3 Questions to Clarify Your Financial Mindset

• Unknown question #1 (07:40)
• Unknown question #2 (09:38)
• Unknown question #3 (10:57)

Quote for the episode: "So money in itself, we have to remember, is not the actual goal. Doing what makes life most enjoyable to us is the actual goal."

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Welcome to the Enjoy More 30s: Family Finance

podcast, the only podcast dedicated to making life more

enjoyable for young families by hitting on the financial topics

that tend to weigh on us, stress us out and distract our focus

from simply enjoying life.

Hi and welcome to the Enjoy More 30s: Family

Finance podcast. I'm really excited to have you here on the

very first episode, "Unknowns Are Scary", where we're going to

go over some things that you really should be knowing about

unknowns when it comes to personal finance, and then some

items to help you deal with those- what you can do about it.

So this is the first episode and the first series, which is "Your

Money Mindset", where we're going to be going over some

basic mindset kind of setting items when it comes to personal

finance topics, to get us ready to go more in depth into some of

those items in later series.

Why we have this podcast for you today is because, in my opinion,

young families have a very difficult time getting proper

advice in the environment that we've set up. So when you think

about what you may have learned in school, I'm sure everybody

here learned about Shakespeare or algebra, but very few people

learn significant items when it comes to dealing with personal

finance. And really everybody after school, we all have jobs,

everybody after school, we all have families or a lot of us

have families. And there are finance specific items when it

comes to that, that we really need to be able to know about if

we're going to do a great job for ourselves and the ones that

we care about.

Furthermore, from a professional advice standpoint, there really

isn't a lot of that out there when it comes to helping young

families specifically. And the reason for that is, in my

industry, they tend to chase or they tend to go after people

that are nearing retirement, because they have 401(k)s and

things like that they can get rolled over, or families that

have established money. And really, you know, they're

chasing where they have the most income potential, which you

know, makes sense. But unfortunately, that leaves a lot

of people out, and specifically young families.

This podcast is going to help provide some of that information

that is so useful when you're young, and can go such a long

way in removing any of that anxiety around some personal

finance topics that we all may have. And really just allow us

to enjoy time with our family, which is why we're here, and the

finance element should not be getting in the way of having

your life be as enjoyable as it as it possibly can. Overall, we

aren't here to accumulate money and insurance products- we're

here to enjoy life with our families. So if we could walk

into any store tomorrow and pick out groceries, a vacation or any

car off the lot without payment, you know, we wouldn't really

care about money anymore. It would have no actual, real

practical value to it. So money in itself, we have to remember,

is not the actual goal. Doing what makes life most enjoyable

to us is the actual goal.

And so there are definitely more than enough retirement podcasts

out there. There are podcasts that help you get out of credit

card debt or rent your first apartment. But this one is

specifically for you families out there who are young, you

know in your 30s, and you're looking for help. You know you

probably are a little bit more established in your career now

and you have some money to you know, make these changes, secure

your situation and then be able to remove the anxiety that

they're related to. So you know, again, like you heard in the

opening, we want to get rid of those things that weigh on us,

stress us out and distract our focus.

Now the last thing to just touch on real quick before we get into

the actual episode is I currently, as of filming this,

have two kids under four as of today. I have a four year old

daughter and a one year old son, so I know time is precious. I

don't have time myself for one and a half hour podcasts, or you

know textbooks or anything like that, so episodes are going to

be as short as I possibly can make them. I want to get you the

information, not have you listened to me talk for 10 extra

minutes. There's only so long before, you know, you hear a

crash or cry in the next room- which sometimes we hear the cry

and you know they're alive, so that could be okay. But yeah,

the goal is to get you the information as quickly as

possible in a way that you can process it, digest it and then

take positive action off of that if you want to.

We're going to start today's episode, "Unknowns Are Scary",

off with a little bit of a story. My son Noah is just over

one year old now, and when he was a couple days old we brought

him home from the hospital. And we started to notice these

little blistery bumps around his diaper line. And at first we

thought it was just an irritation from the diaper, but

after two, three, four started to pop up real quick, we quickly

kind of knew that there was something more to it than just

that. So we came to this realization at night, so we left

a message for the pediatrician, becasue we wanted to go in and

see them the next day. And I couldn't sleep at all that

night, it was me just wondering what was wrong with him. You

know, you go on your phone, and then you just open up a whole

box of scary. And so, it was a very difficult night. Now the

next day, we get an appointment with the pediatrician, they have

us come in and they diagnose it as something called impetigo,

which is a bacterial infection. And it's not a good infection to

have, but if you know, you catch it early, and they gave us a

prescription neosporin kind of a thing that we had to go to the

pharmacy to get. And this poor little baby who's great

throughout it, he has no shirt on, he's laying on my knees on

the couch, and we have the ointment on, and he just he's

sleeping there with his arms straight up in the air. But once

that night happened, I wasn't scared anymore. Not because it

wasn't difficult still, not because it wasn't challenging

still, but because I knew what I was dealing with. I knew the

name of it, and I knew the treatment that was required to

have him be better.

The same thing is true when it comes to personal finance. What

you need to know is the unknowns from a finance standpoint, from

a personal finance standpoint, they work the same way. So if

you don't know where you are, and you don't know what you need

to do to fix it, then it's scary. And what's even worse

when it comes to finance is we don't always even know what we

don't know. So Noah had a rash, it was a visual element, I could

see that there was a problem. Finances don't always work that

way. And if they do work that way, it's likely because it's

much later in dealing with it then we should have dealt with

it. So a typical young family, we've kind of boiled it down to,

there are three major unknown type questions they need to be

asking themselves. And now, for any of these before I even ask

them, you do not need to know the answers right now, that is

absolutely fine. But you should at least be aware of them so

that you can ask them to yourself, and you and your

spouse can discuss them.

The first question is, 'what actually makes life most

enjoyable to me?' And this may seem like a weird first

question, because you know, a lot of people might be like,

'well I know what I like to do.' But what makes it most enjoyable

to me is really focusing on where we're putting our actions.

So I'll give you an example for myself personally. When I was in

middle school, all I wanted to do was get into the high level

classes in high school. When I was in high school, I just

wanted to get good grades to get into a good college. In college,

then I want to, you know, get a good job. After a job, it was a

spouse, and then I wanted to get married and have kids. And I'm

sitting with my daughter when she was less than a year old in

the middle of the night, trying to get her to go to sleep, and

realizing I was already planning out her retirement. Okay, now

when the kids move out, we're going to do this and that. And I

was jumping from one thing to the next and not giving the

present enough of my attention. The 18 years or so that I'll

have my kids before they move out, those are going to be

really unique special times, and obviously, I don't want to be

rushing that.

So yeah, we definitely need to have long term goals of an early

retirement and covering college, but we need to make sure that

we're focusing and not losing sight on what actually makes

life most enjoyable to us today. So my wife Lauren and I also

added in some more, you know, current year present goals that

we want to make sure we're not losing sight of on top of those

longer term traditional, you know, retirement and paying for

college and stuff, that kind of stuff. So we now want to visit

two new places we've never been to every year. We want to make

sure we're staying at unique, you know, Airbnb, places that

will really have like a memory to them when we look back on it

with our kids. You know, Disney is certainly on there, maybe a

pool is on your list and so forth. So this first question

is, you know, 'what actually makes life most enjoyable to

me', and then proactively not losing sight of that.

The second question here is, 'if I keep saving at the current

rates, where will that get me?' So everybody out there is

probably saving to some degree, but where will that actually get

you right now? What track are you on? And this really ties

very heavily into that first question because if we know what

track we're on for college, and retirement, we know how much

extra now we have to do things today. So a lot of times we can

be afraid to do a trip, or do a renovation or whatever it might

be, because we're not sure about what track we're heading on for

some of these other major important items. And so since we

still have anxiety with some of those, we can't release and be

able to do some things that might be more enjoyable in the

present. But if I was able to tell you, "Hey, if you save X

amount today, and every month going forward, retirement and

college will be covered", wouldn't that be a huge relief

to you? Wouldn't that just free what mentally to enjoy living

more that you knew these major milestone things, if I just did

a, b, and c, they would be covered?

The last of these three questions is, 'if I died, or was

disabled, tomorrow, what would happen?' And this is kind of the

protector element, but first, before you can protect anything,

you need to know what you're trying to protect. So some

people may want their spouse to be able to stay home with the

kids. Others may want to cover child care, but they still want

to keep working to some degree. So we have some clients who

even, you know, they say I would go live with my parents. And

that's even a very different scenario. So there is no right

or wrong scenario. It's just what scenario would you want to

have happen, God forbid one of these terrible events occurred

in your life, because each scenario translates into

different coverage. So you first need to know what you would want

to happen, and then you can solve for it.

These three questions are all going to be answered in parts of

future episodes and much more detailed diving into them. But

this first series is just setting your mental mindset when

it comes to money. And so these are the same questions that

everybody should be asking themselves. As young families, I

kind of said at the outset, we don't get enough finance

direction as young families from our professionals in the

industry or from our education system, and we wind up falling

into more of a box checking approach. I'm supposed to save-

okay, check that box. I'm supposed to have a 401(k)- okay,

check that box. I'm supposed to have life insurance- okay, get

some through work, I guess I'll check that box. I'm supposed to

have a 529 plan for college- okay, I check that box, I have

one. And the thing is, if you notice, that doesn't tend to

really get rid of your anxiety because it's not removing the

unknown. You have the 401(k), but is it enough? I have the

life insurance, but is it enough? I'm saving for college,

but is it enough?

If you know the answers to these three questions that we just

went through, now you're removing the anxiety, you're not

just checking a box of something that it sounds like you're

supposed to have. So what can you do? And this is pretty

simple- you need to discuss these three questions with your

spouse. Again, there are no answers that are needed today or

tomorrow, but you should be starting down this mental kind

of a path. So again, let's just recap those three questions for

you. The first is, 'what actually makes life most

enjoyable to me?' Two is, 'if I keep saving at the current rate,

where will that get me?' And the third question is, 'if I died or

was disabled tomorrow, what would happen? What would I want

to happen?' And start with those first three questions with your

spouse, and what you may find is that you get to a point where

you have more clarity on these than you thought was possible.

And sometimes your answers aren't the same as you would

expect from your spouse. So you know, talking and asking the

questions is always the first step for any of our clients

because you get clarity on what you're trying to do and where

you're trying to go. And I know that this works, because this is

what I go through myself. You know, I've had these these

questions and these conversations with my spouse.

And we have clarity on where we're going, we have clarity on

what we want to do, we have clarity on how we would protect

ourselves, God forbid in those scenarios, and so I don't spend

one second of any day worrying about it. I don't have any

anxiety about any of those items, and that's what I want to

try taking steps to help you with as well.

As young families, we have a lot on our plate for sure. But by

taking just kind of a little bit of time to see where we're going

and make sure we're going in the direction we actually want to,

it can remove that anxiety around all those. So thanks very

much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please

make sure to review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen.

There are literally millions of young American families out

there we're trying to reach and help just like you. So our next

episode will be coming up shortly. It's entitled "Like

Super Gymnast Flexible", covering the flexibility that we

should all be having in our financial situations as young

families. So thanks very much and I look forward to connecting

with you again soon.

The conversations on this show are

Joe's opinions and provided for general information purposes

only. They do not constitute accounting, legal tax or other

professional advice for your specific situation. You should

always seek appropriate advice from a financial advisor,

accountant, lawyer or other professional before acting upon

any content or information found here first. Joe is affiliated

with New Horizons Wealth Management LLC, a branch office

of TFS securities Inc, and TFS advisory services and SEC

registered investment advisor member FINRA/SIPC