078 - What To Do About Your Negative Money Scripts

We’re back to discuss what to do about your negative money scripts. 

Hopefully, you took the time this past week to ponder yours. 

If you’re having trouble and want more ideas, check out this resource. It contains a list of many more money scripts and examples of childhood experiences that may have caused them. 

Awareness is the first step to transforming what you believe about money and the key to unlocking financial success. 

You can do this. Lean into the resistance. Prosperity is on the other side. 

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Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Transcript

Welcome to Roaming Returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing, so that you don't have to wait till retirement to live your passions. We're back with the second part of Money Scripts, and we'll now discuss what to do about them. I hope you took the time this past week to ponder yours.
If you're having trouble and want more ideas, check out the resource we provided in the show notes. It contains a list of many more Money Scripts and examples of childhood experiences that may have caused them. Awareness is the first step to transforming what you believe about money, and the key to unlocking financial success.
You can do this. Lean into the resistance, because prosperity is on the other side. All right, we are back with- So this- The continuation of Money Scripts.
It's part- So hopefully you took us up on last week's challenge to sit with what we talked about, and figure out what you have for running scripts about money beliefs that might be hijacking your life. Yeah, so if you recall what the Money Scripts were, money avoidance, money worship, money status, money vigilance, and it's all formed in your childhood, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, like if you believe money's evil, or you believe that money is- Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
A source of happiness, source of love. After being violated for a week, what can you do to improve your money relationship? After being violated for a week. Okay.
Obviously, the first part of improving your relationship is going to be what we basically just wanted you to do the last week, which is ask yourself the hard questions. Because self-awareness is probably the most pivotal aspect of any meaningful change, and that- And that's everything, not just money stuff. That is everything in life.
That goes everywhere. If you want to actually improve, you have to ask the hard questions. But especially when it comes to transforming your relationship with money, because it's such a ... This one's such an end grain since you're like five years old.
This one's probably one of the hard ... This is probably one of the harder ones to actually improve. Yeah, but it also ... This is one of those, I would call it a keystone thing to focus on, because if you can actually figure out what's going on with your money situation, that is literally going to transcend so many other areas of your life, because money touches literally every aspect of our lives. So it's going to be about diving deep into your mind, the recesses of your mind, and most likely your past to confront the truths you've avoided.
The patterns you've repeated and the rules, quote unquote, rules that you tell yourself. Basically, to start the journey, you should ask yourself questions that require honesty and being vulnerable, such as what are your thoughts and feelings that you have about money? Consider whether your emotions around money are positive or negative, or do you have anxiety, scarcity, or indifference when it comes to money, when you ask yourself these questions. I know I have indifference, and it's just as bad as being anxious or scarce or having a super positive thing, and I'm just like, whatever, who cares? Yeah, and if you don't care, you're not going to get results.
I know. I had to literally whip his ass into shape, because I was like, Tim, what are you doing? I know. I was like, if we're going to be in this, because he's like, everything is about you, you, you, you, you.
I go, well, you're not contributing to the common goal here. I was like, of course, I'm looking out for me, because you're just like a money pit central. I know.
I'm not. Zero cares. And I'm just like, this is unacceptable.
Zero shits given. So if we have goals, we need to be consistently, collaboratively working towards set goals, not one person hijacking stuff. Like, I can't tell you how many times.
But if you're in a relationship, like if we have goals, that generally means that she has goals, and you just go along for the ride. You are so full of crap. Who's the one that wants to be living in the van? Who's the one that wants to be living in the van? Oh, you do, too.
I do, too. I know. But who wants it more? I think you do.
I do. I want to be out in the middle. So he's trying to blame that on me.
But I'm over here trying to actually make the goals come about. And he's the one saying that they're my goals. That is complete BS.
Yeah. So having a difference is just as bad as being positive or being too positive or too negative. So another question to ask yourself is, how do you behave with money? So basically, you have to assess your financial behaviors critically.
Are you always finding yourself in a cycle of debt? Or do you hoard money out of fear of losing it? Those are the two extremes. Mine is so weird. I hoard money.
But then I take these crazy, risky moves. And I lose a crap ton because I don't have the system dialed in. So it's like I go through this back and forth.
So I fall into the hoard money side of the spectrum here. But all my money goes from my checking account into investments because I know down the road, I'll actually have more money. Before, you were like casino spending mentality.
You're like, whee! YOLO, man. You only live once. Cash.
I have cash, free money. We're actually going to do that experiment at some point in the next probably three to six months where we're like, oh, I'm just going to take what I normally spend a month on my debit card. I'm going to have cash.
And I bet you I blow it within seven days. So this is a sideliner. But this is actually really funny.
So Dave Ramsey, I'm reading through everybody's books and all sorts of stuff because it's giving us ideas. I pick up stuff every here and there. And Ramsey actually is a really good person if debt is your biggest problem because he's kind of like a taskmaster.
And if you need that mentality to get you over that hump or to get you into better habits, he's actually a really good person for you to follow. So if that's actually what you need, go over there 100% and subscribe to his stuff. But one of the things he was talking about was the cash envelope system.
So people who typically have cash have a harder time parting with it. And I was like, you know what would be really funny? If we actually took our budget for the month and we gave it to one of us as an experiment, like we would do it individually to see what we would have. Because I call bullshit on my own personal and Tim's personal spending relationship with cash for what he's saying.
And I'm not saying that most people don't probably fall into what he's talking about. But Tim is completely the opposite. And mine would actually be I'd spend more money with cash just because I'd be so frustrated by the fact of needing to manage the cash because I freaking hate physical cash.
So we will do that experiment at some point. And to me, cash is free money. I know.
Tim's like, I have cash. Time to spend it. And if I have cash, it stays in my wallet for months and months and months and months and months because I don't want to break it.
It doesn't stay in your wallet for months and months and months. I take it. I was going to say, if he has no relevance, it's fine.
It stays there forever because I never want the change or anything. Or I'll put it into my actual checking. But the only reason I do keep it in my account is because I know he's going to snake it for his basketball crap because he needs cash for that.
Yeah, they really take it. And sometimes I hold cash just because some places only take cash. So I like to have it in case I need it.
But it's only like 20 bucks here, whatever there. But Tim gets a hold of it. Gone.
Gone. Gone. So nothing relevant.
So. And sidebar. Enough.
Enough about me. How are you guys? So how do you behave with money? So do you behave completely different with credit cards versus cash versus what I don't like? I hate using credit cards. Like, if I have a credit card, like I had a credit card for like five years.
I never used it once. Yeah. And I just have, like, completely closed it down.
Like, I don't like cards are stupid. They charge like 30 percent. But anyway, another question to ask yourself in this this journey to whatever you're going to do, fixing your money.
Do I have any strong beliefs about money that may be limiting my potential? A lot of people have deep seated beliefs like money is the root of all evil of religious people. I actually have a belief that the higher ups are preventing me from making as much money as I need to make or like inhibiting me or something along those lines. Like taxes.
I abhor taxes. That's probably why I'm so motivated now to look into how to, like, less these taxes possible. Her dad falls into this next question, which is you have to work hard to make money? Question mark.
No, you don't. My dad believes that the harder you work, the more money you make. And that's not this time and era.
So whatever, whatever the beliefs, like whatever deep sea beliefs you have, you have to identify them. And then you actually have to start questioning the validity of these in your like in your present life, not your past life. Like, are they true or is the belief the actual thing that's holding you back? Like if I believe that taxes or the government's taking more of my money and inhibiting me from whatever.
But then when I started reading these tax books, that's actually bunk. And you have the ability to basically pay no taxes if you just know how to use the tax code to your advantage. So like another area that like I don't know how to do this, but like I would like everybody to actually just take a minute to think about what they would envision their ideal financial situation to look like.
So let's do ours. So basically we're parading around the wilderness in our van with our kittens, our cats. I'm riding a bike and hiking, riding a bike, hiking.
I'm like doing all sorts of random like blacksmithing, air glassblowing, hanging out at random colleges, doing like instrument training and random course stuff. And I don't know, calisthenics practice. And so I need money obviously for like to do that kind of stuff or to do like, you know, kayaking or.
I would like to learn how to bow and arrow hunt. So that's what I'm saying. Like my stuff all revolves around like experience attainment and skill building and needing money to essentially do those things because I just find collecting that kind of crap and knowledge was.
My ideal financial life revolves around physical challenges. I like to challenge myself with physical challenges. So it's like everything revolves around like basically personal improvement, personal growth, personal whatever personal experience.
And I don't really want to spend money on like a house. I don't want to have to spend money on like electric or like that kind of stuff. But once you actually can identify what your ideal financial situation should look like, you can then start to identify what you want your relationship to look like with when it comes to money.
And then you can start to identify like little areas or major areas that you can change to make this vision. I was going to say what I would do is I would actually compare like what you want your life to look like and then look at what your life is now. And the bigger the gap, right, there's your unhappiness factor.
The wider that gap is, the more unhappy and more unfulfilled you're going to feel. So if you're not actually spending money on the things that bring you joy and fulfillment, like your answer literally lies right there in that visualization exercise. I read that.
I came across that in one of these other books and like happiness or somewhere. And I was like, that's actually so for our example that we just came up with the changes we need to make. We need to actually have a passive income stream that will afford us between two and three thousand dollars a month.
So once we actually were able to identify that, then creating a plan was actually quite easy, quite easy. And that's where if we have the money coming in so that we can explore the experiences. And I even thought about finding paid internships places, although I think it's easier just to do the investment thing.
And then we were like, OK, so how do we get the startup money to get the money to actually see that portfolio? And I was like, oh, we just sell the house because we don't want a house anyway. So that's where we're at. Part of it.
But then the other part was just saving up. Well, saving up too, because again, I hoard money and then I don't know where to put it. So I'll take a risky move.
So now that Tim actually figured that whole thing out, I just give my money to him. And he's just like, hey, we made a lot of money. We made a lot of money this month.
Yay. Which is a complete sidebar. I want to see what we make each month.
We actually have it on the website. We have a dividend. It's an up-to-date dividend payout thing.
He enters it every time for each stock that we own, how much dividends we get per month. And there's a running total. So it's actually pretty sweet.
We'll link to it in the show notes. It's always on the website. And if you're doing income investing, you should have something similar where you actually have a chart that shows how much you paid for something, how much dividends you collected for something and how many shares that you have that you currently own versus how many you initially bought.
You should all have something similar to that. Well, that's a different chart. That one's just the one we were just talking about.
It's just a dividend. I understand. But they all should have that just because it actually it's motivating whenever you see that I held this stock for 12 months and I accrued like 40 shares.
I mean, that's like, oh, I didn't have to do shit for the 40 shares. Nice. And then what makes it super nice is if you can actually then think fourth dimensionally like, well, like in two years, whenever I want to be doing what I want to be doing, I can just turn the drip off and I'll be making X amount every month or every three or every quarter.
And that literally just funds what I want to be doing. And then you can work as little or as much as you want. So that was a change that I made.
And it was, again, like once I established what my ideal financial situation and what my life should look like, it was quite easy to actually create a plan to make it a reality. Yeah. So passive income was the key in figuring out which passive income methodology worked best for what we were trying to do.
And since I already had a bunch of cash and we like the investing idea, we just figured out a way to invest to make money instead of growth investing. OK. And then the last of the last question, you have to dig deep into your past and come up with what was your parents relationship with money and what it looked like.
Your family's financial behaviors and attitudes often lay the groundwork for your own. So if you can actually identify what if your parents raised you, what your parents relationship was of your grandparents, what your grandparents relationship was, foster parents, aunts and uncles, whoever raised you, if you can actually look in the past and actually come up with how their relationship with money looked, I'm sure you'll see some similarities in your own current relationship with money. And I will say here, if you have parents with two really opposing beliefs on money, which is kind of how my parents were set up.
My dad was like an uber spender. My mom was like an uber saver. You have those conflicting scripts.
So it's like you'll tend to be more turbulent or like conflicting about money, which is 100 percent my issue. So that might be how. So all these questions here will actually help you identify your current your current mindset when it comes to financial, I guess, money relationship as well as your past money relationship patterns and whatever.
And you can actually make this fun and into a game if you pretend it's not you you're thinking about and you just write out like the crazy beliefs and then just kind of laugh at the improbability of those things. But try to make it fun to take the resistance down a level. So then the step two in the process of what the hell was it to improve your money relationship would be to improve your mindset.
So once you've identified your current mindset and your past mindset, then you can actually start working on your future mindset and your I guess your current slash future mindset about money and your relationship. It's all about transformation. I don't have any specifics here.
Literally, all you have to do is Google transforming financial mindset mindset. And like so many resources are at your fingertips whenever you do that. I actually think we should create a resource for this, because this is one of the things I was actually looking to find in some of the money psychology books is like, what do the wealthy people have as their money beliefs and their habits? And if you literally can replicate what they're doing, you're basically guaranteed success.
There's YouTube, there's plenty of books and audio books, and there's lots of blogs and there's, you know, podcasts. You're listening to one now. Thank you.
And I will say I absolutely love the books on Thomas Stanley. He did The Millionaire Next Door, like what an actual millionaire does and looks like and their habits, behaviors, choices and like things. And it's 100% the opposite of what you think.
Yeah, they drive Toyotas, not BMWs. Yeah. So I mean, that's one example.
That's like the number one most driven car by millionaires. And oddly enough, that's what we have. We're not millionaires, but.
I know. Not yet. We're pretty close.
We'll be pretty close here soon. Once everything. 350,000 ish around there.
Yeah. But his other one was the action. There's another one.
By we, I mean her obviously. I don't have shit. I think it was The Millionaire.
I think it was called The Millionaire Mind. Yeah, but that's intentional, which we're not going to explain here. If you want to know about that, send us a direct message and we'll talk about it.
So that's step two. Basically, just start researching. Like the more, you know, I mean, it sounds so cliche, but the more, you know, the more you can learn and grow and plan and predict.
I will actually say here the happiest people, the most fulfilled people watch the least amount of television because they're more they're actually spending more time educating themselves. And I mean, what I do is I run around with audio books for like actual nonfiction all the time. I listen to podcasts.
And I watched like some YouTube channels like garbage in garbage out type deal. Well, like a huge, like a complete, complete sidebar is she was just telling me about her dad's cable bill. Oh, my God.
And like, we don't have cable. We haven't had cable. And I don't think ever have we? I've never had it.
You know, we never had cable. We had like we had a fire stick at one point. But so we've only ever paid for like maybe subscriptions for Netflix.
But even that, like we found something different that it works better for us. And I'd rather read book gray area. Is that better? Yeah, it's a gray area question mark.
But yeah, we're like TVs. If you recall, when we were I did a podcast, I forget which one it was. But basically, I broke down like the average person's week and like they spend, I want to say 30 to 40% of their week watch TV.
Yeah. So like right there, you're taking away 30 or 40% of your time that you could actually be improving anything like your financial mindset, your budgeting, your happiness. You could be just going out and doing things that make you happier.
If one of your money scripts is that you never will understand money will you'll never understand money if you never put effort in the understanding money. And the thing is that rule of thumb, it's like 10,000 hours to become to attain mastery. But you can freaking get real close to proficiency with a fraction of those hours.
Like right when we started this podcast, I didn't really know nothing about anything. And I just binged like 15 books on investing and finance and stuff. And I was like, well up to speed.
Now, I will say that I think I absorb information at a very high rapid rate compared to a lot of people. And I don't know if it's just because I'm hyper focused on it or interested in it. Because your interest level does have a lot to do with the amount of absorption you have.
But the point is, if you're running around doing errands, you can squeeze audiobooks in for something that's actually going to benefit your life as opposed to binging on Netflix. But anyway, once you've improved your mindset and habits through whatever method or platform you use, you should actually then step three, which is set goals for your relationship with money. By goals, I don't mean like ridiculous goals.
Like set clear attainable goals for your relationship with money. Like I'm going to save for a six-month emergency fund. Or I'm going to put like 10% of my after-bill pay into investments or whatever.
It's like small goals that you can actually achieve. Because once you do that, you can actually then start reflecting on what you want to do with the money that you're going to make. Well, actually, I have some commentary here.
Because I've been reading a lot of habit books and that type of stuff. Oh my god, so just talk. What you do, what you do.
Goal 100%. So you have your bigger goal that you're striving towards. We just said, what was the one you just used? Six-month emergency fund.
Six-month emergency fund. So what you do is you figure out how to actually break that down into either a daily habit, a weekly habit, a monthly habit, or setting something up. And the more automated, the more easy you can make it, the more easy you'll be able to achieve it.
So if you figure out that you need to automatically. And this is where David Box books come in. And I absolutely love the fact that you do stuff before you see the money.
Because then you don't really see that you're taking it away from yourself. Therefore, you don't have that negative emotion tied to it. You set it up automatically to come out and go into a savings account that you can't see, can't touch before you spend your money on anything else.
That is how you reach goals. These are what the millionaires do. If you want to become financially stable, successful, independent, you literally need to be mimicking the habits that the wealthy are doing.
So one of the big components I actually would do here is when you set up your goals, you should actually reflect on what you want to achieve from the goals. Yes. Is it the freedom to travel without financial worry? Is it the ability to do whatever you want experience-wise? You have to have your why joined with your goal.
Otherwise, you will have no motivation to actually take action. So that's a two-parter in step three. And then you make it super easy of entrance.
And then you give yourself like mini wins for the little baby steps. Then you increase as you get more confidence boosting. But don't fall into the I deserve it mentality like we discussed.
So the only reason you deserve something is after you've actually taken action. Because then you've earned the reward. I'm just saying like that.
You don't eat your dessert before you eat your food. I can see people saying, well, I deserve to just go crazy because I actually came, got to my six-month emergency fund. Don't do that.
Well, that's what we were talking about. If you're dieting, you don't reward yourself with food. You reward yourself with something in a different category.
The only thing that you really deserve is to be happy. Everybody deserves to be happy. This goal isn't just your ultimate destination.
It is also the driving force that keeps you grounded and focused on what truly matters. That's why having your why is super important, whether it's your family, whether it's like thinking about being on the streets, living in a car, like not being able to eat, whatever, like whatever's painful or whatever motivates you, that you've got to have the goals, goals about way more than numbers in your bank account. It's about creating a rich life, which you define yourself on your terms.
The goal will be your North Star. If you're familiar with like how the old people used to like navigate the seas, they would just look at the North Star and that's how they determine where they were going. And it's definitely better to motivate yourself with a carrot versus like scaring yourself with a stick.
And the part that I like that I do believe it was the Kunz guy, I forget though, but once you identify what a fulfilling life means to you, you can then reverse engineer your habits to make that fulfilling life a actual reality. So that's kind of like what we're trying to do. Like you want to figure out what makes you happy and then you want to like reverse engineer your current situation to make that what makes you happy a reality.
And you also do not want to bite off more than you can chew. You start small. Like if you read the Benjamin Franklin's bibliography, he basically took one small habit every month and he made sure it became a habit in that 30-day period and then he'd add a new one.
And by the end of the year, he had actually attained 12 new habits as opposed to trying to do all of them at once and then basically berating himself for failing and then falling off the wagon, being depressed and then slipping back into where you were at. It's better to start small and build up from there. That's a perfect segue.
I know it is, isn't it? I didn't even know that was there. Step four is to forgive and accept yourself. If your financial history feels like a burden.
You gotta be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself. Be kind to yourself.
Accept the mistakes and the steps you've made in the past. It's super important to recognize that making mistakes is all part of being human and that mistakes are a significant part of growing and improving. Each mistake presents an opportunity to learn and grow and do it better the next time.
Or to pivot slightly because that thing you're trying isn't quite working for you. Like for example, I realized that it's easier for me to drink water if I actually put a container of water in the bathroom near the toilet or I carry an actual thing with me. But I'm more apt to drink water when I'm peeing because I'm already thinking about dehydrating myself and rehydrating myself at the same time.
So I drink more water if I just do that task of setting the actual water jug on the counter in the bathroom. So it's like little stuff like that. Set yourself up for success.
And one of the other big keys that Tim and I were just talking about with habits is basically like you don't hope you're gonna go set up the apparatus to then go say do the thing you're gonna do like working out or whatever. You basically set stuff up before so that when you actually go to do that action, everything's set up and ready to go. You don't have any resistance points.
You make it easier for yourself. And you can do this in reverse with things you want to avoid. Like one of the habit books I was reading was talking about the guy who wanted to stop watching TV.
So what he did was he'd unplug his TV, he'd drag it into the closet, he'd put a bunch of crap in front of it. So every time he wanted to watch TV, he literally had to drag it out. So if you make it difficult for yourself to do the stuff you want to stop doing, it makes it harder for your brain to rationalize going through the effort to do that.
So you can use that to your advantage on both sides. It's pretty fun actually. Yes.
I always laugh about the TV in the closet thing. It seems like a person like me. It's easier to learn from stuff I don't want to do than stuff I want to do.
Step five in the process is to educate yourself. We've already talked about this one, but education is key. Obviously, there's blogs and podcasts and articles and books.
But even what I'm finding, as a ridiculously introverted person, the more that I actually don't necessarily talk to people, but I put myself around people and they'll bitch about their lives to other people, I can listen to it and be like, oh, so they're doing this wrong. And then I can pull them aside and be like, if you did this, it'd be easier. So you actually talk to people on the street or in your neighborhood.
Like when you drop your kids off at daycare or at your job, whatever, talk to people. You can actually learn more from their negative stories that can actually benefit you than I think most blogs and podcasts, to be honest. You also learn more too through teaching.
So if you take in these education materials with the thought of being able to help other people, if that's something that motivates you more, that actually motivates me to do a lot more. If somebody has a problem, I'm more than likely going deep dive and research and that thing to go help that person out. And then I attain information and then I can help other people.
And I'm actually learning more because I'm helping other people with that same thing. So it's like you learn more through teaching. And you can also learn more through watching other people fail or struggle.
I don't want to do that. The more you learn, the better equipped you'll be to navigate a situation in your personal finances or your personal life, whatever. I myself, personally, I believe that education will help you succeed.
That's why our blog isn't literally just about tickers and investing stuff. There's so much more to investing. Episodes that talk about behavioral finances or money relationships, whatever.
A huge part of investing for me is that you need to know your strengths and weaknesses as a person. Before you even touch a brokerage account, you should know your strengths and weaknesses because all the data in the world about a company won't make you a better investor. If you're a mess psychologically about money, budgets and finance, it doesn't matter how much information you consume about investing.
You're not going to be successful. Well, not only that, if you don't have a good enough why, if your reason for why you want that money isn't good enough, you're never going to be filled happy or successful. Because even if you have a bajillion dollars, if you let your health go to crap or you let your relationships go to crap, you're going to be a lonely, miserable SOB when you hit millionaire status.
Because being uneducated about yourself will actually lead to emotional and irrational decisions. And I've said this over and over and over and over and over and over and over. They have zero place in your portfolio investing.
And that has a negative impact. You need to have your shit dialed in when it comes to your behavioral finances, the psychological components we discussed. You need to have your relationship with money kind of pegged in, like what you're doing, why you're doing it.
Because if not, your probability is pretty high that you're going to make emotional decisions and lose. Yeah, you're going to self-sabotage. You're going to constantly self-sabotage.
And then that's, again, I'm going to go back to the things like not understanding your needs, like those deeper things. Investor, know thyself. I'm sure I've led with that somewhere.
But those deeper things, like I was even looking at this whole, my lack of love throughout my life, I think is somehow tied into like my money or like the reason I have issues with wanting to do so much other stuff. It's like I'm replacing. I'm yeah, I'm compensating for this.
Like if we actually told you about how we met and how we became. Oh, it's terrible. You'd see like a lot of these traumas present and you'd be like, holy crap, this this lady's crazy.
Yeah, we're both we're both pretty out there. But hey, we found each other. Well, that's actually one of the things I don't know if you have this on this list, but I'm going to do like step five slash A. Another big thing is like if you are surrounded by people who are all doing habits that you want to get away from, you will literally not be able to fix that because you will constantly be sucked back into mimicking.
One of the other big tips in the successful and the millionaire financial people is like you are literally the sum of the three or five most frequent people you hang out with. That could be your family. That could be your friends.
Example of that like people at work literally just transpired, not Thursday, but Tuesday on basketball night. The dude was bitching about how he spends. He buys four Gatorades a week to play basketball and it's costing him about $12.
So he's paying the $6 a week buying sheets. Yeah. So he's paying the $6 for basketball, but then he's spending $12 a week on the Gatorade.
So the guy probably not going to play basketball more because I'm spending like I'm spending like 50 bucks a month on a Gatorade. And here I am with my little. Water jug.
Little water jug. I'm like, well, I'm saving that much. But so like you can like.
That's an excuse. You can learn from other people's bad habits. That's a bad habit.
Stopping at sheets to get two Gatorades before playing basketball is a bad habit. Well, I would actually say that that's not necessarily a bad habit. It's a bad habit.
He does it every week. Okay. So it's a bad habit, but it's also a faulty decision to not pre-prepare.
Like if he knows he comes straight from work and he doesn't have time, freaking get a cooler or get a freaking Yeti cooler, stick it in the back of your trunk and put your freaking stuff in it the night before so that you don't have to worry about rushing around and stopping at sheets and go to like BJ's and get it in bulk. Like if you know you're already going to be spending the money on it, make it easier for you to have the habit and have it better on your wallet if finances is the thing. But if he's literally talking about giving up playing basketball, something he loves, just because he's spending an extra $12 a week on Gatorade because of the convenience charge, like I don't know about you guys, that sounds retarded to me. But I'm saying, what I'm saying is like, that's what I, like if you put yourself in positions where you can overhear other people, you don't even have to be part of the conversation.
You can be like, wow, that guy's doing some crazy shit. I'm not gonna do that. One of my absolute favorite ones was my ex-boss talking about how she was struggling with weight loss.
And every time that she was craving like eating crap, she would literally go sit outside of a Dunkin Donuts and just sit in the parking lot and watch people. And she said like 95% of the people going in and out were like obese and just like blah and gross. And she'd be like, okay, I'm not motivated anymore to go get that junk food.
She's like, I'm gonna go over here. So it's like, you can use the negative thing or the thing you don't want just as much as you can motivate yourself with like, so I said, some people are driven by the stick and some people are driven by the care. You gotta know yourself, figure out which one's better for you.
Investor, know thyself. Dude, there's so much that pertains to that. But anyway, step six.
And I do believe, is this the last one? Yeah, this is the last. So this is the last step. After you do all this education and setting goals and identifying what you got going on, step six, your money should always be making money.
We've said this before. I say this to everybody that I talk to whenever they're like, oh, I have this going on. I have this much in my checking account.
Well, how do I get started? I'm like, well, first of all, your money should always be making money. I literally should just get a t-shirt that says that. Well, I'm going to.
Because it's the most important aspect about money is that as a tool and as a tool, it should be making your life or job easier. You need to create systems and habits that actually make your money work for you. Instead of you working for your money, your money should always be working for you.
If you don't, you're going to work until you die as opposed to living before you die. Einstein said it. Benjamin Franklin said it.
The freaking law of compounding is one of the greatest natural wonders in the world. And if you're not taking advantage of your money compounding, you're actually losing money from it just sitting in a zero interest situation because of inflation. So a simple solution to actually rectify this, your money should be making money, is automate your savings and or investment.
So with your savings, of course we mean like a high yield savings or like a worthy type situation or whatever, not putting it in your savings account. And if you're not ready to invest, yeah, you can do the worthy, you can do the high interest savings. Do bullet chairs.
Bullet chairs pay 7%. Or you could literally move it into bullet chairs if you want it in a brokerage so that it's ready to go. Because that's still making you like 6%.
The reason that this is a simple solution is because why would you wait until the end of the month to save or invest when money could be tight? Compounding. You don't know what your financial situation is going to be most of the time, month to month. Yeah, you always invest for yourself first.
So if you wait to like say you're one of the people I'm going to wait till the 31st or the 30th of the month to invest, you don't know what's going to happen the 1st or the 30th. So just if you auto set it, you're taking out whatever your percentage you're going to invest. You should always do it beforehand because if you try to do it after, you're always going to find excuses not to invest.
The reason why is because if you wait until the end of the month to do it, you're hoping that you can save to invest. That's hoping on discipline and willpower. But if it's the first thing that you do with your paycheck when you get it, you know you're going to save and invest.
That's a huge difference. I mean, it seems like it's a simple solution. It is simple.
What I mean when your money should always be making money is your money should be multiplying because of compounding. Compounding leads to more money, which you literally had nothing to do with beating doves. 7% through worthy, 12 to 18% through how we invest, a 5% through treasury, CDs or high yield savings accounts, whichever option you choose.
I think the high yield going rate right now is like 4.6. Whatever option you choose, your money is still making money. Cash at checking accounts and regular saving accounts do nothing for your future. The cash is king crap died out when the boomers started dying off.
So cash is only king when you're actually making a purchase because you have negotiation power. You go to buy a used car, you'll be like, I have 4,000. That's when cash is king.
That's when they can't up the price because you're like, this is all I have. You can't go above that and they either take it or leave it. Like that, when she was saying cash is king, that means negotiation power.
That doesn't mean hide it under your mattress. Generally speaking, cash is king is dead. It's gone.
Your money has to be somewhere making money. Because the inflation thing right now is like, if you're not making at least four or 5%, you're actually losing money. The reason I keep emphasizing investor know thyself is because you need to know your budget and you need to know what you need each month because then you can put your money into Worthy or to bullet shares and not have to touch it because you know that you're gonna go through $1,800 in bills so you set it up so that you're saving whatever you have over $1,800.
I mean, I like the whole non-budgeting idea where you set it aside first because if you're like most people, what you do is you pay your bills and then whatever's left in your account is what you spend in that month. You just make it your discretionary. So if you set everything first, working for you for investing, working for you for your investment account, working for you for your mortgage and bills and debt payoffs or whatever the heck else, whatever is less, then you don't even have to think about it.
Again, we'd say with habits, make it easy. That way you don't have to rely on discipline and willpower because they are not gonna be there when you need them consistently. Knowing all that, what does a healthy relationship with money look like? Oh yes, do tell Tim.
So that- Because we're not even in that ourselves. A person that's healthy with their money relationship is someone that understands their current situation, how much money they have available, they have clear goals and realistic expectations. So they know what they have left over after all their expenditures for the month and they have a goal and realistic expectations what they're going to do with their leftovers, like how it's going to fund their fulfilling life.
That's a person that's healthy with money. Yeah, we're not even there yet. Number two is someone who creates a budget and tracks their spending and income.
Again, I'm the anti-budget. I can't stress how important it is to actually have a budget, know how much you spend and how much you're making. Or have a system in place that makes that irrelevant.
I think the reason that I'm so adamant about a budget is not from the actual investing side of it. I'm more adamant because once you start seeing, oh my God, I'm spending $200 a month on coffee. So when I talk about budgeting, I don't really mean, I just use the word budget because it's easier to say, but basically auditing your expenses so that you are aware of what's going where and what's getting wasted where.
So I think that's more what we talk about when we actually talk about budgeting. But the budgeting for me is from the, it's not from the how much you have. It's the awareness component.
Yeah, you're aware of where you're spending. Because if you didn't intend to spend $200 on, say, Gatorade that month, then you need to readjust your spending because you're not fulfilling your goals or there's no way you're gonna meet your goals if you're rogue-habiting over here. It's just not gonna work.
Okay, and then someone who has a healthy relationship with money is a person that develops smart habits such as saving, investing wisely, and fully funding an emergency fund. Check, check, and check. Emergency fund is key.
I know we discussed it before and I'll say it again. It's worth noting that you need to have an emergency fund because there are going to be situations where some shit hits the fan and you need money. Yeah, and you need to have something set aside so that you do not put money on credit cards that you cannot afford to put on credit cards because if you don't, then you are spending way more money because of the interest that racks up from that.
So the emergency fund is one of those keystone pieces to financial success. I think there's numerous people. There's a three-month one, a six-month one.
I think six months is the better option. There's people that do a 12-month. 12 months is good, too.
I think it really depends on... You like your expenditures. Yeah, your expenditures. And then the one... And your lifestyle.
We're living in a van. We know that a six-month emergency fund should cover any van repairs. We don't need 12 months.
Well, our emergency fund basically is for an engine replacement or a heavy-duty, that kind of thing. Oh, you have the engine or transmission? But I'm just saying, ours might be higher than our actual six-month thing just because if we have to make a major overhaul, we're dead in the water if we're living in a vehicle. So that, to us, is something that gets adjusted specifically.
And your emergency fund should be, at the minimum, something that makes you feel comfortable. And at the maximum, again, whatever makes the most sense for the thing that's gonna be like... Rule of thumb is say that you lost your job tomorrow. Emergency fund size would be whatever makes you comfortable, knowing that you're not going to be anxious and overwhelmed because you lost your job.
Whether it's three months, six months, or a year. Some people's needs to be a lot higher than that. Whatever that dollar amount is, that's something you have to determine yourself.
And some people talk about, don't worry about that making interest. Well, I completely disagree when there's so many good options now that have it in a liquid state. Well, that's why I would think if you don't like Worthy because it's not insured, you can do a bullet share because bullet shares are super liquid and you're getting 7%.
So it's the same as Worthy. Is it up to seven? Yeah. So that's way better than a high yield savings.
Like the going rate right now, like I said, is like 4%. So you literally can take your bank account, link it up to a broker's account, take your extra whatever you want to put into an emergency fund, put it into bullet shares. Make it make money.
If you ever have to tap it, you just sell your bullet shares, whatever you need, and then transfer it back to your checking account. It all happens within like two days. Now there is that caveat where people are like, oh, I need the emergency fund this second.
But I think having that like two day delay for it to transfer means that it 100% is an emergency. Like needing a birthday present for your nephew's birthday party does not constitute an emergency. Your HVAC system going out in your house in the dead of winter is absolutely an emergency.
Funny story we had that happen. Yeah, I actually haven't even been able to turn the heat on yet. Funny story, like whatever the little thing that spins, it does all the blowing.
Oh, it wasn't in the winter. It was in the summer. It still was bad.
It was like, yeah, during heat wave and I had to order a part to figure out how to fix it. So we were like super hot, but we weren't dying. Yeah, so somebody that has a healthy relationship with money also can spend guilt-free on what matters most to them, but spends within their means and according to their values.
So right here is the one that I tend to get stuck on because it's like, I feel like crap when I spend certain money on certain things or I have like hesitancy and resistance and I have these like really bad feelings that crop up. But after doing a lot of evaluation, it is because I resent the fact that I'm spending money on something or I feel I am not getting the value of what I thought I purchased or whatever. But when it comes to like an experience that I 100% am like all on board, I do not have issues with that.
I think mine's, I don't know if I'm an abnormal person where I'm more complicated and I feel like this is a theme in my life, but that to me is a clue that I need to be doing more of the things that I feel good about spending money on and less of the things that I have that negative obligatory grossness. And I feel like that when I pay my mortgage, I feel like that when I pay like the heating bill, I feel like that. Because it's like, I don't want to be heating my whole house when we spend like literally 95% of our time in a 200 square foot space, that's dumb.
If they're anything like us, spending guilt free is pretty easy because it's something that you plan out like buying a Jackery or buying like a bike rack or buying like tickets to a rafting trip or something like that. Yeah, like Tim's $3,000 bike, no guilt there because like he absolutely loves that. He rides that thing all the time.
And I prepared for it. He prepared for it. So like I'm saying like an impulse buy, I don't really think that's something that you should spend guilt free on.
Like an impulse buy is bad. Well, most people who impulse buy have spent, or what is that? Buyer's regret, buyer's remorse. If you feel buyer's remorse, that's another red flag.
That's not something you should be buying. You're missing the deeper thing that you should actually be spending money on. To us, say impulse buying a cup of coffee seems really stupid, but there's other people that that's like actually important for, whether it's the socialization in the coffee shop or if it's just the addiction, I don't know.
So for me, I very, very, very, very rarely spend money on beverages. And if I'm going to spend money on beverages, it's going to be a splurge. It probably will be an impulse, but it will also be like something I will actually enjoy.
Like I will do it for a Jamba Juice when we're actually in Washington DC since I don't know where the heck there is even one near here because I absolutely love those things. And it's a once in a blue moon expense. And occasionally, I'll get a chai tea latte at Starbucks.
I can't even tell you the last time I had one. It's probably been like a year and a half maybe. But I will occasionally, and usually it's if I'm with somebody else who's getting coffee.
And again, how rare is that? Because clearly I'm not a socialite. But those would be like, that's what I would consider an impulse buy even though that's not everybody else's definition. Like if it's something that's like, oh, I really want this in the moment, I haven't had one of these in freaking forever.
I'm gonna indulge in this moment. I'm gonna be happy about it and I'm not gonna regret the expense. And then I'm gonna fully immerse in the experience of sipping that coffee or that tea super, super slow.
Ick, coffee, not my thing. But I'm gonna sip that tea super, super slow. I'm gonna really enjoy that Jamba.
And actually, I was kind of a mad when we got the Jamba the last time because remember we were like late to that Van Gogh art thing that we went to and I was like, I can't even enjoy my freaking Jamba Juice because we had to like run up the thing to catch a freaking, the Metro to like go up this stupid thing because they had time tickets. I loathe time tickets with a passion. Yeah, they're not.
Super annoying. Every time we get a time ticket for an experience, There's like no urgency anyway. It's so dumb.
Shit hits the fan and we're generally late and rushing around and stressed out. So I loathe that. Businesses, why? Just why? I don't know.
Oh, okay. Somebody that has a healthy relationship with money will be someone that understands their money scripts. They know why they feel like they do about money.
If you know why, like again, if you could go back to what we were saying, you have to revisit your past and know why you feel the way you do about money and saving and wealth and all that. If you understand that, kudos. You're a step up.
And you can heal it. You can work around it. You can get around those obstacles, those landmines you got going on.
Like the fact that I know that like the government and whatever is like a problem for me. So it's like I can figure out how to actually maneuver that situation so that they don't feel as craptastic. The way somebody that has a healthy relationship with money also views money as a tool, which they can use to build the life they want.
No, I 100% view that one. I just, to me, it blows my mind that people don't view money as a tool. I mean, you could even have some of these beliefs and still believe money is a tool.
It blows my mind like how they get so like weird about a thing. Like it's so strange. I think people just, some people just naturally accept the like hangups impeding their life.
And I look at everything through the lens of like, how can I get around this thing even if like I'm causing the problem myself? If it's somebody else, I try to figure out how to get around it. Like I 100%, even though I seem uber pessimistic in a lot of ways, like I'm very opportunistic, I guess optimistic about how the heck can I, you know. And finally, somebody that has a healthy relationship with money is looks like someone that is somebody that has created a well thought out plan, which uses small manageable steps to forge a fulfilling life.
Oh, small manageable steps. I can't stress enough. Are you patting me? I just can't stress enough how the small manageable steps is important part.
Like you can come up with a grand plan to like I want to retire with a million dollars and you won't actually succeed because that's very difficult to maneuver around. Yeah, if you don't reverse engineer that and actually make baby steps for you to go from like today to then, like you're never gonna take action. That's why when we first started this, we talked about like know your budget, see where you can cut money out.
Even if it's like $100 a month, you can invest $100. Well, then the $100 is actually going to compound into say 130 by the end of the year. If you do that every month, you're looking at like, I don't know.
A lot when you factor compounding in. $1,600 or $1,700 for the year. If you could just figure a way out to small manageable step of just freeing up $100 a month.
I can actually attest to this in other areas of life, aka the condo, which you've heard us talking about since the inception of this podcast. And I don't know how many times we said we'd be done by X date and it's past that. This is 100% because I am 100% overwhelmed and I have so many different projects, irons in the fire.
Like this project is so huge and unmanageable and I was struggling for the longest time to break it down into steps that were cohesive and like a thing thing. Cause I was like overwhelming myself trying to like make it efficient with if I'm going to the store, I need to get this, this and this for these three different rooms, three different projects. And I finally got to the point where I was like, you know what, this isn't working.
I'm literally just going to take this step by step. And if I have to do a little bit more walking or leg work or whatever, if I'm making more progress day to day, that's all that matters. So it's one of those things where it's like, you got to kind of work with your jack up or a two to like try different things out, test different things, see what works for you.
Same thing that works for somebody is not going to work with somebody else. Like I've talked to so many people who don't like doing audio books while they're out and about. And that 100% works for me, hands down.
So it's like, it really just depends on you. And it depends on. Audio books are the truth.
I love audio books. They made that drive to New Mexico so easy. And I've even gotten to the point where if all I have is an EPUB, I'm throwing it on a free app where some AI is reading at me and I slow the thing down even though she's cryptic as hell.
Like I actually like that a lot. Like I get over the fact that she sounds like a robot. I'm like, whatever robot, read to me.
Robot. So that's what a healthy relationship with money looks like, those seven things we just covered there. I'm hoping that you can get there.
I'm hoping that I actually can get to all seven of these at some point. Honestly, I'd love to hear what other people's money scripts are, especially if they don't fit into this like, these four things and those couple ones we said, because like some people I know from my own experience, they can be really out there. Like, and I would love to hear them just because I'm so intrigued in general to hear like differences in people because it helps us then recognize them in other people and like possibly like give, you know, help or little tidbits for people that are struggling through stuff.
So that's that. There we go. That is a crazy psychological journey through childhood into the future.
Yeah. And I understand why none of us want to go back. Yay.
But I'm like, it's essential. You need to know what your relationship is with money. Well, it's essential if you're repeating the past and don't even know it.
If you're planning to like save and invest and retire early, you need to know how you feel about money. Facts. Because this is one area, again, foundation piece.
You get this dialed in and you like get those habits dialed in that the successful financially independent people have. You've literally just, you're literally putting the inputs in for success and it's just a matter of time before you get there. So next week, apparently Tim wants to rehash crypto.
I think I'm gonna talk about crypto and gold and silver. There is potential for crypto to pop off more than it has and there's potential for silver to pop off more than it has and gold could be kind of stagnant. So like we're actually gonna address alternative investing things such as cryptocurrencies and precious metals.
Yeah, so that you can find out whether or not it's worth looking into that or not looking into that and if you have certain ones, like maybe it's time to jump ship type deal. So tune in to next week's episode where we break down. Some cryptocurrencies.
Crypto, gold, and silver. Because the month of December is looking pretty sick. So I'll just say that right now.
We're gonna visit the portfolios with our dividends and our reinvestments. Then we're gonna talk about tax harvesting and our whoopsie daisies for the year. I liked that episode and people seem to like whenever I fuck up, so.
We're human, man. We make mistakes. I can already tell you one of them.
It was. IEP. We already talked about that.
No, not IEP. It was Rocket Lab. I bought Rocket Lab in January for my IRA portfolio and I sold it at a 80% gain and it's up like 400% for the year.
Okay, I have that song, Rocket Man, playing in my head. Rocket Man, Rocket Lab. So that's a whoopsie daisy that I will actually visit again in the blooper reel but that is pretty funny that I missed out on 300% gain.
It's cause not all the bloopers are like the mistakes we made. They're the actual like opportunities we missed, so. So that's that.
I hope you guys enjoyed the money scripts and how to become better with your money and your thoughts on money and. Yeah, hopefully that was actually like. Might need to listen to how to get there again because that's like the first part of this podcast is super important like how to actually, the steps, the one through six, to actually get a better relationship with money.
Yeah, we're hoping this can actually give you guys a leverage point to get into like a better place in finance, better place in your financial situation so that you guys can go out and freaking do the things. That you love. That you love and live life on your own terms.
With no regrets. Regrets are stupid.