In this episode, we talk to Dustin, a distinguished wealth manager, about helping successful mid-career professionals move beyond the 'save save' mentality to a more balanced approach to life and financial planning. 

Dustin emphasizes the importance of reassessing outdated financial mindsets and adopting a flexible approach to future planning. He discusses practical strategies like the spending accelerator and goal alignment while highlighting the significance of developing a diverse portfolio of memories. 

Tune in to learn about the keys to building confidence through financial clarity, managing risks, and enhancing overall life satisfaction.

[00:25] How do you respond to people who say "I'm worried I don't have enough to retire or a flexible life?

[01:34] Have your beliefs about money evolved as you have grown?

[03:40] Do you first need to decide what your future will look like?

[05:33] A method for evaluating your spending

[08:13] What difference do you see when they do this earlier in their career or life versus later? 

[09:08] What can we do that will start us on this amazing journey of redesigning our flexible life in the future? 

Speaker Links:

Website: https://www.servisswealth.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servisswealth/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/serviss-wealth-management/

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-picture-of-wealth/id1556305294

Links:

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.

https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/derailed

Our next guest is no ordinary wealth manager.

Dustin's service saves successful professionals from waking up in their

60s after decades of the save save mentality with a big financial portfolio,

but a small portfolio of memories.

None of us want to be that person.

So let's dive in.

So Dustin, we have an audience here today of mid career professionals.

Many of them are employees at the moment some have their own business.

And some are doing some form of freelance consulting, but all of them

are interested in their potential life when they stop working.

The biggest question I hear a lot is I'm worried I don't have

enough to live a retired life.

In the way I'd speak to that.

That's a big question.

What I would first ask is where that belief is coming from.

Is it just a feeling or has it been tested somehow.

Usually when we're going through, the most basic level of a wealth plan we

will go back and look at their cashflow.

And one thing we find is.

Many people have evolved in life, but their mindset and their goals

are still back when they're 20.

Big time.

I see that a lot.

So tell me more.

One thing I wrote in my book was, are the beliefs evolving?

So some of the stresses that we feel when you're 18, 19, 20, young twenties.

You may not have money.

And so we got, you've got to save and you've got to really buckle down

and sacrifice to accumulate money.

If you're a mid career professional and you're making, 300, 250, 400 and you

still have that mindset, then feelings can leak into your projection of the future.

So you start saying I still don't have enough, meanwhile, you're

saving more and more every year.

When I'll say to clients, Hey, you're saving $200,000 a year, what

if you only saved $150,000 a year and got an assistant for $50,000?

If that $150,000 of savings a year is enough , again, going back to the optics

of the future and having a professional or a calculator online figured out for you.

If that number accumulates enough by the time you want to be, we don't use the word

retirement, we call it being flexible.

In the modern world there's, a lot of stigma around retirement and, my parents,

work to a day and that was it, and so now there's a whole set of emotions of when

that day happens and then a new life, it's a new chapter, which can be exciting

and all, also can be a little scary where being flexible gives you that permission

that if I didn't save enough, maybe I could still work and make $50,000 a year

part time doing a job that I really like.

I want to be a yoga instructor.

I want to be a photographer, whatever your thing is.

If you are going to work part time and make, even $25,000

a year, that helps a lot.

And if you're, able bodied and you're treating your body right and nourishing

it with not just good food nourishment, but good mind nourishment, then you likely

would be more vibrant into your seventies where the traditional sort of model is

that, 70, you're going downhill, that is one thing that we do talk to people.

Okay.

So I want to go back to that concept of enough, because I see

people saying at some point in the future, I will have enough.

But often in my experience, that doesn't seem to be just a number.

Do you help people to figure out what the future could look like first?

Yeah.

So it just, call it foo foo, call it whatever.

But if if you've got somebody that prompts you into imagination and visualization

and what does the future look like?

I think a lot of people are confused, me included sometimes, of where is the

orientation, where is the true North?

Because you get.

Not off track, but you just get, there's so many different things coming at you.

And so really spending that time and, it doesn't have to be deep meditation,

it can just be sitting down at a coffee shop with a piece of paper

once in a while and just phone off, just like what's interesting to me.

One of the concepts I talk about is being interesting to yourself.

And I think a lot of times we're trying to be interesting to other

people when, as you get mid career, it's I'm already successful.

I don't need to really prove that much anymore.

Now it's so then now what?

And that's a scary thought of okay, I got the money or I got cars or

whatever your kind of thing is, but what are the meaningful things?

Yes.

And that sort of, is this it moment?

I hear people experiencing that all the time.

Yeah, so I'm earning well, I've got the things I want,

my family seem happy enough.

Figuring out what you want seems to be incredibly hard

for people because we're not.

Or, in our society so far, we're on a treadmill, often a heavy work

treadmill, where we keep going and going.

How do you help people just pause for a minute?

Do they hit a trigger point where they have to pause or are

they more proactive about it?

In my background is civil engineering so I'm very

much like numbers, logic first.

And then let myself free to imagine or certain things.

So one concept we use for people is called the spending accelerator.

So if you think of a successful mid career professional, they, again, the context

is this person that can save money and usually a fair bit of money, not, 5,

000 a year, they're going to save maybe more than 50, 000 a year they're saving.

And so you think of a conveyor belt, coming out of a machine.

So there's a machine and a conveyor belt coming out the back of it.

Okay.

So every month call it a bucket, call it a bundle of cash comes out on the machine.

That's your income.

So as your income is going along the conveyor belt, there's

little things that are kicking off a little bit of your income.

So we're going to kick off, it's $10,000, say your income is $10,000, we're going to

kick off $5,000 for your living expenses, mortgage payment, car payment, groceries.

$5,000 kicked off.

So now there's a $5,000 pot going down the treadmill conveyor belt.

You pump off maybe a thousand or $2,000 for savings, like

emergency liquid savings.

Then you've got a little bit more gets kicked off for investments,

maybe crypto, you know, and that's a smaller amount than the investments.

Then you got some maybe to real estate and more of real estate as an investment So if

you've bought a piece of real estate and it negative cash flows, you know a little

bit But you're waiting to develop it or you're gonna, kick the renter out and get

a new renter for a higher rent Then you got to fund it maybe so a little bit to

that if it's built and architected, right?

There should be some money left at the end of the month falling off the end

of the conveyor belt And that money we purposely spend, as in that money

can be spent on whatever you want.

So alignment of spending with goals.

And then that spending accelerator also, if you're already in alignment and

there's still money falling off the end of the thing, that money can be put into

investments and the higher, highest risk.

So you're actually enjoying and celebrating making the money instead

of being, mindset when you're twenties and it's always a sacrifice.

And so you're never actually enjoying life.

So you get people save.

And then they get to 60.

They've got, a very small portfolio of memories.

Versus someone who along the lines has got less money, but they've got

a diverse portfolio, and it's a big portfolio of memories and experience.

Okay.

What difference do you see when they do this earlier in their

career or life versus later.

I think on a real global sense, you're giving a

person more confidence in life.

And so if you're biting off a sliver of something that seems like a big unknown or

uncertainty, and all of a sudden you give yourself clarity in that realm, that seems

complex, now your workouts get better.

Now your relationships get better.

Now, your relationship with your kids get better.

Cause it's oh, okay.

I did that.

And it's just everything's dominoes.

It's like people who, stop drinking, or whatever.

It's or you don't, you're not on a sugar diet and you're getting rid of that.

And everyone has their thing, but little things add up and start.

And, your overall life and lifestyle gets better.

So the listeners at the moment may or may not Have thought

about wealth planning in depth, but what one thing would you recommend

to someone listening right now?

What could they do that will start them on this amazing journey of redesigning

their flexible life in the future.

Without being sort of biased, we do have tools

in the book, in our website with a course but really the courses.

It's five minute long modules.

So if you think of a pyramid, you want to think of three main things.

You're spending, which I already mentioned.

Your goals.

So where are you going and what are you curious about?

Okay.

Then you're asset map, which is a picture of all your financial buckets.

So just write that down.

Doesn't have to be fancy.

It could be just a piece of paper.

If you did those three things, you would be ahead of probably like 40, 50 percent

of people because you see what you're dealing with, then the next layer up

from that would be managing your risks.

So between you and your goals, there's probably a timeline

that's going to happen.

So what could maybe knock you off that, and the main things are you die that

would affect your family and your spouse you get critically ill or disabled.

So what happens then and these are all tools that when you're

younger, you don't want to pay for it cause you're invincible.

But when you're mid career, it's Hey, 500 a month or 200 a month or whatever.

It's like irrelevant.

To the money that you're making.

So once the risk match accumulation is the next zone.

And we already talked about the spending accelerator in that regard.

And then again, top of the pyramid would be your, what you're teaching your kids.

Estate planning would be the more traditional term, but it's passing the

knowledge on to the kids and helping them understand some basic framework to

approach life from a place of offense.

Fabulous.

Getting into this pyramid of personal understanding, what's

going on, is where people start.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your time.

It's called the Life Clarity Summit.

That's what all mid career professionals need to do.

Fantastic.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment.

It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas

of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down.

I call it D Railed.

It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.