 33:12

So it's, you know it's, it's starting I think it's starting to change the mindset of how we think about money and what it does, and that's probably the first step for people it's just coming back to that idea of like, let's get on the same thing. If somebody's a spender, somebody's a saver, then the saver's got to move as well as the spender. You know it doesn't have to be just this the spender that moves, he's got to be the saver that moves as well. If you're gonna come together as a team it's not what my way of the highway it's gonna be you know it's gonna be an enjoyable process you're gonna maybe game it out, as we've said, and just get rid of that friction around it really, which is what I see so much and it causes so many breakups you know, what's interesting about that, paul, is that the differences that people perceive amongst themselves are actually strengths and they're actually gifts, because we'll see this a lot in a max, there'll be someone who's very macro, maybe future focused, yeah, and like thinking very much about the future.

Terry Condon: 34:12

And then there's someone who's like uber present, and actually I just ran into one of our guys just here before and she's like why he's just been so present, focused. But now actually what we're doing is we're now actually collaborating around those different views right. So when you're making your financial decisions, it's a really good thing to have somebody who's understanding the present and all the detail really, really closely, to have somebody collaborating out with who's like, and also we need to be moving in this direction. But I think, because everybody perceives that we need to be the same, they think, oh, it doesn't work for us and we're doomed. Those differences for me, they're complementary, they're not competitive, and if you can reframe that and understand it and give both of you a common cause that's much bigger than our differences, then you can actually use those differences.

Terry Condon: 34:54

My wife, for example, I'd say she makes much better life investments than I do, so she makes quite smart purchases on things that save us time, make our lives easier. But if I just stuck to my conditioning, I'd say, well, why do we need the two hundred thousand or the two thousand dollar thermo mix? And she's like, oh, because it's gonna make everyone's life a lot easier forever. And I'm like it's two thousand dollars. And she's like, yes, and it's gonna be used so and so the cheapest thing. That's exactly what I just said about finance, right, yeah, and she'll just, she'll find ways to make our lives in the house kind of work better.

Terry Condon: 35:26

And I've learned to really respect that, just like she's learned to really understand and respect how I'm thinking about the kids and what kind of school, what kind of opportunities we want to be able to invest in for them, and what we have to do now to make that happen, some of the opportunity costs that we have to pay to be able to earn or pay the price to make that stuff happen. So, as we have those conversations every time you have one of these conversations and it's not my way or your way, it's how do we get the most out of each other's strengths? What you do is you teach yourself that conversations about money can be constructive and, as that happens, what you start to do is you expand that sphere of competence and confidence and comfort, and so you can make your comfort zone much bigger than whatever chaos happens for you. When that happens, when that chaos happens, you can deal with it so much more effective than you can respond instead of reacting.

Paul Hixon: 36:15

I am never gonna live it down. Let not let my wife get a thermo mix. I like the idea of a road map to the thermo mix. I'm good with it.

Terry Condon: 36:31

Yeah, that's that was that's my thing, right. What's the plan for this and how's it fit in? And we're looking at it saying, okay, so if we're gonna spend $2,000 on this now, what is it gonna? What? Which goal are we going to compromise on in the short term? Which of these other goals are you actually willing to move from? Because I think that's the conversation doesn't get had. It's I'm only seeing it in this fear and I'm only seeing it in this fear and I'm only standing in this fear. So it's that conversation that has to be had.

Terry Condon: 36:58

And here's the most important tip if you were to ask me of one thing to make collaboration and decisions and stress and tension and conflict absolutely leave your relationship forever. It's separate that decision from the action. Don't do it all at once. So when you're having that conversation, the further that happens from the actual implementation, the better off you are, because it's actually always if we're reacting to it oh, the thermo mix is broke, we better buy a new thermo mix today.

Terry Condon: 37:28

No, no, no, no, okay, now we sit back, now we kind of think about it now, where's it gonna sit, where's it gonna fit within the next month's plan and how does it actually look, you know in in comparison to what our sort of projection was for this year, because we know it's gonna have an impact and maybe it's not as big as my initial fear was, but I need to know that too. But you also need to know that we're gonna be pulling from Bali holiday. We're gonna be pulling from kids fun, whatever it is, where it's coming from, and we can make that decision together. It's not we just have to act and look. That's the stuff that just creates stress and tension.

Lachlan Stuart: 38:01

I just love that we're hooked on. Thermo mix is now Paulie. I should have given you. I should have given you mine before I put it into storage. Mate, you would have been the husband of the year and I wouldn't have been, I would have been dethroned, but I want to. I want to change the direction of the conversation just a little bit, terry. I'd love to dive into the four financial alter egos, I think, how they influence our financial behaviors.

Terry Condon: 38:25

Firstly, what they are for everyone following along, listening along and, yeah, how they influence our behaviors yes, probably a good point to hit on and and Paul's been kind of mentioning it and touching on it is you know, how are we, how are we collaborating with money? Because that's kind of the biggest unlock if you're pulling in different directions, you just don't go fast. And I guess this is just an observation, this, this model, it's an observation in myself, so observation in all the members that we've worked with over time, and really it comes from the idea that how you feel about money dictates what you do with it, because the limbic part of your brain, it's what influence you. We make emotional decisions, then we justify them with logic, right? So if you understand how you unconsciously feel about money, then you can start to look at how you're acting with it and you can start to codify this and understand. Okay, when I'm reacting unconsciously around money, this is what I'm doing, this is where I'm going.

Paul Hixon: 39:15

This is how.

Terry Condon: 39:16

I'm acting and I guess if you think about how you feel about money, there's three ways you can feel. You can load the money and that's like. I don't like it. I wish I didn't have to deal with it. It's kind of a pain in the arse. Get it away from me. That's one end of the spectrum, or pendulum. On the other end of the pendulum, you can last after money, and that is. I'm obsessed by money. I just have to have it and it's just like something I cling to. All right. And in the middle of that, the more balanced, centered place is love. Now, when I say love, what I mean, it's the balance, kind of love you have for your partner, your son, your daughter. It's the acceptance of who you are. You know you and all your flaws. You're not perfect, but I accept you for you. All right. So that's a centered place.

Terry Condon: 39:55

Now map that against the three ways of being with money or doing. You can scrimp with money, you can save or you can splurge, right. So scrimping, obviously holding on to money very tightly. Saving is putting some away from the future, but also spending in line with what you value. Splurging, saving nothing for the future, spending everything on the now and actually mortgaging the future for the now and so if you map those against each other, what you're gonna find is that we give money these four different jobs and we don't even know that we give money these jobs. This is just completely unconscious. These are not conscious thoughts. These are unconscious feelings about wanting what money has to do for us, and so the jobs are superiority, survival, security and satisfaction. So if I give money the job of making you feel superior, then I'm going to see money as like some kind of moral compass. It says something about me. What I do with money says something about me. So maybe I'm gonna spend a lot on symbols of prestige, maybe I'm gonna get the most expensive car, maybe I'm whatever it is. I'm gonna try to signal something about how good I am. Maybe I'm giving money away all the time, maybe I'm being overly generous in some ways, but the gift is always to me because I'm trying to create some kind of sort of story. And again, it's not a conscious thing, it's just an unconscious thing. And so that one there that these are all like financial alter ego. So if I give money the job of making me feel superior, I'll treat it like a moral compass and I'll use it as such and I call that person a guilty giver. You're either giving money to people who need it or you're giving money away to sort of create some kind of image.

Terry Condon: 41:27

The second one is the resentful paupers, and that's the survivor one. So if you give money the job of helping me, just help me survive, just help me get by, and you'll just see money is a basic necessity and you won't even understand or consider that you could use money for other things, like improving your life, like having fun, like Investing in others. Anything like that won't come across, won't even register for you, and frequently you'll see people from lower socioeconomic status really struggle with this, because I've never seen anything different. I've just seen people struggle and you'll notice that people that I guess get out of those situations and continue to climb that sort of that letter I don't know what the term is but move themselves in situations where they're better off economically, they'll somehow get exposure to seeing other ways that money can be used, and so if you see money is just a basic necessity, then I would call that that's that sort of resentful paupers. So this is just like money's just gonna. I just gotta make it. I guess I've just gotta. I've gotta have it because we live in this world as a pain in the arse. But this is the lot we've been, we've been given. It's very, very hard for you to get beyond that if you only believe that money is going to help you survive the net.

Terry Condon: 42:38

The other one is the fearful hoarder. So this is where I think a lot of men fall into this one, because it's very gender based and it's where the job of money is security. Gotta make me feel safe, gotta protect me, gotta protect my family. So you see money, so you can see where spending conflict comes in. Right, because if you're living with someone who's splurging all the time and it feels like they're putting you and your family at risk because you're like that's the sword and shield, what are you doing? What are you throwing that away for? So you don't even know this is happening and you don't even know why you're disagreeing.

Terry Condon: 43:08

But you're using the word money, but you're actually thinking about completely different things. It's really important to understand that, because wherever the conflict comes from is because your frame of reference is completely different. You're not even aware of it. And so you've got those three and then the last one is your exuberant shopper. So this one's all about satisfaction. So satisfy my desires, change my state internally. So my wife is exuberant shopper, on the fearful order right.

Terry Condon: 43:34

So I think money is a sword and shield if I'm unconsciously going to this place and under stress and pressure, she thinks money is a drug, it's gotta make you feel better, it's gotta change your state so you can see how, like this, this can go back and forth.

Terry Condon: 43:47

She's like this is what you're supposed to use money for and I'm like that's not what you use money for, use money for this. And now, if you just let that happen and you don't have the common cause, you don't have language to talk to. So for us, we know that that's where we go under stress and pressure and we know that that's the unconscious job we're giving. But it's just our conditioning. It's just our conditioning out. The job of money isn't to be a sword and shield, isn't to protect us and it isn't to change our state, it's to improve our life. And we define that when we set that vision. So anytime we have some kind of disagreement, we just go back to the bigger picture and we say it's not about this or that, it's about that. So what's gonna help us get that?

Lachlan Stuart: 44:26

Is it possible to change that conditioning?

Terry Condon: 44:28

It is yeah, but you don't think you're way into a new way of acting. You act your way into a new way of thinking. You do it through practice, right? It's the same as fitness. You change your identity over time through the repetition that you put in. You start to see yourself very, very differently. So you know that conversation I just had with our one of our new members yeah, her and her husband completely different and I said your only job, your, your measure of success for the next six months is to get six reps in Six reps where you guys both go through this practice together. I guarantee that after three you're gonna feel completely different. But if you get six in, the rest of your life is gonna change Because that will be now a habit.

Terry Condon: 45:05

It's a way of working guys have established together. It's an operating that you operating rhythm that you have. And it's sticky because once you do it it just feels like it's kind of like hygiene, right, like it's weird if you don't brush your teeth in the morning. Same thing, same thing. And if it's not weird if you don't brush your teeth and you need to.

Lachlan Stuart: 45:24

Yeah, thank you, breath you got bigger problems yeah. Jen's all those one actually. Other thing, and this is probably another little segue to the right as well, but the three layers of me when it comes to our money stories Can you elaborate on that a little bit more.

Terry Condon: 45:47

I guess it's more just kind of understanding, like where these jobs come from. How did you even get to this place where you've decided unconsciously that money supposed to Be a drug, money supposed to be a sword and shield, money supposed to be a basic necessity or money supposed to be a moral compass, how did you even get there? And you know, the first one for me is like everyone's got emotional imprints when it comes to money. So very early experiences, formative experiences you have with money, you'll find that they create me, you create a story and that story gets reinforced over time. And so if you think about the first experience you ever had with money, you'll understand that you know I'm not and I'm I don't mean like Little bits of money that someone gave you here and there I'm in the first bit of money that you were and it was yours, that you got to use, however, you pleased. Now that's a peak experience in your life, if you think about it right, because that's the first time you get to assert yourself, that's the first time you get to be independent and that's the first time you go, I get to decide what I'm going to do with this now. This is why people, and couples in particular struggle coming together with money because it feels like I'm going to be losing my independence. Right, I don't want to do that, because then someone else is going to tell me what to do with my money and I want to go back to being a child, completely irrational. But that's exactly how it feels and so you're not looking to be, you know, dependent on someone. You're actually looking to create interdependence, that first layer of meaning. It comes with that sense of like I'm an adult, I'm in charge, I get to do what I want, type thing. And yeah, you can do what you want, but you'll always be, you'll always like, never reach a potential as a couple if you stay independent and never get to interdependence. But so that's your first layer and it's not just the peak experience, the first time you have with money, it's also peak experiences that might have happened along the way, you know.

Terry Condon: 47:29

So I talk about this as a story that I only really recently understood, and it actually has to do with debt. Interestingly enough, my relationship with money and debt and money itself was heavily influenced by one conversation I had with my dad and I was 10 years old, I don't even know about this until just recently and he told me how he became a farmer and he said I was 15 years old and I was at school and my dad turned up to school and he came into my classroom he said I pack your stuff, we're going home, I just took out a million dollar debt and your share is this much and you got to work it off. You're a farmer now, and so how do you reckon that with my relationship with debt? That's a bad thing. That is a prison. Debt is a prison. Debt is a prison. Now I had to overcome that conditioning, actually educate myself out of that To better use the tool of debt, because debt what Paul said before is 100% spot on.

Terry Condon: 48:26

The winners of the wealth game know how to use the weapon of debt, because it is a double edged sword and if you know how to wield it, you actually do pretty damn well, because you can handle the inflation problem to the banks and you can actually get the, the powers of the economy and the way that the money system working for you, not against you. If you're trying to save, you can't save your way to wealth. You do need debt to be able to accelerate your savings, but, yes, not on the home loan, preferably. You want that moving against your investments. So, anyway, so that's your sort of, that's your kind of, that's your first layer of meaning, right, your peak experiences. And was it good, was it bad, and what sort of meaning did you make from that?

Terry Condon: 49:02

Your second layer of meaning is like your gender roles. You talked before about like you being the saver. I'm sure most I'd say most men see themselves as savers because you think it's your role to provide security and protect the family and that sort of thing. And those two roles there's, like provider and care, and it's supposed to be provider protects and, you know, looks after things, and care sort of nurtures. Now, inherently those two roles are pitted against each other.

Terry Condon: 49:28

Because if you're the, the carer, who's going to be looking after each other's needs, then you need to be using and spending money To make it happen. Is that's the way the world works? But if you think you're the provider and you're not a carer, then you think your job is to stack as much money as possible, because then everyone's safer, right. And so you're stacking money, the other person spending, and you're like, what are you doing? And you're not across it, and so you kind of come into conflict with that. So that's your second layer. Your third layer is your actual personal values. What do you actually care about for yourself, what's important to you? And if those values are different and you don't actually reconcile those differences and make them common, you can just see all this person just going in their own direction. So those three layers, they actually create those financial fault, alter egos and it's kind of unconsciously driving you. If that makes sense, it's like you just like on these trial train tracks and you can't get off them if you're not aware of it.

Lachlan Stuart: 50:18

Love it, gentlemen. Well, in, in respect for everyone's time, I just want to make sure everyone can find out where they can get in contact with you guys. If you've enjoyed what you've heard, this is literally just scratching the surface. Terry's got a podcast cash flow code. You've got courses, terry. Where can everyone find the work that you're doing?

Terry Condon: 50:36

Yeah, thank you, matt, appreciate having me on and thanks for for introducing us. I really like this conversation and and I think what you guys are doing to just these kind of conversations is it's really valuable, I think, for for men at the moment, I see a lot of, I see a lot of men struggling in this space, so I appreciate the opportunity to talk to it. So where can people find more about us? So our podcast is the passive income project. Yeah, that's okay, but that's literally we give away as much as we can on there, like literally everything we teach is on there. Nothing's held back from that. But if you do need help and you want help and you want to help, then the cash flow code is our business and you can just go to cashflowcodecomau and you'll find everything you need from us there.

Lachlan Stuart: 51:24

I'll have that link in the show notes for everyone to just click very easily. And Paulie Hickson, mate, where can people find you?

Paul Hixon: 51:31

We're at Loan Lock in New Farm. We've been around a long time. Obviously, we look after a lot of your guys as well as a lot of local people. So Loan Lock in New Farm and we're hoping to help you ever need some help with our lending Awesome.

Lachlan Stuart: 51:49

Well, terry and Paul, thank you guys so much for giving you a time. I've taken away so much more from this as well and I've got questions that I'm going to go ponder and listen to the podcast and obviously have some more conversations with the wife. But I do believe the work that you're both doing and the care that you generally have, terry, to your point as well. There are a lot of men struggling out there and financial pressures is one of the biggest reasons why men take their life by suicide. So I think it's a skill we can learn to develop and improve, to better improve our relationships, in our quality of life. So, jens, invest some time in there and you know you can be on the path to continuing improving who you are and the outcomes that you get for your life.

Terry Condon: 52:31

Thanks, locky, appreciate it mate.

Paul Hixon: 52:32

Thank you guys.