116 - Climb Maslow’s Pyramid With Dividends: Financial Self-Actualization

Most people stop climbing the ladder of personal growth once they feel “safe and stable.” But what if you could use money—not just to survive—but to ascend?

In this episode, we dive into financial self-actualization—where your income fuels freedom, purpose, and personal evolution.

You’ll learn how to reframe Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs through the lens of financial independence and how income investing can accelerate your journey from surviving to self-actualized.

We explore Maslow’s 16 traits of self-actualized individuals, the blind spots that keep most people stuck, and how dividend cash flow—used wisely—can unlock creative and spiritual sovereignty.

If you're tired of the hustle hamster wheel and want money to work for your mission (not your ego), this is a must-listen.

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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 with dividend stocks so you can secure your finances and liberate your life. 

What if money wasn’t the goal—but the fuel? In this episode, we break down the concept of financial self-actualization—a blend of income investing, psychological growth, and reclaiming your time, energy, and values. Think Maslow meets the markets. If you’ve ever felt like ‘just surviving’ isn’t enough, this one’s for you.

All right, we're back with another psychology episode, although I'm not even sure this would be psychology per se as much as it is vision questing. I don't know. Fulfillment something don't know.
Anyway, actualization. Yeah, I'm going to mispronounce this word at least the whole way through time. I feel like you should come up with a nickname for this word essay.
That's a not sexual assault, but self actualization. Sexual assault. Oh, my God.
If you're not familiar with the word self actualization, it has to do with Maslow and his pyramid of needs, hierarchy of needs. So Tim apparently landed on some random topic and his brain went kaboom. And he was babbling at me on the phone for a while.
I've never seen the pyramid, the bottom of the pyramid and the bottom line is the fifth line is the basics, food, water, shelter, etc. So you have the bottom is like food, water, shelter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The fourth line is safety and security.
So like job door locks. I don't know. Safety.
It's like getting your finances dialed in. And yeah, your protectionary house shelter door locks. The third the third line is relationship.
The second line, love and belonging. It's not just relationships, relationships. Belonging is relationships.
Being part of something bigger than yourself. The second line is esteem. That's whenever you do things for your ego, your ego, you and self worth.
The top is the essay self actualization, which is when you start to branch out from self to actually interact with the world and make the world a better place. So it's basically once you have all your shit dialed the hell in, then you actually have the capacity for stuff outside yourself, like, right, because you're actualizing, you're taking off, you're going the other direction. Some people, it might be like an artist who paints or other people might be a doctor that volunteers time like across borders and stuff like that.
But you see how they like, start like expanding beyond themselves. What they found though, is like whenever like whenever psychologists like psychologists look into this, they find that the vast majority of humans reach the third line and they just stop growing. They have their food, they have their shelter, they have their safety, and they have their love.
And that's when they just stop. They're like, Alright, cool, man, I'm good. And they just float along throughout life.
And like, like, first of all, like a lot of people, that's acceptable. But like, for some people, it's not like we fall into the category or it's not like we always want more and more. And to help people, obviously, we've had a podcast now for two years with like hundreds of how many episodes were 116 116 160 episodes in this, and I've actually interacted with lots of people via emails and social media and stuff like that, trying to help them to like actually get the financial freedom point.
So if you say self actual actualization, according to Maslow, Maslow is the process of realizing one's full potential and becoming the best version of oneself. It's all about personal growth, fulfillment and the ongoing journey of becoming the person one is meant to be. That's how I feel all the time.
That's why I'm never content with anything. So like, the question is, how do you get to the top portion of the pyramid? Like, before you do that, you should probably take a step back because like prior to Maslow, and I guess the 19th century, the study was about the dark side of human minds, like phobias, neuroses, obsessions, and other mental disorders. And they literally, that's all they focus on.
They're like, why is this person have this going on? That is what they did. Like Jung did that. Freud did that all those other people, they all focus on like the schizos or the schizophrenia, people in the insane asylums, like the older movies and older books, you have the asylums and archaic mental health treatments.
That's how it used to be. Then Maslow came along who focused and studied individuals who lived abundant lives, made the best use of their qualities and capacities and exhibited the highest levels of mental health. So he actually coined the term self-actualization and then set out to find out what qualities these people had.
He studied like a lot of all-stars like Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Whitman, William James, Albert Schweitzer, Thomas Jefferson. And then from his research, he found that people that are self-actualizing have 16 characteristics. And we're going to go over the 16 characteristics right now.
What is interesting about that is those are all intellectual personality types. The top four. Yeah.
So like rather than like what a lot of psychologists did when he was alive was they would look at all like the worst of the worst and the insane asylums and the jails and everything else. Whereas Maslow said, okay, I'm going to look at like the best quote unquote, the best people that I could find. And he found the 16 characteristics.
The first is there's, they all had an openness to experience self-actualizers are eager to undergo new experience and rethink old ideas. So they're not set in stone. Like they're always a growth mindset, not a closed fixed mindset from the book, Carol Dweck.
The second one is they all had a efficient perception of reality. What the hell does that mean? They see things as they really are not as they imagine or wish them to be. So they see reality.
So they're like grounded in reality. Yeah. Efficient perception.
What the hell does that mean? This is like 19th century writing here, man. This is some crazy shit. Put it into your own words.
The third characteristic was acceptance of self-nature and others. Self-actualizers rarely feel anxious, guilty, or ashamed. They are confident in themselves and their ability to solve problems.
I don't even know. I don't even know how that goes together. Acceptance of self-nature and others.
That to me says change what you can change. Focus on what you can change type deal. Stoicism concept.
Good. The fourth one is spontaneity and what's that word? Naturalness. How does that mean, Timothy? As airs may act spontaneously due to their heightened sense of self, they are genuine in their relationships, not needing to wear a mask or play a role.
Oh, so they're actually genuine and authentic. Yeah, genuine and authentic. Spontaneity and naturalness.
Okay. I don't know how that falls in that category, but cool summary, bro. Well, they act spontaneously because they're confident in themselves.
Because it's natural. Okay. So it's coming from a place of integrity and authenticity.
Gotcha. Gotcha. They focus on outside problems.
They're not self-obsessed. Their focus is on general missions to which they devote their lives. My favorite word, mission.
They also, number six, they have a detachment privacy. I love the British word privacy. Detachment privacy.
They crave solitude and time for quiet reflection. I think that's huge. So you're not outsourcing your thought process.
You need to have some... I can tell you from the New Mexico trip when times were quiet all the time, I had plenty of time to actually reflect and learn and I guess analyze how my day was, how if I would do things differently or if the day was productive or if it wasn't productive. You have the space, you have the capacity. They talk about input output, but neutral time is super important because it allows your subconscious or unconscious to bounce around all the crap that you've input and you're not focusing on the other stuff.
So it gives it time to integrate and defrag or whatever, come to conclusions. Einstein used to talk about that all the time where if he was caught on a topic, he would actually just go for walks, do something completely different and then he'd have these aha moments. So it's allowing your brain to essentially synthesize and integrate.
And then if you're consciously thinking, yeah, solitude. Pound for the introverts. Number seven is continued freshness or appreciation.
The self-actualizing men or women, they experience joy in simple everyday things, sunsets, starry nights, children laughing, autumn leaves, et cetera. So that was one of the things that I thought was interesting. Joy.
I'm actually a very simplistic person. Much more than I am. Much, much more than I am.
So that resonated with me. But I do love sunsets. Your sunsets are gay.
You're gay. I'm sorry. They're lame.
I can't say gay. It's not offensive. I know.
It's one of those things where when you grew up with that word and it meant lame and things have changed politically correctly. As a Gen Xer, I would use gay and like retard. And I guess we can't use those words anymore.
Number eight was peak experiences. Self-actualizers experience strong, positive emotions akin to ecstasy. These include- What? All I heard was ecstasy.
A deep sense of peacefulness or tranquility. Like they experience. They don't just like kind of go through the motions.
Oh, so they fully immerse and they fully like feel feelings. So it's like- So they're not numbing. They're not numbing.
It's like getting a release. I don't drink because it dulls my senses. It's like, oh my God, look at that sunset.
Ah, that's what they go through. Like you do. Yeah, I know.
I'm a full blown- It just gets all slippery whenever it's sunset. Number nine is the essayers all have empathy. Self-actualizers are more willing to listen to and learn from people of any class, race, religion or ideology, which like that should just be common sense.
Like- You don't even have any empathy. Are you serious? But I still learn. Yeah, but I think it's funny.
They're categorizing that as empathy. I learn from people. Like I don't care what they are.
Yeah, I'm open. They could be homeless at Home Depot and I'd be like, what's up, dude? And they'll start talking. Like that's fascinating.
Yes. And I think this is key where people get stuck in that hierarchy crap or that labels, titles crap, crap that happens. Like I won't listen to so-and-so unless they have credentials and degrees and all this other happy horse shit.
Well, we talked ad nauseum before about how we believe people that do that tend to get lazy and they're actually less open-minded. I get ideas from all sorts of people and I ridicule- But if you go through this, you can see how each of these pertains to the hierarchy. Yes, but I'm saying like I- People want to feel safe so they're not going to talk to people they think are shady.
Well, is it shady? Because like I was going to use the example about us ridiculing feelers and like emotional, very emotive people, but I still listen because I do learn stuff from them. The reason why people don't talk to like homeless people or like drug heads or like criminals is because of the safety thing where I'll talk to all my girls. So you got you're in here for what? Robbery.
Well, where'd you mess up? And then like- Where'd you mess up? Yeah, he's really hardcore with that. That's pretty funny. Ah, okay.
Number 10 is the interpersonal relations. Self-actualizing people tend to have relatively few friends, but those relationships are likely to be deep and meaningful. This is literally just like a blueprint for me.
Blueprint for Tim. Tim has absolutely no friends. He should have interviewed me, but he's dead.
You weren't alive probably when the interviewing went down. And you're not famous enough for anyone to care. I know.
Number 11 is democratic character. The self-actualizer recognizes we all have strengths and weaknesses, but that we share a common humanity and equality. I guess they're saying if you pool everyone together, we can actually solve a lot of problems, whereas if you try to solve problems on your own, it's going to take a lot more time.
Well, it's that thing, and I believe in the polarity concept. There's things, if you're a strong individual, when you come together, you're actually a greater sum of the total. So it's like knowing when to go both ways.
You can't just be all social and you can't just be all individualistic. But like this list of 16, if you had to remember the people he interviewed were like what he considered self-actualizer. So this is what we're all striving to get to.
So it's like a thought process. Number 12 is discrimination between ends and means. Self-actualizers work to achieve desirable ends, but avoid wrong or hurtful means to achieve them.
I'm sure everybody knows like while working. So they're moral people. When you're at work and like the means to the end is everything's about the end.
So it doesn't matter how you get there as long as the ends are profitable. Yeah. There's no win-wins.
It's like zero-sum game, win-loses type deal. So like self-actualizers don't do that. They have the end game that they want to get to, but they won't step on people's toes to get to them.
So it's pretty much. Yeah. They won't compromise moral.
Number 13 is a philosophical. Philosophical. Do you speak English? I really question this quite frequently.
Philosophical sense of humor. Self-actualizers enjoy humor, but not at the expense of others as whoever that who's that dude Goethe. Oh, that's that guy or maybe men show their character and nothing more clearly than what they think laughable show their character.
Well, I have a super screwed up sense of humor, but my sense of humor is so dark that people don't know what to make of it, but it's not at the expense of others. Oh, I do humor at the expense of myself. I do humor at the expense of myself for sure.
And it's dark. Like it's like, oh yeah. So like someone do what some dude walked in me raping a chick or something like that.
Like it's really fucked up humor. Whatever. Number 14 is creativity.
Self-actualizers enjoy using their creative abilities, whether it's writing, drawing, music, or woodwork, woodworking. That's funny that they just threw in there. Maslow once remarked that a first rate soup is better than a second rate painting.
So they're essentially saying people who actually create and contribute. Yes. People give back.
They don't just say they're using their creative abilities, but they actually like, I think I interpret this as they actually perfect their creativity. It sounds like they actually have excellence as an actual value. Like I said, totally all about me.
I excel at what I want. I know you meet very few people who actually have excellence as a value. And I'm also one of them.
Number 15 is resistance to inculturation. Now what does that mean? Because I'm not good at words. Self-actualizers are not dependent on the opinions of others or the conventions imposed by society.
Booyah! They have a keen sense of who and what they are. Like it literally is. That whole thing has literally been the fight of my entire life.
So like once you get through like where you have the bottom four lines and once you, once you surpass all those, you can actually start working on what matters where you'll find that what matters is not what other people think or like what society thinks. I hate etiquette. I hate social structure.
I'm sure there'll be some people that are like what matters is society is humming along. And so that's fine, but you can't do it at the expense of the individual. And that's usually what happens.
And that's why I have such a freaking visceral response to all that crap. I'm not anti it if it's pure, but when it's bastardized, oh my God, it's so icky. So gross.
Society is lame because society is governed by laws that men create to better like themselves. And like the laws don't actually pertain to society. It just pertains to them.
That person's skewed bias. More money or more power. Yep.
Yep. Something crazy. And the last one.
The last one is awareness of imperfections. Self-actualizers are not saints. They have shortcomings like everyone else, but they are aware of them.
That's the huge key. Like there's a lot of people that have flaws, but they're not aware of them. Whereas if you're at those people are funny.
They're like in denial about it. If you're at the top of the pyramid there, you like, no, Hey, okay. I have, this is my flaw, but whatever.
So I have no qualms being told that I'm not warm and cuddly because I know I'm not warm and cuddly. So like I had to go through the basic understanding of self-actualization because I wanted to talk about financial self-actualization. Yeah.
So here's the thing. Why does this matter? Because financial self-actualization. Why can I not say that word? I don't know.
Basically you use financial resources to achieve personal growth and fulfillment beyond basic needs. So that financial self-actualization almost, almost got it is when you use your money to actually better yourself and those around you. And that's what I wanted to get to because there's going to come a point where you have enough money to fill your needs or your home and your car and your love and yourself, like your wardrobe and everything.
And you're still going to have money left over at that point. You should be using it to actually better. Oh, so is this the whole tithing argument that everybody else brings in? Should we talk about Dave Ramsey and his tithing obsession? No.
Tithing is a jip off. Well, I mean, my, my relationship with tithing is different than other people, but my church actually forces you to pay 10%. You mean your church did? They still do.
Yeah. But you're not part of it anymore. I don't pay tithing because I think that's stupid.
Like the church has like millions of dollars where they're worried about if I'm paying like 10% of like, you know, $2,000. They're making sure you keep up with etiquette standards. But like, that's like, I guess it is somewhat like it's somewhat, but like you use your money to actually achieve personal growth.
I think the underlying principle is in the right place, but I think the actual in application of it gets kind of bastardized. And the thing is like, if you look at the triangle, like you're less and less likely to be able to want to give out if you don't have all your foundational needs met. And that's where I think focusing on getting everything met in the right way is naturally allows you to give when you're ready.
Forcing people too early, I think creates resentment, bastardization, all sorts of like negative crap to happen. Jealousy. So it's all financial self-actuals actual, actual, actual essay is it's about aligning your financial decisions with your values and goals, ultimately leading to a more meaningful and purpose-driven life that goes beyond simply accumulating wealth and focuses on how money can help you become the best version of yourself.
Now, and we do have to talk about the elephant in the room to get from line five to line one, you're going to require a lot of money. More than likely. And this is the thing where like the beliefs come in here.
A lot of people think money is evil. A lot of people actually don't view money as a tool because they think it's evil. They think it's evil, but money is a tool.
They've been conditioned to think that only you can better yourself by using your tool of money to fulfill all your desires, destinies, your needs at the bottom so that you can actually become purpose-driven. Purpose-driven is what we all strive to be because you have a purpose that is how you become a better person. Yeah.
I look at money as like an energy exchange. Like if you have time, energy, effort exchange, like you're going to be able to do those things you need to do. It's essentially just like a, I mean, technically it's a currency.
It is a currency, but it's, it's a currency. It's not, it doesn't have a good or bad to it. It depends on the individual that's using it.
Yeah. It's like any other tool. Food is good or bad.
You can use a hammer to bludgeon somebody or build a house. However you use food determines if it's food, if it's bad or good. If it's addiction or not.
Trust me, we know, we know that. Addiction right there. Okay.
They rocked their earnings report. Let's stay tuned next week. Nice, nice.
That's where I'd like, well, I want to tie this into income investing. Income investing strategies that we actually have offered and like talked about for a couple of years now, they actually make the whole process of going from level five to level two so that you can then focus on going to becoming the best version of yourself. And actually giving back instead of being one of the people who just is a hot mess in the world.
So what exactly is financial self-actualization? Actualization. Actualization. There you go.
Well, the first, the first component is you have to understand your values. The first step is to identify what truly matters to you. That is your compass, your alignment.
It tells you exactly what the answer is to every decision you're trying to qualm. You do not outsource that. When you outsource that, that's when you have that internal alignment problem.
And then you start like getting confused, thought spiraling, all sorts of crazy. Examples would be personal growth, creativity, contributing to society, or spending time with loved ones. If that's what, like what truly matters to you.
Okay. So now how do we get to that point where you do the income investing and you use your dividends and you live off your dividends and you can actually spend time with your loved ones more and earlier in life, or you can become creative. You can become more creative because you don't have to work nine to five.
Yes. And that's the thing. And what I will quote, is it Warren Buffett, Einstein? If you don't find a way to make money when you sleep, you'll be working until you die.
I think that was Buffett. So basically, if you don't figure that out, you never have the opportunity to really partake in as much joy and fulfillment and desire as you would, because you're enslaved to. So the way to actually understand your values is to reflect on what brings you joy.
It can be anything. What brings you joy, purpose, and sense of fulfillment. That'll be actually, you'll be ignored.
Let's do you as an example. Biking and hiking and spending time with the cats. And your hummingbirds? Well, apparently hummingbirds.
Yeah. But yeah, I'm simple. I just need simple things, so I don't have to really worry too much about paying for that because it's pretty cheap.
Yeah. And I'm the opposite. I have experienced junkie problems.
I just literally want to do everything, try everything, explore everything, do whatever I want all the Spending time with family, to me, is a waste of your time because the family, you can never spend enough time with them. And the way your immediate family, you can, like your mom and your dad or your brothers and your sisters, but like your extended family, like you could, especially mine, like I could seriously take 30 years and never visit them all. So like it's pointless.
But some people really do have that connection with people and they do really enjoy that. And if that's one of your values or one of the things that means a lot to you, then that is your thing. Whereas ours is a lot less people oriented.
Mine's nature oriented. Yeah. Nature's a big one.
I like to be in nature. And I like animals. That's what the hiking and the biking, because I'm always in nature.
But I like building, doing... I like taking stuff apart, but... And not looking how it came apart and then being like, Hey, I took all this crap apart and I don't know how to put it back together. And I'm like... Fix this for me. Oh my God, Timothy.
The second component of how financial self-actualization works is beyond basic needs. Okay. So once you've secured your basic needs, like food, shelter, water, safety, financial self-actualization focuses on how money can help you pursue your higher level needs.
So once you understand what your higher level needs are, then you can actually start using money as a tool to actually help you pursue those higher level needs. But if you never feel like you have those basic ones dialed in, that means you don't actually have your system dialed in. That means you're still working for income.
So like examples of beyond basic needs would be like you're pursuing higher education or a passion project or supporting a cause you believe in or creating experiences that enrich your life. So those are all beyond your basic needs that you'd actually then be using your money as a tool to actually achieve those. It's actually fulfilling your wants and desires.
We keep going back to that once versus needs thing. Desires are definitely a need. Yes.
They're just a higher need. The third component is making meaningful choices. Instead of solely focusing on accumulating more money, consider how your financial choices align with your values.
So like me, I'm a simpleton. I just need to be in nature. Well, it goes back to that thing where experience is not shit, not stuff.
Wow. Because if you're accumulating money, those are tangible objects. If you're accumulating materialistic stuff, that's a tangible thing, but it's not fulfilling something deeper.
If you're actually sitting in values land, it's more an experience thing because even if you're hanging out with people, it's experience mining. The connections, all the other stuff that happens. I do like to experience good food.
Like tasty food. I mean, there's different definitions of good food, but I like... But like fully immersive, fully blend. Like tasty food.
Yeah. Like unique cuisines. So I don't mind spending money on good food.
Like I said, experience junkie. But just eating out to eat out seems kind of pointless. Monotonous.
Examples of making meaningful choices are if you're contributing to society is important to you, you might choose to donate to a charity or actually a volunteer time to support a social enterprise. Yeah. Like building those house things.
For me, it would be like, personally, it would be either working at an animal shelter, ASPCA. So like helping with animals or like helping clear the trails of the national parks or something like that. That's how I would actually contribute.
That would make everyone's life better without actually having to interact with people on your own terms, and that's all that matters on your own. It's on your own terms. You have to identify this for yourself.
Like it's not like it's not that you're not caring. Not a couple thing like she has different things and I have different things. And like so what we have to do is, OK, so like we'll do like what I want to do like for a week or two and then she'd like, OK, I want to do this.
So then we drive wherever she wants to do whatever she wants to do, and we do that for a week or two. And I'm still you still have to be present because I think part of her experiences are me being present and enjoying them or not enjoying them. But that's like what you do.
It's like when you're like when you have a relationship, you kind of sacrifice a portion of your time. You do if you want to, though, but it should not be a forced obligation. So that's like when you know you actually care about somebody is when it actually becomes a natural.
It's not a forced obligation. It's just something that I know that would like it's meaning it actually would benefit you and make your experience better, which actually help you become a better person is if I'm there and immersed in it as well. Aren't you altruistic? I feel more selfish here in this category, which usually looks the other way around, doesn't it? I don't like doing what I don't like doing.
And well, like we get along. So when he has hobbies, I have no interest in. I encourage him to do them with other people.
For the most part, we do. But I still support him. Like the bike.
Like I have no interest in any bike. What a bitch. I still don't know how to get.
You always want to talk about it. I'm just like, I don't know how to get that out to New Mexico. I'm still trying to figure that out.
Oh my, I'll figure it out. I went on a thread and they like actually went on the stuff that I don't group and they told me like which which bike racks to get. But the stuff that I don't want to do that you want to do.
I find something in that thing that I actually only thing that I don't want to do with her is when she has to go do like family obligations. I have no desire to do that. Yeah, and I let him stay at home because I don't care.
Like if he doesn't want to go, I don't want to be forced to go to stuff that I don't want to be forced to so I let him do whatever he wants. So, okay. So if the personal growth is a priority, you might invest in workshops, courses or experiences that help you learn and develop which I love learning like whether it be reading or tinkering or whatever.
I'm always learning. But again, it's learning how I want to do it, which is mainly in a very small group or a group of one. I prefer self.
The fourth area of self-actualization is authenticity and purpose like and purpose. So financial self-actualization is about being authentic and living in alignment with your true self. So like you again, you're using money as a tool to live as your true self because the thing is like when you really are truly aligned and authentic you actually radiate goodness that other people that inspires other people to do the same.
So even if it seems selfish on the surface, it's actually very giving more so than somebody else who's like giving and self-sacrificing. That makes any sense. Well, if you pull back up, if you pull back up the pyramid once, you know why we were beating on this is because to get to that top port there.
You basically have to get through all like safety is a big one because that's where a lot of people have a huge problem. That's where like they need money for their house and their car and their kids and whatever. I think this is like the fallback foundational like components.
Like if you don't have systems dialed in that essentially takes care of all that basic crap. So it's not on autopilot. Like that's where you have bandwidth sucking.
So I understand like his rationale for like the order of this, but I actually think like the fish that safety thing should be like to two or three lines of the four because that is where well, this is why I don't believe in the triangle. I believe in like every one of those balancing and each personality or person with the cognitive like distinctions like it should be this could be like the bottom is food water housing. You need money for all that for the most part of the third one is relationship and belonging.
Well, you need money for that and the top one is the steam which is basically you need money for that for your clothes or like your computer or everything. So like basically this isn't saying money. This is just saying that you have safety is money.
That's safety and security is money. That's how people translate it. It's they're not wrong.
But again, the higher aspect or like the more you need money for all that. That's why we keep bringing up like us. So basically the goal is to become a better person using money as a tool.
But like on my in my opinion like money is to become a better person With your basic needs to become a better person with your relationships and belonging a better person with your as your self-esteem like you need money for all of that. So like it's that's why are we to embarked on this with the invest income investing so that people can actually see you don't need to spend as much money to live the life that you want to because if your money is making money, you actually don't have to make as much. Yeah, and you don't have to like sacrifice your time or exchange your time for money like that's the whole point of this decoupling time for money, but like I consider the finances more of like a foundational pillar kind of like the physiological ones.
I consider health one of those and I consider like your personal alignment one of those because if you don't have those three core like foundations dialed in going up that pyramid like you're going to have sketchy results the whole way up it. You're going to bastardize the esteem needs for freaking a million dollars house and cars and all sorts of crap and it's never going to be this and come up with our own psychological I've been trying to do this for years and it's it's not a very streamlined thing. It's it's dependent on individual.
It's but I consider those the foundational pillars like finance health individual individual needs health. They need finance. They need so those pieces but the higher ones are in like different orders depending like we don't have super high love and belonging like we have a little bit but it's not like some people's that's really high on their list for his autonomy and freedom is super high on our freaking list.
That's why we're trying to reach people are about freedom. I know that's what I'm saying. So sovereignty is really high on my list.
I could give a shit about the relationship like why I do this. I'm hoping that other people like me be like aha and they're like, okay, okay, this guy knows know something. I don't know.
Okay, okay. I got off. So I got authenticity like Tim's actually one of the most authentically like unapologetic.
Oh, I'm my me regardless if you don't like me, I don't care. Yeah, that's pretty funny if you'd like me but it's funny but I think that's why a lot of people like you because you're actually very genuine even if you seem brash or harsher, you know, I'm very blunt that's for certain. I'm the same way but people tend to interpret me wrong like so I had a I had a hell of a time like when you're younger, you know girls always ask how do I look in this outfit? I'm like, honestly, you look like crap and they get all butthurt and That was into that relationship.
Yeah, and then when I ask you the question, you're like, it's a trick question. I'm like, no, I'm genuinely it's a trick question. It's not a trick question.
I'm genuinely asking if it looks like shit. It is. Okay, the second point it's about making choices that feel right for you rather than being driven by external pressure pressures or expectations.
That's a huge one because that is I think we're like probably 90% of people live their life. Like everything about them is driven by external pressures like what my neighbors think what my family thinks what my significant other things but a lot of that actually is because it gets intertwined with the esteem and belonging needs because a lot of times you need people to actually have those fulfilled. So you have to placate certain aspects to get them fulfilled or at least you think you do and that's that's the lower level trying to get that need fulfilled without the right proper pathway.
So like for example, the esteem thing if you do things that actually help people eventually you will get the respect that you're looking for you can't just like earn it through owning things. It's it's like a peacock look at me thing. It just doesn't work that way and I'm like caring if you're genuinely giving caring to people who actually appreciate it versus the people who take it for granted.
That's when you actually feel like or they see you for who you are and you don't have to like put on a mask and try to be somebody or not. There are people that will care about you as you are flaws and all. I found like when I was younger like I had I suffered from the external pressure thing and I just reached a point was like I don't give a shit anymore.
I mean I was like eight or nine but like I was in 10th grade up to like why was eight or nine? I was really worried about what people thought it was exhausting because all you have to wear like the best clothes and the best shoes and you have to eat the best foods and like you have to do all this like as a you know, as a young kid, it's like oh my goodness. This is exhausting. You're performing for love and then like once I just said I don't give a crap anymore like it was so much easier to be me and the people can and you're happier and more fulfilled and people literally attract you like a magnet because it's like I want what he has.
What is he doing? Yeah, it's literally not feel the dreams. I built it and the people come. They come to do.
They come to and okay. The last point like when your financial decisions are aligned with your values are more likely to experience a sense of purpose and fulfillment like we've mentioned the key thing if you do not feel fulfilled from something you are doing that means you are trying to fill a void with the wrong thing period. So that's like going back to my eating an example like if I go out and we get good food and it's really good.
I'm fulfilled like we go out to eat and I just go through the motions. I'm full but there's no fulfillment. Yeah, so you're not actually essentially fulfill fulfilled, which means you're still craving something like that was worth $40 probably not but like I'm full.
I guess that's a something some like just real quick examples an artist using money to fund their own art studio and to exhibit their work. That's all. That's an example of someone that's at the top of the pyramid because they don't give a crap anymore about what people think they're like.
Here's my work and I funded it myself. So I'm not dependent on other people to like to they're not like, what does that call whenever artists have to do stuff for people to pay for stuff bartering? No, like it's like say you're an artist you go to our studio and they're like, okay. Well, I own you see you like I'm like their agent.
I want you to make a picture of this and it's like that's not what they want to do. So whenever they whenever they self-fund their own art studio, they can work. They can do whatever they want their own projects pick their own stuff.
They're not like forced to perform whatever the heck somebody else wants to do. They work more from personal inspiration and their actual creativity and stuff. Yeah, that's actually one of the reasons I wanted to like put this out to the artist of the world because it's such horseshit that they have to basically compromise on their morals values and like creativity to essentially get their paycheck or like you just said their agent fee or their studio or their college or whatever the heck it is that they're working for.
They should have the same way like whenever like the same way like say you're working at a job and they pay you to go back and get a master's degree like you're basically at their at their discretion their whim because like I want you to get a master's degree in this because I'm paying for your education. So if you paid for yourself, you can get your master's degree in whatever you felt that you would fulfill you but you because someone else is actually putting the bill. You even like education paradigms.
Like if you only want to take this class this class in this class, but you're stupid masters to have a piece of paper to make somebody else impressed or get a job elsewhere says you have to take all these other courses and ignore the ones you actually want to take and a whole bunch of classes. You don't want to take for sure like when I was not when I was an undergrad, I went through probably six different majors because I just want to take the classes. I want to take can't blame you that sociology anthropology, but then I wanted to take like religious studies and I want to take like some math and qualify for Gen Ed's most of the time did they know so I had to like switch majors to take the classes.
I wanted I was paying for it. So I mean I wasn't but I was and I saw I could take what I wanted but that's another example of a social entrepreneur using their wealth to create a business that addresses a social problem that they're interested So say you have enough money to actually create a business and they wanted to do something like say trafficking or like abuse women or something like that. So you create a business that actually addresses that deals with that that you fund.
So then the business actually follows your outline of what you want. Yeah, you don't have like an you don't have an authority person. I mean, I'm not I'm not like I'm not suggesting.
Hey, like you should pay for everything in your life, but you probably should give you the freedom to be able to say no to pursue whatever you want don't align with you. And that's basically the freedom that sovereignty piece. That's I think what most people are actually craving.
They just don't know who to put words to it. It's literally the ability to say no last one now individually using money to pursue further education or training that's in their chosen field. I just went over like that's what I last one's the one for me.
I just switched majors multiple times so I could take whatever courses. I wanted to because I knew that the like I knew the degree wasn't going to amount to shit. So I just wanted to learn what I wanted to learn and then the last one someone prioritizing experiences relationships over material possessions.
I would hope that most of our listeners would be in that category because like we talked about enough like material possessions are dumb. I mean, there's caveats if you have like meaning tied of like an heirloom type thing still dumb, but again, you're you're fusing something as a possession versus like the experience. You're still actually attached to the experience.
You're just like decoding the memory and an actual totem people don't Understand that piece, but if it's literally like soulless objects, what's the point? Let's let's let's break it down. Like I'll make it simple suppose tomorrow you had to start a new job in Seattle and you live in we live in around Harrisburg Pennsylvania. So you have to move 3,000 miles away material possessions are dumb because you'd have to like get a fucking truck to move all these stupid things 3,000 miles or you have to get a truck to move these things to a storage unit that you end up paying for.
Well, and you know, what's funny and a lot of people I know that have moved multiple times. They say they literally just sell the stuff and like rebuy when they get there like that shows you what actually matters and doesn't matter. And I think the better example is like if your house is burning down.
What would you take out of your house as you're fleeing the building? My cats exactly like you wouldn't really care about much like I'd be up my hard drive. I can literally grab my computer and cats and my cats is all I worry about like, are you awake? The house is burning down here. You're good.
I'm grabbing the cats and I feel like I got the laptop. Would you know you wouldn't because that's easily replaceable, right? That's what I'm saying. So like my computer would be a huge thing and I've even thought about that being a problem.
So it's like online storage. So it's like having those backups and that's again that security line having those things dialed in so you never have to like waste bandwidth worrying about that cat that stuff but like people and cats and like that kind of stuff is irreplaceable because it's like I don't want to lose my photos. It's like my biggest thing because those are like my memory totems from We live in a good time though.
Like the photos are generally uploaded to the cloud. So I'm actually very grateful for my family. I got the family reunion.
They literally were going through like boxes of photos and shit. It's like are you guys serious right now? Okay, I mean that doesn't seem again. A lot of people have those memories sparked with things.
So I get that but like basically it's basically okay. So to sum it all up financial financial self-actualization is about using your money as a tool to enhance your life. So if you go back to the pyramid once we go my God, we're back to the pyramid yet again.
What we've tried to do here. We've tried to incorporate a investing strategy where you can like not not not saying you can knock all four of these levels out right away. But like you like you could knock out the bottom level with your dividends pretty easily.
You could buy a mail-order bride with the love and belonging, but you can knock out your food your water your house like you can pretty much get that the bottom two definitely are way easier. Pretty easy pretty easy to knock out with your dividends. Yep.
You safety in your physiological needs but love and belonging takes a lot more work because of that alignment component like you have to have the right type of like relationship because I'm telling you like I have dated a crap ton of people and Jesus Christ, what do you know? What was what was it eyeballs? You've been around huh? Yeah, you huge you knew this going in. This is news to me. You're so cool.
How much is a crapload? Are you serious? Like 300 the world will never know dated like 30 30 or 40 in my time. But like we've tried to establish a investing protocol or strategy that you can basically knock out like the lower to you so that you have time to do the time in the bandwidth in the space actually find yourself and then find what resonates who resonates and actually put the effort into the esteem stuff like that is actually podcast. We're like, okay, so you just invest X amount into a Yomax and it generates X amount of dollars.
Well that X amount of dollars is enough to take care of like your cell phone bill and your grocery bill. Well, then you've knocked out two of your quote needs. Yeah, and then you basically that then you can work on investing more money that you can then knock out like the mortgage in the car payment insurance and like so there's going to come a point within like five to ten years where majority of your expenditures have been are being paid for by dividends.
So that should free up so you don't necessarily have to live in a van like we're going to but you can free up time to actually pursue the next two which is love and belonging and your personal esteem, but it would also again it frees up your time. So it's like you can take a part-time job instead of a full-time job where you have to work 40 hours a week and you have to compromise your schedules and you have to do this. I will tell you this story real quick when I worked I worked at the Department of Transportation in Pennsylvania.
So Penn dot Penn dot I was there for a week and I said to myself, I'm never getting this time back. So I have to figure something out seriously first year at the federal government. I was like, oh my God, I can't do this for 30 years.
So but there's people that I got this is my 37th year of Penn. I'm like, whoa, right kudos to you. I literally was looking from like two or three weeks in like once I started having that soul-crushing sucking like having issues with the alarm going off in the morning Sunday night panic attacks.
The only thing you can't replace is time. Yeah, so time is super important and what they found through like a lot of surveys and studies is that the number one thing that people waste is time they waste time and that's actually what most people are trying to buy is time. The number one way that people waste time is going to coming home or at work.
That's where most of your time goes. Yep. So if you can replace that again decoupling time from money and yeah, so that's that that this is a short one, but I hopefully like resonate a little bit to next week's going to be a banger next week.
Actually digging into the portfolios and we're actually going to look at the earnings reports for a handful of stocks. I've currently in the process of composing that I'm but like we're there's a few that were increased their dividends. So we'll look at those.
There's a couple that cut their dividends and we'll look at the financials and earnings reports of those and then we'll just go through a handful other ones. But just to give you an idea where like a like a majority of our money's Invested what the earnings are saying that's next week in the week after that. I'm actually going to then just dig into the quarter to earnings.
I was going to do that next week, but it's only like two-thirds of the companies have reported yet. So like I had to extend it by a week. So I said, I'll just look at our personal holdings and we'll go through them and it's it's pretty interesting like the data is suggesting that earnings are pretty good.
This quarter doesn't necessarily mean the rest of 2025 is going to be good. So I kind of try to find like their their their forward guidance to see like what they're projecting that the company's going to do the remainder of 2025 but earnings have done they've done pretty good thus far and we're going to dive into some of those and educate you guys and say well, this is one that you should you should have in your portfolio like Hercules Hercules Capital smashed its earnings. Smashy.
Did it go up? Yeah, I went up to about $20 a share. What a percent gain? Six or something. That's still a good game.
That's like a crypto jump. Yeah, so that's what that's next week getting down there. I think I'm leaving here again soon in a couple weeks.
I've had enough of this loud noise and everything. So he's like back two days and he's already got like symptom unwinding. So yeah, we are we just moved the bed out of the house.
So we are no longer sleeping in the house. Yeah, the noise the noise is annoying and the aches and pains aches and pains are back. So I have he's back to taking naps during the middle of the day.
Craving food ad nauseum. Can you say you've been eating more? Yeah, I've been eating like it's it's bad like the like some symptoms have resurfaced after I haven't had those in weeks. Like this is why people who get out of rehab and go back to where they came from their addictions restart.
It's literally the environment. The environment is bad. So I'm going to probably get on the road cats here in a couple weeks.
So we'll be doing like whatever we were doing before and because I have issues with wanting to do everything and have everything I have a lot more downsizing to figure out so Tim's probably going to leave without me and then I have loose ends and admin crap to tie up. So I will actually talk about that because I'm going to be setting up like trust and businesses and certain things and at that point like once that all gets taken care of that. I'm going to be actually building out the community hub and we're going to be putting together courses and a bunch of other stuff.
So stay tuned for that. I don't want to be like two months ago coming along. I'm imagining like a winner in New Mexico.
I'll be able to finish the book and then we'll actually have that out. I think we're going to postpone that we're going to do courses first or I won't I've been vetoed vetoed, but that's it for this week guys. Sorry, it was boring, but it's like something that I think we all should be striving to this is my jam.
I love this behavior crap because if you can get this stuff dialed in this literally answers the problems to get like all of your life issues. It really does. Well, I think for me it's like you look at this and say here's what I want to be.
How am I going to get there? And it actually clarifies the investing strategy because I want to be here to get there. I need to have the investing thing, but that's the thing when we went into those jobs and we were like, oh shit, we can't do this long-term like this isn't the thing we have spent the last like 10 11 years 12 years 13 years at this point looking for what we're teaching you right now and like if we had this blueprint before dude, we would have been fine like three years into that we would have been done like off gallivanting wherever years and years and years ago. So we want to help other people get there faster because I think the world would be a better place if more people actually liked what they were doing.
Yeah, so that's why we do what we do and we will see you guys next week next week.