[00:00:01] Let’s automate giving money to our future self. Instead of saying, well, I don’t have that money right now, actually you do, you’re giving it to your future self.
[00:00:10] James: I highly encourage, after we have a math equation, which I know some people don’t like doing, there are financial calculators out there that can help with that, but once you have that clear roadmap on what you’re trying to accomplish. You can automate as much as you can, have it taken from the top of the paycheck, You’d be surprised at how quickly that can build.
[00:00:30] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapist podcast, where we answer this question, how can therapists and health practitioners go from money, shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money, coach and creator of the course, money Skills for Therapists.
[00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is James Alexander. James is a certified financial planner. And today, James and I talk about the idea of playing your own game when it comes to money, kind of keeping your eyes on your own work, making sure that you’re setting yourself up financially for the life that you actually want.
[00:01:10] We talk about balancing emotions and math when it comes to money. As James says, there’s an equation, with all financial investments or decisions, but also as we know, people are highly emotional. So how do you balance the emotional components of money and the actual financial hard numbers to make good decisions? And we also chatted about kids and money. We have sons who are similar ages and we started chatting about what we want our sons to learn about money, how we’ve each so far tried to teach our sons about money and how money works. Here is my conversation with James Alexander. So James, welcome to the podcast.
[00:02:00] James: Thank you so much for having me, Linzy. I’m looking forward to the conversation.
[00:02:02] Linzy: Yeah, me too. Me too. So for folks who are listening, can you tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
[00:02:08] James: Certainly, so I’m a financial advisor. I’m also what’s considered a certified financial planner. I love talking about all things money and how money can help people accomplish what they want to accomplish in their life. A little bit of brief background about myself. I’ve been doing this for 16 years. I actually didn’t want to get into the money field originally. I wanted to teach math. I know it is scary to a lot of people to think about math, all these numbers. It doesn’t mean a lot, right? But I landed on money because it’s a math equation. And when I saw what it can do for people, the purpose and how I can help people, educate them in the ways of money is how I landed on what I do, and I absolutely love it.
[00:02:45] Linzy: Because you’re taking those equations and they actually mean something in people’s lives when they can figure out that equation and I have found that over the last couple years, especially, I think I’ve developed that as a phrase in my own vocabulary, talking with students of like, there’s an equation there. For instance with group practice, when I’m working with people who have multiple employees, it’s like there’s an equation there of like how many employees times what you charged times what they get paid plus this, plus this equals a certain outcome. And like once we can figure out the equation, you know how to take action and make things happen.
[00:03:14] But if we’re working the wrong equation, we can work really hard and not see the things that we want to have happen. There is an equation there, but also it’s an equation involving humans who have a lot of feelings. We chatted a little bit, off mic before we got started about this idea of, you know, playing your own game with money. Doing things the way that you actually need to do them. Can you tell me more about this idea and how you use it with the folks that you support?
[00:03:38] James: Absolutely. Yes, I think this is one of the most powerful things to be in the know about, in today’s world and here’s why, is playing your own financial game, nobody else’s. I. What happens in today’s world, especially for you listening, is you might have this idea of, I’m supposed to be having this amount of money by this age of life, or I’m supposed to be having this house, or you know, I’m looking all around myself.
[00:03:59] And then you have the news headlines that come out about target numbers and volatile markets, and just you’re inundated with information and it just comes in all externally to you and you think to yourself, okay. How do I navigate this? I feel like I’m doing something wrong, right? And instead what I help my clients do is have ’em take a step back and say, ignore the outside world for a minute, and just focus internally and think in 10 years what’s the ideal life for you. In 15 years. In five years.And write it down. All of this, by the way, should be non-monetary to start, we will back into the monetary factors later.
[00:04:36] But talking through, be very clear. The analogy I use is, you know, you’re going on vacation. Let’s plan a trip. This is your trip for your future self, right? You’re going on vacation and you first need to decide where you’re going, right? If I’m going to Florida, I’m probably packing something different than if I’m going to Alaska. And so we have got to be clear on what we want and write it all down. Give a timeframe associated with it. Don’t be married to that timeframe, but have an idea and then we can back into, okay, what does it take to get there? So going on that trip, if I’m traveling to Florida, I need a car, I need a reliable car, I need, you know, to pack certain things.
[00:05:13] I need a navigation system.As opposed to Alaska, I’m probably getting on an airplane. That’s a different strategy, a different navigation. And so too many times we look in terms of not playing our own game, and we see our neighbor next door who has the fancy car and all the items, or we see they’re traveling or they’re, you know, their kids are wearing these things and we’re saying, oh gosh, I feel so behind.
[00:05:34] And I’m telling you from a financial advisor’s point of view, that is a recipe for frustration, and that’s a recipe for de-motivation and my goal is to help people get outta that mode and really focus on themselves, and especially those listening and therapists. You’re so great at giving back in this money world. It’s time to be selfish, and selfish in a good way, because when you have things you can have, you can help people in a much more profound manner.
[00:05:59] Linzy: Yeah. And I think that, that’s so accurate. This experience. I think that we have of all this information, this external output of like where you should be, and sometimes I have folks talk to me about the idea that they’re behind, like they’re behind on their retirement savings and,it may possibly be true for their goal, but if you don’t know what your goal is, it’s hard to be behind on it,but also that compare and despair. And like I recently had,I was going through a little thought exercise of like, what if I sold my house or maybe saved up a down payment for another house and I moved to another neighborhood that’s just across the street from us.[00:06:31] my son goes to. It’ll be a lot more money, but we’d be closer to this, but I started to think through it and I actually, I realized, James, I had this thought of like, actually, I feel like for my compare and despair parts of me that tend to compare to other people, I actually don’t want to be in that neighborhood because
[00:06:48] It’s closer to the school and all the houses are that much nicer. The families are all like high income. So then what their kids are going to be doing is going to be things that cost a lot more money. It’s like, I realize that for myself, that’s actually going to pull me into kind of a, almost like a community where it’s like, I don’t want to actually want to even feel like I have to keep up with that community.
[00:07:06] Whereas the neighborhood I live in right now, is a real mixed neighborhood. Everybody’s kind of doing their own thing, which I think reminds you that there’s so many great ways to live life. There’s not one way to live life. and there’s something about getting out of a monoculture that reminds you: I could do anything. Like this family down the road from us has seven people living in that house of multiple generations and like they’re living this like, rich, interconnected family life that, I’m not going to see when I’m over across the way, but yeah, it was interesting for me to notice like, oh no, that is definitely going to like, potentially pull me into, almost like a lifestyle.I want to call it a one track, I dunno what to call it, like a rut, you know, where you get little boxed in.
[00:07:41]That I think would actually pull me away from some of the things that I really enjoy about my life I wouldn’t want to change. So there was a little vulnerability that I noticed to myself. We’re all victims of these kinds of things, right? The, like, keeping up with the Joneses, the social media, I feel like is a real feeder for this kind of messaging.
[00:07:58] James: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, this is something I’m probably too passionate about, but what is the purpose of the news in social media? We think, especially if we’re watching financial elements in any capacity, whether it’s personal finance and budgeting and savings and investing, or business finance of how much, you know, my profitability of my firm should be, or any of those lines. The purpose of the news is to drive eyeballs, get us to watch tomorrow. That’s their agenda. Their not agenda is to actually obtain wealth, whatever we define wealth as in our world.And so how do they drive eyeballs? They create fear. They’ve learned over years. How do we create fear? I can’t tell you how many times the word recession has been talked about over the last, right.
[00:08:40] And we’re still technically not in one and it’s been two, three years it’s been discussed. So, I think we have to just take all this in context, and that’s why I always go back to what we want? Ignore all that for a minute and then we can go back to the outside world and see, okay, what can we do now and how do we take into account safety and all of that.
[00:08:57] Linzy: Yeah. Put it in context.
[00:08:58] James: I think the reason that’s so important is motivation. I’m probably preaching to the choir how motivation is so powerful. I mean, I have stories of clients where they run the math equation and they’re saying, okay, I have this much debt. It’s very cheap debt. I only pay 3% on my mortgage. I can invest and make more, but one of them can’t sleep at night knowing they have a mortgage. And it’s just, I owe somebody something. And so we have to reframe that and let’s actually get out of debt even though the math says otherwise, so that we feel better about it later. And so there’s that component.
[00:09:29] Linzy: And there’s a dance there I find between, you know, what are emotional aspects of our relationship to money that maybe we can shift and change, right? Like maybe ’cause I see like another potential intervention there to use therapist language would be, could the one partner start to actually shift how they feel about debt. Could it be okay to owe something? You know, like could that money be seen as a gift that allowed them to do this thing sooner than they would’ve been able to otherwise? And there could be gratitude there instead of a sense of being beholden or unsafe, right?
[00:09:55] Like there’s so much to explore in the emotional side of money. And then there’s also these hard numbers. And I think for each of us, it’s this individual dance of what we can like, maybe soften and shift in our own stories that aren’t helpful. ‘Cause for instance, like if you have a really emotional, maybe shame-based relationship or a fear-based relationship with debt, that’s going to make life hard. ‘Cause it’s pretty hard in this day and age to have no debt.
[00:10:18] You know, like my grandparents,they lived on my grandfather’s family farm, and they had no debt. And then when they moved into town in their sixties, they had to get a bridge mortgage, like some bridge financing, until the farm sold. A bridge loan. And I think my grandfather was so stressed about it ’cause like debt, having debt, that created like such a noise for him, but they grew up in a time and age where you could actually not have debt and owned property. For most of us now, debt is not something we can, you know, do without, right.
[00:10:50] Unless you are born into generational wealth and you know, your parents buy you a nice condo by, you know, the ocean. Most of us aren’t in that situation. So, yeah, I think too about, as we think about this math and feelings, and I have Friday episodes as you called, feelings and finances, you know, like speaking to this relationship, it’s like, what can we shift here and like, where is it that the numbers really are telling the truth? We should just follow the numbers. And I’m curious, like with your clients, have you seen examples of where people can change their emotional relationship with money and make a math decision or yeah. What does that bring up for you?
[00:11:24] James: Yeah, I can get very granular on math. I fully realize that it doesn’t resonate with too many people. And so, I have some very basic math equations, for lack a better word, or math mindsets to use is starting to, your example of debt is, I always say, look, to be in a good spot with debt in general, I really like to use the what I call 20 60 20 rule, which is if we can have our debt payments be no more than first 20% of our income, and not including mortgage, I want to be careful on that, That had to be incredibly tough if you could do that. More power to you, but these are things from our past. You can have that be 20% or less. You’re in a really good spot with debt. A really good aspect. The 60% is what I’m paying now for my life, and these are rough numbers, I don’t want people to be married to them. I always say be reasonable, not rational, which is again, seems a little counterintuitive to my linear mindset sometimes, but if we can earmark 20% towards our future self, whatever that might look like. We’re in a great spot, and so we look at, okay, student loans, right? Or, you know, I’m borrowing for the practice that I’m trying to obtain, or, you know, whatever the case may be. If that’s my 20% for my past, now I’m talking about my current reality that includes a mortgage, bills, things of that nature.
[00:12:42] And then I want to keep one other eye on my future self. If I can adhere to something in those lines, I’m in a good spot. So, you know, if people say, well, gosh, I’m way outta whack. Well, let’s talk about… This is what I find so fascinating about that current self is sometimes we have false notions of everyone’s doing this. The herd mentality. Everyone’s paying for cable. I need to have cable. But then you realize I watch like one hour of TV a day. If that, you know, like do I really need that? Versus, I care more about these items. When we look at budgeting especially, which I know is, I call it the big bed B word, because nobody likes doing it, right? But when we’re done after we kind of overcome that aspect, we feel empowered. Like, oh my gosh, I feel like I found money. You didn’t, you just feel like you did. So, anyways, that’s a nugget to help perhaps others.
[00:13:35] Linzy: Yeah, and the guidelines are helpful because it is helpful to have a starting place. For instance, the 20 60 20 rule. Like I’m doing my own math in my head and I’m like, okay. You know, in our case we’d be less here, but we’d probably be more there and then less there again. So it’s like, again, what are the actual numbers for us?
[00:13:52] You know, what are our priorities right now? What makes sense and I think there’s also seasons to this, too, right? Of being oriented to the season that you’re in. So I have a young child. He’s six now and I just did a couple days away on a solo strategic planning retreat for our business just to think. I just went away to think and not step on Lego for a few days of my life. And what I really grounded in when I was there is like, he’s only going to be a kid who wants to hang out with me for maybe another eight or nine years. So it’s like I’ve got this little window of time with him, right, to really be with him. But also I really sunk into the fact that like my parents are now in their early to mid-seventies, I probably only have 10 good years left with them. So like orienting to that. And as I think about our money and what we could do and like we could put money into like expanding our house and having more space. But if I think about that and then I compare it with like, maybe going to Europe with my parents… which, when I was a teenager, apparently at some point I told my dad that when I was older I would take him to Europe, and he has not forgotten this.
[00:14:53] My parents can also pay to go to Europe for themselves, by the way. But it was like this dream and now you know, we are at a place where we can do that. Again, now is the time to do that because in 10 years. You know, my parents probably won’t be up for going to Europe when they’re like 84 years old, but 74, they’re in great health. So I think about that, too. As we think about this conversation of like, what matters to you is also it’s going to shift in different seasons of your life and like coming into my fifties, I’ll probably be putting away more money than I am now because my son will be more independent. You know, I won’t be doing a big trip with my parents,but really being grounded in where you are today.
[00:15:29] James: I think that’s so well said. It’s funny you mention I have a son who’ll be six as well, and I think about that all the time is, you know, we can’t get time back. We can always make more money. We can’t make more time. Right. And so, and furthermore, life is not linear and that’s what makes it exciting, even though it can be nerve wracking.
[00:15:47] Linzy: Yeah, and, I think, yeah, the budgeting perspective, you know, in that thought myself, I was thinking about writing a book this year, and I’m very excited about the prospect of writing a book. and I was kind of almost trying to cram it into this year to be like, it’s important that I write a book. My colleagues are writing books. This person, this conference is writing a book and then I realized. No, just in terms of its budgeting, right? The decisions we make about our life, it’s also budgeting and if I have only so much time, right? And I have to think about using some of that time to make money to pay for our life, and then building up influence through the book, and I can’t have maybe all of these things, what am I going to prioritize?
[00:16:18] I’m going to prioritize time, and like just making enough to pay for our life. But I’m not going to like, spend all my time writing a book, which is a very absorbing process and then maybe have to go speak and do all these things to promote the book because my son’s only six, and I want to be home. And that’s a budgeting decision. And it hurts to have to say goodbye to something to let something go for now. But as you said, too, it feels really good to be like, huh, I just found all this energy that I was going to give to this thing because my friends are doing it. That doesn’t actually make sense for me.
[00:16:47] James: You have got to, you got it. You know, when you talk about time, it makes me think about, I feel very blessed to work with people at all stages of life, but especially to your point, those that are older in their eighties or nineties, I feel like I learn more from them than they learn me.
[00:17:00] Linzy: I’m sure. Yeah.
[00:17:02] James: And they reflect back on their life when they’re in their forties and fifties and talk about regret, how powerful that is. I don’t hear any regrets of, “I wish I made more money.” I’ve never heard that from a single individual. I’ve heard I wish I spent more time with this person. I wish I stayed in touch with my colleagues from school. You know, all these things that are actually what mattered to them as they reflect back on this last chapter. And I think there’s something to be said there, and so I think if we, speaking back to money, if we use money as fuel and see it as just fuel and nothing more, otherwise, it’s a number on a screen. To accomplish what we want. That’s what we should leverage money for.
[00:17:38] Linzy: Yeah, say more about the analogy of money as a fuel, ’cause I often use the analogy of money as a tool, which, you know, rhymes. So they must be copacetic somehow. But yeah when you say money as fuel, tell me more about that image.
[00:17:50] James: Sure, yeah, so I’m a big analogy guys, so forgive me. but going back to that, traveling and getting from point A to point B and talking about goals and all of that is we can have the biggest goals in the world. If we don’t have fuel to put in our car to actually drive to go get there, we’re never going to get there.
[00:18:08] It’s just the aspect. Conversely, we can have all the fuel in the world if we don’t have the vehicle and the action items. We’re also not going to get there. It ties to what you’re saying really if it’s a tool and nothing more, but to me we need to put energy in money for what we’re actually trying to go after for a fulfilling life. Money allows us to do that, and I think we have to celebrate that, but we might not need a lot for our fulfillment. We might, we might not. It all depends on us. And we just have got to fuel that up according to what we need and want.
[00:18:42] Linzy: So. You know, I’m curious about, from your perspective, somebody who’s, you know, does financial education for people, and who also has a kid. This is a question I ask some of my students sometimes as they’re thinking about their relationship with money. What do you want your son to be learning about money? Like, what are the attitudes that you want him growing up with, or the skills that you’re thinking about for him even now when he’s like five years old?
[00:19:04] James: Gosh, we could spend a whole podcast on this. That’s a wonderful question, Linzy. So a couple of things, especially, so he’s five years old, so I’m going to tackle it out in stages. You know, there’s only so much a 5-year-old can retain, but he’s naturally curious. Anyway, one item is money that is not given to us. We do have to earn it. I want to make sure he understands that, and work for it, and all of that. It’s not just something that falls down from the sky. At the same time, we need to enjoy it. I have family members who have over-rotated to the future and they’re actually not enjoying their money, and there’s regret that falls in there.
[00:19:40] Linzy: Yes.
[00:19:42] James: But we also need to think about our tomorrow. I call it tomorrow instead of future, right? Think about our plans for our tomorrow-self. And so an example I used, this was actually pretty comical according to my wife, but he did a lemonade stand last year. We had garage sales and he made like a hundred dollars, this child. He was great at it, you know? And so he doesn’t really know much. It’s just these coins and dollar bills and whatnot. And I said, okay. So what I did is I carved it out into a couple of pieces. I said, all right, here’s half of it. We’re going to decide on what we want to spend this money on.
[00:20:19] And you can spend a lot of little things, or you can decide on one big thing. The idea is to enjoy it. And then the other half, we’re going to save it in here and every month that we keep it in here. I’m going to add to it. My son’s name is Theo, so I said I’m going to add to it. And so it’s that idea of delayed gratification that I’m trying to teach him. So he has the idea of, I earned it by doing this lemonade stand. I’m going to enjoy some of it, but I’m also going to let this thing grow. And so, we’ll see how it shakes out. He passed that test to start, but we’re early.
[00:20:51] Linzy: So are you’re adding interest to it, basically?
[00:20:54] James Yeah, I’m adding interest to it every month, for a month is like five years.
[00:20:57] Linzy: Yeah, I know, for them emotionally, so what is the interest rate in your house? I’m just curious.
[00:21:02] James: 5% is what I put on.
[00:21:03] Linzy: Solid. That’s, you know, that’s reliable. Yeah,I’m doing a similar thing with my son where I started giving him allowance.I have decided that at his age, what I really want him to learn is how to manage money and how to manage his emotional relationship with money.And I also at this moment adhere to the idea that he shouldn’t get paid to do things in our household because like your responsibility to your family and your home is not, you know, something to be compensated. So, so far he has not been entrepreneurial enough to set up a lemonade stand, but he gets $ 6 a week because he’s six years old. And this is what my mom did too, except for when I was a kid. You got the grade that you were in but, you know, inflation being what inflation is everything’s $5 more now. He has a piggy bank that has four compartments. I don’t know if you’ve seen these. They’re really cool. It’s a save, spend, invest and donate. So there’s the
[00:21:50] four compartments and I give him his allowance in small denominations. So we’re Canadians, so some loonies toonies quarters and then he gets to put $3 of that, about half in his wallet that I keep in my purse. So when we’re out and about, he’s always got his own money. and the rest we divide between the like, save, donate and invest, right? So I invested for him recently. He definitely is not tracking that yet to be like, I’m putting this money away for you and it’s going to grow,but donating, we’ve now been having to have a discussion about donating and like, where do you want to give your money? Like, you’ve got like $70 in here.
[00:22:23] You know, it’s been adding up for a few years ’cause I started when he was three. So until he finds a cause that I find that he’s passionate about, I’m just saving that until he’s really emotionally on board with like, “I want to give it to this” So we’re, you know, talking about that. But then also what I found is that because he has his own wallet, he doesn’t have to ask me for things in the same way. Certain things, obviously, like a large Lego set takes him a while to save for, but he’s done that too. He bought like a $55 Batman Lego set with his own money.
[00:22:52] James: Good for him.
[00:22:53] Linzy: But also when we’re out, you know. If we go to a candy store or whatever, he’ll say, okay, how much is in my wallet? And I’ll say, okay, you have $8. And then he’ll go around and he will look at all his different options until he finds something that’s in his budget and he’s gotten really good at, like, if he’s got something in his hand that he wants, but then he sees something he wants more, he’ll put something back to take something out. And it just makes me so happy. Like, I’m like, okay.
[00:23:16] James: He is that responsibility.
[00:23:17] Linzy: The responsibility and the ability to discern between what he actually wants, right? It’s like, I wanted this when I saw it, but now that I see this other option, I’ve decided I actually want that more. And so I’m going to make the decision to prioritize. Right? He’s learning how to prioritize his dollars and that there’s a boundary there. There’s a limit. ’cause like maybe a couple times I’ve topped him up by 25 cents, but really rarely. and now I also find he’s empowered. So if we go to stores, he doesn’t beg me for things, or he is not upset if he can’t get something. ’cause he knows that he actually now has a means to get that thing in the future if he doesn’t have the money now.
[00:23:53] James: So profound, and oh my gosh, that’s absolutely wonderful and I love the idea that you added that donate piece. To be brutally honest, we tried. It has not worked.
[00:24:01] Linzy: No. Well, ours, ours hasn’t worked either, which is why he still has $70 there.
[00:24:05] James: Yeah, right. It’s like the idea of giving it away.
[00:24:08] Linzy: Yeah, I know. He’s like, sorry, but, uh, that’s mine. But, you know, and that’s also part of his development. Like, he’s six now, and I see, you know, he’s developing more and more empathy. I’m seeing that growth in him,but it’s there and ready for when he decides like, I really care about this. So it’s also like I’m also being patient and waiting, you know, for when it’s going to be meaningful for him, when that lesson comes along. ‘Cause I think that a lesson’s not quite available yet, but it might become available in a month or two. And then he’ll be able to give a lot of money to a cause that he cares about.
[00:24:35] James: I think there are parallels to what you just said in that example of him putting back one toy and taking, you know, the one that’s more important, self realizing. You extrapolate that to adulthood of, you know, we’re just so ingrained, I’m supposed to be getting this every single time. I don’t even think about it and not realizing I actually need that.
[00:24:53] Linzy: Yeah.
[00:24:54] James: Right, versus something I want, that’s more powerful for myself.
[00:24:57] Linzy: Yeah. And I think, you know, I talk a lot with my students about slowing down and being with, you know, like actually slowing down in a decision. Is this still what I want? And of course, now too, so many things that we pay for are on automated subscriptions, so you actually have to choose to not want it rather than choosing to want it. So there’s lots of ways that different industries have taken advantage of this vulnerability in our human psychology, to go along with what we’ve already been doing. It’s harder to stop it, but yeah, it’s a valuable skill that I see lots of adults that I know and myself too, still working on this skill in different facets of my life and so, yeah, that’s something I would encourage, folks listening to think about too, is if you have kids, especially if you didn’t get a direct financial education from your parents, which most of us didn’t.
[00:25:39] What do you actually want your kids to learn? And it can be just like you and I are talking about James, like these small things that we do to help to instill what money means to kids and also teach them the skills to actually manage the money. Like how do you actually manage money? It’s by learning how to put one thing back and only take, you know, the other thing instead ’cause you don’t have money for both. So powerful, mix there of feelings and math. So I’m curious, James, for folks who are listening, if they’re finding themself kind of overwhelmed by the prospect of planning their financial future… ‘Cause I know for some people, all these feelings you talked about earlier, that kind of feeling. Like they’re behind or like this person has this and they don’t. Where do I start? Yeah, where would you suggest that they start if they’re starting to think like, okay, I need to put a bigger plan in place for myself.
[00:26:25] James: Yeah, yeah, so, that income piece is obviously the biggest driver of being able to accomplish this, right? So you take your income, you know, after you go through these non-monetary goals and what do I want, like we talked about earlier, but I go back I say, okay, where are we at today?
[00:26:39] And this is often where shame comes in, unfortunately. To your point, this isn’t taught in schools. This isn’t part of a curriculum. We should not feel bad about having poor money habits and all that. So we have to eliminate that brain, and I’m going to let therapists do their thing because they’re much better at that than myself, and helping hopefully alleviate that mindset, but when you look at the strict practicality of it, all right, here’s where I’m at today. Here’s where I want to be for myself both today and tomorrow. Where are the gaps? A clear example is I want to, you know, have the option, maybe not the requirement to get out of my practice and be done by 60 and transition to somebody else and sell it.
[00:27:19] And what have you. In my sixties, I want to be doing these things in my seventies, I want to be doing these things. We don’t want to be married to those, but we want to have a gauge. And so, now, I’m 48 years old. I’ve got roughly 12 years to go on that. What do I need to sock away today to be able to build up that nest egg for when I’m 60?
[00:27:40] And so you talked about automating. Now you know how these companies are so good at automating, taking money from us. Let’s automate giving money to our future self. Instead of saying, well, I don’t have that money right now… Actually you do, you’re giving it to your future self. Reframe that mind. And so, I highly encourage after we have a math equation, which I know some people don’t like doing, there are financial calculators out there that can help with that. There are advisors obviously that can walk you through that. But once you have that clear roadmap on what you’re trying to accomplish,
[00:28:13] you can automate as much as you can, have it taken from the top of the paycheck, top of what you’re getting before all the rest are taken out. Set and forget it. You’d be surprised at how quickly that can build and then for today, for the budgeting aspect, is just taking that hardcore look and saying, okay, where’s my money going? Do I want to go there? Why is it important to me? Why is it not? And reallocating that, and just kind of going through that. If there’s a shortfall, you know, okay, what can we do about that shortfall? What compromises should I make to your son’s example? You know, I have got to put that back. I want it, but I can’t have both. And just being at peace with that too, I think is important.
[00:28:51] Linzy: I think it’s an ongoing process too, right? Like that budget conversation. Like even as we’re talking now about subscriptions, I’m thinking, oh yeah, I have that subscription that I should probably cancel ’cause it’s going to auto-renew at some point. You know, like we constantly, I think we have to be just spending time with and reassessing, okay, is this actually important to me still? I thought that I’d really like this thing. Do I even really like it? Do I want to keep investing in x, y, z? There’s a continued conversation there about the money and where it would serve you best.
[00:29:17] James: That’s right., And, you know, I want to hit on one topic, especially given the timing of probably when this will come out is, you know, there’s some concerns about if I invest, quote unquote invest in my future self, I have got to do it in things like that. And those are risky and volatile, and when’s the right time to get in and everything else. The short answer is consistent contributions always wins. But especially now when things are dicey, to say t ae least, there’s a common misconception that we have psychologically of I’m doing something wrong, if I put in money and all of a sudden it buys something and then it goes down of like, this is a problem, I need to fix it.
[00:29:55] That is the cost of admission for long-term growth is volatility. If we reframe our mindset with investing as: I’m putting money in and it’s going to go up and down and everywhere in between, but over time it will pay off and I’m going to educate myself as to why. This is the cost of doing business in the market. Hopefully that helps those listening. You know, we’ve been through times like these before. 2008, 2009, I read headlines that said, you know, the economy was going to collapse and America as we know it would cease to exist entirely.
[00:30:26] Linzy: Right. Sink into the ocean.
[00:30:29] James: Exactly. Fear sells. Remember that.
[00:30:35] Linzy: But yeah, it’s, what I’m hearing is like steady just be steady. There’s going to be noise. And as you mentioned earlier, those news sources benefit from, you know, fear and other emotions like anger and outrage, you know, that fuels clicks and reads of their articles. So yeah, staying steady and continuing with your plan, whatever your plan is in terms of investing.
[00:30:55] James: It will always win. If it doesn’t win, we’re worried about clean water, you know? We’re not worried about our money, so…
[00:31:02] Linzy: Well, James, thank you so much for joining me today. For folks who are interested in what you do, who want to learn more about you, where can they find you?
[00:31:10] James: Oh, certainly. Yeah, so our company, I should start off with, they’re called Edge Financial Advisors. The website is EdgeFA.com. F as in Frank, A as in apple.com. Those that want to educate themself a little bit more, we have a podcast called Ed’s Edge. It’s a tongue twister. We talk about all these topics and ways you can improve your financial knowledge. So I appreciate the question.
[00:31:31] Linzy: Thanks so much for joining me today, James.
[00:31:32] James: Thank you again. It was a pleasure.
[00:31:42] Linzy: I really appreciated James’ emphasis on the mathematical, you know, equation side of money and the emotional side of money. You know, when we neglect the emotional side of money, as we all know, as therapists, usually money just doesn’t work, right? If you have so much shame and overwhelm around money, or as he talked about his example, so much weight and anxiety around having debt, the fact that on paper it makes sense to keep that debt still doesn’t bear out in your lived experience of it, right?
[00:32:13] So we need to balance what makes sense on paper. If we do X, Y, Z it will equal this, and this is what we want. You know, whether it’s this much money for retirement or this much that’ll be available to save for goals. There’s a gap sometimes between what the math tells us and what our actual emotional experience of that is, and then there’s a lot of opportunity there to start to figure out how to bring those things together. Same with those guidelines on, you know, he mentioned the 20 60 20 rule, you know, so putting 20% of your household income towards historical debts, excluding mortgage, 60% towards living your life, another 20% towards the future.
[00:32:50] That’s a good guideline. It’s a good starting place, but then we’re going to have to look at our own pictures, our own emotional relationship to these different pieces and we might choose to do it differently, right? But there’s a difference between making a choice and actually sitting with the numbers and sitting with our emotions and deciding the best plan for us.
[00:33:08] There’s a difference between that, and ignoring these things. So I really appreciate James bringing his perspective and his experience as a certified financial planner to the podcast today. If you are interested in learning more about him or working with him, you can check out the link in the podcast show notes.If you’re enjoying the podcast, it’s a big help if you can leave us a review, you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you just click on the link in the show notes to leave a review, our Fancy Dancey little app shortcut thing, it will take you to exactly which podcast tool you use on your device.
[00:33:47] So reviews are super helpful. They allow people to find us. And if you are interested in working with me and getting help in making money work for you, I have my two courses. Money Skills for therapists is for solo practitioners. Money skills for group practice owners is for group practice owners.And you can learn more about those courses by going to our website, moneynutsandbolts.com and clicking on courses in the top menu. Thank you so much for joining me today.
