Demystifying Budgeting: Your Path to Wealth and Personal Growth

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Curious Ulsterman podcast, the podcast designed to equip you with the tools and wisdom you need to thrive as an adult. I am your host, johnny aka the Curious Ulsterman, and in today's episode I am joined by my good friend and repeat guest, dylan Bain. In today's episode, we sit down to discuss creating a budget and why that is so important in today's world. We also discuss why a budget is more than just basic maths and the basic psychology and emotions that will inform your own budget. We also discuss how a budget done correctly can lead to financial sovereignty, also known as financial freedom. So, without further delay, folks, here is today's episode on creating a budget with Dylan Bain. Dylan, welcome back to the show. Hey, good to see you, man, how are you? I am really good, can't complain at all, and I'm really glad to have you back on the show. This is your fourth appearance, if I'm not mistaken. My fourth appearance. Yeah, you just keep delivering the absolute bomb content. So you know we've got to have you back all the time. Between your life experience and you know, today actually you have the most downloaded episode on this podcast with. I think it was our first ever episode, maybe our second. I had to do well at a job interview. I had to do well in a job interview. Man that is clean, cut above the rest, like the easy, most downloaded episode. So yeah Well.

Speaker 1: 1:34

I'll share with you. Right before this call, I was on a coaching call with a gentleman who's having trouble with his wife and you know he's having some issues. We were talking about like being on this podcast and sharing knowledge, and I was sharing with him about you know what you're doing here in your mission and he was super interested in these. He started, he downloaded a couple of these, just texted me right before we jumped on this call of like this is great content. How did I know this was here? So I think what you're doing is great and I'll also share with you. I'm interviewing on Tuesday for for another position inside of my company. That would be a pretty big paybomb and so, like I was kind of reflecting on that very first episode as I'm preparing for the interview and going to my my you know the interview questions and great crafting, my story, getting ready to sell myself. You know what is the value proposition that I'm making to them? That why am I worth 20 grand more than than I'm making currently, even though I don't have all the minimum qualifications that they want? Why am I still the best candidate? You know and I'll let you know how it goes, but it's a great example where it's like, you know, good networking, because I got the interview because of networking, which is another conversation we had, and I networked my way into the position. I leveraged my wife's network to get the conversation so that I could network, and now I'm getting preparing for the interview and I know I'm going to crush it. So if I miss, I already know that I've won everything I possibly can and if I miss, it's just because somebody else had those minimum qualifications that I didn't have.

Speaker 2: 3:04

Yeah, man, I must admit I really admire your confidence in this kind of thing. You know, you're knowing you're going to walk into that interview with the various life skills that you know you've accrued through hard won battles over the years and, man, I'm inspired by your journey and you know just the kick ass stuff you keep doing. You know, I know I check in on your Instagram and your various endeavors between your own podcast and between you know your new life, your life coaching company you've recently set up, which, man, I'm well happy for you. But for you know, and for the audience, if you're not aware, we did how to do well on a job interview, professional networking, and you did a third episode which I was ashamed to say I can't remember what we talked about Dead Dead, that was it.

Speaker 1: 3:55

You would post it up. About this idea of good debt versus bad debt.

Speaker 2: 3:58

Yeah, and like absolutely can't let that one slide, not even 30 seconds later, straight in my DMs. Right, we need to have a conversation, yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:08

Yeah Well, but I mean it. Just, we live in such a variable world where shit changes so fast and you know, I feel like on today's topic, we're talking about budgets and it's. But what you say about budgets, I feel like you can say about a lot of things. You know, there's this idea of shame around it. Everybody has their own personal philosophy with it. It's the same thing with the debt conversation. People will tell you like no, there's good debt and I'm, I'm on the same train as Dave Ramsey. No, it's not. You know, debt is a mortgage that you've given on your future production and it's part. You know, your income is what you know, your income that comes in at parts of your life that you've traded away for these, these pieces of paper we call money, and debt is part of your future you've given away for the same thing. You know, I really believe that when you start to look at these things and in a more stoic reality, they become in the focus.

Speaker 2: 5:05

Yeah, no, 100%. I feel like the conversations we have are so badly needed because, you're right, today's topic is about budgeting and I don't this is not a slight against my parents, family or anything but I don't ever actually recall talking about a budget when I started earning a wage. You know, I got the don't obviously the real basic common sense. One do not spend more than you earn. That's real common sense. But like actually sitting down looking at what you're, what, what is coming into your bank account, and allocating it in a logical way. I was never taught that. But before we get into into that kind of arena, I think it's worth getting the foundations of a comp, of this conversation and topic into play and built. And the first question I would have for you is like, what is a budget? Because people hear this term thrown about and I think that for every financial guru on Instagram there's somewhat of a similar answer, but they'll all put their own spin on it. But in layman's terms and for, like a university student or someone earning their first pay packet, like what is a budget?

Speaker 1: 6:21

Okay. So, to the audience, I'm going to put you to sleep, then we'll wake you up, okay, so, like, just let's you know, let's hang on here, because here's the thing when you, if you want to put someone to sleep, there are two topics that will will like, if you're going to get one, two, one or two responses are either going to punch you in the face or you're going to go to sleep, and that's budget and taxes 100%. You're like I can't tell you, like I get some people who would like they get fired up about budgets. I know that they're out there, trust me, but I'm going to give you like a technical definition of a budget and then I'm going to tell you why I think that's a horseshit thing. So if you want a technical definition of budgets and estimation of revenue and expenses revenue being income over a specified future period of time, and it's usually compiled and reevaluated on a periodic basis Now, anybody but me should be asleep at this point, or they should be sitting there going well, I guess I don't need a budget because I don't know what the hell. He just said yeah, and I think that that's part of the problem. So let me restate you what is that saying? What it's telling you that you're looking at your income and expenses based upon a particular timeframe, that you need to redo all the time Okay, but let me say what a budget really is. A budget is a statement of value.

Speaker 2: 7:39

Oh, at the end of the day you're going to be elaborating that one.

Speaker 1: 7:42

Your budget is a statement of your values. Period, end of statement. There isn't more to say about it. And here's why. If you wanted to know what type of man you are, johnny, give me your checkbook and your calendar and I will tell you exactly what kind of man you are. Because your two most precious things in the world are your time and your money, and your money because you traded your time to get it. So how you're using your money will tell me how you're using your time, your one single, most valuable non-renewable resource you have. So your budget is how you're managing that precious resource. Oh, wow, that's your budget is a statement that's convecting me pretty much there. Your budget is a statement of values. That's what it is, and that's true for governments, that's true for companies, that's true for individuals Like stop and think about it. And for those who are 18, you probably don't know this, those who might be older you probably have run into this where you have a company and they say we've had a great year, we've had record profits, we've never made more money. And then you say, cool, I want a 10% raise and they go, we don't have the budget for that. Fuck you. Yes, you do. Your budget was a statement of values and what you just told me is whatever else I did with that money whether I paid dividends to my shareholders, invested in my equipment, that was more important than paying my employees. And what do corporations tell you? They're our quote unquote most important asset. That's never true, because their budgets never reflect that. Wow, no, companies paying above market value for their employees because they're their quote unquote most important asset. But that budget's a statement of their values. Now, I'm agnostic because I'm not sitting here saying these corporations are evil. I think they kind of are, but that's not the point of this conversation. The point is trying to illustrate how budgets will outline your values you as an individual, when you're looking at your budget, give me your budget. I get people who come into my financial coaching practice will say, hey, I got, I have a tax problem. What's your budget? Oh, I don't have a budget. Well, I can tell you you don't have a tax problem, you have a spending problem because you don't have a budget to manage your resources. Or I get people to say, well, I want to start investing. How much do you have to invest? Well, I don't know. Well, that tells me they don't have a budget. It's not part of their value system to manage their resources, so they can even do things like invest. So if we start the conversation with something that actually hits to where budgets actually matter, which is your heart, not your head, your heart a budget is a statement of values.

Speaker 2: 10:18

That is an amazing explanation and I mean I'm standing here and I feel convicted because now I'm asking well, what are my values? And you know how is my own pay packet looking Like? To give you total transparency, I quote unquote don't have a budget. What I do have is I know I've got a ballpark figure for I know that I don't have any major expensive hobbies. You know, my most expensive out going would probably be my gym membership, my mortgage, my phone bill. I don't have any huge expensive hobbies and I don't waste money quite frugal really.

Speaker 1: 10:58

But what it tells me but here's like let's just stick with that for a second. Yeah, you have no, no expensive hobbies. How the hell are you living life? Your budget is telling me like, oh, we're saving, we're doing this, but Johnny is not spending. He's not spending that. Where is the rest of that money going? Is he deferred today? Is today washed out so that because he believes that that better, happy, your future is just over the horizon? Does he have a reason to believe that, like there's lots of questions, just in that little bit of transparency about budgeting that can tell me like, all that for me, I just have more questions. But as you're talking about, like, what are my values? Okay, well, that's a good question.

Speaker 2: 11:38

Yeah, no, but it's really good as well, because I think that you know, when our next time I sit down in journal, I'll really that this would be a question I'll post to myself like look at my bank balance and look at my and look at my values and see like I'm, what my goals in life. I have very specific goals in life I want to achieve and I feel like I'm on track to achieve them. But it's so interesting, I never looked at that A budget is a reflection of my values and you know, but that it's so. You've caught me off guard with it, to be honest, because now I'm sort of thinking that if I'm feeling like this, how is everybody else in the audience feeling? Because you know, if you're 18 and you've just got your first pay packet and you're doing cartwheels, and you're suddenly like, oh, I've just spent all my money on nights out and maybe you've bought your first car and you know all this kind of thing, it's a major conviction. I suppose at 18 or even a university, shouldn't this would be a really good way to to find out what your values are here and now, rather than you know or what somebody asked. You pulled up into the street and said oh, what are your values? And you're like, well, I don't know. And, as you say, show me your pay packet. And if you're spending your pay packet exclusively on nights out and not really chasing after your dreams or any your ambitions, and that kind of thing, it's very telling, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 13:08

Well, we're going to come back to that, because when we start talking about pitfalls and budgeting, we're going to talk about nights out and you know the I imagine that we're going to. We're going to disrupt some homeostasis with that conversation. Oh, I'm looking forward to here. Here's the thing. There's two ways you can put people to sleep or get them to fight. You talk about budgets, talk about taxes, why, yeah, the people who go to sleep, they know that they're not looking at their values and they probably have no idea what they are. The people who will fight. You are the people who are going, who are insecure about their values, and they don't. So they stick to this thing and they found some excuse as to why they think that they're right. And why do they fight you about taxes? It's the same thing, because your taxes make up some sort of governmental budget. Oh, you know, how your taxes are spent is a reflection of the values of society. I'm an American, so my values apparently are aircraft carriers and fuck off with your healthcare, right, and so like you know, I mean laugh. No, you totally should, because it's fucking comical. You know, people aren't people. I've never met anybody who's upset about paying taxes. They're upset because the government doesn't spend them the way that's in line with their values.

Speaker 2: 14:25

Oh man, that is powerful. You're right. Yeah, I don't mind. I don't mind being taxed, but I want my, I want my taxes to be spent well, that benefits the broad society that I live in. You know, I want people, I want people everywhere to have a high standard of living and I suppose, yeah, it's a reflection of the government's values and we're not going to get into the discussion because we'll go on a tangent. But I suppose in a way, depending how you vote politically is you're looking and saying, right, well, I think that these people will spend my taxes better because they're more in line with my values. That's a whole other conversation we can have, potentially have Dylan. But yeah, it's just it's. All these like little tangents are going off in my head, thinking God is, it's connected to everything.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Now, it is because your, your money is your time, your time is your life and you got a finite amount of it. Yeah, like, hammering that home is really important, but I mean it even goes back to when you talk about, like, oh, our society responsible for raising kids or individuals responsible for raising kids. To me it's society, right, like we can have this debate, and I know there's some people in our men's group, the iron council, who will, who, like now, shank me in the shower because I just said that. But let me give you an example. If you got a guy in the United States who has a kid, who's disabled and we both know somebody who's in that boat we're not going to mention names but when I look at my paycheck and I look at my pay stub and I see that there's this tax taken out for for you know, social, social security insurance, medicaid, medicare, Medicaid being healthcare for poor people, medicaid being healthcare for people over age of 65 here in the United States I look at those lines and I never, ever, ever feel bad about paying that tax, because I know my friend's child is supported by my tax dollars and I feel an obligation to my friend and his child to pay that money. Now I look at my income tax and think do I need another fucking aircraft carrier? Hmm, hmm, hmm, right, you know, I want a cyber command. I want a better infrastructure. I don't want to hear that in Pennsylvania, bridges are collapsing. So my issue with paying taxes has everything to do with the fact that the spending isn't in line with my values. Yeah, and it's the same thing with the budget. At the end of the day, we all kind of know this, and I want to go back a little bit to something you talked about with. Like well, your parents sit and sit you down and teach you how to budget, and I'm going to I do want to touch on that, because it's such a such a barrier to budgeting. Like now, I said it's a statement of values. Now people are probably pissed at me, or they turned us off, or they're. They're like no, it's not, it's just money. Like okay, man, calm down, take a breath. But let's talk about why you didn't learn budgeting. Why the fuck would you learn budgeting?

Speaker 2: 17:01

It's very boring, to be fair, I'm just speaking from speaking when I was like 18, 19,. I didn't want to sit down and budget. I wanted to play Xbox or go out with my friends. Yeah, party all night, because that's what's important to you?

Speaker 1: 17:13

Yeah, but like, I want to get a little bit deeper. We live in a specialized economy, like we're human beings, so like, let's just stop and think about what the hell that even means. So, in terms of human beings, we've human beings, homo sapiens, have been on the planet for three million years. In the last little bit of that, in the last 10,000 years, we built the pyramids and had civilization, and in the last 50 years we've lived in a technologically enabled world when in our genetics or in our makeup or in our social programming that's part of our neurological hardwiring is budgeting? Yeah, it's not. I don't need to teach you how to fuck somebody, because that's it. I don't need to teach you that you need to eat food. I don't need to teach you to stay away from a pile of shit, because that smell drives you. Nuts or rotting things same deal, right. That's hardwired into your brain. There is no God-given reason why a human being should, out of the box, somehow naturally know how to budget. It's just not true. And, more to the point, stop and think about a tribal society for a second, because this is the proto-budgeting part of this right. So when we talk about savage firelight or fiscally savage, part of the reason I use the term savage is because I'm talking to the primal part of ourself. So in a tribal thing, who did the budgeting? Well, the tribe did the budgeting. The men would go out and chop firewood and the women would tell them when it was enough. And the women would look at it and go well, we need more firewood. Men will go get it. Right, that's how that shit worked. And so where in there was them planning for retirement? Oh, wow, where were their health care costs? Where was the idea of debt in those societies? So what's going to have a bigger impact on us as humans out of the box? Three million years of evolution or 10,000 years of society?

Speaker 2: 19:05

Oh yeah, Well, yeah, it's not a competition.

Speaker 1: 19:10

So for people who are feeling shame about, like, I don't know how to budget or I was never taught this, the first thing I'd say is why the hell would you know that? There's literally no reason to feel shame other than societal controls that are put on us around budgets, because we look at it and say people who don't do a good job. Budgeting in my dream must be morally insufficient, because budgets are statements of values.

Speaker 2: 19:32

Oh my God, drop by, drop on a bomb on us there, whoa, yeah, I suppose, in a way, we do judge people who we perceive to be bad with money and who we look at them like, especially if you're like, homeless or extremely poor. It's like you know, we've all done that. Everyone is guilty of it at some stage. Going well, you must have made bad decisions, and maybe they did. But then again, if they were never taught how to do, how to look at how to do money correctly in the first place, or they just had a really bad hand in life, you know, it's yeah, man, that's. That was a really convicting statement, but again, it's very truthful though, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 20:19

Of course, we live in a society that's everyone's dependent and having a job, while every corporation's trying to figure out how to eliminate as many of those as possible. You know, we also live in a world where, you know, we have the baby boomer generation, who came out of the biggest period of economic prosperity, shared across the greatest segment of society that has ever existed on this planet, telling millennials who have gotten the short end of the stick economically well, it must be that avocado toast and you can't budget. You're completely you know, and it's a judgment call on their own kids, it's completely blind to the economic realities that you can't budget your way out of poverty, and we'll talk about that here in a bit.

Speaker 2: 21:00

I was. You read my mind. I was going to at some point in the podcast. I would love to discuss that. In fact, actually there's this sort of leads on to my next two questions and they sort of tie in quite well with that statement. The question I would like to ask is like who actually needs a budget? And then to and then I'll reask this question after you've asked this, because I imagine you're going to give a really long but really amazing answer and like, is it for rich people or for poor people?

Speaker 1: 21:33

So this is great I love about it. I asked you this question and then you're going to ramble on.

Speaker 2: 21:39

But I love your ramblings. That's why you're back for a fourth episode.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Well, okay, here's the deal. Who needs a budget? The people who need a budget is anyone who needs money to survive in society. So everyone, yeah. If you are exchanging pieces, if your time for money, you need a budget. If you are needing money to continue to have a roof over your head or your belly full or the heat and lights on, you need a budget. Budgeting is literally required for every single individual, and you, you you avoid budgeting at your own peril. So let's just go through the spectrum of of employment. If you're poor, do you need a budget? You're well you're. You're on the edge of society between your one paycheck away from homelessness, and you think you don't need to manage your resources. Are you out of your goddamn mind? Like, you need a budget more than anybody else. And I will tell you that, for poor people, the, the two people who most resistant to budgeting are poor people and rich people for the same reason, and that is they have to look at some really uncomfortable realities about their life and that might seem counterintuitive that they're in that same category. But let me explain. A poor people, a poor, a poor person is going to look at it and they're going to realize that you know they're going to have to look at their income and they're going to look at their expenses, and they're going to have to start understanding pretty quickly that they you know expenses they have direct control over, but they poor people typically don't have a spending problem. Okay, poor people are not poor because they have a spending problem. Poor people are poor because they have an income problem. Right, people who have a spending problem aren't poor, they're bankrupt. There's a difference, okay. And so when a poor person starts looking at it, they start realizing a truth about their life, and that is that, no matter how hard they work, they're never going to get ahead.

Speaker 2: 23:29

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:31

And this is the point in which a poor person throws her hands up in the air and goes and cries in the shower, which is a totally reasonable and I completely endorse that, that reaction, because it's some grief there, yeah, or they get really fucking pissed off about it, and then this is where you have to go back to listening to. You know how to do well at a job interview and how to network, because that's your ticket out, but you have to stop the bleeding. Right, if you're going further and further into debt and you're in a poverty situation I personally have been in a poverty situation Step one is stop the bleeding. You have to stop the bleeding and that budget is your ticket to stop in the bleeding. Even if you're still bleeding at the end of the month, even if you're still falling behind and going further and further into debt at the end of every month, it's better to go less into debt than more. Yeah Right, 100%. So then you get the rich person and they go I have plenty of money, I don't have the budget. Well, yes, but they're going to look at that, they're going to do that budget and they're going to come to two conclusions. Number one how they spend their time is not worth the income they have, and no rich person like there's I shit you not an entire subsection of psychology that just helps wealthy people come to terms with being wealthy and not feel bad about it because they look at their budgets. The other thing that they're going to look at is that their expenses do not reflect anything that's worth of value. Right, they're going to look at their expenses and realize that they could do so much more for society and make a bigger name and impact for themselves, and they don't like that. And again, this isn't about shitting on poor people or shitting on rich people. It's about facing reality in your life. Remember, budgets are statements of values. For a poor person who's realizing that their income is never going to be sufficient to dig themselves out, there's a self-worth component in that Right. For a rich person who has a lot of money and they suddenly realize that they're really not worth it, they're not really doing anything with it, there's a self-worth component to that Right. But in both cases they can change their life if they just look at where they have the problem. They can be motivated, they can make an impact, they can grow themselves if they look at it.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Wow, that is us. I've never actually looked at it from that perspective, especially from the looking at it from a rich person's perspective. I am not rich, I'm just imagining what you've just said Someone who, if pulling in six or seven figures a year and realizing they could be doing a lot more with it, and they, in a way maybe not quality of life struggle with having that much money, but the fact that they have that much money and could be doing more with it, versus the stark reality and the horrible realization that you cannot outwork your current financial situation Right. No amount of hard work is going to get you out of this absolute shit show that you're currently in. As you said, you're taking out of there as mastering job interview skills, becoming a employable person of value and the good networking.

Speaker 1: 26:45

But let's just stick with that for a second though, because I have had people come to my financial practice who are making eight figures, wow, okay, and at the end of every month they don't got fuck all.

Speaker 2: 27:00

Right.

Speaker 1: 27:03

They are spending every dollar that they have as soon as they make it, thinking they will always be able to make more, and so my net worth exceeds theirs. That person and I have one client who makes eight figures, and so, if he's listening, I'm very sorry, but I'm not going to mention your name they're literally one month from homelessness. Oh my God, right, because they and so they look at their budget and it's like, oh my God, I have no net worth, I have no capacity to take a hit. I am living on. They are living more on the edge than the poorest of my clients, because I've also had poor clients who come in and they are so worried that they're saving $10 a month into their savings account and all they really want to do is be able to save $15. Right, so that poor client of mine has a greater net worth than my eight figure client.

Speaker 2: 27:58

That's insane. So you wouldn't think I was physically possible.

Speaker 1: 28:03

Well, but it goes into this idea that if all my problems would be solved if I just have more money, Right oh?

Speaker 2: 28:09

yeah, that's. That is definitely an idea I would like to maybe talk a little bit more about, but after whatever you were going to say before, yeah, so I mean, like, like you get this two into the spectrum is, both poor people and rich people need budgets.

Speaker 1: 28:22

But what about the middle income people? 100%, yeah, and and so like, that's where I fall right. Like I make I make six figures in a year, you know, and I have a budget. But I also, like, I have a budget and I have to look at it and I have a salary, so it's very consistent as to what I bring in every single month. And people go well, that's perfect for budgeting. I have a variable income. Well then, you really need a budget because you don't know, you know, like some months are feast and some months are famine, and I don't know about you, but I like to eat. So a budget can help you smooth that out. Right, yeah, you know, it just comes down to whether you have a fixed income or a variable income, whether you have a large income or a small income. Everybody needs to have a budget because everybody should have values in their life and everyone should be honest and open and transparent about what those values are, with themselves first and maybe with other second. So you get these objections to budgeting where people will tell you like, oh well, I, you know I make enough money. I don't have to worry about it. Well, if you're, you really should think about it, because making money is one thing, making wealth is another, and your budget is the link between those two things.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Oh, I like that quote. Yeah, that's man. There's so many avenues I want to pursue right now. But for the, for the average Joe, say you're 18, you've just got your first paycheck, or your university student and you are living dollar to dollar, or a pint to pint in our case. You know, if you're working minimum wage job and you're sort of you know you haven't got a lot spare at the end of the month, where would, where would you recommend people start? Like how do you even start making a budget? Like to me it seems like a life of a monster. It's like where do you even begin?

Speaker 1: 30:13

So that's a great question. I mean, we've spent a time kind of expounding on the probably the more important part of budgeting, which is the the emotional part of it 100%. But let's just get to the technical nuts, guts and feathers, right. So you have to start out, you know, budgeting. Budgeting is, is, is very simply this the equation is income minus expenses, equal, residual done, and so let's break that down. Your income, your income, has to be a reasonable projection of what you're going to make month to month, and budgets are, are living documents that you have to manage from month to month. Your values might stay the same and the budgets could look completely different. Okay, and what I mean by that is you know we're, we're at the bottom of January as of this recording, and after I get off this call, like, like, quite literally on my calendar, is my budget meeting with my wife, which we have at the end of every month and we're going to do a projection. Here's what I think I'm bringing in next month. So that's going to include my salary, her salary and the appointments that I have on the calendar for fiscal savage and savage firelight, right, that in those, those last two fiscal savage and savage firelight, there are some months so I make thousands. There's some months I make zero. There's some months I make negative, and that that's just a reality of that type of work, right? So I have to look at it and say this is my income, right? If you're a minimum wage employee, as you mentioned, what are your hours that's on the calendar? And do you work in a job where the calendar actually means something? Because we've all worked that shitty minimum wage job where, like, they put us on the calendar for 20 hours, but I know I never work more than 10 in a week, right? So you, you have to have a dispassionate viewpoint of your income and, as long as I'm talking about that type of variable income, understand that when you first go to make a budget, you're going to screw it up.

Speaker 2: 32:08

I like that. That's very free, you know. That gives me permission. That gives me permission to fail on my first budget.

Speaker 1: 32:13

Yeah, I mean, like with everything, you've got to fail fast, fail frequently, fail forward. I will promise you I have never had or heard of a client who came anywhere close to a real budget within the first three months of trying. I will tell you, it was nine months before I got within $100 of sticking to my budget when I first started. So you're going to screw this up. Just come to terms with that and you're going to learn and you're going to get better and it's going to be an iterative process with calculating your income, expenses, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you're going to learn a lot about yourself along the way. But, like, like, realistically, I tell well, if somebody comes to work with me and fiscal savage, it's a minimum of a three month commitment. For this reason, you know, and if we're going to do a three month commitment, we're. You know I don't take it as seriously, it'll be entirely fair as I do as somebody who signs up for six months over a year, and you have to commit to that for that time, because that's how long it's going to take for you to get the budgeting thing down.

Speaker 2: 33:15

So it's a skill that has to be honed. It's not something that you can just do some simple math and it's done, dusted.

Speaker 1: 33:21

This has so little to do with actual simple math and a lot more with facing reality. So you start off with your income. Whatever your income is, you got to come up with a dispatch. And if you know Clint, who's my team leading the iron council, he does tattoos. His income varies If he just, you know, he wants to work, you know, 12 hour days for a week he's going to bring down Bukku bucks, but he also has cancellations and he has, you know, different expenses and stuff like that and that has to figure into the budgeting calculation. And so you can start off with your income, but your income is your first line. Okay. So once you have your income and you add up all your income for projected income for the next month and I always think budgets should be done month to month then you start with your expenses, okay, your expenses. And for somebody who's 18, who's listening to this for the first time, I need you to understand that expenses come into two flavors Okay, fixed expenses and variable expenses. This is important because fixed expenses are ones you don't have a whole lot of control over. Okay, and let me give you an example of a fixed expense Rent. Rent is a fixed expense. Your rent check. You know, unless you're in a terrible situation, your rent check is going to be the same month to month to month over the term of lease. If you're, you have a house and a mortgage payment, that mortgage payment is going to be the same month to month to month. It's a fixed expense, it doesn't change and it's not. There's nothing you can do to change it, right? You can't just like I'm just going to spend less time in my apartment and therefore my rent is going to go down. That's not at all how that works. So other types of fixed expenses that you have Okay, you have. You know your rent, your phone bill is typically fixed. Car insurance is typically fixed. Car payments, student loan payments these are all fixed expenses. So as you list out all your expenses that you pay, you need to start putting them into buckets. Fixed expenses and variable expenses Okay, now some some expenses that are variable, but you should treat as fixed. Which is the tricky spot power bills, electric bill, electric bills, gas bills, water bills they're going to. You know you can, you can affect them based upon usage, but you should, you should make a fixed amount and then stick with it. So like, for example, I know that, during peak season for water usage, I will use about $220 a month in water because of where I live and how prices work, and then, during like this month, my water bill was $60. Okay, that's a huge variation. The way that I handle that, though, is I just say my water bill is $120. Right, it's in my budget Even though I'm not going to pay it. I'm going to end up with a little bit less, but I've budgeted as if it's fixed, and it gives me the ability then smooth that, because the difference between what I pay and what I budget then goes on a savings count to cover over just later. So you know where you can take variable expenses and turn them into fixed expenses, because they're easier to manage that way.

Speaker 2: 36:35

Yeah, that's. That's a really good start. I've I've got quite a few fixed expenses. I've got a couple of sorry, what's the other? Variable expenses, variable expenses. And it's interesting, I've never actually bothered to separate them, I've just put them as expenses, just generic. Yeah, and obviously that's not very helpful because it fluctuates. Then if you combine them, they're they're going to be.

Speaker 1: 36:59

You can't predict month to month, obviously, but what that's going to be it's going to make budgeting a lot harder than it needs to be, right, and the like the the key to reaching a place where, if you want to have a high savings rate, so let's say that your value is you think of yourself as a saver and you, you want to retire early or you just want to be able to tell your boss to go fuck themselves if they tell you to do something wrong and you want to get some of that fuck you money. Like you're going to have to have savings, right? So, looking at your expenses and going these ones are fixed, there's nothing I can do about it unless I start planning better, right? So, like, let me give you an example of that. When you start looking at your fixed expenses and go, man, I'm spending two grand a month on an apartment. Okay, so I'm spending $1,000 a month on a studio apartment here in Denver, colorado in the United States, where I live, is $1,400 a month. That's outrageous, right? You start looking at it and going, man, like I have this value that I, I, you, clearly, I value my ability to live by myself, but I want to value saving more money. Well then, maybe it's actually going to be cheaper if you go get a two bedroom apartment, because the average two bedroom apartment in Colorado rents out for $1,800 a month and if you so. So stop and think about that. The total cost of the apartment, if I have a studio, is 1,400, a two bedroom is 1,800. It's a $400 increase, but I get a roommate and I split it. My fixed expense just dropped. Oh right, yeah, cause I'm not paying. You know I'm I'm, you know I'm not paying the $1,800 for the two bedroom apartment. I'm paying half that cause I'm splitting with a roommate. So you might sit there and go, you know, but now. Now, this is where it comes down to that statement of values, right? What is more valuable to me, Maybe next year? Money at the end of every month or living by myself? Yeah, you see how that works.

Speaker 2: 38:48

Yeah, every financial decision has to ultimately come back to the bedrock of this conversation and your own values. Essentially, every financial decision is essentially saying this is I value this more than I value something else.

Speaker 1: 39:09

Right, I'm saying yes to one thing and no to another by maintaining a studio apartment at $1,400 a month rather than getting an $1,800 apartment with a roommate means that you're willing to pay an extra $500 a month for that solitude.

Speaker 2: 39:24

Yeah, that's pricey for being on your own.

Speaker 1: 39:28

That's just rent. We haven't even talked about what all the rest of the costs utilities, water, parking, the whole nine yards. Same thing with car payments. Car payments are fixed expense. So your average in here in America we love our pickup trucks, right? You have any idea how many people have seen who are driving their house. They can't afford a mortgage payment but their credit was good, so they went and got a new pickup truck and now they're paying $700 a month for that new pickup truck. That's insane. It's absolutely insanity. When instead they could have just driven that used car they had right into the ground that was paid off, then if they could afford that $700 a month, they could have been putting that for a down payment on the house. Right, when you start looking at it that way, what's their value? Their values are they don't really actually care about the house. They actually care about having of spending every single dollar they have on trying to look good instead of be good. Yeah, that's a powerful conversation. This is where these conversations start going sideways on people, because now I'm talking about some heavy shit, because now I'm telling you your values aren't actually having a house for your wife and kids, your values being looking like you have bigger balls than you do with that Ford F-150. And, by the way, bro, you're not fooling anybody, right? So this is where it comes down to. By looking at those fixed expenses, you start asking questions how can I actually reduce this? How can I actually maybe make this a little bit better? But fixed expenses take time to break down. So, like I'm almost 40 years old and I'm still on my parents' cell phone plan, why? Because if my bill for being on my parents' plan is $50 and I pay that to my mom when we get off the skull and I do my budget, I'll be paying my mom $50 a month for my phone. If I went and got a family plan with myself and my wife and my two kids, my $50 would go to 120 a lot, I agree. Why would I do that? So is my values saving money so that I can spend it in the way I want to, or is my values having my own independent phone plan? Yeah, yeah, exactly, it makes perfect sense so harder discussion to have, and this is the boring part, like I can see you starting to glaze over as we talk about expenses.

Speaker 2: 41:51

No, no. So unfortunately for the audience you're not aware I am a little bit ill Probably not COVID, but I'm not in top form. But I am thoroughly enjoying this conversation and I've no doubt the audience are as well. I'm learning quite a lot from this. It's challenging me in so many ways, that's like from an emotional and from a technical perspective as well.

Speaker 1: 42:12

Well, I mean, that's just it, though. We started off by talking what is a budget? I gave you a technical thing. We're talking about the technical side of it, but going back to that values thing, you have to start questioning your expenses. This is why when a rich person looks at their expenses, they start having to have that question. It's not comfortable to sit there and say do I really need a house with eight bedrooms for myself and my Chihuahua? Right, like why? How much is it costing me in taxes and heat and all this other stuff? It's challenging, it's hard, it is emotional and it should be frightening, like, like I said, going back to fiscal standards, I've never had somebody where I sat down and be like we scheduled two hours because it's going to take two hours to make a budget. A budget takes 15 minutes.

Speaker 2: 43:03

Fun story man, that's great.

Speaker 1: 43:06

Do you lie to your mom with that mouth? No, we sit down and we have to have these conversations and then we have to have the, you know. Look at the implications of each one of these. So we've talked about fixed expenses. Now let's talk about variable expenses. Okay, variable expenses are expenses that will fluctuate, you know, from month to month based upon your behavior. Okay, let's talk about some variable expenses. Food is a variable expense and for everyone in the audience, I need you all to fully understand this one thing about food it classifies into two categories, always Food and dining out. Oh yeah, they are not the same thing. Okay, dining out is not food, it's an experience. Even if you're getting something and eating it in your car, you're paying not for the food, you're paying for the convenience and experience of having Chick-fil-A or McDonald's or whatever. You go to a restaurant, you're paying for the experience and the ambiance and the ability to say that I went to that restaurant, even if it's the Olive Garden. Okay, it's not food, it's nurturing and sustaining in many ways. You totally should dine out. Don't hear me say the otherwise. Well, I will tell you otherwise here in a second, but for right now, don't hear that. But the food you buy at the grocery store and bring home and pay for yourself is a completely separate category. Okay, interesting, lumping them together is like taking and saying that you know, I lumped together my clothes and all of my books. Right, they're nourishing. You could actually cut one out and be just fine. Right, they're not comparable categories. So you need to have as variable expenses food. You need to then have dining. Dine out is what is on my budget. Quite literally, I have food and dine out. There are two separate line items. Another variable expenses would be what I call life supplies. Okay, life supplies that you can think of as clothes. Clothes are life supplies. I got two young beautiful girls who make tons and tons of art when I buy paints for them. That is life supplies. Okay, shoes, I consider to be life supplies. Okay, that's a variable expense. Now, when you look at your variable expenses, it's worthwhile to start thinking about how, like, what do I spend on food? If your dine out is greater than your food? Okay, you might be backwards on how you're treating yourself, and this is where you said everything's connected. When your dine out is higher than your food, you're doing two things your values are telling me that the convenience and the experience is more important than the actual nourishment. Okay, hard thing to say. Take, I said, we get back to the nights out, so you get the 18 year old who does this and they suddenly realize that all their money goes to the bar. What is the value that's being? What are their values? It's the experience of being at the bar with their friends and probably the ability to sedate themselves from having to deal with harder emotions or harder topics, whether it's stress from school, stress from minimum wage jobs, stress from poverty, whatever. So just looking at just the food thing and this is a huge thing is a big deal. Here's another thing to think about. Okay, I'm going to get into some technical shit, but I do want the audience to start thinking about this. You can go online and look up and I'm going to use Chick-fil-A. I don't know if you have Chick-fil-A's in the UK, to my knowledge.

Speaker 2: 46:55

No, okay, hopefully in the future there are. It's a chicken sandwich place.

Speaker 1: 47:00

It's a chicken sandwich place. They only sell chicken. That's all they do. People will line up or queue up for hours to get the sandwiches, okay. Now, if I'm looking at a Chick-fil-A sandwich, I think let's just say that they sell. A Chick-fil-A sandwich is going to be $5 or five pounds or whatever. You can go online and get the recipe, okay. And I can go online and I can look at the recipe and I can say, okay, well, I know, I need powdered sugar, I need pickle juice, I need, you know, I need to get the buns. I can do all this other stuff. And I go to the grocery store and I can buy the chicken and I can spread it, I can bread it and I can fry it and I can do all this other stuff. And I'm mentioning this because I've quite literally sat down and spread sheeted this out. If I go buy the ingredients at the grocery store and make the Chick-fil-A sandwich myself, it's going to come out on a per sandwich basis, okay, so, a per sandwich basis of 75 cents per sandwich. Now, granted, I'm buying. When I buy a flour, I have to buy a big sack of flour, right, yeah?

Speaker 2: 48:05

of course.

Speaker 1: 48:06

You know, and I have to take my time and I'm, you know it's, you know the ingredients. The smallest I could make, it you know, was you know I had. I ended up having to make like 20 sandwiches, yeah, but it came out to 75 cents a sandwich, versus $5 to where they charged me the Chick-fil-A. For what?

Speaker 2: 48:23

So it's 4.20.

Speaker 1: 48:24

I am paying a premium of $4.25 for Chick-fil-A to make me the same freaking sandwich.

Speaker 2: 48:31

When you put it like that, it sounds like insanity to go with. Why wouldn't you make it yourself?

Speaker 1: 48:37

Well, you know this. This applies to other restaurants too. Right? And look again, I'm not saying that Chick-fil-A is overcharging for the sandwich they have overhead. They got to pay their employees, they got shipping costs, insurance, blah, blah, blah, blah. The point I'm trying to get to is that your values are that it is worth an extra 4.25 per sandwich of money that you got by exchanging moments of your life to get in order for Chick-fil-A to make you that sandwich.

Speaker 2: 49:03

Man, yeah, it's one big logical trend, isn't it and it? But it all comes back to that harsh reality of what are your values and what? Why are you? Why are you giving over your hard earned money?

Speaker 1: 49:15

Well, let me let me really fuck up your homeostasis. You're going to have to mark this thing explicit, because now I'm fired up and I'm just going to swear. But you're a sailor, so it's fine, right? Yeah, but here, let me let me lay this out for you. Let me lay out a scenario for you. Okay, I'm going to go get Chick-fil-A sandwiches for me and my two daughters. Yeah, we're going to get in the car, we're going to drive the 10 minutes to the Chick-fil-A. We're going to wait for 45 minutes in line to get three sandwiches. I paid 4.25 for every single one of those sandwiches, right? So what is that? I'm 12.75 of a premium. I paid for Chick-fil-A. We're going to come home, we're going to sit down, we're going to spend a couple of minutes eating it. Then we're going to take all the shit and throw it away in the trash. Can? I'm probably in what three hours of time to do this? I paid an extra 12.75 of my life for my daughters to just go over and have three sandwiches, okay, and then they walk away. And what did they walk away at? They walk away with a full belly and a normal everyday run of the mill car ride with their dad yeah, now let me flip it. I go to the grocery store and I buy the ingredients and I tell my girls we're going to spend today and we're going to make our own damn Chick-fil-A sandwiches. And I come home and I get out the. I have my oldest daughter, she's cracking eggs. My youngest daughter, she's breading these sandwiches and I'm heating the oil and then they get to drop the chicken patty into the oil and see a bubble and they talk about it. We plate and we have those sandwiches and then we clean up and we put on some music while we clean the kitchen together as two daughters and their father. Each one of those is going to generate the memory I want on my death bed.

Speaker 2: 50:55

Oh snap yeah Bloody hell.

Speaker 1: 50:59

So I paid 12.75 to Chick-fil-A to avoid having to make that memory with my kids.

Speaker 2: 51:06

Oh man, oh damn, that is a, that's a shit. Me right in the chest with both barrels there. Bloody hell, that's it's true, though Is it, is it savage truth?

Speaker 1: 51:20

Yeah, savage realities, dude, yeah. And and on top of it all, I paid 12.75 for an inferior product. That gave me inferior memories.

Speaker 2: 51:29

Man. That is making me question where am I paying? And what about? What memories of my mess and I own, potentially for convenience?

Speaker 1: 51:38

Now do that with every meal. Like seriously, now do that with every meal. Yeah, when I first started budgeting, I was spending almost two grand and dying out my entire food budget for a family of four plus my roommate cause I live with. I live with four women and my cats. I have two cats. I pay less than $800 a month. Now I have better food, I'm a bit more healthy, which of course then cuts down on healthcare costs, and my both my girls know how to cook. I never have to tell them when they get up in the morning. My girls make their own eggs and hash browns and shit, because they learned how to cook because we started cooking everything instead of going out. Oh, wow, now you know if I was a single man. Now I want you to stop and think about, about the ladies, okay. So for the young men that are listening, let me just, you know, gather around. Anki Dillon wants to tell you a story. What do you think in ladies? I want, I want you to think about this too. What is more impressive to you? The guy who goes and takes you to a nice restaurant where you're away from everything, where it's a weird, where everything's out of context, and he. All you know from that. That is the conversation and the fact that he picked up the check. Okay, that's, that's a date at a restaurant. Yeah, and you fucking know that he is putting out his best, most socially acceptable face. Yeah, because he's, because he's trying to get laid Like ladies, I'm sorry. But like that's what's going on here. Okay, how are you feeling, ladies? And I know, I know the guys are sitting there and they're like yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I'm like I'm not going to do that. Yeah, no, no, I, I never fuck at the first date, liar, you know. Given the opportunity, who wouldn't? Right Now I want to run the scenario again, you know in which, and for the audience Johnny is right as a fucking stop sign right now. It is beautiful because he, because he's guilty of this and I know it. But now I want you to stop and think about this. Okay, instead of budgeting time to take a girl out to dinner, I budgeted time and I spent money on cooking classes, and so I tell her. You know what I'd love to share a meal with you, but I want you to come to my place and I'm going to. You know, I'm going to cook you a meal and, ladies, when you walk in, the whole house smells of beautiful food. He's sitting there, he's got an apron on, and you walk in and you can see his entire house. You can see how he's decorated it, you can see how this guy lives. He's invited you into his space and then he provides you this beautiful meal that's delicious and thoughtful and caring. He took the time and effort to take parts of his time to provide nourishment to you. Now, ladies, which guy makes you feel more important and safe and which you know? Guys, which scenario do you think you got a better chance of getting late? Okay? I mean for the guys, you already got her home right. Make your bed like telling you it can be a deal breaker for some people. But the point is is that, guys, if you spend your money on cooking classes and learning how to how to provide good food, it's going to be cheaper. On your dating life, you're going to be more successful and ladies are going to love you yeah, 100%. And and stop and think about it you take her out to a nice Italian restaurant. You spend 40 bucks on a fucking meal with Italian restaurant, with the food you know inferior. I can make it a beautiful fennel and genie steak Alfredo for $12 and she will be impressed as fuck. Yeah, so, like, when it comes down to budgeting, what it? What is the statement of values between these two scenarios? The one statement of value is I'm just going to use my money to for the convenience and be able to just try to put on a show. The other one is I've invested in myself and this experience for this person. I'm trying to make my partner Wow. Yeah. So when you're looking at your variable expenses, this plays out with everything right. If you're looking at your life supplies and you're saying, well, I bought that those shoes and this is this is, by the way, shoes are a big emotional hang up for me. Um, be just some trauma in my, my childhood that just I, I'm still dealing with. So I always want to buy the cheapest piece of shit shoes. Right, because that's what my trauma tells me to do. Yeah, my statement of values is I spend money on good shoes so I feel good, right, yeah, okay, you know so. So I look at this and go my shoe expense. You know, when I buy shoes, they should be expensive. Yeah, cause that's a valuable to me to take care of myself. You know, it's the same thing with clothes. It's the same thing with paints. I buy good paints for my girls, cause them. Making art is valuable to me. Right, I spend money on their education. There was a time in my life where I was paying $2,700 a month of my girl's education for good daycares because that value was valuable to me. Yes, yeah, right. So when you're looking at your variable expenses, you can start asking myself is my behavior in line with what my stated values are, and can I in the budget? Is the proof, positive data that you can't refute as to whether or not you actually are doing it?

Speaker 2: 56:47

Yeah, man it's, yeah, it's hard facts and numbers that you know.

Speaker 1: 56:51

You say one thing, but you're living another life, man you give me your checkbook and your calendar and I'll tell you what kind of man you are.

Speaker 2: 56:58

Well, it's convicted me to be a better man. I mean, I think I. I think I do an okay job, but you can always be better, can't you? So I it's definitely. I've got some homework to do at some point, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: 57:09

Well, and this is the thing, is that you know at the end of this, right At the end of it, when you look at all of your fixed expenses and your variable expenses and you really, the goal should be at the very bottom to have zero. Your residual should be zero. And if you have it, if it's a negative number, you go back and you figure out what expenses do I need to cut to get it to zero? And if it's a positive number, well, what am I investing in? Am I saving that? Then you go up and you put a savings expense in your variable expenses and then you put that number up there so that the bottom number is zero.

Speaker 2: 57:48

So that's interesting. If I was going to make a budget, I was always looking at it, trying to make it a surplus, like I'd have 200, 300, pick a number spare at the end of the month the I-DM would put. Personally not going to go into, obviously, the explicit details, but personally I save about 30% of my paycheck At the start of the month. It just goes straight into savings. I never see it. But then if I was budgeting at the end of the month I'd go well, I always want to be in a net positive and then I can put that again into savings or invest it somehow. But when you're saying it should be zero, that makes more logical sense. It's such an interesting concept of and I suppose this is a skill that you would get better at the longer you do it getting it to zero or plus or minus 50 pounds or dollars, wherever you're living in the world on that line. But in your opinion, is that a hard fast rule? It has to be zero.

Speaker 1: 58:51

Yes.

Speaker 2: 58:51

It's always a hard fast rule.

Speaker 1: 58:53

It needs to be zero. Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why Because it gives you a solid target to shoot for. Okay, if you're just saying I need a surplus, okay, well, one cent is a surplus, yeah yeah. Oh, I won. Did you actually need one? Did you just need a surplus? Or did you actually need to be saving 500 pounds a month? Oh yeah, that's a foul one. It's about making sure your metrics meet your values. You want zero on that. Like I said, when you're looking at your expenses, let's talk about some other and variable expenses. Your savings rate can be part of it. I have a savings rate. One of my line items in my expenses is an expensive pay to myself. It's a retirement expense. It's money that I put into a retirement account for just myself and I said it and I say I'm going to put $500 a month into that account. Now I have other savings that come, like you, directly come out of my paycheck. But I have this extra thing and I know that, like I live in America, so America, fuck, yeah, I got guns. I have so many guns, in fact, that I need a bigger gun safe. So I put on one of my expenses it's a fixed expense, it's my gun safe expense and it's $200. And now that $200, where do I pay it? I pay it to my savings account, but it's on my expenses. It's an expense because I know I'm going to pay for that safe down the road and I'm paying it now, here in advance. So now it goes back. So when I get to the bottom of my budget. I've taken to account my fixed expenses, my variable expenses, and now we're talking about a third class, which is future. But I didn't want to really want to get into that. But, like other examples of future expenses that I'm paying ahead of time, I know I have to pay car insurance. I pay it every six months, so I put away $200 a month for car insurance so that I have the money to pay it. It's a prepaid expense and I know my value is to. My values include paying cash for my insurance expense rather than putting in my credit card. Yeah, right, I know that my values are saving it for the things that I want, like a gun safe or a new grill or whatever. So those are all expenses that are in my expenses, in this case, fixed expenses, and I have to look at that every month and say is it like, do I actually want that gun safe? Do I actually need that gun safe? Yeah, I got $2,000 saved up. What's more important to me that $2,000 for a new gun safe? Or maybe I can pay off a student loan with that. Oh, yeah, right. So when it comes right down to it and I have in fact done this where I got to a point I had been saving. Now I can't think of what the hell I was saving for. It was a grill. I wanted to get a wood pellet grill. Yeah, because I love grilling with my girls. I love to cook. It's a big part of my family culture, a big part of my values. If you couldn't tell by the previous example, right, and I saved up, and I had $2,500 saved up to buy this grill. And then I was looking at my budgets and my student loan payments and went I want to be free of my student loans more than I want this grill. So, instead of buying the grill, I paid off one of my student loans. That's more in line with my values of being debt free. Right, I didn't need the grill at that point. And you know what I did. I just kept saving for a grill and I'm at a place now where I can buy it. I could buy it now again and, like I said, after this call, I'm going to be sitting down with my budgets and doing my monthly finances. I'm probably going to end up paying off another student loan today Because when I have to actually look at it and ask myself, what are my values? Yeah, I know which way I'm going to jump, but the bottom line of your budget should be zero and that should force you to have to go back and look at how do I manage my expenses to make it zero and where am I putting this money and where am I being intentional with my money? You have a zero at the bottom because it gives you a solid target. That then forces you to have to go back and look at those expenses.

Speaker 2: 1:03:03

I like that. I like that because it means then you have to get very specific about where is every single pound or dollar going. Allocate every pound or dollar a job or a rule, rather than if every pound or dollar has a job. Then suddenly there's a lot more clarity with where you're going to allocate that resource Exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:03:32

Well, and it starts asking forcing you to have asked questions. Right, oh, I have my food expense. How much was beer? Oh, right, like. This is a conversation I had with myself. I used to drink cocktails every night before I went to bed. Right, yeah, huge part of my family culture, huge part of the state. The region of the United States I grew up in is famous for its drinking culture, so I had a couple old fashions every single night before I went to bed. And starting to look at my food budget and be like how do I drive down my food budget more? How can I be more efficient to get better food with better memories, it gives me better value. This is literally a conversation I had with myself a couple of years ago and I looked at it and I went I'm spending I think it was like $150 a month on alcohol, which then, of course, meant that was just alcohol. I had to buy the bitters and the mixers and all that other stuff. What was it getting me? Right, like, why was I spending that money? So I actually ended up cutting it out and then I started sleeping better. I stopped snoring. Right, I stopped snoring and that made me better at my job, made my wife sleep better, made her more amenable to seeing me Again. It made me question my values. Are my values really that I'm the kind of guy who has to have a cocktail every single night? Or am I the type of guy who's intentional with the spending in this food, you know, and so that then, of course, freed up money? And then the question was okay, intentionally, where am I going to put that money? You know, in that particular case I mean, we're going back a couple of years now, like in by couple, I mean five I actually ended up putting that, allocating that money to extra credit card payments, because at the time I had a lot of credit cards right and I paid. I'm sitting here. I have no credit card debt right. The only debt that I have is my mortgage and the last of my student loans. And so you having that zero target forces you to have to allocate that allocation, forces you have to question your values. Everything has to have a role. Even if it is. This is my savings expense. Even if it is, I'm saving for a car, so like going back to the guy who bought that big pickup truck right. He was a client of mine. I ended up forcing him to sell it.

Speaker 2: 1:05:51

So you have to sell this.

Speaker 1: 1:05:54

And he sold it. Man, he was awk and pissed at me, but he did sell it. And then he was like, okay, well, now I've got an extra $600 a month. I was like, okay, what are we going to do with that? Yeah, and also for those who are doing the math at the audience, he was paying $700, but getting rid of it meant that he had an extra $600. So that can tell you that that truck actually put him $100 upside down in his budget.

Speaker 2: 1:06:19

That's sick, yeah Right.

Speaker 1: 1:06:23

And so now, what do we do with that? Well, hey, man, part of the reason you couldn't own the house is you got 50 grand in credit card debt. The extra $600 went to credit card debt right, and at this point he's now saving for his kid's college.

Speaker 2: 1:06:36

There you go, right. He's more of an inline with his values because he wants the best life for his kid. You got it.

Speaker 1: 1:06:42

You got it. So, when it comes down to it, the basic math here is income minus expenses equal residual. More complicated is that income, all income, minus fixed expenses, minus variable expenses, minus future expenses, should equal zero.

Speaker 2: 1:07:00

Right, and so that is in summary, essentially from top to bottom, how you're going to budget. Now, obviously everybody's story is different. Everybody's values, goals, ambitions are different, and so obviously that is, would you say, that's a hard and fast formula for everybody. Or like, obviously there's going to be particulars that have come into play there, but that should work for most university students, that should work for most people just getting their first paychecks, I assume.

Speaker 1: 1:07:32

So yes, with an asterisk right. The asterisk says the only guarantee I can have is you're going to fuck this up, right?

Speaker 2: 1:07:39

Which is good, because it means it gives you permission to fail.

Speaker 1: 1:07:41

Yes, yes, you're going to screw this up. And the other thing about this that I it's a pet peeve of mine, particularly if you ever go swing by the Iron Council Finance Channel, like half those people I want to stab with a pen because they're really convinced that they're completely unique, beautiful snowflakes who have the special skelos in key of budgeting. But when you dig right into it, everybody who tells me they have a special method, it's this Like. I have been told a thousand times, oh well, I have a different way. Okay, what is it? And then, at the end of the day, it's this Someone who's got not a debt. I had a special way to get out of debt. They follow the same path the one who is successful, all the successful people had the same path and all the unsuccessful people had a unique way to fail. You know it goes back to. It goes back to families. You know family systems right. All family, all happy families are happy in the same way. But all dysfunctional families have a unique brand of fuckery.

Speaker 2: 1:08:45

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: 1:08:48

You know I'm paraphrasing Charles Dickens here, but yes, this formula will work in. Whatever system you come up with is basically going to come back to relatively the same way, because there's really only one way to do it you look at what's coming in and you manage what's going out. That should equal zero. It should equal zero.

Speaker 2: 1:09:08

Perfect, because at the end of the day it always equals zero, Perfect. So I do have three more questions for you which I would love to get your perspective on. I got time man. Perfect. I'm loving this conversation, so more time the better. So we've talked about you know the emotional foundation of making a budget, why you're making a budget Because it's your values. Then we've talked about you know what are the various components of a budget and actually how that's laid out and how you would actually apply that to your life. But there's a phrase I've heard which I'd love you to expand on, and that is like where's the locus of control? Like how do? Because I've heard this within some financial circles. I'm got no experience in that area, but to my knowledge, this is focusing on where you can control things to a degree. Have I got that right?

Speaker 1: 1:10:11

Yeah, yeah. So where is the control? Just means where is the control. Locus just means location, right? So where is the central point of control? And this is one of these places where, like emotionally and this is where we're getting to kind of the emotional side of budgeting Like, if you think about a university student, because that's who we primarily talk to here where is the locus of control for them? And in terms of how they study, it's 100% in them. Right, the locus of control is an internal locus. They have control over their study habits, right? Yes, an external locus of control would be how the professor presents the material, right? Blaming an external locus of control is like spitting in the wind it's pointless and it comes back at you in bad ways or pissing in the breeze. I have another phrase that I really want to use, but we're going to keep this non-X rated. You have to look for your internal locuses of control in budgeting. So let's go back and talk about that. Income is where, like, if you have, so when you get to it, if you're having trouble getting back to zero, if you're negative at the bottom and you're having trouble getting back to zero, you have one of two problems. You have an income problem, you're not making enough money or you have an expense problem. You don't know how to manage your expenses. The expenses are 100% in internal locus of control. People don't like me saying this, but it's true. Here's why you chose your living situation. This is where, when people shit on millennials who get out of college and go live with their parents, it's the dumbest conversation in the world. These guys and gals looked at it and went I can control this and I can cut my housing expense by going and living with my parents. In some of them they just smoke, weed, jack off and live in the basement. They still made that choice. Other ones looked at it and said I'm going to control that expense because my values are paying off my student loans faster and being free quicker. They still made that choice. Not having a roommate is a choice. That internal locus of control is solely within you. You might have signed elites. I've signed elites. I'm in for two years. Dylan, I can't do that. I can't do anything about that Bullshit. You can break it. You probably shouldn't, but you can. You could just stop paying rent. The point being is that the locus of control there is uncomfortable might be is entirely with you. You have control over how you spend your money. You have control over whether or not you get the avocado toast which, by the way, is delicious and I think everyone should have. You have control over if whether like car insurance, like well, I have to pay car insurance it turns out no, you don't. You could, in fact, break the law and not have it. You've chosen to have car insurance. That's a good choice. I would strongly recommend that that be the only choice you make. But the reality is still, you have control there. In expenses, it's easy to see where your locus of control is. Income is where people will tell me that they don't have a locus of control. What I'll say is you do still have a locus of control in your income, albeit indirectly. Let me give you an example. You got that kid in university who gets that job and they're making horseshit money because we've all done that Well, they chose to be at university, they chose this job. They chose to work in the first place. They also have control over how much value they're able to milk from that job so that they can then turn that into a more experienced job with a higher value proposition to get more money. They have a locus of control over their income and it's just in very indirect ways. If you're in a dead-end, bullshit job, how are you trying to get all of the experiences that you can put on a resume so you can do well at a job interview, so you can get up in the world? Like I said, I'm interviewing on Tuesday. Let me give you an example of the locus of control. I'm probably at about as high as I'm going to get on a salary scale doing the type of work I'm doing. My options to get higher are to get into management or to change service lines into something that's a higher value. I'm doing the latter, like I'm applying for a job. That's a higher value position and I don't make bad money. But the reality still is that I'm at top of my game. The locus of control is do I want to just be content with where I'm at I have control over that that's a direct impact on my income or do I want to start career crafting and creating experiences that give me the opportunities to punch above my weight class, which is what I've done? You have to start looking at it and saying the locus of control when it comes to everything that's on the budget. I either have a direct internal control on it or I have indirect internal control on it. The mistake people make is they start saying, well, I don't control that line item, I don't control that line item, I don't control that line item Bullshit. Like you are lying to yourself and giving yourself a pass and you are only worse for it. Yeah, so when you start looking at it, your budget is a statement of values. Here's one thing that I'll say is that there are some things that are like little rebellions in this world, and being healthy, I think, is one of them. Being physically fit is being one of them. Acknowledging your sovereignty is one of them. When you make a budget, a budget is values, and by the fact that you're even trying to make a budget in the first place, you are declaring to yourself in the world that one of your values is self-sovereignty.

Speaker 2: 1:16:18

Oh, I love that quote.

Speaker 1: 1:16:19

That's good, you know. So right there you're already saying I'm in control of this.

Speaker 2: 1:16:27

I like that. That's a powerful concept.

Speaker 1: 1:16:32

So it's important to understand that right, that the locus of control is solely in you, in your decisions. And sometimes you know sometimes it's not really a choice, like having car insurance. In the United States it is illegal to not have car insurance, you know, and yet you could do it right. You know it's not worth it. So, for everyone listening for the love of God, it is not worth it to not have car insurance. But you have to understand that even though it's governmentally mandated, you still have the control there. Yeah, so I mean one of the things that kind of goes with this and I don't know what you'd like. Do you want to get to any other questions or do you want me to just keep going?

Speaker 2: 1:17:17

Oh no, I think we can wrap that question up. Help me summarize it in that I really enjoy Joggle Willings book and left with left be given about extreme ownership. So essentially, you're taking ownership of your values, your decisions and you know what's big and the experiences as well, because I feel like a lot of the decisions people make good and bad with their money is because they want experiences like it's. Like you say, they want the Chick-fil-A experience or they want the you know pick any experience you want, and then they spend the money to have that experience and then surprise, surprise, at the end of the month they're in the red or they're nowhere near what their monetary goal is, would you say. That's a good summary. It's about recognizing that you are in control and by taking ownership you end up becoming sovereign over not only yourself but over your finances. 100%.

Speaker 1: 1:18:24

And your finances are merely budgeting your life because, remember, you exchanged bits of your life to get that piece of paper we call money. Yeah, yeah, and you know this also means that when you start looking at this and start understanding like, no, I'm in control of this and my net worth is what it like. For me personally, one of the numbers I chase is my net worth calculation. I didn't cross into positive net worth until two years ago when COVID hit. Oh wow, you know I was always upside down in it and one of the biggest things I did is I had to just sheer dumb luck to buy a house right before COVID started. So I've really grown in net worth just to appreciation on that one asset. But I set targets for myself. You know I want to grow my net worth to be X amount of dollars. I want to. You know I figured out what a university education is in a first semester. You know, basis at the school I want my daughters to go to. And now I'm like I want to pay for half a semester this year. And so I got to see, I got to see their college fund increase by that, whatever half a semester is. So the semester is 24,000. I got to make sure that I got 12,000 going into two different accounts because I got two kids. Yeah Right, so, like you know, having those, because those, the education, is a huge value point for me, but, yes it. Ultimately it comes back to sovereignty and being self sovereign and being independent and being able to, you know, not be dependent on your job or your salary so that you can be more than your job and your salary 100%.

Speaker 2: 1:19:53

I love that quote being more than your job and your salary. Yeah, so we've talked about all the positives of a budget, but what are the pitfalls of a budget Like? What things catch people out?

Speaker 1: 1:20:09

Yeah, so let's let's talk about pitch falls of budgeting. We already talked about shame, so go back and listen to my sting on shame. I'm not going to sit here and repeat this. There are two pitfalls, okay, and yeah, people are going to this is again where everyone's going to be like, no, dylan, there's tons of them. Okay, yeah, let's talk about. Oh, they all categorize into these two categories Fascinating. Yeah, there are system pitfalls and there are social pitfalls, okay, okay, so we've talked about this on this, this podcast, before. It's the system problem and the social problem. Almost everything is going to come down to this finances, fitness, fucking, you know, family feelings. They all have a system problem and they have a social problem. So what's the system problem? A system problem is I don't know what the hell to do. Okay, now we just talked about the entire technical parts of this. Start with your income. Subtract fixed expenses, subtract variable expenses, subtract future expenses. Everything should equal zero. There, I just solved your system problem. If you want to, if you need more help with your system problem, you can go to fiscalsavagecom. Slash tools and all of my spreadsheets are available for free on that website and they're all targeted towards the system problem. Okay, I have never had a financial coaching client who actually had a system problem. Okay, we all know what to do. At the end of the day, we can look it up online. Okay, at the end of the day, I just gave you my website, if you can, if you can follow everything on those spreadsheets, you don't need me. Which is why I've never had a coaching client who actually has called me in with a system problem, because if they could if that's what they truly had they would figure it out because it's free on the internet. Yeah, now stop and think about that. With food, you can go look up how to feed yourself. You can look up how to go lose weight. You can look up how to woo a woman. Right, you can get all sorts of classes on how to fuck your lady Like they're all over the place, right, I know. I'm getting raunchy here, but like I said, like I said, this podcast. I was having this conversation with the guy where it was like he was like well, what's your goals with your, your wife? Well, I want to. I want to be a great lover. Okay, well, do you fuck your wife or you have sex with her?

Speaker 2: 1:22:32

Right yeah, having sex with her is the important question.

Speaker 1: 1:22:36

But it is. It is because having sex with her is the system problem.

Speaker 2: 1:22:42

Oh nice, it's all tied together Right. Okay, that's a system problem.

Speaker 1: 1:22:46

Yeah, Are you telling me you didn't? You don't know how to get it done. Cause.

Speaker 2: 1:22:49

I promise you, you do yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:22:54

But fucking her is going to be a different story. Right, that's going to require some ambiance and some energy and some emotional work. Right, it's the exact same thing with budgeting. It's the exact same thing with food. We know how to feed ourselves. We do not know how to stick to a diet. I know how to lift weights. I do not know how to grow myself myself. Image enough so that I feel on the inside matches what's on the outside. You know, I know that to hold my daughter's hand and walk down the street, I, you know, but I, you know, that's a system. The social thing is how do I make sure that when I'm holding her hand, I'm doing it with tenderness, so that this is a memory she will carry safely and securely in her heart for the rest of her life? That's a social problem, okay, and when it comes to budgets, it's the exact same shit. Okay, like we're not. We're not actually unique snowflakes, with all a thousand and one different ways to think about everything. It's actually quite simple, not easy. It's simple, but it's not easy, okay. And so, as we're talking about pitfalls, I want everyone to understand that this is very simple, it is not easy, it's hard, it's really fucking hard because the system problems. Easy to solve. The social problems probably what you have. Let's talk about nights out with university students. They come up when they make this beautiful budget. They followed out, they figured out their income, they figured out their expenses. Everything equals zero, perfect problem. They put dine out as $100. You ever gone to the pub for $100 in a night? No comment, yeah, yeah, because I'll tell you this much, I'll go for that one. I'll go for one drink. Yeah, you know, the last time I went to the bar for one drink I had, I could not walk. You know why? You know why? Because the way that I got around the one drink was I slid my credit card a guy and I said I will give you a $100 tip if you make sure this drink never actually empties. So I could be technically honest with what I told my girlfriend at the time. Right and that bartender made sure that I never saw the bottom of that glass. I don't know how much I drink, but holy shit, the point being is that you know so this university student goes and puts down. I put $100 for my rage money. I'm going to go out and drink $100. Your brain, your liver, is going to tell you a different story. After drink number three. Yeah, and if I have to drink number three, you know you're. You're. Now I don't know what, what it costs in England, but let's just pretend that you know. This is a Saturday at the end of the month. Drink number three puts them at $100. It is, let's say, it's, 10 o'clock at night for a university student. I'm an old guy, so I go to bed by that time, but you know, but for a university student that are just getting started, right, they got till 2am, that's four hours, and their mates are all sitting there going dude, let's stay, like, let's get some darts. And he thinks now, remember he's, he's three drinks in, like he's not making the best decisions in the world and you know that that will. To be at the end of the bar is starting to look good. And he says, well, I'll figure it out on my budget later, and he lays down the credit card. Right, it's a social problem, because it's his friends and the social situation he's in that's causing the spending at this point. Yeah Right, it's the same thing with the guy with the pickup truck, where he's paying $700 a month for his pickup truck. Why did he want to pick up truck? Because all his friends had pickup trucks, because all his friends are living these lives that just look completely beautiful and amazing and wonderful and, at the end of the day, all of that is expensive and so none of them have net worth. This goes back to the guy that I know that makes eight figures in a year, and he's my client. Right, he's spending all of his money making sure that he everyone knows he's living an eight figure lifestyle. Yeah Right, with the boats and the house and the sports cars, you know. And one of the things that we had to talk with that guy was like hey, you really need to cancel this golf membership, you need to sell that Ferrari. Well, what do my friends think? They're not really your friends if they love the Ferrari.

Speaker 2: 1:27:01

Yeah, from harsh trip to the Wesson up, right.

Speaker 1: 1:27:06

You know like and stop and think about how his life would change. Okay, I'm just lay out the scenario. You're spending every single dollar. You decide to sell the big house, you get yourself a Toyota Corolla, cancel the golf memberships, you live a simple life and you're just sack of money away. Right Now. Suddenly you have enough money that you can just retire. Okay, then you go and you travel and you meet people in Columbia and you suddenly start having experiences with people that you really enjoy and your life suddenly feels more fulfilled because you're not chasing these things. You're chasing experiences and people's and heart space stuff. Yeah, but his life will look completely different and the people that were part of that other, more artificial life, they will leave his life. It's a social trap to maintain that lifestyle. You've heard that phrase. Maintain that lifestyle. You know it's like Warren Buffett says the secret to the average man's formula for wealth is same house, same wife, same car. My house, stay in it for life, get married once you know, drive your car till it's till it's dust. The social problem inside of budgeting this is where this comes in. And you say the expenses are statement of values. Why? But Netflix is valuable to me, but why? Because you spend every night so dating yourself with the newest Netflix trend instead of reading a book on your relationship. That could save your marriage.

Speaker 2: 1:28:35

Oh, oh, drop on the triff bombs there. I'm not married, but I was just. It was very, it's very true though, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 1:28:42

But it is. I have an income problem, but you're spending money on Netflix. Well, I use that on wine you spend. How much time do you spend on Netflix? Two hours a night? Why are you not taking online classes? Why are you not reading books on how to network with people? Well, I don't have the money for an online class. The library is free. Yeah, go get Dale Carnegie's how to Win Friends and Influence People. Right, Go get Dave Ransy's the Complete Money Makeover. They're in the library. Even in England, I promise you, those books are in your library. Yeah, you know. Are you investing yourself? Are you meditating? Fuck, are you just going for a walk and thinking about your life? The point being is that that social entrapment is part of this problem. It's a pitfall, because then here's another thing that, with Netflix specifically, or like Game of Thrones, is probably the best way to put this right. In Game of Thrones, like people watch Game of Thrones, because everyone talked about Game of Thrones, yeah, right, and I have to have that HBO subscription. So, because it's really important to me to be able to talk about all this, all this Game of Thrones stuff with my friends at work, right, it's important to me. The social, like. I'm trying to mock social anxiety here, which I know I shouldn't do, but I'm going to anyway. Here's the deal, let me. Let me lay out another scenario for you. Do you watch sports, johnny? Yeah, I'm a big rugby fan, okay, well, I like rugby too, but I also don't have three hours every Saturday to watch a rugby match. Yeah, okay, I. Just I spend the time with my kids. That's my values. I spend time with my kids, yeah, but if I'm going into the office and this is true here because we're this weekend is the playoff for the Super Bowl for American football Okay, we got the San Francisco 49ers going against Kansas City Chiefs on the AFC, we got the. No, it's 49ers versus Rams for the NSC and it is Cincinnati versus Kansas City and the AFC yeah, now, I stumbled over that. Why? Because I actually don't give a shit. But on Monday I'm going to spend the first five minutes of my working day by looking up on ESPN and getting all the highlights for the game and all the social commentary from all the people who were talking about it, so I can speak intelligently to the people in the office and have the conversations and the social community connection about football. Yeah, but I won't watch the game. Same thing with Game of Thrones there's always going to be an episode recap. Yeah, right, yeah, you can always look that shit up, and so, like you can. If what you're truly are socially worried about is losing connection about this pop cultural reference, there's another way on mine that's free and will take less time. Other social traps that are huge. Shame over money. The number of people I know that get to a place where they're budgeting and they're starting to save and they're starting to see their network come up and then they undermine themselves. Why? Because they were told that money's evil.

Speaker 2: 1:31:42

Yeah, I've definitely heard that. In fact I was. I actually listened to Order of man Ryan's podcast with Dave Ramsey on the, as you previously mentioned told Money Makeover, and you know there was that five minute discussion of all rich people are evil, which I think is a ridiculous notion. But yeah, you're right. I elaborate more on why, on what you meant by that statement, like the money's bad or what was it you said exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:32:13

So the money's evil.

Speaker 2: 1:32:14

Money's evil yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:32:15

So there's a couple of things to hear. First off, let's just say this about Dave Ramsey. Okay, dave Ramsey's advice is mostly really solid. Dave Ramsey's is a trash human being.

Speaker 2: 1:32:26

Oh, I wasn't, I wasn't aware.

Speaker 1: 1:32:29

There are some people who are going to listen, who'll be like I can't take Dave Ramsey's advice because he's a trash human being. And so I'm just going to admit this he's a trash human being, he's a terrible employer and he does things that are not good, but his advice is really solid. And so, like separating that out right off the bat, like you know someone's, you know the value of someone's advice and the content of their character are not always aligned. And Dave Ramsey says it has had a lot of controversy lately, but this plays into it, right, because you get people who are, who are quite wealthy and do really great things, like Dave, dave Ramsey, who then also then hurts his employees, and then the next thing, people say again, this goes back to that social problem. And they say, well, I can't listen to Dave Ramsey because he's he's too judgy and Christian, okay, okay. So think of him, the most reprehensible person you know. If they told you, hey, don't take heroin, does that mean that you're going to start lighting up the black tower heroin because you got to do the opposite of what they said, like the like a heroin addict who tells you not to do heroin is still right. Yeah, you know. So there's that. And I also would say that there is a certain level of wealth not income, but a certain level of wealth that I don't think we can attain without doing some things that are very morally reprehensible or damaging to society. Okay, so let's this level set that. So you know a Jeff Bezos. I don't think Jeff Bezos or the Walton family have had a positive, a very positive impact on communities and families and people's health. Have they been economically hugely successful? Yes, have they changed the face of commerce? Also, true. Have they put out out of business the hopes and dreams of countless small business owners? Yeah, that's true too. And if I had to say, would I rather have two day delivery in Amazon or flourishing small business community, I'll take the flourishing small business community. Yeah, because again, this goes back to my values. Yeah, and so. So there's that. But let's talk about the idea that money is evil. You get to this idea from a quote in the Bible, and everyone misquotes that. They say money's the root of all evil. And that's not what. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil, and those are fundamentally different positions you also start running into on a social level. A lot of anti racist sentiment says that you know, for white people, divestiture is a muscle where you need to be on. Be divesting yourself of wealth and stuff like that and giving it to minorities, that's a that's true thing. That's out there. I'm not going to comment on anti racism and just commenting on sources where the idea that money is evil. What I'll say on it here, though, is is it better to be a useless person with a good heart or a useful person with a flawed heart? Oh, so, let me say, let me say, if you were completely broke, is it better to be completely broke but completely feeling morally superior to everyone else? Or is it better to actually accumulate some wealth and maybe you don't feel as good about that, but you're able to do more for your community? That's a lot. Yeah, that's what I would take, right. But I also think that's still a false dichotomy. Right, because you can. You can grow yourself and be, live an expansive life, and then the difference in the morality is how you, what your value statement on your budget is going to be right. If I grow my income by helping people like my side business, is coaching right. If I charge a lot of money for coaching, my coaching time is more valuable than my finance time to be in time. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, right, you know, because I charge $250 an hour for financial coaching, I charge $750, you know, $500 to $750 an hour for personal coaching, because if I had to listen to your sex problems, you're going to pay me more. You know, with that section, that's true. I just think that the value proposition for life coaching is higher, right? Yeah, now, if I start doing that in an extractive and exploitable way, where I'm extracting from these people, then I'm morally reprehensible. Yeah, but I've never had a coaching client come back and say this wasn't worth the money, because I asked that question for feedback. Is this worth your time, is this worth your money? And everyone who said no has always followed up with. It was worth so much more. Oh, wow. So I'm getting paid for a service that's increasing people's lives. It's making them better. Wives, husbands, fathers, community leaders how is that bad? Yeah, and I am paying for my girl's college with it. Yeah, so everybody benefits and that's how it should go right. I'm not shutting anyone's business down. I'm not writing laws that are hurting other people. I'm not arguing to cut funding that's going to make people's lives worse. I'm focusing on adding value to everyone's lives in a holistic way that benefits all parties. And if you are in that boat, then you by all means be expansive. Stop and think about this for a second. With somebody like Andy Firsilla, I fold disclosure. I don't like Andy Firsilla, but here's one thing that I look at and I go damn what an impact this man made. Local high school needed a new, wanted to have a facility to help invest in sports and young man's lives, and Andy dead ass cut a check out of his personal bank account for it. It was $25 million, oh my God. So if you can live an expansive life that now you can cut a check for a new facility that will impact positively the lives of young men for generations, how is that money bad?

Speaker 2: 1:38:20

Yeah, yeah, because I do think it's interesting that a lot of people do feel guilty if they do Suddenly a crew, a lot of wealth, and then think, well, other people have it harder. But then it's as you say, if excuse me that if you suddenly have that ability to write a $25 million check and like the, you know you're never going to know the full scale of the good you did, like it's unreal Even in your local community. If you are the richest man, woman in your community and it's like, well, you can help so many people, don't look at I even just think about this on a smaller level.

Speaker 1: 1:39:01

I asked one of my college professors like what should I do? They're like the world's fucked up. What should I do? And he looked at me and he said be a good father. It's like we need people to be good fathers.

Speaker 2: 1:39:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:39:17

And so, like I couldn't continue to be a teacher and make shit pay and not have health insurance and have to work a second and third job to make men's meat and be a good father, I needed the money. The money is what has enabled me to be a better father for my girls by giving this. How is that evil? You know, it's one of these things that's really hard. And when you talk about pitfalls and social pitfalls, there is a small wounded spot in people's hearts and I have this wound too that starts thinking that if I do good, if I advance my life, if I start accumulating, I'm somehow bad or unworthy. And when you talk about pitfalls, of budgets this is why people hire me as a coach it's not because they don't know how to do it, it's because and it's not even that they can't say goodbye to their friends. It's because, by doing better in their lives, they somehow feel they're unworthy or that they're doing wrong. And for, like everyone that's listening, I want you to know that you're worth it. You are worth it, you are worth investing in yourself, you're worth living an expansive life. And as you live that expansive life, as you conquer these things and you gain a better sense of self-worth. That then you can translate into self-wealth. You can start doing things amazing, even if it is something as small as being able to take time to just sit with an old lady and have a conversation and impact her life. Even if it is something as small as being reading a book to your kid because you're able to be home instead of work that second job, even if it is something as small as being able to woo a woman and write a beautiful love story with her and like your budget and your ability to manage your resources will unlock all of that. And deep down inside, everybody fucking knows that 100%. Your pitfalls are. That is, when you go through this process, it's all going to feel like it's far away. It's all going to feel like it's really difficult, and it is. It's not easy, it's simple, but it's not easy. It's just worth it. And so, as you live more expansively, you have the abilities and the capacity to be able to be a lighthouse in a brighter fashion and influence more people. Divestiture is not a good plan. Investiture in yourself and the people around you grows communities, grows happiness and grows real wealth.

Speaker 2: 1:41:55

Oh man, I think that's possibly some of the best two minutes of content I've possibly heard in the podcast. Yet that's like that hit deep man. It hits the heart, doesn't it? Yeah?

Speaker 1: 1:42:11

Yeah, you know, for those people who are sitting there and they're uncomfortable with the idea of gaining wealth and budgeting and expanding your income and being ambitious, you're not alone Like. I know how you feel because I felt that way before and I've found that it's improved every aspect of my life and the aspect of the lives of people around me. If I was still a teacher, I might be making impact on young men's and women's lives. As a teacher, I'm making a greater impact as a coach, 100%. You know I got clients who are getting out of relationships that should have died years ago and men who are finding themselves as the husbands they always wanted to be. You know I'm going to. You know there's one guy where he reconciled with his wife and it's like holy shit, those kids aren't going to have to have to horse parents now, man, that must be such a satisfying feeling.

Speaker 2: 1:43:07

Yeah, I didn't do the work.

Speaker 1: 1:43:09

I just shine the path. But I can shine the path because I have the money and time to do so. I can be on this podcast because I have the money to invest in the iron council, and that's how we met. We're able to jump on Zoom because I have the money to have this microphone right. Like all of these things are true. You know, I can be relaxed with my kids because I know I have an emergency fund that's sitting there that if I lose my job tomorrow, I'm going to be okay. You know I don't have the stresses I had when I was before and it has enabled me to be a better person and to make better decisions and take principled stance. So is money the root of all evil? No, the love of money is the root of all evil. When money becomes the do all and all, when you only look at your bottom line dollar figures and you, as a value, undercut other people to continue to increase your wealth, now you are loving money more than your loving people, man preach. So it's in. Like I said, there's a certain level of income and wealth that people attain where there's just no way they could have ever gotten Like there's no way to have ever generated that much value in the world, to have that level of income without extracting it from other people, and the extraction is the key right. The McDonald's franchise owner who cuts your hours and fucks with your schedule and demands that you work whenever they want to. They're extracting from you. They are extractive and being extractive. They are morally incorrect. The guy who owned a tax office, who created the job for me so that I could get experience doing taxes, so I could use that as a springboard to jump in to get my CPA. He didn't extract for me, but I made him a lot of money. Yeah, exactly, and he too this day makes more money than I do. Is he evil? No, he was my savior and he was able to do that because he had grown his business enough that he could take on a charity case like me. So these are all social pitfalls and things that you will face as you get your financial house in order. It's in the social problem everything from your friends to your family history, to your own internal makeup, in your own emotional states. Those things are the harder parts about budgeting, and when we say that it's going to take time, you're going part of the reason that nobody just makes a budget and sticks to it the first time is because they stick to it. And then they budgeted $100 for drinking and then they suddenly realized that staying at the bar late with their friends is more important to them. And then they have to face them. Either type of person who alcohol is important too. Yeah Right, it's a social problem. People get to the point and they have that bottom and they have a surplus at the bottom. They have an extra $500 and they think they have to give it a charity rather than put it in a savings account. Yeah, yeah Right, that happens too. So one of these things when we talk about pitfalls. At the end of the day, the most valuable part of this conversation, where people are going to be successful or fail, is dealing with that social problem we've just been talking about 100%.

Speaker 2: 1:46:20

I wish I had this conversation when I was 18.

Speaker 1: 1:46:25

Well, and when you're 18, surround yourself with people who take it seriously too. They're out there, they are Right, you're not alone, and your life will be better. It's like Jonathan on the ChooseFI podcast. He talks about this all the time. What would be a better night? Going out to a restaurant, where you sit with your friends at a booth in a noisy restaurant for an hour and you get food that's subpar, that you could have made better at home, or a three-hour cocktail night at your friend's place? Yeah, right, you know, but you got to have friends who want to do that. Right, you got to have friends who have their shit together enough that they have a clean house that you can show up at.

Speaker 2: 1:47:09

It's a social problem.

Speaker 1: 1:47:11

You have to have had or have dealt with your family trauma it had a family that did that or have dealt with your family trauma so that you can be a person who does that in order to be part of a group like that. So those are the pitfalls, and I could talk for another hour on the social problem. But, like I said, the social problem connects to everything. The system problem connects to everything. Are you having sex with your wife or are you fucking her? Are you feeding yourself or are you nourishing yourself? Yeah, are you working out or are you building fitness? I like that. Yeah, right, like I. Literally, there is not a topic that touches people's lives that I can't talk about those two issues in a real holistic way.

Speaker 2: 1:47:55

No, you're 100% correct, and it helps give some clarity to the complicated subject that is finances and budgeting and trying to balance your goals. Is this a system problem? Is this a social problem? And, as we referenced earlier in the conversation, it's about taking ownership and giving you that permission to fail, which I think will give people the green light to get stuck in finally into making a budget. So one, in fact, the couple of last things to wrap up the episode is what resources can you recommend for people in the version of either apps or I know you mentioned one of your own resources in your website, the for tools, which I'll be posting all your websites and podcasts down in the show notes but what resources are available to people that can help them either start a budget or maintain a budget and just make the most of it?

Speaker 1: 1:49:02

So from a technical standpoint, we already mentioned fiscalsavagecom slash tools. I have all my spreadsheets and stuff are available there, so you can feel free to go download them all. If you go to fiscalsavagecom slash books, most of my books that I think are useful are posted there they're going to give you great technical stuff. I'm going to mention Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover because I truly do believe that that in Financial Peace University, which is Dave Ramsey's other book, dave Ramsey Trash Human great fucking advice. Budgets are a statement of values. If you're not having a budgeting meeting with your wife or your significant other, you're not sharing values with them, and guess where your relationship is going. He talks about that. I think Dave Ramsey is a wonderful, wonderful resource because he'll get you started. I do want to mention one thing that I would say absolutely do not bother to read are any of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series.

Speaker 2: 1:50:01

Oh, interesting, I see that advertised all the time.

Speaker 1: 1:50:04

Well, he is brilliant, but he's also so. Here's what I'll say about Rich Dad, poor Dad. His mental advice is super solid buy assets, sell liabilities. Don't ask can I afford that, ask how do I afford that? These are very good advice. Some of his very specific things that he talks about, like buying tax liens as a savings method, is straight up tax fraud. You probably shouldn't do that. So nothing I say should be construed as tax advice or financial advice. Just putting that out there, you're all brisk borne by the individual. But Dave Ramsey is a good thing on an emotional level. One of the things a great book and I know this is not a typical financial book, but as a man think is by James Allen. We'll talk to you about how your thoughts generate into realities. And when you talk about budgets being values, that's another place. It's to really look because it's going to force you to reexamine your values. Sovereignty by Ryan Mickler Not a budgeting book per se, but focusing on what is your vision. Why am I doing this? How am I doing any of it? And he talks about a 12-week battle plan at the end of it. You can make all four of them, all four quadrants on his 12-week battle plan, financially focused, budget focused. So it's a great framework. And how am I going to go through and fuck this up for six months and still feel okay about myself? Sovereignty by Ryan Mickler.

Speaker 2: 1:51:43

Yeah, I finished reading that book for the fourth time last week.

Speaker 1: 1:51:47

Yeah, it's a yearly devotional for me?

Speaker 2: 1:51:51

Yeah, 100%. What about apps? Is there any decent app budgeting apps you can recommend, or anything of that nature, just obviously, with this being the tech generation.

Speaker 1: 1:52:02

Yeah, so on an app basis, everydollar by Dave Ramsey is a wonderful app which focuses on zero budgeting, which is what we were talking about. Ynab you need a budget is the acronym YNAB. They are excellent, too. The one thing I will say, though, and here is my pitch on budgeting apps I know we're the tech generation. Technology is a barrier to connection, which is weird because we're on a podcast trying to create connection through technology, right? Yeah, I would highly recommend not doing any apps or technological anything until you have 18 months of successful budgeting under your belt, and here's why Budgeting, like we've talked about it's more of a social issue, personal finance, more personal than it is finance. Having to actually sit down and actually write out a fucking budget connects you to your money in a very real and holistic way, whereas a lot of these budgeting apps just automatically pull it out of your bank account, so it's just dead numbers.

Speaker 2: 1:53:04

Yeah, yeah, I can see where you're coming from on that.

Speaker 1: 1:53:07

And remember you're dealing with more of a social problem than a system problem, that pulling out numbers and being able to just present you the dead numbers is all system, it's not social and you probably have a social problem.

Speaker 2: 1:53:20

Well said. Yeah, that's class. So now that we've gone through all the resources and how to make a budget, the social problem, the system problem we're going to wrap up the episode. But for people who've really enjoyed listening to what you've had to say and would love to connect with you and more of your content, where can they find you? So?

Speaker 1: 1:53:41

primarily, you can go to my website, which is just goosephizavidscom. That's going to stay up there, although I'm shifting more into the life coaching side because, as we've talked about a lot, the system, social problem dynamic exists in lots of different areas, and as I talk about budgets with people, I almost always end up talking about something else, typically sex, for some reason, especially for my married couples that I financially coach, so you can find me there at fiscousavidscom. You also can find me on Instagram at savagefirelight, which is what I'm posting on there. I am going to be bringing more content onto that and be offering some free classes here relatively soon, and you can find all about that on the Instagram at savagefirelight.

Speaker 2: 1:54:27

Fantastic, and I'll post all of them links in the show notes as well, just for a convenient click away. This has been an absolutely outstanding conversation, dylan, and I think at the minute this is probably the longest episode of the Curious Ulsterman podcast to date. But to be fair, my thinking is, for the sake, this is probably about a two hour episode for two hours, to really sit down and go through the real meat of this discussion and then have that inform the rest of your life, which will hopefully be a long and fruitful one. I mean two hours now in exchange for, if you're 18 now, hopefully another 80, 70 years of good financial decision making, setting up a solid foundation. I think we can't get any better really, man, has it been two hours? Holy crap? I think it has been. I think it has been, but the conversation has just been. So the conversation is so badly needed. I mean, I, you know audience, I'm positive you'll get value from this. But, speaking for me, man, I'm convicted, like I don't know if I have the time or the current health touch would, but I'll be tomorrow, when I'm feeling better, I'll sit down and make a budget. Well, you know what? I'm not sorry, I'm paper not an app.

Speaker 1: 1:55:44

I'm not sorry, and I'm not sorry because you're right. It is a needed conversation. Being a good steward of your resources, you know, is huge and will set you apart in so many different ways.

Speaker 2: 1:55:55

Oh, 100% yeah, and you'll be ultimately sovereign over your life, won't you?

Speaker 1: 1:56:01

Yeah 100%.

Speaker 2: 1:56:03

Dylan thanks a million for coming on the show again and no doubt we'll have you back on the show again sometime soon 100%.

Speaker 1: 1:56:10

It's been a pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:56:13

There you go, folks. That concludes today's episode. I hope you got a lot of value out of the content provided. If you did, then please do consider subscribing to the Curious Ulsterman podcast on your preferred streaming service and leaving us a five star reading and review. That really helps the podcast grow. Thank you very much. If you would like to follow the Curious Ulsterman on the various social media channels to view upcoming content, the Curious Ulsterman is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Twitch all at the Curious Ulsterman. If you know someone who would benefit from this content, then please do share it with your friends and family on the various social media channels. You can also check out our website at wwwthecuriousulstermancom, where you can view our full catalogue of episodes across all the seasons. If you would like to get in touch with the Curious Ulsterman, then please do get in contact on the various social media channels mentioned, or there is a voice note option on our website. As always, folks, I'm open to suggestions to make this podcast a better experience for you, the listener, If you tuned in today for the first time, thank you very much and I hope you got value from the content I provide If you're one of our seasoned listeners. Thank you so much for the continuous support. I am eternally grateful. I hope you'll join us for next week's episode, folks, but until next time I wish you all the best. Bye for now.