How to Build Wealth Like a Pro and Still Enjoy Your Life (feat. Stacking Benjamins)

welcome to the money guy stacked edition it's brian preston the money guy you caught me with that do you want to start over no that's good so so here's we're rolling as y'all can see this is not bohansen much upgrade anybody anybody who is knows the wonderful world of broadcasting and personal finance knows joe saw siha i'm so happy to be here i can't believe i'm i'm with all of you it's so great to be here brian thank you so i feel like i need to set the stage for you though joe because i you and i we are old friends and the fact that you are part of my informal when i go to conferences i call you my unofficial conference mastermind group because well think about this because every time i go to a conference whether it's podcast movement fincon usually it's either you or steve stewart that i don't know how you do it but y'all are like the first people i ever see and then when i come home if i'm trying to come up with three ideas to try to implement in my show going forward you've got one of those slots pretty much every year and i'm not trying to just throw stuff at you but it is one of those things where i come back always and i'm like team this is what we need to be doing i learned this from joe and and you i think it's because you and i are so somewhere in that you've been a long-term podcaster you have stacking benjamins that you do with joshua are super successful a lot of industry recognition a lot of awards i think y'all have even put on your website y'all are no longer accepting award nominations because y'all have one too many of them at this point it is it's like written in the bio if somebody wants to give us an award you don't want any more lifetime achievement yeah we're like stop stop please but but you've you you also you have 16 years as being a financial advisor so that that that says a lot because you're somebody who's actually worked in the trenches you have your your own successful life as well so there's a lot of depth to the knowledge and then what i was so excited to find out when we were at the last fin con um you had shared i got a book coming out and um and it's i know how hard that process is and you did it through penguin random house so it's one of the big publishers and um you got me so excited about i was like you got to come on the show we don't do guests anybody who's watching the show you guys know we're not a big guest drop-off place but um i think enough of joe that i wanted to have him on the show so you guys could learn kind of what i learned when i go to all these conferences well thank you i'm very grateful for that i want to talk to you this book stacked so you know you can and feel free to drop any of the stacking benjamins i also want to thank your mom for letting you out of the basement i know that's not the easiest easiest thing to get away so you can do this road show and talk about that fumigate the place but um it is one of those things where i when i was going through your book it starts in the beginning like in a basic level so it's very approachable for anybody that's out there but then you do go you go pretty deep with the knowledge so it kind of catches it captures anybody and everybody who's interested um in money how did you kind of decide what did you know who your audience or did you want a wide net like you created i wanted a book that i would read and i wanted a book that kind of went along with what we do on on stacking benjamins which is you mentioned is kind of campy fun right uh uh mixed with some heavy duty financial planning topics and i was wandering around this wonderful bookstore in portland called powell's i don't know if you've ever been to powell's and it the the bookstore brian is a whole block long right and and what they did was kind of like your studio here which is where as as people next to you moved out they took over their space okay and so uh you can tell when you go from building to building inside powell's because they blew out a wall and the second floors don't even line up right so it's this crazy place which is what we love about bookstores and you just kind of get lost so anyway i'm wandering around the bookstore and i end up in the kids section and i saw this book the hardy boys detective manual okay which dude when i was in fourth grade i carried this manual around with me my little brother and i we carried it everywhere and it was written with the help of a real-life retired fbi agent like this was the real deal so my dad would leave for work on a muddy day like we kind of have today on a muddy day and my brother and i would go we'd look at the tire tracks right now so we could we could tail the bad guy my mom would touch a mom would touch a door handle and were there with tape like getting getting getting the trying to get the fingerprint fingerprints yeah and i and we dog-eared this thing we took it everywhere and i had this germ of an idea that i wanted a book for adults about money that i loved as much as i loved that book that i could refer to no matter what stage i was in but that didn't really you know that was kind of the germ i got home and my mom has a key to our house not only do we have a key to her basement but but to our house and she's she's left me this box of stuff by the way it's 50 years old at this point 50 years old she's finally letting me have this uh sixth place bowling trophy from the father-son bowling thing my dad and i had and one of the legs is bro all parents do this by the way they just start bringing stuff and clearing out their clothes you can't trust me with this until i'm 50. you know the little league stuff but in there was the cub scout wolf guide yeah and and the wolf guide and we talk a lot about gamification people you and bo and og and i we we talk about gamification really helps it makes it easier if you turn into a game and man they were i realized looking at this again as an adult they were these early people gamifying stuff for kids to get them interested and every every achievement starts off with things you need to do things you're going to need tools you're going to need and then succinctly how do you do it and then at the end check boxes of did you do this did you do this did you do this and then there's a place for your mom to sign it yeah so stacked was born it's a list of achievements starting very basic at the beginning and then tough achievements at the bottom and at the end of every chapter as you saw there's you check the boxes and there's a spot for your mom to sign so here's two compliments well first i i went through all the cub scout stuff got the arrow of light so i knew exactly i caught the concept very quickly because that's what did drive me to get more merit badges and other things but here's the compliment we came back from podcast movement and ft daniel when we we came back he goes hey i got to get a copy of joe's book because he goes that concept sounded perfect for me and i mean it was unasked for he just daniel i mean it was right there like in his and what he was looking for and what i like is it's approachable you use humor because i think i think creating content the personal financial space gets it can get dry very dry and you need to to keep it interesting sense of humor works and i wanted to ask you because we've we've done so many shows on like optimism humor and other things every one of your shows has that built into it where where's where's that come from i mean because you could i mean you're an mc at most events i go to so that means that it's not just you that thinks you're funny other people think you are how did you get into that racket of first being interested in humor but then also kind of turning that into what drives a lot of your content well like you and bo we are teachers yeah and i think as a teacher you have to make sure that some of these concepts to your point people think that they're boring people don't understand them i read a report recently uh that said that over 150 million people report in in the united states that they've cried about their money um i believe the numbers almost 35 of millennials have posted stuff to instagram that make them look more wealthy because they feel that pressure to appear something like they're not and so there's so many people crying they're struggling they've got all of there's so many reasons to be down that if we're not up and we're not that voice that says that you can do this no matter where you are that um who's gonna be yeah you know i think everybody needs that in their life they need somebody who's pushing them on one end but on the other end showing them the top of the hill that you know there was a day in my life brian when and this is early in my financial planning career where i i had this old minivan i had no credit yeah uh i'm teaching other people about their money though so this is this is this is this is how scary this really was early in my career i'm teaching and i'm doing none of other stuff myself i ran out of gas on the way home i had no credit i borrowed money from family already i couldn't go to anybody i was underneath the seats of my car and i'm looking for and i found 85 cents in my car so that i could walk half a mile to a gas station by the way i'd beg this dude to give me the plastic uh gas container he didn't want to give me the gasket because i was going to steal it yeah and so uh why did i steal a gas container i don't know but he didn't want to give it to me and i remember i cried that day yeah you know i thought i was completely screwed so optimism is you know the book is funny not just because we're trying to be funny and i'm not funny just to just to you know ha ha let's have some games it's really because if we can't make this approachable for people that were where i was then um that we're missing out yeah and well i like the the fact that because you're very you do i don't know if it's confessional but you're very open about that in the book as well is that you've had mistakes and um and it's one of those things where i think that that makes it very approachable when you can be honest vulnerable and um and and that that opens people up to come in and go on the journey with you so i you know part of the money guy show is is that we go i like to say we go beyond common sense and you do i want to kind of dive with i still want everybody to buy the book but i also want to give a little bit of the wisdom and knowledge that you shared or if you're where i was just get it from the library so you can if you're thinking for 85 cents your library is good that'll be fine but let's let's talk about because there were a few nuggets in here that i did want to cover the first thing is because we you know one of the first things if you've ever gone to therapy they um they'll talk to you about controlling that inner voice you know in the questions you ask yourself and you kind of in the very beginning of the book you ask yourself what questions are you asking yourself because so many people are focusing on comparing themselves to others what are some of those big questions that that people should be first to make sure their mindsets right on the on the wealth journey process well to your point the the number one question i'm sure that you and bo get in your practice that i used to get when i was practicing was how am i doing versus everybody else yeah who cares yeah the big question i would ask when i would go to companies and i'd talk about like using their benefits people would say okay how much should i put in the 401k and my first question was always this crazy question that nobody could answer where are you going yeah like where do you want to be and then they'd say well okay i want to retire at 60 or 62. well what what size bag of money do you need to get like how much do i need to put away today to get to that point and it's funny because people would could never answer that question but it seems so basic to all of us doesn't it yeah that if i want to know where i'm going i need a roadmap and and it should be i need x amount of money times y return to get to the goal yeah and what's cool by the way about this very simple occasion or uh equation so much money times so much return to get the goal is that this powers some of the most kick-ass conversations man it's so many exciting things like i have all these different goals on this timeline i want to get let's say that i want to put my you know i have twins that are 16. you've got kids if if if if you want to i said my kids are 16 they're 26. yeah i was about to say i was like your kids are older than mine and i have an 18 year old so keep going in my head they'll always be 16 or maybe even younger than that but anyway they uh but but i you know putting twins through college and my own retirement goals or financial independence goals even um maybe people out there want a second house or they want more flexibility in their life whatever these goals are when you put them on the timeline the first thing that you were able to see is how do they compete against each other and when you find out how much each of these goals cost brian as you know we can have a great discussion about there might not be enough money for all those so which one's more important is is it more important for me to pay 100 of my kids college and get retirement when i want it or would it be better for me to help my kids maybe pay for 20 of the college and i get to retire or maybe retirement's not that important to me and i will pay for all of college and i will uh i'll retire a little later you said something there that i think i want to go because you take it i think you take it for granted but i want to back up and make sure that everybody listening heard it a lot of financial advisors the first homework they'll give you is just say list your goals because that's kind of that why that you're talking about but as you just went through with kids in college desire to retire you know whether you start stacking in the the you know new car purchases and other things you can get overwhelmed with all these goals here's i thought you did something very unique and i want to give you a chance to talk about it you said just writing down your goals is not good enough you need to put a timeline with it because you know in this this i think this is where we're so similar because i always talk about financial order of operations that's one of our key brands that we do but when you put a timeline it makes it so much more digestible talk talk a little bit about that because that way people don't get overwhelmed with trying to absorb all this at once because finances that's when people go on the sideline and quit doing it so i wanted to talk about because i thought that timeline strategy was very important well here's what i like we've talked to uh quite a few uh uh people in neurology and and working with the brain and most of us the vast majority people are visual i'm actually not as visual i'm audio which is why i love you know audio podcasts right but but still even even when i lay stuff out even as a guy who's visual second audio first when i lay it out and i can see it against everything against each other versus just goal one goal two goal three and here's the things i i begin my brain my inner brain starts working on these things my subconscious brain starts working on it and it also avoids another problem that you and i see all the time which is that if i've got a goal here and i've got a goal here and i got another goal here and i'm sitting right here the only goal i focus on is this first one because i can't see past that mountain yeah and the bad news is is that you and i know compounding interest is so awesome that if we're gonna let our money make some money for us i think that one of the cool things robert kiyosaki talks about is you try to build this pile of money that goes to work every day with a lunch pail yeah you know and not only am i going to work but my money's going to work at the same day and when i can get to the point that my money's doing all the work and i'm not doing any work and i'm sitting back like that's fantastic but for this goal out here we've got enough time that i can send my money to do a bunch of that work while i focus my time on this goal so by timelining the goals and having them all set out i can have a strategy about this one this one and this one instead of well i work on this one and oops guess what now i've got this huge mountain here for the second one then oops i've got a huge mountain here for the third one for people listening on the audio podcast they have no idea what i just did there but no but but what you're really saying is make it digestible you know because i think with the timeline with what you described in the book because it can get overwhelming especially and you even make this example is that if your retirement was like say you need a two million dollars saved up yeah that sounds if you're starting out from day one that sounds like how in the world am i gonna get to two million dollars it just seems unattainable but if you start breaking out through the timeline and knowing which objective needs to be first it's one brick at a time i think is the way you put it in the book um i thought i thought that was really helpful because people get so overwhelmed when they're trying to figure out their goals and the why and that now that leads me to my next thing because well before we get to that do you mind because there's one other big thing here which you and i also see people get overwhelmed with all the time and it's that there's this huge range of investment options out there yeah and how the hell do i choose from all these investment options what to do well if i start off with timelining my goal it'll give me once again the amount i need to say but it also gives me this rate of return i need and while there's all of these investments this huge range of investments out there i can now instead of knowing everything about everything if i start off with these goals i can now laser focus in on the few goals that historically based on this amount of time till the goal and that rate of return i need as as you know that takes this wide range and makes it very narrow and now i only got to know about a few things yeah instead of everything and i could be much more confident that i'm going to make it to the goal versus you know what people usually do like which which cryptocurrency is going to get me yeah well it lets you put it short term money you know is going to make you a little bit like cash the midterm goals are going to let you be a little more aggressive and then those long-term goals maybe you can do the eight to ten percent yes that's that's great because i think a lot of times people they they need that clarity and as you mentioned visually or at least grouping and organizationally that's powerful stuff because the because the concept of what's best yeah has got to drive you crazy yeah and that's what so i want to kind of get into some of the nuts and bolts of now that we know the why we know the goals the first place people have to do is you have to have that margin you actually have to be able to live on less than you make and the only way you can live on less than you make is if you actually know what you're spending stuff on and that's where and i'm going to say the dreaded word that nobody likes to talk about budgeting oh man but man you dropped i got to tell you i even told the content team i was like joe dropped a just knowledge bomb on something because we just sent out on on social media we're talking about net worth stuff a lot because we're quickly approaching year end right now and net worth is an important thing and when we put out on social media hey tell us what your relationship with net worth is a lot of people said i'm doing mint i'm done i got it you know i'm you know i've checked the box give me my merit badge you know if we're doing this stack style and and that's just you talked about and i want to give you a point to talk about the difference between budgeting versus tracking yes and mint is tracking yeah and mint can be fantastic tracking and it can teach you about things that you shouldn't do in the future so i can go back through my tracking um uh and and for tracking purposes i don't use mit i i actually use the marcus insights okay yeah i will try to another free thing just to give people a couple choices out there of things to use they uh i have no relationship by the way with that company just let people know it's just it's just what i use i i very much enjoy it but when i go back through my marcus insights which used to be clarity money cheryl and i can very quickly see what mistakes we made last month but those mistakes already made they're done they're buried what i really need is something that ahead of time will prevent me from making those mistakes in the first place in an example that we use in the book my co-author emily geiberkin and i we talk about thomas jefferson yeah thomas jefferson wrote down every expense that he had he was fantastic at it anybody that knows history knows thomas jefferson owed everybody and their sister tons of money he was so broke he was so broke all the time he was in debt he was scrambling very much scrambling uh tommy j as we go our good friend tommy j was scrambling but but by budgeting ahead of time instead of writing down the mistakes that i made which is good budgeting is how do i set up a system so i don't make that mistake in the first place and uh and there's a few things out there you know a lot of people use ynab as an example uh something like that or cube money who's a sponsor of our show or dave ramsey's every dollar right these envelope budgeting systems very simply you put money in a spot ahead of time it gives that money a purpose before you spend it and then you have this little timeout when you take money out of that envelope however the technology works just this little spot where do i really need to spend money on this should i spend money on this and if you just build that circuit breaker in ahead of time and have some discus and frankly i don't even know how much i like the budget brian yeah as much as i like the conversations around budgeting well and we talk about that though hopefully if you do this long enough you get some muscle memory but what i i know look i don't know if this makes me the old guy on the front porch yelling at young kids on the lawn but it is one of those things where i think people they think technology has completely relieved them of their obligation to be an active participant in this budgeting process and that's what i loved in the book when you talked about the tracking versus budgeting is because tracking just because you downloaded an app and you named off quite a few good ones there you haven't finished the drill you still have to you can use that as a tool in the budgeting process but you've got to be actively involved in it otherwise it doesn't work i mean but so many people yeah six months ago i downloaded that app and it's been running in the background but if you're not actually keeping up with what's going on each month until you build that muscle memory i don't think you actually are getting the benefits of what budgeting can do for your financial life that's how it really helped cheryl and i was my spouse is that we had uh and by the way if you're watching us or listening and you're single i like having an accountability partner somebody that you maybe go out to lunch with and you share a budget with some trusted individual because i got to tell you these conversations you have when you say stuff out loud once again back to the brain when i say stuff out loud i internalize it my brain hears me say it out loud and then i and then i'm much more likely to follow through we we had this problem in our family which is that she and i on the same day when we were struggling with money and we're trying to dig our way out of that initial hole that i said earlier we were in we both come home with important things yeah she would come home with school clothes for the kids and i come home with a video game both very important for our family a little off on the priority very important and and we would have in all capitals the fight right the money fight because i didn't know she was buying something she didn't know i was buying something and we would invariably break the budget because we hadn't talked so the problem wasn't just the video game the problem was the fact that we didn't talk and the sad thing is in every relate not in every relationship but in most relationships that i saw there were two different roles one person knew where every penny was and the other person's in a place we call fantasyland yeah and because i was so busy helping other people with their money i was the person frankly that was in fantasyland so you were the plumber with the leaky pipes absolutely yes and so what what really solved it wasn't the app it wasn't the cool technology to your point we started having a weekly budget meeting and here's the deal we we initially had like this we had like this because you know being a money nerd like okay we're gonna do this professionally we have like and it's gonna be an hour-long meeting it's gonna be we're gonna do this point this point this point this point i got the spreadsheets out we we abandoned that in a hurry because it just didn't work it wasn't fun it was us us you know uh having elongating those fights instead all we needed was a quick check-in fairly frequently that would keep the money conversations alive the little conversations because i found that if we communicated on a scheduled basis once a week not once a month or once every six months but once a week we had a check-in we would then have these great conversations all week long that we're impromptu and so we decided to make it fun it's 20 minutes long here's what we do we do the tracking stuff we look at the week before all the stuff that that we spent money on and we go and by the way we found mistakes in our phone bill right we decided to level out our utilities we did all some of these really cool things because of the fact that we that we did the tracking piece but on the budget front we would then set up our money for the next week so that's the second 10 minutes of setting up the money for the for the next week and um and we would always do it to make it fun either either over pancakes or wine uh depending on what time of day it was well i like what you just described is because the previous example when you're talking about you're so generous to cheryl because you you complimented her while cutting yourself down but but you know like cheryl is thinking about the goals of the house with the kids and so forth when you are you know raising the children the twins and then you were thinking about the video game you had each were independent thinking of different goals when you have that open communication i think it controls that inner voice that we all have we all have a selfish streak inside of us but if you're at least having these meetings as a couple yes that voice now is united to where and you'll find that the goals because you kind of alluded to this early i always talk about the invisible hand of how powerful your brain is if y'all are all united on the goal you get there it almost seems like it i don't want to say magical or spiritual but it is an amazing thing where if you're united and you're tracking and you're building goals together you will look back three to five years in the future and it happens i mean and then you get the the fulfillment of of doing it right and doing it well and then it's instead of the boring stuff like education supplies and just paying the bills you can do the sexy stuff like the trips and all the other things yeah that's good between couples no it definitely takes that me and turns it into we to use a ted lasso phrase yeah yeah i love that show too i think it fits our personalities i i won't if i could grow a mustache and wear the same shirt i would totally try to get everybody around here to think i'm ted you know we could just have this whole thing i've already adopted like we got nate the great work in the the video over there i am trying to be the best version of the stretch by the way it would not be a stretch so i'm gonna ask some some you know these are these are questions that they serve us well but i think that i have i would be crazy to not take advantage of the fact that you have 16 years of being a financial advisor but you're out of the game yeah you are no longer now your your your partner on stacking benjamin's josh is a financial advisor so i don't i don't mind sharing that but you have a whole chapter in the book talking about hiring an advisor who won't bleed you dry yeah i mean what is what's cause that's something i think a lot of people and with your unique perspective that you were in it but you're out of it but you work in the personal finance space give us some some general thoughts and then we can kind of fine-tune this too well and i'm going to say that some people when i started talking about advisors because i was one they get their they get shields up yeah like of course yeah here comes the advisor pitch number one not being one first of all but number two i do look at advisors different i think brian than most people do when they talk about financial advisors like the bad news is as a guy who's gone from being in in the financial planning game to now just doing the financial media side the some of the baloney conversations i see online about financial advisors and and that you don't need one is ridiculous right it is it is absolutely ridiculous and and here's the reason i say this and once again i'm not a financial advisor i don't have a firm i will tell you this i don't want earl from peoria who spends all day on facebook right having an opinion about what to do with i mean it's okay if the earl has an opinion but i don't know if earl can zip up his pants and earl is busy making sure that that i follow every piece of advice and he gets angry if i don't yeah right versus people that i know who know me and know my goals i want to be the dumbest person in a room i need to have people that i respect around me i need frankly for me i need people that will fight with me yeah because because i'll get on my high horse and say hey i know that i know that and the question isn't by the way do i know it the question is and my my advisors do this to me all the time like joe we know you know this you're not doing any of it like you're seriously doing nothing so uh i need people that are gonna push me i had a friend tell me uh recently he said i need people who believe in me more than i believe in myself around me well we had previously talked about because there's two of you in this relationship this financial household you and cheryl and you said you in the book you talked about you need gordon ramsay to yell at you you know and get in your face but you know cheryl needs something completely different and especially you being such a financially minded person it's probably good to have that third party that bridges the gap and then here's what i loved in the in the book also you shared all the other service providers you hire and i found myself going nodding my head through the whole thing is like i have a personal trainer yeah i have a currently a physical therapist that's helping me with some some back issues that i pay a fortune to and then i have a you know i come from i did 16 years of public accounting so i have a background i even had a tax practice that i sold a tax business and i thought for sure because i had a three-year commitment to hire this cpa firm that had bought my firm and that was it and then i thought for sure i'd pick up the habit of start doing my tax i still overpay and get my my taxes done by a professional i do too because i because even with that background because it's everything you talked about it was an accountability and made it work talk about because there are people out there i spoke the ormonds and others who say you don't need this yeah yeah and think about this if you think about yourself as a company if you think about um let's let's take you know i'm a detroit guy originally most of my career was in detroit let's take mary barra the ceo of general motors yeah mary barra does not hire a bunch of people who know how to build cars and then she goes and does something else mary barra still has to know a lot about cars herself she still goes to all the car industry conferences she knows what she's doing when it comes to it but she still has for each piece of the car she's these engineers around her that are smarter than her about how the wheel you know now i'm going to get into the end of my knowledge how the wheels work that's where it ends how do those wheels work i need to know that uh how the different pieces of the car work and these people so but she can't abdicate and i think what people think of when they think of financial advisors is i'm gonna hire somebody and i abdicate the throne you cannot you you hire somebody you know my thing when i was a financial planner i would tell my clients because they were smart people i work with engineers presidents and vice presidents of companies these people were hella smart and i would tell them i'm like 96 of what i do you can do yourself my job is to cover your blind spot to to tell you when you're full of it and to push you to do the things that you tell me are important to you and accountability for sure my wife told me last night when we got home that she's hiring a personal organizer for the house i actually got white with being petrified that that meant that was good because i mean you know you need to do stuff but the accountability on actually doing something you're not good at and that's what i like to think financial advisors can do now you you you put in there three questions that people can ask to really cut through the marketing material do you mind sharing some of that yeah no no the the the very basic questions that you need to ask people are uh number one what type of people do you work with yeah and if they answer you by the way if they answer you that every single person looks like you they're lying they are totally lying they might be hungry yes but but also remember that your your goal is there's no right or wrong answer to these questions that what you're looking for is this back and forth of of how are they going to respond to these who do you who do you work with is a phenomenal question that i like what licenses do you hold don't ask them are you a cfp are you a fiduciary but fiduciary is a hugely important question but i would rather that they said it and by the way and this is something that's very important there are people out there as you know saying they're a fiduciary and they're not yeah yeah yeah this is a slippery slope well and it's illegal yeah yeah but if it's not written down they can get away with about anything but just it's hard to sue people yes yeah i want to see that in writing that you're a fiduciary meaning that you have to act in what you think is is is my best interest i'll tell you another clue if you're meeting with them face to face or if you're working with their staff one thing i found because i visited a bunch of different financial planning offices the receptionist is a huge clue the person that answers the phone if the receptionist is disgruntled i went into a lot of financial planner offices i will tell you if the person answering the phone acted disgruntled didn't have the time of day for you was not really very inviting all that comes from the boss and the boss is probably not great to work in fact in my experience and i've been in hundreds of financial planner offices every time that happened the financial planner themselves was a jerk it was just a total journey now i'm replaying as you walked into our office and you met ali thank you did they welcome you with a warm smile and you know that's terrifying but that's actually great insight because it lets you see what the culture of the the place is and if the advisor is answering the phone if they don't have people around them to do the little things you know you your advisor is part of your brain trust meaning you want them dealing with these big heady issues that you're coping with and sometimes as you know they're not as much money issues as they are you meeting money like how am i coping with money or how am i pushing myself to do more with my money versus opening a roth ira could probably be somebody else who's on the team that can help you fill out that paperwork or navigate the website or whatever that is if they're doing all that stuff for you you got to wonder how many people they're doing that for is as well so some is also looking at the operation and how they how they work and how much they're investing in the technology and all that stuff absolutely because it is you want in this modern world you want to take advantage of all the convenience that come from that absolutely but which also means to me brian means to me too that i want an advice i don't want to i had clients that always wanted to call me for everything yeah you don't want to call your advisor for everything you want your advisor to have a team that will handle all the little things and i want to talk to the advisors team for the little things i want to talk to my advisor about the big stuff i want my advisor to be constantly out there reading getting knowledgeable like think about once again if you're the ceo like mary barra is it at gm i don't want that i don't want that uh uh engineer who's dealing with the wheels trying to figure out his email or answering something about you know some supplier issue i want them figuring out what's the latest technology that we can all take advantage of yeah and that's what you could probably sp and we'll move on to the next thing but most financial advisors are sales folks and i'm always amazed at how many people are actually trying to get the next client versus becoming the masters of financial planning and that's that's unfortunately how the majority of this industry is set up yeah yeah that's a whole different episode man so let's talk because you did talk i wanted because you gave away some free tidbits on investing earlier but i was this is the book is set up for not only beginners but it does go deep in some areas too and i wanted to kind of bring this around because we have a lot of financial mutants that will watch this and they'll say hey what is joe's thoughts on investing and other things and there was a chapter that grabbed me you have a chapter called how to get rich quicker and i was like wait a minute this is the opposite of where we're telling people how we do this and and so i had to ask you because you mentioned about diversification how there is things that you can do to accelerate your wealth creation it pretty much at the expense of diversification so i wanted to ask you point blank are you a fan of diversification i i am very much a fan of diversification and actually my goal writing that chapter is if we don't put that chapter in the book people are wondering why if i make it sexy how to get rich quicker it's the same way that people would always phrase the question to me how do i do this faster right i mean you can tell and just as two creators online when we have an episode with a sexy title we get a big bump it's called clickable titles it's not clickbait it's clickable but but we get a big bump and i know that bump doesn't come from the the you know the the the general money guy family it comes from people that are looking to to cherry pick the get rich quicker that that's who's that's who is cherry picking the episodes versus your core audience which are there for every episode and they want to learn along with you as you're you know going along the journey so go ahead well no i was going to ask because this ties into exactly what you're talking about but it's you even have a call out section in there and and i felt convicted by this because i'm an entrepreneur i have the these businesses with the content creation the financial planning firm you called out dave ramsey saying he's built his wealth not through diversification what did you what did you mean by that well well here's broader and i'll get to dave ramsey but but broader you can get rich quicker and the way to get rich quicker and most cfps won't tell you this is that what you do is you under diversify and my goal here by the way brian was actually too when you finish the chapter you realize that you can get rich quicker but you could also get poor quicker getting rich quicker is is one thing you can do but it always comes with a downside and what what it in technical terms is just increase your standard deviation which and to do that we either buy smaller companies so we go from buying big companies which are stable and are going to move with the with the market to smaller companies are going to do whatever they do a small company is either going to hella succeed or it's going to be you know pushing daisies fairly soon so you you're going to have this swing versus this and i point out dave ramsey because dave ramsey talks a lot about diversification as one of the baby steps right by these diversified mutual funds and by the way that is great advice it is good advice but that doesn't make you rich what made dave ramsey that makes you responsible what makes you rich is dave ramsey didn't do that he created one company it was a little tiny company and it did very very well so if you want to get rich quicker cut your diversification buy riskier stuff now i want to give a counterpoint though on something because i do agree with you i work with a lot of entrepreneurs and and you're exactly right is that a lot of and i tell this to because i had like a telecom person you know he puts fiber into the ground and one day he was like brian why would i give you an extra 25 000 when i can go put another line crew out by buying this one piece of equipment and i looked at him and i said you know what you're exactly right i mean if you've got a small business that you can go invest this and it will give you this return you ought to go do that but just make sure you're building enough diversification or income outside or assets outside the business that allows but you're exactly right but i do want to because i don't want to i don't want our audience to watch this and go the only way you can get rich is through starting a business entrepreneurship because there's a whole group of people out there on social media and on youtube sure that are trying to say if you buy my system or get into real estate i can teach you how to be rich but i got to tell you from personal experience and i bet you're the same way i can show you teaching couples where both husband and and you know both spouses are teachers and educators that just a little bit over time stacked up and it turned into wealth i mean it really it's slow and steady does work but i mean but when joe is not wrong in the fact that under diversification or entrepreneurship but he said something very key there it also is a much higher likelihood of failure absolutely and and and frankly what i hope people do when they come out of that chapter brian has come out kind of where we are that there is clearly a middle ground yeah for me 95 of my net worth is in responsible growth-oriented investments to grow our family wealth right and then five percent is this stuff that i'm playing with yeah that is my go go go and i'm investing in small companies i'm investing in these things that might might do really well but i'm mitigating that risk on my end i'm not putting every dollar i have in it because the downside of getting rich quicker is getting poor quicker you had um kind of closed out the chapter with you and you cut through the noise and you said focus on what you can control what did you mean by that i meant that that so many people focus on and we play monday morning quarterback yeah we we focus on how come the market's not doing this yeah what's going on in washington right is is is this mega backdoor roth ira stuff really going to survive or not and you know cnbc just had a piece saying this is something for rich people and i rolled my eyes but anyway especially the backdoor roth conversions you don't have to be rich to take advantage of those things drives me crazy and by the way on a total since we're on this tangent why the hell are if if i'm in a 401k i can put so much money in a 401k now over 20 000 next year well what 21 000 next year why is a roth ira contribution still only six yeah like really why we talk about people being left behind how come those people can't put twenty one thousand into a roth but anyway you know look there's a lot of things and if we're looking for washington to give us our answers that's why we don't do religion we don't do politics because i know that the those things change like the wind in the seasons but we definitely you can focus on what you can control that is exactly the point and that's why we don't do any of that stuff because see how mad i got right there i can't do anything about it though you know i can get mad about my credit card debt i can get mad about cheryl uh emphasizing school clothes over my video game like what the hell i get mad about i can control all that stuff i can't control what goes on and watching we're gonna put a cuss jar for the next time we have guests here because i've already counted four maybe five that i i'm trying to figure out how i'm gonna play this with nate the great on post edits on if we're going to to put a horn on there or what i'll tell you what we do we just beep we just beep it it's just it's well let me ask you because i want to ask one more closing question and then i want to give all the information so everybody can look up joe and i don't mean to put you on the spot but i do think it's somebody who's been doing this as long as you have both from the financial planning but then also content creation i always think about there's usually like three things most like when i go to a conference i can retain about three things and that's why i always try to be very careful that i that i think of three measurable goals that i want to have coming out of a conference i think the human brain doesn't want to grab much more than three if there were three components to wealth creation that you would like people to know or what you consider foundational what would those three things be it can be anything yeah no i think the first thing is is that we focus on so many things we think that the the reason that we're not getting ahead to the point that we just talked about is because of washington or because of these what my boss did or didn't do what happened with the weather with all these things behavioral stuff is is the key to your success i see people online focusing on no it's all index funds and avoiding fees it's all and don't get me wrong avoiding fees can be a big win yeah paying fair fees can be a big win but that's not the dragon people are losing on during my 16 years i saw people using high expense ways and and still becoming wealthy still building wealth it's not the way i would have told them to do it but but they still were able to do it that way it's the behavior yeah it's setting up saving uh it's it's focusing on what i can control that's number one how do i set things up so i win number two is people talk about discipline all the time i think discipline's kind of overrated i think what's underrated is automation i think if you set things up so you don't have to think about it here's what i want once again going back to mary barra ceo as the ceo i want to focus on the big stuff and how am i going to make my life better and do more stuff i want to have money when i identify an opportunity automatically go to the right place and avoid the wrong place right so i want to have systems built in that i don't have to think about all the little things i can keep my head on the big picture and the money machines rolling which means whenever i and i identify something that's good let's say that i save some money on my phone bill by going with the new provider i then have a system where the next time i look at that is a year later or six months later whatever it is and it's already in my it's already in my my system every six months look at my phone bill you know um uh i'm not giving myself discipline as much as i'm building a system to take advantage of that the the uh that's number two automation is the key to success number three is remembering to protect your downside and we didn't spend any time on this today but we spend a fair amount of time on this in the book and one of my favorite stories is i worked with this uh engineer and i want to give her full credit because she her name's lori and lori talked about how they build highways and she said the first thing they do is they go to a whiteboard and they look at everything that could go wrong with the highway everything could go wrong and then they have they look at all of those possibilities and they try to eliminate them and they know well and good that they're not going to be able to eliminate all those things brian but they at least know that they might happen and they protect as much of their downside as they can and i feel like especially when we're struggling that's where we cut like like we we raise the deductible on the car insurance and then we have a car wreck and then our we go into credit card debt because of that or we we you know skimp on or don't have renters insurance and then something happens there so i feel like focusing on that foundation first and some of the non-sexy stuff and uh and protecting our downside before we build would be the third thing i love all three of those i had no we didn't talk about that beforehand so i didn't know where you would go but i think you're spot on number one being behavioral yes because i mean that's one of those things where we get in our own way of creating wealth and being successful whether it's somebody telling you you can't do it because there's a lot of people do that and are making excuses on why not to start that first day of investing number two make it automatic for the people i love that you know because that's automation can be better than discipline if you make it where essentially you can't fail if you're making this automatic and then third this is one we always talk about don't run up the scoreboard protect the downside because you know we focus and look we know we're aspirational where we're focusing on building wealth but there's a key component and joe nailed it you have to also focus on keeping wealth because i think a lot of people and you see it right now with interest rates so low people are getting pushed so far out on the risk spectrum that they don't you know especially if you're in retirement don't just assume those trees are always going to grow to heaven so you do need to protect the downside that's such great advice i mean that's that's brilliant now joe i want to make sure that i set everybody up to know how to continue to follow you as well as to run out there and get stacked because that gets released on december 28th through september 28th yeah so we're still in the pre-order phase let me make sure because i set up all this stuff so here's all joe's contact information if you want to follow him on twitter if you want if you want to go to the websites you can see stacking benjamin's but what we're here for specifically today is you do have a book coming out that you you've co-written with emily guy burkin and um and like i said i've had a chance to go through this i want to encourage whether you're a beginner or whether you've done a pretty deep dive go check out stacked and we had a whole conversation i think this is important because you're following we're content creators and you were talking about how important it is to get and help people on the front end what did you mean by that with these pre-orders versus waiting until it comes out yeah i will be and thank you for saying so many nice things about the book today and it was really fun to write and emily's a great co-author we had we we we really got a lot out of it but but what we are hoping for i'm going to be okay if people don't buy my book uh uh i will be all right i mean i know that's not a good sales pitch but there's a lot of people out there that won't be if they don't buy if it's not this book if don't if they don't listen to the money guy show or they don't they don't pick up and different people learn different ways so uh what i never knew before i was a creator is if there is a brand or a creator or somebody out there that you really like their stuff pre-ordering it i never knew this before really helps amplify the messaging so we can bring more people along for the ride with us which is your goal it's my goal is to widen this community because i do better when all the people around me do better yeah so um uh the way these these charts work is they're all based on pre-order so on december 28th based on the number of people that pre-ordered we'll hit the chart at x number uh on that day which is kind of baloney in some ways but but but it is what it is so but if you but if you pre-order the book and we throw in some pre-order incentives we give you some budgeting uh worksheets we've got uh emily has some cool stuff that's that's in the book a tetris sheet to kind of gamify your budget as well uh she also has her spreadsheet that she uses we have a uh we have a video about the making of the book the behind the scenes for the the real stacking benjamin's nerds that want to know how to how we made the book and some funny stories about stuff that happened while we made the book but um uh on the day that the book comes out amazon maybe or the next bigger one was the wall street journalist maybe we make a good number on the wall street journalist and somebody just happens to be looking at the wall street journal and they see this book and then they recommend it to somebody because they saw or god forbid you know we make the we make the new york times bestseller list but it but if you like anybody's stuff pre-ordering it is way more important than i ever thought i never pre-ordered anything before i was an author in the last six months i've been pre-ordering where do you want people to buy this if they had if you had your weathers about it where is there a source that you would prefer people to go check out i love personally buying from your your local bookseller okay no i started off with that story about powell's one of the biggest independent booksellers in the nation and i i just think that's a great place to it's a great place to go and if we don't support those local places in our communities they're going to disappear right so uh go in there and ask them for stack we have a list by the way there's a organization called book shop which if you go to our website uh stackingbedjammings.com and go to slash stacked you'll see all the different places but if you click the bookshop link that's an independent association of local book sellers and they will help you get it from your local bookstore oh that's really cool yeah it is cool so it also helps kind of build the grassroots underneath as well because i mean i'm sure that creates some demand and connection with the people so yeah that's awesome well i'm going to continue look you now if you want to know who i try to grab a drink with whenever i'm at conferences you've met joe i appreciate him coming on um hey look i don't do a lot of interviews so and you're the mr mc so we we made it through this thing and i appreciate it but definitely go check it out guys i'm your host brian preston thank you thank you thank you i'm i'm bo we got mr joe saul see hi we'll be talking to you soon money guy team out

Channel: The Money Guy Show

Views: 35,624

Keywords: money guy show, debt, budget, cash, real estate, insurance, how to make money, save, credit card, compound interest, buying house, buy stock, success, personal finance, stacking benjamins, the stacking benjamins show, stacking benjamins podcast, how to build wealth in your 20s, how to build wealth, how to build wealth with low income

Id: ykmxvtYxQD8

Length: 53min 5sec (3185 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021